There was a recent episode of Royal Pains where the Hamptons Jitney crashes (and our Doctor Protagonist is nearby and saves people), and yeah, it’s just a bus.

RE blue-collar elements of Jitney riders–OK you may be right, but that’s not the crowd I saw.

RE landowners not taking the jitney but taking limos–um, nope, used to work with a guy who owned a house in Bridgehampton (lived in NYC in a place his family owned forever most of the time).  And he swore that the jitney was much easier than dealing with traffic, gas, tolls, etc. 

(which I believe is the last stop since the OCEAN starts after that)

The ocean starts after Montauk? Wow I always wondered where all that water that fills the globe came from and now I know!

Call it “Hampton Express” or “Hamption Cruiser” but don‘t call it a “jitney” when it isn’t in any way, shape or form anymore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo

…at the sites that labeled them ‘green’.

I absolutely love spotting green leaf labels/logos—“the environment”, “save the planet”, etc…—on products & ads! That’s when I know smoke is being blown up my ass with a leaf blower set on high!

My personal favorite is “luxury condos”, which absolutely every…single…..condo developed in the last 10 years appears to be…

Yeah. One of the lectures in one of my design classes was about individual vs. mass, specifically around pin-striping on cars and how it went from a custom design element to standard very rapidly. I would make the same comment about body mods, but I’d get punched in the eye. Adding any new element to a design makes it ‘deluxe’, but when everyone else has added exactly the same element almost immediately, they all become deluxe instead of all becoming ‘standard’.

Most of us had this discussion with our parents sometime during our adolescence when we made ourselves look exactly like everyone else in our quest to assert our individuality. It seems hard-wired.

However, if you put “artisanal” in front of pie, well baby I am there!  In fact, you could have two of the same exact pies and if one was identified as artisanal, I know that one would taste better.  Just like toiletries in frosted glass bottles are better.  Or bottled by someone whose first name is Dr., is better too.

The difference is a lot of items in the past were given “luxury” names, but had normal/cheap price points. And the puffed up words were used in the brand name, not in the description of the item. Nowadays when I hear that a new “artisanal” food place is opening the first thought to mind is: “Overpriced burgers?  Or overpriced hot dogs?”

folks are using words like “luxury”, “artisanal”, “fancy”, “exclusive” and others to schmaltz up simple things for snooty marketing reasons.

As opposed to the 50s, when products were “fit for a queen” or “Imperial” and there were crowns on half the boxes in the grocery store?

You want a “regular” bus line look at the atrocious Red and Tan lines in Westchester/Rockland, or the truly disgusting Shortline busses in the tri-state area.  Commuter hell…

So when I hear “jitney” I hear an entity trying to “snobify” a simple service instead of calling it for what it is. It’s a real problem here in NYC and even in the U.S.; folks are using words like “luxury”, “artisanal”, “fancy”, “exclusive” and others to schmaltz up simple things for snooty marketing reasons.