From October 26, 2007

[Editor’s Note: I sure could get used to this lazy-ass repurposing.]

There (s)he was on the 7:16 to Stamford last night, all 11-inch heels and fishnet dress and tights with the ass cheeks cut out.

Yes, the giant black drag queen was shaking up the stuffy decor on the Metro-North again, brushing his blonde wig in the vestibule as riders peered over their Posts at this most unique of spectacles.

There were what looked like a man and his granddaughter, maybe 11, sitting across from each other as the drag queen entered the car a little before Fordham. The older man struggled for the right thing to say, then struggled some more, and looked like he was concerned he might actually be held responsible by the girl’s parents for what she was forced to witness on her trip to New York.

Finally, the oldster let loose this philosophical beauty:

“There’s a whole big world revolving around you,” he said as his arms whirled about to show just how big the world actually is. “You ought to…pay attention.”

As we neared Mount Vernon, a young woman in the vestibule near the queen asked about the heels. “These are 11-inch,” the drag queen said. “The company just started making 12-inches yesterday.”

He then added, “If you were to take this off and hit somebody, you’d kill ‘em!”

An Indian woman and her toddler got on in Mount Vernon. The toddler’s eyes went as big as pingpong balls, humming “Old MacDonald” as she took in the biggest, blackest Barbie Doll she’d ever seen.

The conductor walked by, and made a point of shaking his head emphatically, letting the whole car know he did not approve of the rider’s choice of black fishnet dress with the feathery waist.

A few more images I’ll not soon forget is the look of the poor guy, grayish black hair and business-casual attire, next to the queen as (s)he brushed her wigs and blonde strands fell on poor fella, and the whole of the car cringing as the queen bent over to retrieve something from her bag–exposing those tights with the ass cheeks cut out for all to see.

Where the hell was (s)he going?  

I had plans for a few pints in the city with Big Jim, in from Ireland, and the reports of a blizzard weren’t about to keep me home. I got Little G to bed on the early side and set out on foot for the 7:53 train Saturday night with the bare essentials: the day’s Times, a flashlight, the old iPod Nano (easy to slip into a pocket when hitting the bars), and a Beck’s for the ride.

The snow had just started picking up momentum and was starting to stick. It blew hard on my face and instantly adhered to my pea coat.

Along the sidewalk on Elwood, I encountered another man braving the rough mid-Westchester night. I see him around our tiny downtown and the train station a lot; I believe he’s mentally impaired and he enjoys smoking butts with the cabbies.

“Good evening Sir!” he said cheerily, extending a gloved hand.

I returned the good evening and hand.

“Be safe!” he warned. “I hear we’re in for rough weather.”

I felt the rough weather pelt me in the face. We wished each other well and went our respective ways.

I saw bodies spill out of the soon to open Punta Cana Spanish-Portuguese restaurant on Elwood, the biggest addition to the tiny main drag since the liquor store opened earlier this year. I figured it was construction workers, but as I got closer, saw that the restaurant was actually open for business. It’s a wee place: three or four tables and a counter. But they had a few customers on this snowy night.

The 7:53 was right on time, and chugged through the arctic blast with ease. I was warm and safe in Central Bar, Sierra Nevada in hand, in 55 minutes.

Big Jim was late, as usual. I told him up front my plans to be on the 12:06 so I’d have a fighting chance to keep up with Little G and Little Miss C Sunday. He looked out the window, the snow blowing sideways, the drifts piling up, people entering the bar looking like snowmen.

“I don’t think you’re getting home tonight,” he said.

A few at Central Bar and a few more around the corner at Black and White, and two or three more “You’re never getting home tonight”s from Big Jim.

Midnight was beckoning. I said good bye and was lucky enough to score a cab at 10th and 4th in the East Village. The cabbie had been off-duty but saw a white mark that he figured was going in the direction of his home in Queens. En route to Grand Central, he peppered me with questions about Westchester, Long Island, good colleges, etc. He was Bangladeshi. I gave him an extra buck for being personable.

I harbored faint concern about what Big Jim had said about the trains; was I to be stuck in Grand Central all night? I stocked up on supplies at Hudson News: water, a Daily News, a giant Fast Break candy bar, and jumped on the 12:06.

She started out on time and seemed to have no issue with the snow whatsoever. Indeed, the 12:06 pulled into Hawthorne around 12:47–a minute earlier than scheduled. I was going to text Big Jim to tell him how woefully wrong he was, but was too lazy to do it.

The snow was blowing around like mad. I pulled my hat low over my eyes, cued up my flashlight, and headed for home.

It could’ve been much, much worse. Look at these tales of woe from today’s NY Times:

Helena E. Williams, the president of the Long Island Rail Road, reported that about 50 riders were stranded, shuttled and towed aboard four trains in a seven-hour ordeal that began at Pennsylvania Station at 1:17 a.m. and ended at Ronkonkoma at 8:45 a.m. In between there were snowdrifts, ice, an engine breakdown and no heat on a three-hour stretch going backward from Wyandanch to Farmingdale.

And in New Jersey, passengers aboard a train and a bus, both operated by NJ Transit, had a close call at Pennsauken on Saturday night. Officials said a bus with 26 passengers stalled on snow-covered railroad tracks as the train with 38 passengers approached. The bus riders were evacuated moments before the vehicle was struck by the train.

“There was a terrific impact noise,” said Ralph Mintel, a passenger on the train, “and the rail car rocked violently from side to side. I feared that we had derailed, and that the car was going to tip over.” He was relieved to learn that no one was killed and only two people aboard the train were injured.

A Hampton jitney left New York City at 9:30 p.m. Saturday with fewer than a dozen passengers and got to Southampton at 6:30 a.m. Sunday, a nine-hour adventure in the storm.
 

Besides elicting one of the most bizarre obit second paragraphs as I’ve seen in some time, the passing of famous writer Dominick Dunne earlier this week prompted an entertaining yard from Conductor Bobby, the New Haven Line staffer with a knack for spying–and approaching–celebs on board.

He writes:

I’ve seen the author Dominick Dunne on my train several times over the years. He is always very impeccably dressed and looks as if he is headed to a polo match or some swanky country club. I recognized him from his eyeglasses, which are horn-rimmed and round. They make him look oh so much like a senior member of the Harry Potter fan club.The first time I met Mr. Dunne was on the eve of the two-year anniversary of the Nicole Brown Simpson slayings. He had a garment bag slung over his shoulder when he got on the train in New Haven, which is about a 40 minute ride from his home in Old Lyme.

The two struck up a conversation about the O.J. trial, and Conductor Bobby apparently made enough of an impression on Dunne to worm his way into the roman a clef Dunne wrote about the trial.

The novel was Dunne’s thinly veiled memoir about his experiences at the O. J. trial and how he, somewhere along the way, lost the objectivity of a reporter and became emotionally involved in the case. The novel’s protagonist’s name is Gus Bailey.In the last chapter of the book, page 343 to be exact, gossip columnist Liz Smith asks Gus if he ever gets sick of discussing O. J.:

“I talk about him to Deb at the gas station when she puts gas in my car.

I talk about him to the train conductor on Metro North.”

The year 2000.

The towers stood tall, Mike Piazza hit mammoth home runs, and Ashleigh Banfield was all over MSNBC. Conductor to the Stars Bobby has an Ashleigh sighting on Metro-North (she lives in Connecticut), along with a topless woman who sounds like a lost participant in some Boardy Barn Sunday fun.

It’s all on Derailed.

Bobby writes:

I was boarding the train in Grand Central, when a woman who looked exactly like former MSNBC reporter Ashleigh Banfield ran past me. A few years back, the bespectacled Banfield was the hot rising celebrity journalist, and her reports were all over the cable news channels. But then she criticized NBC and ticked off the studio brass. They fired her, and now she works for Court TV (Tru TV).

When I collected the woman’s ticket, I thought that I was mistaken. Now, up close, this woman looked too young and blond to be Asleigh..

“For a minute there, I thought you were Ashleigh Banfield.” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’ve heard that before.”

“But you’re much younger.”

“Bless you.” She said.

The woman’s husband was sitting next to her, he looked up, laughed and said, “You’re kidding…right? This is Ashleigh.”

“Wow. You’re younger than you look on TV.”

“Well,” she said. “I like to tell people that I’m 50 ( she’s 41), then they think I look great for my age.”

Conductor Bobby thinks he deserves a cold one with the president after a racial flare-up with a black Metro-North rider some time ago.

He writes:

I was collecting tickets on an early morning train when I came upon a bench/row where all three seats were occupied by passengers. Being observant, I noticed that I had previously placed two seat checks in front of two of the passengers here. This meant that there was a recent arrival and someone owed me a ticket. I used logic and assumed that the gentleman sitting on the aisle was the last to enter the row…therefore, he was the one who owed me the fare.

“Let me ask you something conductor…There’s three of us sitting here.” He pointed to his two seatmates, a white woman sandwiched next to him, and a white man whose face was crammed against the window. “And yet… you only ask ME for a ticket.”

The rest of the yarn is on his Derailed blog.

Since we’re on the topic of trains getting jammed up in tornadoes today, here’s a peak at what it looks like when it actually happens.

Thanks to Conductor Bobby for the link.

Conductor Bobby has a fascinating account of his new assignment as a Metro-North conductor–working on the Waterbury Branch, which appears to be full of homeless, fare-evaders, and “quick-turners”–the guys riding Bridgeport to score dope, then hopping back on the train to Waterbury.

That region of Connecticut used to be a bustling manufacturing base. Now it sounds like it’s beyond despondent.

Bobby writes:

A distraught woman boards the train in Seymour wreaking of booze. Her skin is pale white but her eyes are vibrant red and bloodshot. She tells me that her boyfriend just threw her out of the house and she needs to get to her sister’s place in Naugatuck. I say “no problem” and tell her that I can bill her for the fare. I hand her the billing pad book and she sits down. She begins sobbing uncontrollably, so much so, she can’t fill the billing form out. I take the pad from her shaking hands and I begin filling the form out. I ask for her name and address, but instead she gives me her life story.

It appears Late Show host Craig Ferguson can only make out a single stop’s name when he rides Metro-North to “Albany.”

Here’s the link, cheeky wee monkeys.

Thanks to Conductor Bobby for sending it along. Perhaps Bobby and his ilk can learn from it and polish their diction.

This is terrific–the whole of a train station in Antwerp (by the way, Antwerp is Flemish for “Lots of White People”) busting out in The Sound of Music–both the traditional SOM and a hip-hopped up version of it.

This beats any freeze-in-place stunts those Improve Anywhere guys have come up with.

Thanks to Derailed, who got it from the Sandi Kahn Shelton blog.

Whether it’s brawlin’ late-night riders or hemorraging day-hoppers, Conductor Bobby’s posts always seem to have a fair bit of blood in them.

His latest:

“Sorry dude!” Said the passenger, now showing me his thumb which was dripping with blood. “I sliced it at work today and it won’t stop bleeding.” I looked down at the ticket he’d just handed me, still not comprehending his apology. There, between my index finger and thumb, lay a crimson colored piece of paper. It was the size and shape of a powder blue Metro North ticket, but streaks of plasma had left it unrecognizable.

But it’s not just blood. It’s snot. It’s sweat. It’s phlegm.

I frequently catch passengers holding tickets in their mouths. Sometimes they’ll go as far as using them as dental floss, spending the better part of the ride mining molars for forgotten bits of a $200 business lunch and then handing me a ticket covered in spit and shreds of steak tartar.