Update: Jeff Jarvis wondered, rightly, if the shirt actually said "I" and "New York" (the heart, I can read). An interesting question, and not. It wouldn't be beyond Maurizio to use illegible/nonsensical script. As it turns out, at Social Design Notes, John recreated a flyer he saw in the EV around Sept. 11. To this unaccustomed eye, the scripts are, indeed, different. But whether it reads "New York," "NY," "Now Yak," or "Newark," I can't say. FWIW, Japlish or Engrish, the Japanese mangling of English is a more powerful phenomenon than the corollary, Americans randomly tattooing themselves with Japanese characters they don't understand.
That actually doesn't say New York. The first letter isn't even a real letter in the arabic language, the two dots indicate a 'ya' or 'i' sound, whereas it looks like a 'seen' or 's' sound.
I'm not an expert on this, but that is my opinion.