Invisible Dogs In Brooklyn

So the other day, Andrew and I go off to find some lunch and are gob-smacked by the sight that befell us:

Every where we look are groups of people walking their invisible dogs! Seriously, these dogs were interacting with everyone in the streets, and their owners were petting them. They were really there!! But we couldn't see them....

Some say you are your own best company...

I am coming to the conclusion that the crazy people in NY favour one train line over most others. The "F" line seems to attract them like moths to a flame.

Once again, in the wee hours of the morning, we were making our way home and we were treated to a very interesting sight.

Sitting in the train-car when we arrived was a rather masculine-looking woman. Whether this was a he-she or a transvestite or not, we never reached a definate conclusion. No matter, we got quite an amusing show, none the less. For the entire 45-minute ride, she sat across from us and had an argument with herself, verbalising both sides of the conversation:
"I want to go to Coney Island. Is this train going to Coney Island?"
"You can't go to Coney Island."
"But I wanna go to Coney Island."
"You don't have enough to go to Coney Island"
"I want to go to Coney Island."

We stopped at one of the stations and the dispatcher held the train there for some unknown reason.

"Sonny, you gotta get off this train"
"But I wanna go to Coney Island"
"You don't have enough to get to Coney Island"

Then twice she got up, left the train, came back and argued some more.

We eventually decided to walk from there, so we never did find out if she made it to Coney Island.

$5 to make the drop shot

Late one friday night (Saturday morning actually) Andrew & I were on our way home, via Time Square. While waiting for the light to change we noticed an unkempt man standing a few feet behind us and talking rather loudly.

It turns out that this man (I don't know if he was homeless or not) was asking someone to bet him $5 to make a drop shot into the rubbish bin. It is still unclear whether he was talking directly to us, or if there was an invisible friend, or if he was just talking to the air in general.

The 3-odd minutes that we were waiting there went like this:
"5 dollars to make the drop shot. C'mon, bet me 5 dollars!"
He walks a few feet from the bin, shoots, misses.
"Aw, missed by a mile!"
"5 dollars to make the drop shot. C'mon, bet me 5 dollars!"
He takes the shot again, misses.
"Aw, what a shame! So close!"

He was still doing that when the light changed.

Abductions

We have a resident neighbourhood crazy-person! Yup, I came across him 3 times in one week, every time just a few steps from my building front door, and have seen him a few times since then.

He hasn't approached me for anything yet, but I might give him a dollar to get a photo of his sign. He has a sign hanging from his neck that reads:

Who is going to bear witness to the fact

that I have been abducted by aliens

and had a microchip implanted in my brain?

Schizophrenic conversations

The other day I had quite an interesting ride home on the subway. Sitting next to me was this sweet looking lady with all her shopping bags. I was busy reading my book, but couldn't help noticing that she seemed to be having a conversation. A couple times I glanced in her direction to make sure that she wasn't trying to have a conversation with me. Then I realised that she was having a quiet two-sided conversation.... with herself!

I'm not kidding. She would cock her head and look to one and "mumble-mumble-mumble", then she'd cock her head to the other side and "mumble-mumble-mumble" back. It was very quiet so I don't think anyone else noticed, but as I was sitting next to her I did. She did the for about 5 mintues and then she opened up a box of black grapes or berries and popped one into her mouth. A second later she popped another one, then another, then another into her mouth (without having swallowed any of the others). I think she must have had about 5 in her mouth, looking rather like a hamster storing its seeds, before she started chewing and swallowed them.

Harmless, but very amusing!

Man urinates into bottle

I stepped into the train the other day and was amazed to see an empty bench at 4pm! I was about to sit down when this odour of a public toilet assaulted my nostrils. I then noticed that this homeless guy was sitting on the opposite bench and was fiddling with a his pants fly and a bottle.

I couldn't move away as the train was filling up, but I did stay standing as far away as I could. I was busy reading my book but couldn't help but notice what he was doing from the corner of my eye. This old man was weeing into the soda bottle! On the train! Granted he was really discreet about it and managed to put the bottle inside his zipper and not just whip it out for the world to see. But everyone knew what he was doing - the bottle was see-thru!

And then for the whole trip i knew there was a bottle of urine under the bench!

To top things off, it turns out he's not just incontinent, he's also totally crazy and has these crazy eyes that point in different directions which made his ravings even more crazy! He sat there, after relieving himself, and grumbled at no-one in particular about how "they are trying to destroy him" and "these are gangs" (pointing to the people standing in the car) and he "has no time for children"...

Drunks!

My first couple experiences with drunks on the subway:

• The two older gentleman who lurched down the stairs as the train doors were closing. First man leaps gracelessly onto the train and holds the doors open. Second man says "Old thoshe doorsh!" First man: "Don't worrysh! I'm holding theshe doorsh!"... Yes, people really do slur like that! wow...
• About 2am on a Saturday morning, after finding out that our nearest subway was closed for the night, we ended up at West 4th Station... keeping a wide berth of the young guy in front of me who kept leaning over and burping those horrible vomit-burps!
• The man who smelled like he was drinking brocolli vinegar... urgh, not great in close quarters!
• Recently Andrew & I took the subway to get dinner somewhere and there was this woman sitting on the floor of one of the cars in what looked like a pool of vomit & urine.
  

Youth at 72nd St Station

I really hope these people never leave New York because they really do make me smile and think "Thank God, I'm sane!"

I was walking from W72nd St Station the other day, because for some unfathomable reason the 1-train was no longer stopping at W79th St (which is the closest to our current apartment) even tho that is the only train which is scheduled to stop at that station. As I passed a corner this young guy, about 18 or 20 years old, was standing there in his hoody and converse tekkies (sneakers to you non-Saffers) repeating "F#$% you! F#$% you!" to no-one in particular...

Ikea - an experience

Ok, so this entry is a little off the topic of crazee's but I just had to share this.

Yesterday Andrew & I took a trip out to Ikea. Now if you've seen Fight Club, you might recognise the name from the opening 10 minutes of the movie: Edward Norton is sitting on the loo talking about all the stuff in his life, especially his furniture from Ikea, and paging through a catalogue for Ikea. Ikea is a Swedish company that sells EVERYTHING for your house at a really low price. The catch? You have to do everything yourself: choose, pick, pack, pay, etc. They don't do ANYTHING except man the cash registers! Oh, yes, you also have to assemble everything when it arrives at your apartment, flat-packed in a box!


But the range is AMAZING! Andrew was really sceptical of Ikea, thinking it had to be rubbish quality because it is so cheap (and his Ikea desk at work wobbles), but seeing as everyone asked us if we were getting Ikea we decided to check it out... WOW!

So, we decide to go furniture shopping at 7pm on a Sunday night... incredible! Unfortunately we hit a snag when, after 1.5 hours of carefully examining the items and finally deciding on our list, we found out that we had to collect all the boxes ourselves! And this is even though we were going to have it all delivered to our apartment for an additional fee!! I think we must have broken the record for fastest trip around Ikea collection department, trollies drifting around corners, yells for unsuspecting shoppers to get out of the way! Finally we made it thru the check-out and arranged the delivery.

Unfortunately by this time it was 9:30 pm and the last shuttle bus had left at 9pm... Hmm, stuck in Brooklyn warehouse district on a Sunday night. Not a great situation. We did have some dodgy-looking guy come up to us and offer us a lift back, but he wasn't a yellow-taxi driver so we declined. Unfortunately after he left there were no other taxis to be seen, yellow or otherwise!

So, now how do we get back to Brooklyn Heights? Ah, a bus stop. Lets wait there. Hey! There's the bus. So we get onto the bus and off we go. Next thing we know, the driver parks the bus on the side of the road and switches off the engine. Huh!? We must've sat there for about 15 minutes before he decided to move on. No explanation tho. Then Andrew notices that we're going back towards Ikea. HUH!? Back at Ikea we picked up a few more people and started off again. Thankfully the bus didn't do another trip back to Ikea, but I wonder how long the other passengers sat there going in a circle...

Now, the problem here is that we had NO idea where the bus was going and we certainly didn't know the area. About 20 minutes into the main trip we realised it was going passed a Metro stop so we jumped off there and went to catch the train. Except the escalators are all leading up, and waaaay up they went. With no other options, we followed the escalators up and up and up and came out on the overland train platform! Thankfully it was a train that went to the general vicinity of home.

While we were waiting for the train we saw some cops and paramedics arrive. One of the paramedics looked like Igor. So we followed them on the opposite side of the tracks to see what was happening. Turns out some old guy had passed out on the platform - we think he was really really drunk. He refused to use the wheelchair they'd brought with, but about halfway back to the escalators, he passed out again. That was the last we saw of him.

And that was our really interesting trip to Ikea.

Hysterical Lady in Grand Central Station

I honestly cannot believe the number of strange people I have seen in this city!

I had to go thru Grand Central station on my way to the Upper East Side and was so startled by this woman that I actually took my headphones out of my ears and stopped and stared. Along with half a dozen other people. Now, the thing about New Yorkers is that they don't stare at strange people - you can be wearing a sock and nothing else and it is the non-New Yorkers who will stare. These New Yorkers were staring!

Why were they staring? Walking, maybe a better description is prancing, down the corridor was this sweet-looking African-American woman of about 50 or 60 years old. Nothing to stare at. Except that every time some one passed her she would veer towards them, pointing a gnarled finger at their face, screaming "He gave his life for you! He gave his life for you!" over and over.

Thankfully she didn't see me!

Dancing man vs Central Park Squirrels

To add a little more nuttiness to NY there was the homeless guy in Central Park. This guy was merrily dancing a jig, or possibly the can-can, to a tune that only he could hear. Looked like he was having fun and he wasn’t bothering anyone.

Then next thing he starts yelling! And it turns out the squirrels were trying to get into his bags so he kept yelling at them to leave his bags alone!

It was really funny: dance, dance, dance – aaaaaargh!!!!

Eventually he picked up his bags and moved to a different spot cause the squirrels wouldn’t leave him alone.

Guy with a cat on his head

There was the guy in Time Square with the cat on his head. Yes, you heard me correctly, he had a real live black-and-white cat sitting happily on his head!

I unfortunately didn’t take this photo because when I pulled my camera out, he came over and started asking us for money. So Andrew pulled out a quarter dollar (which is equivalent to like R3) and this guy started yelling and swearing at us. Andrew told him that we’re from SA and this is a lot of money to us and he said “I don’t care! if you come to Time Square, bring a lot of cash!” So we walked off.

I found the photo on the net tho and its the same guy. (The cat doesn't look too impressed, tho!)

Nutter on the Train

So, the first crazy person I saw was this one guy on the train. Didn't look totally nuts when he came onboard, just looked unkempt. Then he started talking to himself. They ALL seem to talk to themselves. As the train pulled off, he started banging his head against the window behind him.

And then the cherry on top, in case anyone didn't really think he was nuts, was that every time the train slowed down at another station he would careen across his bench. Then he'd mutter angrily to himself and look around like one of us was the culprit.

Then he'd move back to his original seat, and the whole process would start again.

I think he did this for about 10 minutes before we had to get off at our station.

Introduction to "Crazee's in the Big Apple"

Hi Everyone

So... this is going to be a record of all the crazy people that I come across in New York City. There are many of these people, but a general trait is that these individuals are over the age of 40! Moral: Don't get old in NY - you'll go crazy.

I will try get photos, when the opportunity arises, or even better: video footage.

You will not believe this is real, unless you've seen it for yourself!

Keep a watch out for the crazee's!