- 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.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Drunks!
My first couple experiences with drunks on the subway:
Friday, March 13, 2009
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...
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...
Monday, March 9, 2009
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.
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.
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