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 All new posts will be at those addresses. This blog is for archive purposes only.

 

Billie Cohen Hits the Bar Car

NY Times reporter Billie Cohen, who’s commuting from a different corner of the New York metropolitan area every day this month, tipped a few with the regulars on the New Haven Line bar car.

“There was beer everywhere, a crowd at the bar, a bunch of people playing poker and a din of friendly talk and loud laughter. What was this place? It was definitely not the normal commute home,” she writes about Wednesday’s 5:23 to Bridgeport. “It had the feel of, well, a party.”

Cohen mentions people falling in love in the bar car, and some of the regulars assigning Cheers characters to each other. (I’m Norm. No, I’m Norm!)

She also rightfully points out the New Haven Line’s mechanical shortcomings. “The equipment on this line is the oldest in the Metro-North fleet,” she says, “and is subject to many hiccups.

But Cohen saves the best part for last–a little perspective from a seasoned conductor who’s none other than Bobby McDonough, author of the esteemed Derailed blog and the subject of our seminal Q&A on rude riders and transvestites.

“I’m not really a fan of the bar car,” said McDonough. “Everyone thinks they’re funny when they’ve had two drinks in them. They’re not.”

 

Beaver, Poontang & Muff: Humanity and Cops Fail PeterFromPort

I enjoy a post-work commutation lubricant as much as the next passenger, but the drinking on the train may be getting out of hand. Last night I was a party to two situations where the police were summoned, all within the space of about 40 minutes.

Granted, the first incident was set on an Amtrak train, not an LIRR rattletrap. On the three-hour haul from Washington, a group of four was getting increasingly louder as the three men—apparently two twentysomethings and a guy in his thirties—downed more beers. They had a running joke where they’d call each other slang names for female genitalia. This was on a packed train, scheduled to arrive in New York at 8:30.

Finally, one woman asked very politely that they refrain from using words like twat, poontang, vagina or crim. Which prompted the eldest of the bunch to start getting abusive, telling the middle-aged, well-dressed woman that she could just go find another seat and to get out of his face. And then he and a buddy started up again with gleeful cries of “Muff!” and “Beaver!,” like 12-year-olds on a backyard sleep-out.

When we got to Penn, I started to exit the train and found myself between the head dope and the woman. He started in again, telling her, “Hey, you have a nice night now,” and laughing in a menacing way.

I couldn’t help myself.

 

“You out to be ashamed of yourself,” I told him.

And then I was the target. Though other people on the train chimed in, and soon he was hurling abuse at several more people. I could see that two of them, both young women, were clearly scared.

 

I didn’t take his taunts. Instead, I walked up to a conductor outside the train and told her, “Look, this guy is threatening us. I think you need to do something.”

 

She was nice, but said the window of opportunity for her was closed.

 

So I trudged on, heading up the escalator. Sure enough, he was waiting for me at the top of it, and started in again. I cut him off with, “The police are on their way.” He dusted.

Curiously, I did see a cop right then and stopped him. I explained what happened, and he clearly didn’t care if I had a knife sticking out of my back. He wasn’t going to be bothered. He treated me like a crazy person.

So off I went to the LIRR section of Penn Station to complete my journey home. The 8:49 was loading, and I could see that it was a crowded train, with lots of kids tugging balloons on ribbons. There must’ve been some type of event at the Garden.

I sunk down in an empty two-across and cracked open a beer. All was right with the beer until the low-level hum of dozens of conversations was interrupted by a very loud, “Fuck you! You ugly piece of shit! You pimply fat-assed, ugly bitch.”

I looked to see a guy who looked like Vito from The Sopranos. He was standing near the door, yelling at a heavyset woman, about 5’ 3”, sitting about three seats away.

The guy kept at it. There was a kid on my car who looked like she was ready to break the window and jump out, she was so scared. And the yeller’s anger was clearly climbing as his control seemed to be slipping away.

Finally, he crumpled up his beer can and threw it at the woman, who reminded me of the nurse at my grammar school. And then he stepped toward her.

In front of the woman was a middle-aged couple, a guy who didn’t exactly sport the build of a gym rat and, we were to learn in a minute, his wife.

The husband told the yeller, “Okay, that’s enough.”

The guy kept coming, now threatening the husband. So the hubby stood up, in an act of courage that went beyond admirable. Because there was going to be trouble, clearly.

I and another guy walked over, though I had no idea what I was going to do.

Meanwhile, the woman who’d been the target of his abuse slipped into the next car. Soon a conductor charged into the car with a kid in a knit wool cap and jeans. He opened his coat and showed his badge—an undercover cop.

 

The abuser immediately turned into an altar boy, denying that anything had happened. But now the hubby and his wife were telling the cop what happened. At that point, the doors opened at Auburndale, and people started to get out. One of them was a tall lanky guy who said to the cop, “I saw exactly what happened.”

The abuser smiled and told the cop, “Now you’ll get the real story,” as if he was suddenly in the clear.

The guy exiting turned to the drunk low-life and said to him, “You were a threat to this car, and what you did and said was outrageous.”

Then he turned to the cop. “You should arrest him.”

 

With that, the guy exited. Unfortunately, the rest of the crowd was not as sympathetic. The cop told us that the train would have to be held there until backups arrived, and he turned to the wife whose husband had stood up to the creep and said, “You’re the one who wanted this.”

 

I could see that the cop was losing his enthusiasm for doing right.

 

The husband suggested that the perpetrator just be kept off the train and that the train proceed.

Unfortunately, the perpetrator’s stop was Auburndale, so he got off essentially scot-free—no doubt to tell the tale the next night over a few beers down on Track 16.

–PeterFromPort

 

The Ass-Man Driveth

How did I forget to mention this?

I was schlepping to JFK Airport last Friday, crawling in traffic on the Grand Central Parkway. I wanted to chastise my cabbie for not taking Woodhaven Boulevard, but he reminded me of Marlo Stanfield, so I stayed quiet.

We were veering dangerously close to ‘am I going to miss my flight?’ time when a black economy car cut us off. It had the world GLUTEUS detailed across the back, in between the trunk and the bumper.

Gluteus, I thought to myself. Who would get that stenciled on their car? More importantly, what would compel someone to get that stenciled on their car?

We crawled along some more. Growing tired of the Forest Hills scenery (Gatsby’s “ash heaps” kept coming to mind), my eyes returned to old Gluteus.

Then it struck me. The black shitbox in front of me was a Nissan Maxima. Below “Gluteus” it said “Maxima.” Gluteus Maxima.

It’s why the phrase “idiot savant” was invented.

 

Metro-North Announcements As Poetry

I don’t have a doorlight.

Get it yet?

No, Dennis.

Uh, let me try.

Something…uh, that didn’t work.

bzzz….click

Ladies and gentlemen…

We don’t have a doorlight. We’ll get someone to look at it outside.

bzzz…click.

I got a doorlight now.

Hold on!

Just wanna let you know, I got a doorlight now.

I think we’re good now, Kev.

OK, can we go?

Yessir!

 

CTRider Gets an Earful…and a Noseful

It only takes a person or two to completely destroy the normally curteous routines of silence and isolation that the everyday commuter cherishes.

The evening was starting out great.  I had just wrapped up a productive day in the office, and managed to not only leave in time to catch the 5:01, but was even able to get to track 24 early enough to secure a single-seater. 

Things are looking good.

The train was still relatively empty & quiet….until I heard a shrill female voice that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.  Two Asian girls – most likely in their mid-20’s – entered the car chatting it up in what my mother used to call their ‘outside voices’. 

Things aren’t looking so great anymore, but I figure they will quiet down once the train fills and we get moving. 

Unfortunately, this did not happen.  Worse yet, they seemed to infect most of the other passengers.  I ride this train pretty regularly, and it’s usually dead silent.  Every few weeks, there will be someone screaming into their cell phone but the ‘I wish you were dead’ stares from the other passengers usually gets thru their skull after a few minutes.

Because of these two yappers’ influence, the car is full of loud conversation, including several people on their cell phones.

Enter the Ipod.  I don’t have Bose noise-cancelling headphones like our esteemed webmaster, but I do have Shure EC3’s with foam inserts that fill the entire ear canal and once the music is on, I can’t hear a thing. 

So I’m safe, right?

No way.

Right about 125th, I catch a whiff of one of the most disgusting smells I’ve encountered in quite some time.  I look over, and the yapping chick with the shrill voice is eating something that I can’t identify by sight, but it smells like a combination of garlic, onion and raw sewage.  It’s actually making me gag.

I’d write more, but I can’t.  I’m going to email this to TJ and close up my laptop and move to another car.  I’ll stand in the vestibule to avoid the attack on my senses.

It’s really amazing how one or two people can really affect the behavior of others and completely ruin your commute.

–CTRider

 

Metro Back With More on Heath Ledger

I spoke too soon when I mentioned that the stack of traffic-inducing Metro papers was moved away from the top of the stairs descending to the subways at Grand Central.

Not only were the green Metro papers back today–with another cover story on the untimely passing of Heath Ledger, no less–but its fellow freebie AMNY was there as well.

Good grief.

 

Second Ave. Says MTA Mobile App Lacking

Our subway-obsessed friends at SecondAvenueSagas put the new MTA mobile Website to the test, and find mixed results. The new platform is geared toward giving you train service alerts, departures and maps on your Blackberry, but SecondAve. says an over-reliance on PDFs seriously hampers its functionality.

 

Living Without Your Heath Ledger News

I’m pleased to report that, as of today, someone has moved the big stack of freebie Metro papers from the top of the stairs heading down to the 4-5-6 train in Grand Central. These papers had long been a source of agita–just as a few thousand people are trucking along, making good time on their commute en route to the staircase, some dolt at the head of the stairs pauses to decide whether they want to read about Heath Ledger’s untimely demise–then further clogs the works by struggling to separate one Metro from the stack.

It’s sort of like placing a giant bucket of M&Ms at the entrance to the highway. You’re rolling along, making good time in visiting the in-laws, when suddenly the car in front of you stops so the driver can reach his filthy paw into this bucket of chocolate delights, then has to sift through what he’s pulled out to separate the peanut from the almond, the red from the yellow.

(Speaking of M&Ms, we just got back from a disappointing visit to the M&M store in Vegas; we schlepped through three floors, encountered every conceivable shiny tourist bauble emblazoned with an ‘M&M’ logo, sat through a supposedly “3D” movie about M&Ms, and received not a single free sample for our travails. Not one. Thanks.)

Someone has moved the Metro stack about 10 feet to the right, where they’re now in reach of those going up the escalator and entering Grand Central–a group that has already embarked on their morning’s subway ride and presumably has a lesser sense of urgency.

Amen to that.

 

From One City of Blinding Light to Another

We landed in Newark Airport around 9:45 Sunday night. (Does anyone other than a politician actually call it “Newark Liberty”?) By 10, we were massed around a TV in the airport, watching Lawrence Tynes shank his would-be winning kick. Jersey let out a collective groan.

By 10:05, I was on the shuttle bus for Grand Central, weary from a weekend in Vegas, shivering from the 14 degree local temps. I’d thought about a cab, but the schlep from Jersey to Westchester probably would’ve swung into the three-figures, so I was hoping for a little luck and a train leaving for Hawthorne in the not so distant future.

By 10:10, Tynes had hit the winning kick, and we were off.

I suppose if you’re playing your iPod all the time, it’s not surprising that what you’re hearing in your ear buds sometimes jibes with what you’re seeing around you in some ironic/coincidental/fitting way–as has been chronicled in these cyberpages before. So it wasn’t a total shock when U2’s “City of Blinding Lights”–Neon heart day-glow eyes/A city lit by fireflies–came on just as the Manhattan skyline came into view. But it was still kind of cool.

By 10:35, we were at Port Authority; I started wondering about train times, hoping I didn’t get stuck in that long gap between that late Hawthorne train and that later Hawthorne train. On a whim I took out the Blackberry, punched up Google, and searched “Metro-North big board.” The Blackberry chewed on the request for a bit, then spit out a link to our very own Trainjotting–the one where guest editor Gorgeous Francis offered up the little-known link to Grand Central’s real-time departures board. The next train was 11:06.

By 10:45, we pulled in front of Grand Central.  I buttoned my too-light jacket against the frigid air and stepped off the bus. With 20 minutes to kill, I had time for a Bass from the deli, a cheeseburger from Mickey D’s, a Daily News whose pre-game hype was mostly meaningless with the Giants having dispatched Favre and the lads in green and gold moments before.

But there was enough in there to kill 42 minutes on the train. In between Grand Central and 125th, a drunk guy in a Brandon Jacobs jersey stumbled into our three-quarters empty car, hoping simply wearing a Giants jersey would elicit peels of mirth and the easily-won bonhomie of his fellow riders. Alas, we were too sparse, too indifferent, too tired.

I forgot about the guy for the next minute or so, until he entered the next car and got his eagerly-awaited applause.

Mercifully, the cabs at Hawthorne were still running a little before midnight, and better yet, I didn’t have to share one. The cabbie was from Bedford Hills; he told me he was moonlighting to make a better life for the wife and kid. To make a better life for my own wife and kid, I had him stop a block away so we wouldn’t wake anyone, then snuck in, fell into my Archie Bunker Lazy-Boy, and wondered just how the hell Eli and the boys pulled it off.