Where Did You Get That Scarf?

My Aunt Reba recently visited New York, and after a sufficiently New York Tourist that ended with the Met, we ended up waiting for the 6 train with her friend, Maxine.

Seated next to a box of art supplies was a man of Native American skin tone, whose face and visible body was drowning in tattoos. Washes of liquid dripping all over his face and countless misarranged figures sprawled over his arms mixed with fluid designs. Maxine remarked the presence of Native American language on the streets of New York and He looked on, engaged as the train arrived.

We crammed into the car, His egg crate of miscellany causing a serious problem on the early evening Lexington Ave crunch. Reba remarked on the new R160 trains and He began:

“Where are you from?”

“Seattle”

“Oh yeah, the public transit system isn’t so great out there” He is haplessly unwinding tangled headphones in vain. “I was just out in San Francisco, they’ve got pretty good…um…trains out there”

“Where are you from?”

“Brooklyn” He says with relish. His voice is a finer gravel, crushed up by some sort of hard creative sensitivity or just roughed up by a cigarettes and outdoorsmanship.

At the next stop, the throngs stand outside the doors direly. Pressing onto the already-saturated car, I advise my charges to move towards the center of the car to make more room. His box of art supplies, however, remains a serious roadblock to the oncoming passengers. One guy remains on the platform and as the car pulls away I wonder how much this guy is “from” Brooklyn.

But I keep my mouth shut and generally stop listening, but a flash of conversation reaches me.

“So what do you do?” Reba asks.

“I’m an artist,” He says.

I still keep my mouth shut and he gets off with many others. Reba, Maxine and I get seats and I tell them it’s stuff like this I write about on my blog.

“Yeah, there’s just time when the energy on the subway is just off the charts”. Maxine says the 2^nd half of this to some guy’s ass, who inconveniently blocks the comment to my Aunt, who is across the car. Some Guys Ass has plenty of room to move around, but it’s not until at least three awkward-glance-exchanges that he moves.

The R160 continue to impress Auntie Reba, and she wonders aloud “I wonder whether those voices are computerized or recorded by people”

I theorize that they are computers but Maxine is of the school that they are human voices.

“There’s a contest, actually”, I hear from next to me. Guy Reading the New Yorker continues “its New York AM radio. The male voices give commands, while the female voice gives information”

We marvel at the proven energy of our particular subway car while smirking at the gender notions of this bit of news while a recently arrived straphanger asks Some Guys Ass, “Excuse me, where did you get that scarf?”

Politicians is Funnies

Scrawled on a Late Night Service Change notice for the L train at Bedford Avenue (in purple marker):

 

Why is service being changed?

Because the city of NYC has no money b/c we had to pay for Giuilliani’s extra marital affair.

 

Haha! Politicians is funnies!

Wretched

“San Vanelona has been destroyed, but this game builds a Wii construction–”

“You ga any money fo me?”

I’m trying to read my cousin’s issue of Game Informer, but a panhandler is making his way toward my end of the train, in a very distracting fashion.

“Nobadee ga anee nuffin tryin to see whut’s…”

He must be physically or mentally handicapped in some way; his fingers on his right hand hang limp and paralyzed in a jagged way and his wrist arcs down sharply. Regardless of this, he is certainly blasted out of his gourd and intrusively begs his way down the car.

“…San Vanelona has been destroyed, but this…” I am reading the lines of the review over and over again, with no retention. This bum is doing a terrific job of intentionally entering personal space throughout his trip, and the road-weary New Yorkers are doing an excellent job of ignoring him.

“You ga it? I wonda if you ga anysin fo me? No…”

Of course many of us are playing close attention to him, wary of any potential incidents. We are a skillful people, multi-faceted in our ability to observe multiple points of interest with a series of conflicting agendas:

1) Watch the freak

2) Act like we’re not watching the freak

3) Hope he gets off the car safely

4) Hope he gets his ass beat

5) Be alert in case of a bad fall

5) Worry about the discomfort of the insecure

6) Worry about the future of this sad horror

“…The Wii remote and nunchuck control scheme are the…the Wii remote and…are the best of the three possible…configurations…”

“Oh don get it, no issokay I don nee is fine I get roun by mysef!” He stops before the final stretch of the car, where I’m sitting between my cousin and my father. He cranes his neck around in a weird, drunken attempt at a stretch, staggering dangerously close to a baby carriage.

“Skate It retains…blah…blah…blah” I glue my eyes to the magazine in front of me, while keeping close watch on the stumbling wretch as passes in front. He focuses on my father, who is deeply entrenched in the New York Post.

“Escoose me you spay sum chaynge? You ga a noo paypa? I don see wha…”

My father has been known to have a very low tolerance for the wasted of the city, and that combined with a tendency to explode with fury at an appropriate target has me prickly on edge.

But nothing happens. The doors open, the bum practically falls out and as a stream of passengers enter, one of them says, “Oh man, that guy breathed on my face and I think just got drunk”

What Time is it?!

           A boy in a blue shirt stands, staring at the edge of a toothpick he holds before him. He is focusing extraordinarily hard on it while his friend in an orange sweater sets up a boombox. Another young man in a yellow tee tilts a can of Welch’s grape soda upside-down over his mouth, draining it. They yell a few innocuous phrases before moving into the universal set-off.

            “What time is it?!”

            “Showtime!”

            A techno-beat begins and Orange does a few steps before it abruptly ends.

            “Ladies and Gentlemen, that was the remix”

            The doors open and they go back to the drawing board. Passengers enter and a young tall woman moves to the center of the train and opens a magazine.

            “Miss, I will soon attempt to jump over you”, Blue says “I don’t have life insurance, but I hope you do”. He paces back and forth, a tiger ready and used to performing in such a small cage. The young woman does not budge.

            The music begins again and Orange approaches the woman with pleading hands and a polite appeal. She moves, appreciating the civil, human request. Blue immediately bursts forward, his legs flipping through the air, various parts of his hands, shoulders, head and fingers bracing against the ground.

            Yellow moves up next. Staying in one space, he fluidly flips his body upside-down time and time again. A single leg kicks down to give him his fluid balance after every upright spin, and his pudgy ten-year-old belly shows from under his long-sleeve shirt.

            I am inches away from these swinging body parts during different moments of this display but most of my focus is directed at the dancers’ uncanny ability to stay put in this unpredictable, moving environment. Despite the jarring turns and rocking of the train car, hands and feet stay planted in their chosen position. It is an impressive display of resoluteness at such a young age.

            Blue blasts forward on more time and in one single motion, he grips the overhead bars and flips head-over-heels, in the direct personal space of a hairy Mexican couple. After this single move, he returns to his pacing grounds. Orange takes the stage now, spinning on the ground and showing enormous strength with one arm supporting and maneuvering his entire body.

            “Don’t try this at home!” He says.

            “Try it at work” The others chime in. “You can sue!”

 

Below is a subway story from another friend’s blog:

Late one weekday night I was making my way home from Penn Station, exhausted and lugging a moderately heavy suitcase. I started to nod off to the gentle rocking of the subway when I was jolted out of my near-sleep by, “HEY! WHITE LADY!” Even in my semi-unconscious state I knew that the speaker could be referring only to me. Sure enough, a middle-aged African-American gentleman with an electric guitar was sitting on his amp in the center of the car and staring right at me. Then he started his show.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, this white lady almost fell asleep on the train! Now, we don’t want her to miss her stop so I’m gonna help wake her up. That okay White Lady? [no pause for a response] You know White Lady, you kind of look like Martha Stewart! OKAY! One, two, three … I got sunshine….on a goddamn number four train… I got the sweetest song … I’ve got, the month of May. I’d guess, you’d say, what could make me feel this way? My girl (the white lady with the glasses!) my girl, oooooh…..”

This went on for what felt like an exceedingly long time and my face was probably more fire-engine red than white by the time he finished. He was actually pretty funny and went on to make jokes at the expense of several other riders (and ask for donations so he could buy his three kids iPods) before we got off the train. Equal opportunity embarrassment. I approve.