Mind the Gap

In the late 90's I used to take a dance class at the local Y with a teacher named Jennifer. She was bitchy and funny and I liked her. She once told us some story about when she'd been in London, and by the time class ended the only thing I remembered about it was that there are recordings saying, "Mind the gap" all around the Tube stations. Even then, when I was 20, I thought the Gap should take that phrase and market the hell out of it. It seemed brilliant to me, and to be perfectly honest, it still does.

My last apartment in San Francisco was a close to Gap headquarters and on walks past the building I'd look up at the windows and wonder if the marketing department had already considered and rejected the "Mind the gap" idea - maybe the phrase is taken or there was some negative connotation I wasn't thinking of. But really, if Calvin Klein can do an ad campaign with Brooke Shields saying "Nothing comes between me and my Calvin's" I hardly think it's too risqué to say "Mind the Gap."

Anyway, here's what made me think of all this gap talk. Good looking out stepping onto those trains, people. Mind the gap, indeed.