Oh the horrors of traveling underground for your morning commute, where you’re forced to read a book or magazine rather than Tumbling, Facebooking or finishing that Words With Friends death match. This week, L train riders get an out: from 8am-10am, you can pull out your laptop or spacePhone and log on to a special free intranet provided by the creative group WeMakeCoolSh.it. The “L Train Notwork” is limited to specific content that’s clearly designed for L train riders: a “Missed Connections” (obvs) feature that includes a live chat room/dating site, curated content from local authors, poets and visual artists, news feeds from popular websites and “other surprises.” New content will appear each day through Saturday. The wifi comes from battery powered web servers carried by members of the collective. The group told 3rd Ward: “When people ride the train during rush hour they are forced to be so close to each other but they rarely interact with each other. We wanted to give people something to talk about.” (Fast Company has a test drive of how the system works.)
WeMakeCoolSh.it will also make the project’s code available on the open-source site Github so that others can play with their own pirate networks.
The service is available on the L train from Morgan Ave. to Eighth Avenue.