Tales of Public Transportation

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

The bus! It takes me to work, it takes me to school, it takes me to yoga. It also has a bunch of crazy people riding it. Some of these are just things I’ve overheard, some are conversations I’ve had with people (tangent: how can I avoid conversations with overly friendly strangers?).

“Do you like spaghetti?” Randomly asked out of nowhere. Once he got an answer, the guy was satisfied.

“The best marinade for a brisket would be Jack Daniels and Cherry Coke, because they smoke meat with cherry wood.” I nearly busted out laughing at this.

“Getting your belly button pierced give you Hep C.” I kind of wish I’d contested this, but the woman seemed like the sort who would remain stubbornly ignorant.

And my favorite of all: “I only drink coffee on Sundays, because it reminds me of hell: hot, black, and bitter.”

2

When I first started taking the train to work for some reason I used to see all sorts of crazies, but now you mention it I hardly do any more. No idea if the local mental health services are better or railroad security is tougher .

3

Well, this isn’t so much a funny tale as it is downright weird and disturbing.

One time when I was in like 10th or 11th grade I was running to catch the city bus after school after it had already pulled away from the terminal. The driver saw me in time so he stopped to let me on. This being a public bus in DC, and in particular the 70 bus going down Georgia avenue, I happened to be the only white face on the bus.

Pretty much right after I sat down and put my headphones on the guy in front of me who looked to be in his mid 20’s turned around and started loudly explaining that I had slowed down the bus and this that or the other. He took particular pleasure in calling me Casper to the general amusement of his buddies. I just turned my music up and ignored him but apparently the old women who was sitting across from him didn’t take very kindly to what he was saying.

She started loudly yelling about how she was half white and how it wasn’t my fault that I was white and that he should leave me alone. He kind of shrugged her off until she stood up and pulled a pair of scissors out of her purse and threatened to stab him unless he apologized to her. I hightailed it off the bus as my stop was coming up, but what struck me was that the driver just kept going and picking up fares while this old lady was threatening to stick this guy with a pair of scissors. :eek:

4

Headphones.

5

My favorite Bus Guy was the one who rode in back carrying his didgeridoo. He’d play it as softly as he could occasionally, until the driver yelled at him, and then he’d go back to just petting it.

6

Aaah geez, too many to list…

I was going home one night on the train (about 10:30pm) and I saw two guys on a platform as we pulled in. A bloke in his late thirties, and a teenager. The older man was carrying one of those fluorescent, conical CAUTION WET FLOOR signs. I assumed they knew each other, but it soon became apparent the older many was quite drunk, and the kid was too polite to get away (he got off at the next stop). So I was the drunk’s next target. Turns out he’d been drinking at a club in the inner city that morning, and had finally been refused any more drinks at about lunchtime. So he got the train home, but got the wrong train. He promptly fell asleep. Now Sydney’s rail network is radial, with “spokes” projecting out up to fifty kilometres in any given direction. He lives in the outer south-west, but woke up on a north-west train coming back into the city. It had already gone fifty kilometres and was returning. He told me asked some young guys where he was. They told him, then he fell asleep again. He doesn’t know where he went after that, but he was in transit about ten hours. He thinks he may have ended up on the right train, but slept past his stop, and that train terminated and returned into town.He must have been very drunk when he caught his first train, because he was still half cut. But he was one of those guys that couldn’t be embarrassed, and kept laughing at his situation. He looked at the safety sign he was carrying: “I don’t even know why I’ve got this. HAHAHAHA!” Then he kept telling me about his afternoon on the train: “Geez… RICHMOND! Where’ve I BEEEEEN?” Finally, he rummaged through his pockets and pulled out a boarding pass: “FUCKIN’ QANTAS!!! Where’ve I BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN??? HAHAHOHOHO!!” I liked him.

7

I once got on a bus where every seat was taken. A woman was sitting on a front seat with two little children beside her, and a stroller and some blankets and jackets on the two seats behind them. I pushed the blankets and jackets to one side and sat down. The woman starts screaming “Don’t you touch my stuff. You can’t touch my stuff. You sit somewhere else or stand.”

I told her I had paid for a seat and unless she paid for four seats I was sitting. The bus driver told her to let me sit. I talked the whole time about people who want seats for free so people who pay for a seat can stand.

8

I’ve been on a bus that caught fire – the driver only stopping when smoke started filling the interior and I went up to the driver to point that out to him. I’ve been on buses where the drivers were so new, they hadn’t a hope of knowing where abouts the route was they were supposed to follow. Those trips were actually among the coolest. They’d end up being a kind of joint “let’s assist the driver in getting us to town” sort of thing. Lots of folks chatting, and “Turn right here, driver!”

I’ve been on buses where life’s perpetual inebriates get on for the ride home. In one case, a chap cradling the inner bag out of a box of wine like a baby, sloshed out of his brain, telling a young woman in front of him on the double seat how beautiful she was until she moved away in disgust. Then, he related to no one in particular how he’d wasted life and tens of thousands of dollars on the booze. His effing and blinding soon got the attention of the driver, who turfed him out about a mile and a half from where he wanted to get off, which was close to where I live.

I saw him again a couple of days later in my suburb, while he was asking for cigarette and a light from car drivers in the street. Soon as he ambled onto the footpath, cradling a wine bag (might have been another one, but hard to tell) I went up to him, said I’d seen him on the bus, and that I was glad he got back home safely. He blinked, then said with a surprised but pleased tone, “You remembered me!” He then thanked me for being concerned, and kissed the back of my hand. Haven’t seen him since. Poor blighter knew he was on the road out of here.

9

Oh Lord, after nearly 25 years of taking the NYC subways, I’ve seen a lot of weird, funny or disturbing stuff.

Where to begin? Fistfights, name calling, people insulting each other in different language pairings (including once what looked like a vicious argument breaking out in Sign Language), embarrassing pickup attempts and rejections, people exposing themselves or obviously, er, enjoying porno mags…

Two memories in particular stand out:

That’s Just Pathetic. Subway musicians! There’s outstanding performers I can recall: jazz sax players, harmonica players, “world music” players like Inca ensembles with pan flutes and drums or Chinese duets of a flute and erhu, a pair of Juilliard students playing pieces for cello and violin; so-so performers singing doo-wop or R&B standards, the guy with the accordion singing sea chanteys, or the innumerable scruffy looking guys with the open guitar case trying to sound like Bob Dylan or Counting Crows; and silly performers like the guy who plays a synthesizer while motion sensitive hula dolls bop to his beat.

But dear Lord, when it’s bad, it’s really bad. Like the guy on a subway platform who was doing a medley of classic songs by The Who on a beat up acoustic guitar. Badly. As he segued through “Pictures of Lily” and “Magic Bus”, he got to “My Generation” and really got worked up. Jumping up and down and screaming, he suddenly took his guitar by the neck and, emulating The Who’s legendary performance at the Monterey Pop Festval, raised it as if to smash it to pieces. But being a guy who probably had nothing to his name but this guitar, he didn’t actually smash it. He just mimed smashing it, with chopping motions but holding back inches before the guitar actually hit the ground. While screaming “Aggh!! Yarrggh!” with great passion.

Worst. Subway Musician. Ever!

That’s Just Scary. It’s a crowded train that’s stuck between stations “due to congestion”. Everyone who’s standing is crammed up against each other, and there’s the usual shuffling and murmurs of “sorry” or “excuse me” accompanied by annoyed glances or shrugs.

The guy next to the door is a construction worker in denim overalls with a tool belt and wearing a muscle shirt. The guy behind him is an ordinary looking guy in a business suit. Just as the train starts moving again, the construction worker turns around and says, “That’s the third time you put your hand on my ass. I’ve pushed it away without saying anything but you keep doing it, and I’ve had enough.”

“Hey look, it’s a crowded train, I can’t help brushing --”

“That wasn’t no brushing. You were reaching and squeezing.” The guy blinks, unable to come up with anything further to say, while the construction worker got angrier. “You think that’s funny? Is that how you get off, you faggot, standing next to guys on the train and groping them when it’s crowded, and then lying about it?” He reaches down to his tool belt and unclips a carpet cutter.

Suddenly there’s three feet of room around the two of them as the crowd cleared way. He holds the blade up to this guy’s neck and demands, “You were doing that on purpose, weren’t you? I oughtta cut you open like the sack of shit you are.” Terrified, with his eyes squeezed shut, the other man nods and says, “Yes… Yes, I was doing it on purpose. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry…”

The construction worker holds his ground for several long moments more, before saying, “Listen: you’re getting off the next stop, your stop or no stop. Got it?” After the guy nods, he puts the knife away. Not another word is exchanged by anybody (almost needless to say, the entire car fell completely silent as this drama unfolded).

10

I’m having trouble finding a working link (got the following from Google’s cache), but it’s an old newsgroup thing, and been around for years, so I think copyright isn’t an issue (mods please act if you think I’m mistaken). Anyway, no such thread would be complete without this classic:

11

Yeah, that’s certainly a classic and the very definition of “a bad day”.

12

Came back to say that I have been on transit vehicles where people have done eveything except delivered a baby. (I’ve jinxed myself now, and there will be a birth on the 5:13 train tonight) :smack:

Buses on fire? Yup. It was a brand-new bus, and while we’re trundling along, I’m smelling plasticky/oily smoke. We come to a stoplight, and a billow of smoke comes forward. “Hey, we’re on fire!” We all scramble off, and sure enough, smoke is pouring out of the bus. A later news report reveals the new buses had bad hydraulic pumps that would sieze up and leak, spraying oil onto the hot engine.

Bleeding on a bus? I was crammed onto a 38-Geary bus (SF folks will recognize this as one of the most over-used lines in the city) and somebody was bleeding. BADLY. There was blood running through the grooves in the flooring from somebody. People are doing what they can to side-step the river and not get blood on their feet. Presumably, this person was on the way to one of the hospitals along the route. I hope.

Puke? Couple months ago, someone barfed behind the elevator on the Lake Merritt BART platform. Thanks to indifferent management, the puke stayed there for two days before someone cleaned it up. Amazingly, Lake Merritt is where BART’s administrative building and master control is located, so it’s not like some far-off station in the boonies that nobody uses. The first morning I saw it, my reaction was “ewww!” That evening, it was “It’s still there?” The next morining, it was “WTF??” By this time, it’s dried out and crusty. Thankfully, it was scraped up by that evening. Scraped, not mopped.

The more common bodily excreta? Too common to even notice whether it’s a turd behind the elevator, a wet seat, or just plain ol’ foul stench. Smart commuters either do eerything they can to avoid the seats in the end corners of the cars, or they spread out the classifieds before they sit. Newspaper ink is a far better thing to get on your clothes…

13

My dad drives a bus. He’s been shot at, punched, resulting in a broken nose and surgery, electrocuted, resulting in temporary blindness, and held up at knifepoint…sorta.

The shootings happened in a bad part of town. Not much to report there except that the bus was pretty badly damaged, but Dad’s fine.

The punching happened when two women were going at it at the back of the bus. They made their way up toward the front, unbeknownst to Dad, and continued swinging. My Dad just happened to get in the way of one of their punches. Women are arrested and Dad winds up getting surgery to fix a broken nose.

The electrocution happened during a storm on a trolley car. It hit the trolley and blinded him for a few minutes. I don’t think anyone else was with him. He’s fine now.

A few years back, a drunk guy gets on late at night. He’s the only passenger at the time. Drunk guy stands about half way down the bus, in the aisle, and pulls out a knife. This time my Dad caught on to his antics before it could go much further. He slams on the brakes, sending the guy flying down the aisle, causing him to lose the knife. Dad promptly kicked the guy off the bus (not so hard with how drunk he was) and kept the knife.

Dad’s also been hit by cars (while driving the bus) so many times I can’t remember them anymore. It’s great to hear the stories though. People from all around will find out there’s been an accident and try to get on the bus after the fact. Anything to try to sqeeze a dollar out of Uncle Sam…

14

Here’s something that’s a little lighter than drunks, fires, shootings, gropers, and pukers:

It was many years ago, but I still remember the time the bus couldn’t get up the hill. It was when I lived in Toronto and for those Toronto dopers who know the system, it was a York Mills 95 bus. Shortly after the bus leaves the York Mills subway station and heads eastbound, it goes up a short but very steep hill.

This day, it was rush hour and the bus was packed. All seats were full, and standees were crammed in like sardines. The bus started to go up the hill, and went slower, and slower still, until it couldn’t go any more, and stopped. It lurched a bit as the driver tried to get it to go again, but no luck. We were simply overloaded.

So the driver did the most logical thing he could think of: he asked us to get off the bus and walk up the hill. He would meet us at the top. It was completely voluntary; if you didn’t want to get off and walk, you didn’t have to. But most of us did–probably sixty people made their way up to the top of the hill while the bus, now much lighter, made its own way up. True to his word, the driver waited at the top until everybody had reboarded, and we were on our way again.

Still, our shared experience with something so unusual meant that the rest of the trip was almost fun. People were joking with each other about the next hill, and wearing better shoes on future trips. When we approached other hills, none of which were as steep as the first, the driver would call out, “Another hill, folks!” and gun it to get enough speed to reach the top. As we crested the hill, everybody would sigh with relief, and then laugh.

As happens on buses, many of us hill climbers got off as the bus reached our stops, and other people got on, who were unaware of our earlier adventure. And the bus reverted to its usual state of strangers trying to ignore other strangers.

Okay, it’s not as exciting as some of the other stories. But out of the hundreds of trips I made on that route, and the thousands I’ve taken on other buses and subways in various parts of the world, that’s one of the more memorable ones.

15

This is why I’m glad I take the commuter express to work everyday. I ride with the same people and it makes for very low drama levels.

16

The stories in this thread are great. I, too, have been on a bus on fire. The driver got out to inspect the black smoke pouring out of the engine. Then he came back in and said, very calmly, “Ladies and gentlemen, please collect your stuff and exit the bus.”

Cool story. I was waiting on a corner to transfer busses when another bus dropped off passengers at that spot. We were all sort of idly chatting, when this one woman asked us, “Were you on the number [bus she just got off]?” A couple of us said no, and she told us about this guy who had a water bottle on his head, and was balancing it by rocking his head back and forth. “He said he had very strong lice!” she concluded.
Fast-forward a couple weeks, and I’m on another bus in the same neighborhood. A young man gets on holding an empty water bottle. He sits in one of the inward-facing seats in the front (the bus was very crowded) and, sure enough, puts the water bottle on his head. I didn’t want to stare, but it really was amazing how he kept it from dropping through all the starts and stops of the bus ride. A little boy was sitting across the aisle, wide-eyed with amazement. “How are you doing that?” he blurted out after a few minutes. In this charming I’m-not-sure-from-where accent, the bottle guy replied, “Can you keep a secret? If you can, I’ll tell you.” I knew what was coming next. “I have very strong lice.” I cracked up.

Creepy story. I was riding home from a class at a community college. There were four of us: me, the driver (Dennis), a very proper-looking lady, and a scruffy-looking guy. Somehow, the topic turned to young people smoking. The scruffy guy suddenly interjected, angrily, “They’re being purposely manipulated!” He rang the bell at that point, and continued railing about advertising as he made his way to the front door. Dennis opened the door for the stop and the other guy finishes nonsensically, “It’s all those Jews in Hollywood trying to destroy Christianity!” Not enough :eek:s and :confused:s in the world to describe my reaction (I was a naïve eighteen years old, and had never seen an anti-Semite in real life before). Dennis says, very coolly, “All right now. Take care.” The wind taken out of his sails by Dennis’s non-reaction, the guy swaggers off the bus.
The woman says something disapproving, and Dennis answers sadly, “Well, he’s confused on some things, but he’s an ok guy. He teaches a class at the college-“ “He’s a professor?” the lady asked, disbelieving. “Yeah.” She sniffed in the most condescending manner possible: “He sure doesn’t look like a professor.” I never found out his name, so I’m not sure what he taught.

Funny story (and short, too!). Every year, the busses traveling through Minneapolis’s Nicollet Mall get rerouted for the Holidazzle parade. I was on such a bus one evening when the driver got lost. A few people were anxious about where they’d end up on the detour and were pestering his with questions while he drives around, trying to figure out the new route: “Are you going to this street? Are you going to that street?” This guy calls out, “Are you going to Burnsville? [a suburb that he’d have to very lost to end up in]” The driver sends him a “Shut up, smart ass,” look while the whole bus snickers.

Too many more… definitely more than anyone wants to hear me babble about.

17

One time I was in Paris I took the metro to the Eiffel Tower. At the second stop a huge group of blue collar workers board, complete with protest signs, whistles, bullhorns, etc… ad nauseum. This being France, they were on strike and heading to the rally point. Why didn’t they take the bus?
Because they were bus drivers!

18

When I was a kid, relatives came to visit us so we took them into DC. There was a metro bus ahead of us and one lane over as we were driving into town. As we looked over towards the bus, its back bumper simply fell off in the street. The bus continued on without stopping.

19

Travelling between towns in NZ, I use the InterCity bus service, because I don’t drive. I’ve had a few “moments” over the past few years on them as well. Bus coming down from Northland, stopped briefly in Auckland to pick up passengers for Hamilton and Rotorua, then continues on. Night-time in the middle of South Waikato, in a small town called Cambridge, the bus has let off a passenger. I was sat right behind the driver when he leaned over, studied his control board intently, then radioed HQ just before they head off home for the night.

“There’s an orange light flashing. What does it mean?”
“It means you’re about to run out of fuel.”

He should have refuelled at Auckland, but was running late and didn’t. Apparently, we’d have been stranded somewhere on the road short of Rotorua if he hadn’t asked what the light was. The service station attendant just down the road got a bit of a surprise seeing a coach easing its way carefully under the canopy to tank up a few minutes later.

Then there was the deeply involved discussion another time, between me and a driver along the same road, to do with global warming and such. “You reckon there’s global warming?” “Dunno, mate, just dunno …” Wintry night, foggy mist all around, bouncing back the lights from the bus. Surreal.

Another time a truckie took umbrage at the coach I was on coming back from Rotorua, not really liking the fact that the bus was overtaking him. The truck sped up – and lost its side mirror, clipped off. The cops pulled the bus over just short of Cambridge, the truckie telling them the bus driver had driven recklessly. It helped our driver that he had a busload of eye- and ear-witnesses that day.

One Auckland city local bus ride I had, heading into town to catch an InterCity, I still remember as quite cool – some students brought their guitars along, heading toward some event close to the city. All the way in, they played guitar. Beautiful accoustic stuff – way better than having to put up with the crackly stuff from people’s standard headphone accompaniment, any day.

20

A few of my own experiences, culled from a healthy 20 years of riding various public transit systems…

Back in Hawai`i, I was riding one of the last evening runs of the 52. As the bus rounded a corner, it lost power and the engine began to rev furiously. We coasted to the side of the street and the driver spent a minute trying to coax anything more than high rpms out of the poor old Gillig Phantom. It wouldn’t shut off, wouldn’t move, and wouldn’t stop acting like it was floored in neutral. At this point it was agreed that we should all orderly file off the bus and wait for a new one. Heh… “Orderly.” Several people accosted the driver at the front exit, which blocked things there, and several other people managed to jam the rear exit door. At this point the guy next to me and I looked at each other, shrugged, and opened the emergency window exits and hopped out. We watched as for the next FIVE MINUTES people continued to be stuck on this bus, which I was convinced was going to explode at any moment. NO ONE ELSE used the window exits.

Next, now in Portland, during an ice storm some 7 or 8 years back, the streets downtown were caked in ice. Naturally, working in IT at the time, I was requested to come in to wrangle servers. Coming down the main bus mall the bus I was on pulled away from the curb, moving at an angle that was noticeably different (45 degrees from the curb) from the angle the bus was pointing (straight down the street). I got off at the next stop and slid the rest of the way to work.

Finally, the requisite Crazy Guy story… I was heading to town and as we passed by the Swan Mart a fellow passenger turned to me somberly, pointed at the store, and said “That’s where the possums go to die!”
I do love public transit.