(Vimeo)

A Brooklyn filmmaker named Dean Peterson noticed something curious about his subway station at 36th St. in Sunset Park. One of the steps near the top of the staircase appeared to be just slightly taller than the other stairs, but the difference is so miniscule that it's not noticeably visible. In fact, Mr. Peterson only noticed it when he realized that everyone trips on the step. And of course, being a cinephile, he decided to film it.

The Vimeo video, entitled "New York City Subway Stairs," hit the front page of Reddit this afternoon, and as of this writing had accrued over 2,000 upvotes.

It's funny and slightly uncomfortable to watch the presumably non-regular 36th St. passengers react to the surprise step. All of them manically speed up as if that by pretending they'd meant to jog the last few steps it will cover for the fact that they almost faceplanted. Sigh... been there.

One Reddit user, a veritable peddler of interesting castle facts, informed the social news site's audience that, "They used to put random different height steps into castles as part of the fortification so that attacking forces would stumble and give the residents more time to defend properly." The more you know!

Mr. Peterson, for his part, seems unimpressed by the fleeting flicker of Reddit fame. "Holy shit, you're on the Reddit front page!" tweeted one of his followers. "Yeah I just saw that, pretty crazy," replied Mr. Peterson, probably while shrugging and rolling his eyes, simultaneously.

UPDATE:

When reached for comment by phone, the MTA media relations department had already heard of the video and began to search their email for the corresponding comment. When the email couldn't be unearthed for what seemed like one million years, the MTA representative told us, "We will send someone out to take a look and take corrective measures."

UPDATE #2:

The MTA has blocked off the offending staircase in preparation for fixing it. Yay, Internet!