I used to ride the light rail (small commuter train in Baltimore) to and from work every day. One day a black man was on the train, raving to all and sundry about how evil and racist all white people are. The fact that none of the white people on the train wanted to sit next to him was proof of this. Nevermind that no one (black, white, or other) wanted to sit by him because he was a raving looney.
He’d been going on for a while when a young (early teens I think) black kid started trying to argue with him. At one point the kid said something along the lines of his anti-white ranting being every bit as racist as he was accusing whites of being. The guy leaped from his seat and pinned the kid to the floor, shouting over and over again “I AIN’T WHITE! I AIN’T WHITE!” It took several guys to pull him off him. The kid wasn’t hurt, but I’m sure it scared the piss out of him.
I’ve seen a guy scam some kids on the Chicago “L” with the three-card monte (despite every passenger on the train warning the kids it’s a scam, and at least one lady telling the guy to not cheat kids).
A few years ago I was riding BART (subway) back from SF and a fellow who had obviously had too much to drink was being sick (all the way through the transbay tube) into a newspaper that his wife was holding. When the train got to the station she dropped the newspaper on the floor and walked her husband off the train. Couldn’t even be bothered to throw it in the garbage, that was pretty vile.
I was waiting for a train during the evening rush hour at the Columbus Circle station in New York. The platform was crowded, of course, and I was juggling groceries, my purse and a three-foot-long bouquet of gladioli, when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and a fairly seedy guy was pointing downward and grinning hugely. I assumed I’d dropped something but um, no. He was pointing with evident delight at the very special little friend he wanted to introduce me to.
I rolled my eyes, turned my back on him and started walking away, but he followed me–pants puddled around his ankles, johnson bobbing like a metronome, “Hey lady, lookit! Lady, hey laaaaady!” No one on the crowded platform said a word or intervened in any way; we all resolutely minded our own business and eventually he climbed down onto the tracks (pants still around his ankles), crossed over the third rail without incident and climbed up on the other platform.
I commuted a route that had a stop in the middle for a large mental health services clinic, with many rather extreme residents. The commuter express time periods weren’t too bad because of the reduced stops, but if I missed the express time period then the bus quite literally became a crazy house until it passed the clinic midpoint.
The A train makes no stops between 125th Street and the aforementioned Columbus circle. I was on the train going to work one morning, listening to my tunes and reading a book, when I heard a several people groan with obvious disgust. I looked up a few moments later because I wanted to see what stop we had just passed. I was treated to the sight of a homeless man masturbating. Not only was his dick about the size of my forearm, he also licked his fingers clean when he was finished.
What else could I do? I went back to reading my book.
I have been riding subways, buses, commuter trains for over 60 years and I can’t say I have ever had a genuinely bad experience. I have had unpleasnstnesses involving overcrowded vehicles, but that is another matter. The worst I remember is this. Because the commuter train I use has a high level terminus, but all other stations are low, you have to get on in the middle of the car and get off at the end. One day, I was among the last to board the car and I had a suitcase to wheel. Since the train was badly overcrowded (a constant at rush hour), I had to spend the next 9 minutes to my station fighting to get my suitcase and me to the end door. But I did it, not without garnering some (well-deserved) curses along the way. If, when they rebuilt the entire system, including all new stations, between 1992 and 1995, they had made all the stations high platform, this wouldn’t have been necessary.
Not my story but my brother’s.
He was riding BART in SF and was in the tube station beneath Market.
On the opposite track, some poor woman had apparently come down with a stomach flu or something whilst on her commute home from SF. There she stood against the wall in her pretty suit outfit, intermittently puking and shitting her skirt, trying to remain in control and polite:
Everyone just whisked by her. Awful.
Probably not my worst nightmare but pretty bad being stuck in/on public transport with virulent crap coming out both ends. Hey, want to sit with me?!
My most recent crappy subway experience - I was taking the subway home from work and for some reason it was unusually packed that day. So packed that you were squished up against everyone else with barely room to turn your head. When the train lurched there wasn’t even room for anyone to stumble.
Anyway so I was standing there praying that my stop would come soon, when I realized that my skirt had somehow inched it’s way up my thighs. I squirmed around and pulled it back down, but then I FELT SOMEONE’S HAND trying to tug it back up. I tugged it back down, he tried to pull it back up. Repeat until I could finally get off at my stop.
For those of you who are wondering - it’s almost impossible to figure out who is feeling you up when the subway is that crowded, and I didn’t feel like accusing everyone around me of trying to grab my thighs.
That’s the Korean subway for you though. When I took the #1 line in college I used to get groped on a weekly basis.
As Gary explained for me: The norm around here is for an explanation of a link, not just a bare link, esp. to a link that is labeled as NSFW when you get there. Providing a link to an unlabeled, unsafe destination with nothing more than a puerile woo-hoo-look-at-me “First” (in extra-large letters) isn’t the way we encourage people to post at the Dope.
I didn’t issue a warning, nothing is going on Wesley’s record for this, but I hope he’ll make an effort to behave in a more adult manner if he wants to hang out here with the adults.
The majority of my public transit experience involved daily rides on Paris’ RATP (Metro, bus and tram) and lord, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it all.
Chicken bone man, the addled guy who would sit in the middle of the platform at various Metro stations and make intricate patterns out of trash he had dug out of the bins, with a particular predeliction for, yep, chicken bones.
Crying man, the beggar who would get on board a Metro and start telling a tale of joblessness and woe that would end with him openly weeping while tearfully explaining that he was horribly embarrassed to be asking for a pittance of money from us. He’d then get off, go one car forward, and go through the whole routine again.
3 Some wack job following a woman around the Denfert-Rochereau station while talking dirty to her. She walked over to me with pleading eyes; I rattled my newspaper at the guy and amazingly enough, he went away.
At least three attempts to lift my wallet on the Metro, none successful. Partially makes up for the time I did get my pocket picked on a tram in Rome.
A guy in a Ford Escort on Blvd. St-Michel inexplicably making a sharp right turn directly into the side of the bus I was riding, just below my seat. There’s no way he could not have seen it; he was halfway back alongside the thing and it would have been like driving parallel to a wall.
At least twice, angry black men on the Metro apparently wanting to get in a fight with me simply for existing. Seriously, I was just riding, didn’t crowd them, didn’t say anything to them, didn’t even look at 'em prior to them getting all up in my face.
An epic journey on the 350 bus (Gare de l’Est - CDG airport) on a sunny Saturday, in which the bus driver more or less accidently cut off the driver of a Renault at a traffic light, which escalated to each driver weaving around trying to force the other off the road, which eventually escalated further to the Renault driver blocking the highway in front of the bus, getting out and trying to attack the bus driver through the side window, the door, and, most amusingly, the windshield, while about twenty panicked passengers tried in vain to exit via the closed rear door. After about 15 minutes of this theater, a dozen cops showed up and dragged the guy off, who nevertheless tried to break free and go after the bus driver again, while in handcuffs.
Yep, good times. Hope this is the sort of thing the OP was looking for.
I hear stories like this pretty much any time subways or mass transit trains are brought up. I always wonder why the victims don’t simply demonstrate just how delicate finger joints are to the perp. Especially pinkies bent 110° in the wrong direction.
I guess the trouble isn’t worth it. Supposing I did break his finger - it’d be his word against mine that he was groping me, and in Korea the climate is such that women making those kinds of accusations aren’t believed (or are brushed off) most of the time. If I made a fuss, I doubt I’d have many sympathizers among my fellow commuters. Especially if the dude was older than me (respect towards the elderly is an absolute rule here, even if they are trying to grope you on a subway).
tdn’s story about people having to yell “rear door” at every stop? If I had been that bus driver and I had to hear that a million times a day, I think I would have pulled the bus over, walked out, and quit. Every bus I’ve been on, the rear door on a bus opens automatically, with no yelling to the driver.
I don’t have any horror stories other than dealing with miserable drivers who obviously hate their jobs. One time I pulled the cord to signal I wanted to get off at a shopping center, but the bus kept going. I worked my way up front and said I had to get off here and the driver said I should have pulled the cord before he turned in! The s.o.b. kept driving for a bit, but did deign to bring his chariot to a stop with a big sigh and gave me a hope-you-die look. (There was one particular driver who was very polite, said ‘good morning’ to everyone who got on, and ‘have a good day’ to everyone who got off, people just loved him and there was an article on him in the newspaper.)
When I lived in NYC, I was coming back from Grand Central and got on a crowded 4 train. I also had my headphones in, so I couldn’t quite make out what people were saying. Anyway, despite the train car being completely full, apparently there was a reason no one was standing next to the guy with the bike. (Pro-tip: if there’s an empty train car during rush hour, there’s a 100% chance that that car smells unbearably of ass.)
Anyway, I stand somewhat near the guy with his bike, and he starts in on me. I can’t quite understand what he’s saying, except that somehow I’m in his area. I just ignore him because what am I going to do? Move? But I can’t move to turn down my headphones either (to be able to understand what he’s saying) because that would make it obvious that I’m hearing him. Eventually he starts punching his fist near me to see if I’ll flinch. I pretended he wasn’t punching the air next to my head until we got to Union Square and I switched cars.
But really, that was it. And once, I felt really ill on a subway car and had to squat down, and strangers were asking me if I was okay. New Yorkers can surprise you. (Although they may have just wanted some advance warning that I was going to puke on their shoes.)
