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VIDEO: Hip-Hop Video Mocks Men Who Hit On Women in Subway

By Gwynne Hogan | February 23, 2015 9:59am
Subway Rap
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Room 28

INWOOD — Hope your subway pick-up lines are better than these.

“Subway Girls,” a goofy YouTube video, featuring members of the sketch comedy group Room 28, mocks men who try to pick up women on the subway.

“Hey girl, you taking mass transit?” the chorus of swaggering guys in the hip-hop video ask.

“Uh — yeah, I’m taking mass transit,” a woman responds with utter contempt.

The video takes place in the 200th Street A train stop in Inwood and in a subway car. Several men take turns trying to pick up different women. The coy rap lyrics make cracks about subway rats, being too cheap to take a taxi and the car-service Uber.

“I’ve never really tried to hit on a girl in the subway, but I’ve seen it happen a lot,” said the video's co-creator, Andrew Casanova, 26, who’s lived in Washington Heights since 2009.

He and his friends said they've had the idea for the video kicking around in their heads since last summer.

“I’ve seen guys get denied," he said. "It’s bad but it’s also funny.”

Casanova started working on the beats for "Subway Girls" months ago. He said he experimented with several different styles and rhythms before settling on the one used in the video.

“Rapping and making beats [are] at the forefront of what I’m doing my life,” he said. “But I don’t consider myself Mr. Cool Hardcore Rapper.”

So, he said, comedic raps that play on his acting and sketch comedy skills are a happy medium.

Casanova recently joined Room 28, a group founded by his uncle Jamie Fernandez, 34, and another friend in 2007. The name Room 28 is a reference to a mental health institution located at mile 28 between Santiago and Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.

The group dabbled in video production before, but mostly to promote live-sketch comedy shows that were upcoming, Casanova said.

The team hopes to keep producing videos. The next one in the works will make fun of men who invent lame excuses for not going out, like binge-watching “Friends” or taking cooking classes from YouTube videos, Casanova said.

With all their videos, the group hopes to poke fun at mundane occurrences of city life.

“[We want to] shed light on something super relatable, that everyone knows about,” Casanova said. “[And] hopefully make people laugh the next time.”