Merry Christmaween

It's one o'clock in the morning on Halloween and I'm dashing across the Jay St platform from the F to the A to head back to Manhattan from a party in Brooklyn. I am dressed as Batgirl, and the car, which is already filled with people, sports several Men In Black, a pair of 20s gangsters, the Pillsbury Doughboy, Raggedy Ann, a couple of "cats" (and by that I mean the generic skanky outfit with ears that passes as a costume in some circles), the cast of the Jersey Shore, and an assortment of others. In fact, there was exactly one person in the whole car who was not in costume, and she looked terrified to be there. Most of the people on the train had clearly been imbibing, and it was a pretty lively car. The Pillsbury Doughboy decided to start singing Christmas carols--according to his friends, this was his typical drunken behavior--and started taking requests. Receiving none, he launched into the absolute LOUDEST version of Rudolph that I have ever heard. This apparently annoyed the Men In Black, who started asking for Frosty the Snowman, shouting "Sing Frosty or nothing!" The Doughboy did not oblige, but instead moved on to Silent Night when he'd finished with Rudolph. Thwarted, the MIB got off at Canal St, and Doughboy left with his friends at 14th St. Poor Raggedy Ann was very raggedy indeed, and had to be helped off the train by her slightly more sober friends.

The Hot Seat

The uptown A-train, Wednesday, 10:30 pm. I got on at 14th St and sat in the inner seat of one of the little two-seaters that stick out perpendicularly from the walls of the train. A 25-ish man, who looked rather like a Muppet, sat down beside me, holding a small plastic pumpkin in his lap. He clearly should have had a book or a iPhone rather than a pumpkin, because he was incapable of entertaining himself. Instead, he proceeded to interview every single person who had the misfortune of sitting in the seat immediately in front of us. The first woman, who was already sitting there when we got on, either had the good fortune or incredible insight to pretend that she did not speak English, so she escaped unscathed. At 59th St, an elderly woman got on holding a playbill. My companion immediately began grilling her. "Did you see a show? What was it? Yo-Yo Ma? You saw Yo-Yo Ma? I didn't even know that he was in town! I've been here for six months, and I've already seen Elton John." (Um... yay?) "How many people were in the audience? Do you have a subscription to Carnegie Hall? Really? Oh, how lucky! Does that mean that you always sit in the same seats? Are the seats comfortable?"
The woman held her own, and eventually, (perhaps to shut him up,) started just reading the playbill out loud to him. Every word. Including the advertisements. It was scintillating. Finally, she got off at 125th, and her seat was then taken by a very tired-looking man.
My seatmate quickly moved on to his next victim. "What's that around your neck? Is it a compass? Does your compass work underground? Did you buy it at a flea market?" (It was, in fact, a compass, and no, he had not bought it at a flea market. Perhaps he was trying to start a new millennium trend like Flava Flav's clock?) The poor compass man happily exited the train at 145th, and his seat was left vacant. I rode in blissful silence until my final stop.

How to Become a Subway Preacher

Is anyone else concerned that one of the people preaching the end of the world works as a psychiatric social worker?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/nyregion/24preachers.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion

It's The End Of The World As We Know It... And I Feel Fine

Sunday afternoon. I was transferring between the A and the N at Times Square, which involved a looooong underground walk between 7th and 8th Avenues. Every time I go through that tunnel, there are people handing out fliers about the end of the world. According to them, it's supposed to be ending on May 18, 2011. Perhaps I should start working on my bucket list? Anyhow, today, for the second time, I witnessed one of the end-of-worlders go up to someone in order to pass out a pamphlet, only to be rebuffed with the words, "I'm sorry, the world is actually going to end in June." (Actually, the first time this happened, it may have been a different date, but the gist is the same.) The two got into a very polite but highly convicted argument about the actual expiration date for our planet. (Or is it the universe? I'm never sure what they really mean by "the world". Somehow the science of it seems to be... lacking.) I continued walking, but turned around before taking the at the end of the corridor, and they were still deep in discussion. I think that they should both start handing out pamphlets, and hire a bookie to take bets on who's right. I guess it might be hard to collect one's winnings, though...

Would It Be Rude to Give My Bus Driver a Map?

Okay, so this isn't technically a subway story, but it is a mass transit story, so I'm going to post it anyhow. Although I live in Manhattan, I work in NJ, so I cross the George Washington Bridge by bus everyday. It is normally a lovely commute--17 min in the morning, and I always sit on the driver's side heading out in order to admire the skyline as we cross the bridge. This morning, however, was not a typical morning. There was a fatal accident on the bridge at 5:15 am, and the police closed the outbound upper deck to traffic in order to investigate. My bus normally leaves at 7:30 from the GWB Bus Terminal, and we pulled out of the station as scheduled. Buses are not allowed on the lower deck of the bridge, however, so I wasn't sure where we were going to go. Neither, however, was the bus driver. For those of you unfamiliar with NYC geography, there are three routes out of the city across the Hudson into NJ: the George Washington Bridge, the Lincoln Tunnel (maybe 8 mi south of the bridge), and the Holland Tunnel (farther south than that). Once you get out of the city, the next crossing is the Tappan Zee Bridge, which is about 20 mi north of the city. So when we left the bridge, I figured that we'd either go south to the Lincoln Tunnel or north to the Tappan Zee. But no. Instead, the driver started to go east. And then continued east. And then... went even farther east. Really? Did he not realize that we were headed in the wrong direction? So rather than finding an alternate route over the Hudson, we got a tour of the Bronx. (And by a tour, I mean we sat in the incredible gridlock that paralyzed both boroughs.) I was tempted to just give up and get off the bus and hop on the subway to go home, but then I looked outside. Suffice it to say that we were not in the best of neighborhoods... Although I spent most of the time reading my book and talking on the phone with my dad, I did check Google Maps on my phone periodically to verify that yes, in fact, we had gone all the way to the Bruckner. I've included a helpful map to show our bus driver's route. The blue is the route that we took. See the yellow highway across the Hudson? Yeah, that's where we should have gone. After an hour and a half, I went up to the driver to ask what was going on and if we'd be taking either the Tappan Zee or the tunnel. He said no, we were heading back to the GWB. "Oh," I said, "have they reopened it?" His response? "I don't know." Excellent.

Fortunately, by the time we made it back through the clogged streets to the bridge, it had in fact reopened. I finally got off the bus at 10:11. My 17 min commute only took me 2 hours and 49 min. But at least I got a scenic tour of the Bronx.

"Now Repeat That Back..."

This happened a few weeks ago, but I'm posting now in the spirit of "better late than never". Weekend afternoon, heading uptown on the A-train. A teenage couple was fighting very melodramatically. Suffice it to say that "oh no you dih-un't" was uttered more than once. While this was going on, a fifty-ish Australian man was trying to figure out his route into Queens, but was clearly puzzled by his subway map. A young woman tried to help him, but she didn't seem to be much more familiar with the subway system than he was. They were standing right in front of the quarreling teenagers, looking alternately at handheld maps and the one on the train itself. Suddenly, the teenage boy said, "Hold on," to his girlfriend and then addressed the Australian man. "Here's what you want to do," he said. He then proceeded to very clearly lay out a detailed set of directions for the tourist, involving about three different trains. Once he was done, he told the tourist (who was at least thirty years his senior), "Okay, now repeat that back to me." The Aussie tried to do so, but got mixed up. The teenager patiently reiterated his directions, and then once again had the older man repeat the instructions. This went on until the tourist got the instructions right. The teenager then turned back to his girlfriend and resumed the fight. Once we got to the Aussie's stop, the teenager held his hand up to the girlfriend, who was mid-tirade at this point, and turned to the man. "Get off here, and you know what to do. Just go up those stairs over there. Have a nice day!" The man smiled and got off the train. The doors closed behind him, and the teenagers resumed their fight.

Music Soothes All Souls

1-train, around 6:45 pm on a Saturday. As usual on the weekend, the MTA is doing all kinds of construction, so the train is super-crowded. An elderly Sikh man gets on at 103rd, carrying a very awkward-looking bag out in front him. He is wearing a small radio around his neck, which he has cranked up all the way and is blasting opera. Someone offers him a seat, which he accepts, and then he arranges the bag carefully on his lap. It seems to be moving of its own volition, and suddenly, a very tiny dog pokes its scrawny head out of the top. The dog seems agitated, so the man turns up the music even louder, which I would not have believed to be possible given the tiny (and tinny) speakers. A few people look annoyed, and the man announces, "Opera calms his nerves." The dog ducks back into the bag, and the man gets off two stations later.