A drop of water falls with the sound of broken glass.

On the downtown F train I look up from my copy of Please Kill Me, now with a wet splotch on page 338. Three white hipsters stand over me. The tallest, with strings of carrot-orange hair, is also the sweatiest. I wonder if it isn’t a drop of water but a drop of sweat. And that one drop brings what happened tonight back in a flood of anxiety. I’ve been trying to forget it, burying my mind in the oral history of punk rock, but it’s no use. This annoyance pokes at some very raw nerves.

I’m alive and grateful to be alive. But I also feel like I’m standing on a tree trunk five hundred feet in the air.

I’d gone to see a movie at Lincoln Center with my friend Brian, then to a Starbucks on the corner of 63rd and Broadway. Brian, who had his back to the wall, asked me what I thought of the movie. As I started to answer, a hollow, metallic-sounding BAP! came from outside. I looked over my shoulder and heard—and felt—a thunderous crash.

Terrorism, I thought. A bomb. Go home to your wife and son.

Yet my eyes did not see fire and smoke. They saw a black Mercedes-Benz careening through the façade. Glass fell straight down in rainy beads. I shook in place. The store burglar alarm sounded, unendingly, as exhaust fumes overtook the coffee aroma. The car was halfway in and out of the Starbucks. Running, but stopped. Where we’d been standing in line not five minutes before.

Brian and I scrambled out the nearest exit to the sidewalk. A taxicab with a mashed-in front fender was idling in the middle of Broadway. It looked as though the vehicles had pinballed off one another, ricocheting the Mercedes backward into the Starbucks. I steadied myself and dialed 911. All circuits—you guessed it—busy. Maybe the 50-odd others gathering on the scene were also calling for help. I was nervous and scared, but also feeling my adrenaline spike.

A blonde emerged from the Mercedes, followed by her little girl. Both looked like zombies, yet neither seemed injured. Sirens joined the din of the alarm and the chatter, as two paramedic vans zigzagged to the corner. Four paramedics hopped out, hustled over and yelled for us to make way. They examined the mother and daughter—

And then a high-pitched scream came from inside Starbucks. An Asian woman visible through the hole in the store was pushing at her cheeks with her palms and staring at the floor. One paramedic went in and immediately brought an Asian man into a chair, wrapping his head in mummy gauze. The man was stunned but conscious. Apparently, he’d been strolling down the sidewalk with his girlfriend when the force of the Mercedes batted him inside.

Another woman screamed: “Somebody help me!” This one was sitting in the backseat of the taxi with a face so bloodied, it looked as if she’d slammed her face against the Plexiglas divider and broken her nose. “There’s a woman over there who needs help!” I cried, pointing into the street. A paramedic hurriedly threaded through the crowd to tend to her and to the cabbie. I was heartened that New Yorkers had acted against type and wanted to help. But the crowd was threatening to become its own hazard. “Let’s get out of here,” I told Brian.

Grinning with sheepish relief, we marched down Broadway, deciding Columbus Circle was far enough away to catch up—and to catch our breath. After going over what the hell had just happened, we went back to talking about happier things: the movie, his engagement news, my experiences as a new father. The night was summer perfection, too: hot but breezy. An hour later, we said good night and took different subway lines home.

So now I’m on the F train. Still looking at the drop of water on the page of my book. I gaze up at the tall, carrot-topped hipster. “Sorry,” he says when we make eye contact.

I realize he’s holding a dewy bottle of some kind of energy drink. The not-inexcusable offense of sweating down on a fellow subway rider could have set me off and made me lose it. But the drop isn’t even sweat. It’s water. I must relax. Still, I want a drink or a cigarette. Or better yet, a drink and a cigarette.

Tonight I’ll forego both. I’ll take the comfort of the F, rocking like a cradle, delivering me to the sanctuary I call home.

For more on this incident, including photos, go to
http://gothamist.com/2008/07/11/car_swerves_into_starbucks_near_lin.php?gallery7123Pic=1#gallery

The Austin Statesman salutes a Texan with a 430-mile round-trip commute, who figures he’ll have commuted a million miles by the time he’s through.“I’ll tell you what. It’s a show out there on the road. That’s why I enjoy it so much,” Jeff Rue told reporter John Kelso.

Part of what Rue enjoys about the “show” are the various animals he’s hit on I-35 over the years — dogs, cats, coyotes, snakes, and an owl that he slammed with his grille.

Another fun show took place when a circus truck was jammed up in traffic in front of him, and the driver let the elephants and emus out for a walk.

“We had been there about an hour, and they decided to take the animals out of the trailers and let them move around,” Rue said.

A systems analyst, Rue seems like he couldn’t be happier about driving 3 1/2 hours each way. Myabe the guy needs his own system analyzed.

AM New York’s regular installment on hardcore commuters profiles a 23-year-old girl who commutes from the Philly suburbs to Tribeca each day, a one-way total of between four and five hours. Poor Kimberly Twist, an editorial assistant or somesuch at Cambridge University Press, takes the subway from Tribeca to Penn Station, New Jersey transit to Trenton, SEPTA to Philly, and a local train to a town called Ambler (”Amble” in the Webster’s Collegiate: “an easy gait, a leisurely walk.”)

Oh yeah, then there’s the 15 minute drive to her folks’ house.

Twist passes the time by eating, reading, doing crosswords, listening to her iPod, and bawling her eyes out about the sorry state of her life. (OK, I made that last part up.)

Her monthly commuting nut is $550–about what a normal 23-year-old might spend on a crummy rental 3 1/2 hours or so closer to work.

On page 1 of today’s Wall Street Journal is perhaps the most shocking bit of commuter-related journalism you’ll ever read. Eric Bellman tells the story of overcrowding on commuter rails in Mumbai, India; so bad is the problem that 3,404 people were killed while commuting last year (13 a weekday!), whether they’re crossing tracks, falling off trains or platforms, or (this one’s by far the worst) “sticking their heads out open windows for air.”

The trains are running at 2 /12 times capacity, as in, 550 people on a 200-max train. The Mumbai railroad even has a name for it: “Super-Dense Crush Load.” (Here we call it “Slippery Rail.”)

The story is told through the eyes of Jagdish Malwankar (no, not the kid voted off Idol last night). Malwankar has had a tough time of it of late; in January, 10 people fell on him while disembarking and he broke his foot. More recently, he was shoved onto the tracks, and two trains passed over him before anyone noticed. Also this year, poor Malwankar witnessed two commuters fall off the roof of the train and get sliced in half.

“Once or twice a month, I see people killed or injured on the tracks,” he said.

[Editor’s Note: Twice I checked to make sure the date atop the paper wasn’t April 1.]

Other highlights: the Mumbai system carries 20,000 passengers a day for each kilometer. To put it in perspective, Tokyo’s packed lines run 15,000, and the Long Island Railroad moves 420. Yes, 20,000 versus 420.

A few times a year, the article says, frustrated commuters riot–”rampaging through stations, lighting trains on fire and throwing rocks at police.” Yes, precisely what happened at New Roc City a few weeks back.

One positive: Jagdish Malwankar’s one-hour ride costs less than 25 cents. But should he upgrade to first-class, with fans and cushions, it’s five times as much.

Our pal Al Saracevic has a very interesting feature on the San Francisco Chronicle blog about his tour of India to see how it’s coping with its new economy. Apparently commuting is quite the bitch, both for locals navigating the horrific traffic and woeful railroads, and for Americans checking up on their outsourced biz.

Regarding the former, Saracevic writes:

“[The Indian Railway] is also the bane of many an Indian’s existence. People regularly wait in line two to three hours to get tickets at major urban train stations. And if the ticket you want isn’t available, you have to start over.”

Mercifully, a tech company is starting to sell train tickets online, though a small minority have internet access.

About traffic, he writes:

Street lanes are merely suggestions in the crowded cities of India. Traffic laws are rumors dismissed.  

About the trek Silicon Valley tech workers frequently make to India, he writes:

“It took me two cabs, three planes, two bus rides, four naps, a well-timed Bloody Mary and a tram ride” to get to Chennai.

Show me a Saracevic story without a strong Bloody Mary, and I’ll pay for your next drink.

The whole story is here.