We’ve all been there. On Muni or BART during rush hour. You slither into a car, almost cheek-to-cheek with your fellow riders, and as you hold on to the rail, you feel it. The metal is wet, or slimy, and suddenly you realize you’re crammed in a box filled with coughing, sneezing, sweating masses, holding on to the same metal bar as the guy who is “discretely” picking his nose.
Excuse me while I dive into a vat of hand sanitizer.
Your commute doesn’t have to be a total germy hellscape if this new invention gets its wish from the crowdfunding fairy. The Germinator Transit jacket is the San Francisco brainchild of Gravity Tank and Betabrand, and you can read all about it on this website.
The Germinator is as close to an Iron Man suit you can get without robbing Tony Stark. To start off, it has a collar with an antimicrobial liner ideal for shielding your mouth from offending coughs, or as the site suggests, the smell of reckless farts.
Next, it has a built-in, zippered transit pass holder on the arm, meaning you can simply press your sleeve to the reader to pay your fare instead of having to touch that thing with any bit of skin.
Want to avoid touching the rail? No problem, this jacket comes with removable antimicrobial cuffs so your delicate paws need never come in contact with that germ stick again!
Currently this Bat Mobile of a jacket is only available via crowd funding, and at press time it was only 57% of the way to its goal with two weeks remaining. The jacket can be yours for less than $200 and will ship by January if it’s enough of an internet success.
In the mean time we can carry on doing what we’ve been doing: closing our eyes, holding our breaths, and for the love of God, not licking the Muni poles!
Photos courtesy of Betabrand website
