You need to escape from New York…. Just don’t take the Subway

There was a shooting in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn. It looks like they used flash bang grenades. 15 people were wounded and no announcement of fatalities yet.

I often rode those trains and transferred at that stop. Sunset park is primarily Spanish and Chinese. They must be really scared because they announced that the suspect was a black guy in an MTA style uniform. Maybe somebody who got fired because a vaccine mandate. Normally they never announce the race of the criminal. So they must be shitting their pants.

"Cops Catch Murderer by Arresting Him for Manspreading"

Manspreading can get you arrested in New York. Know what can also get you arrested in New York? Murder.

The NYPD cited a man riding the A train for putting his foot on an empty seat (broken windows at its finest!) and when they ran his record, they discovered he was wanted for murder. Forty-three-year-old Gregory White was charged with fatally stabbing a woman in Coney Island in January. Cops hauled White to the precinct, where he confessed to the murder.

“It’s a big city, Somebody’s going to drop something.”

"And somebody, if the item is sufficiently treasured, is going to try to pick it up. These are the fishermen of the (NYC) subway system, cobbling together homemade instruments to pluck items from the tracks and release them to a grateful city."

They have lifted bikes and basketballs.

One worker, Bob Devine, recently recovered the detritus of a lover’s quarrel: a bag of clothes hurled beside a third rail in the Bronx during an argument.

“We’re O.K. now,” the man told Mr. Devine, repacking his jeans.

For as long as there have been subway tracks, New Yorkers — haggard, perpetually busy and forever jostling for space — have been dropping things on them.

But in recent years, the workers say, the rigors of the job have multiplied, with smartphone proliferation and in-station Wi-Fi producing a more distracted ridership and sending more phones tumbling to the tracks.

“That’s job security,” said Mr. Devine, a 30-year veteran of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

There is the occasional aggrieved passenger, chafing at the response time if a crew is traveling from another call at a far-off station. But almost universally, riders are appreciative. A few have tried to tip the workers, though they say they have never accepted.

“A little hug, we take,” Mr. Geraghty said. “I usually tell them, if it’s a man: ‘Take your wife out. Have a good time on us.’ ”

"Bedbugs found on N train after conductor is bitten"

"The subway system has 5.5 million riders every single day and we can't check all of them for bedbugs before letting them on the train," MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg said earlier this month. "That said, when we get reports of bedbug sightings we investigate — and exterminate. This is an interesting story but not a big problem."

NY Daily News

"New York police to city's subway acrobats: siddown"

The Guardian: The New York Police Department is cracking down on the subway showmen who use the tight quarters of the nation's busiest transit system as moving stages for impromptu — and illegal — pass-the-hat performances. More than 240 people have been arrested on misdemeanors related to acrobatics so far this year, compared with fewer than 40 at this time a year ago.

Police Commissioner William Bratton acknowledges he is targeting subway acrobats as part of his embrace of the "broken windows" theory of policing — that low-grade lawlessness can cultivate a greater sense of disorder and embolden more dangerous offenders.

"Is it a significant crime? Certainly not," Bratton said recently. But the question is, he added, "Does it have the potential both for creating a level of fear as well as a level of risk that you want to deal with?"

The subway acrobats say they're just out to entertain, make a living and put a little communal levity in New York's no-eye-contact commuting. (read more)

 

 

Unconfirmed rumors say that the roundups began after a 'dancer' landed on Trooper York ;-)

NYT Metro Diary: Lament for a Live Subway Voice

"My New York wasn’t lost with the gentrification of the East Village — a once edgy, tattered, soulful neighborhood turned into a massive food court."

Or with the closing of CBGB, or the morphing of SoHo into a shopping center, with crowds to rival Times Square.

It was with the audio automation in the subway — that voice, like a computerized Verizon operator, intoning the stops. You could be in any city.

Where’s the man at the wheel who tells you it’s his birthday, gives a thumbnail history of Astor Place or barks, “Let’s Go Mets!” as he’s pulling into Willets Point?

Couldn’t they at least have given the robot a New York accent?

“It’s tea, not coffee, you know.”

“My dress, my dress, my dress, my dress!” she repeated, grabbing on to the ends of her expensive-looking, body-hugging white dress. A thick, brownish liquid formed an egg-shaped stain, dripping off the end of the cloth. A pool formed there, the liquid encompassing her white high-heeled shoes, staining them likewise. Next to her stood a tall man, unmoving man, holding a tilted cup, empty but still dripping with the last of his beverage.

Then, the woman turned into a tornado of fury and brown stain.

“WHY THE [expletive deleted] WEREN’T YOU CAREFUL WITH YOUR [expletive deleted] COFFEE? THIS IS A [expletive deleted] TRAIN! YOU KNOW TO HOLD IT BETTER THAN THAT! I HAVE A [expletive deleted] INTERVIEW, YOU [expletive deleted] KNOW!” she wails.

As the brakes started to squeal and the train entered 79th Street, the tall man smugly motioned to get off the train.

A Spilled Cup on the No. 1 Train