I enjoy a post-work commutation lubricant as much as the next passenger, but the drinking on the train may be getting out of hand. Last night I was a party to two situations where the police were summoned, all within the space of about 40 minutes.

Granted, the first incident was set on an Amtrak train, not an LIRR rattletrap. On the three-hour haul from Washington, a group of four was getting increasingly louder as the three men—apparently two twentysomethings and a guy in his thirties—downed more beers. They had a running joke where they’d call each other slang names for female genitalia. This was on a packed train, scheduled to arrive in New York at 8:30.

Finally, one woman asked very politely that they refrain from using words like twat, poontang, vagina or crim. Which prompted the eldest of the bunch to start getting abusive, telling the middle-aged, well-dressed woman that she could just go find another seat and to get out of his face. And then he and a buddy started up again with gleeful cries of “Muff!” and “Beaver!,” like 12-year-olds on a backyard sleep-out.

When we got to Penn, I started to exit the train and found myself between the head dope and the woman. He started in again, telling her, “Hey, you have a nice night now,” and laughing in a menacing way.

I couldn’t help myself.

“You out to be ashamed of yourself,” I told him.

And then I was the target. Though other people on the train chimed in, and soon he was hurling abuse at several more people. I could see that two of them, both young women, were clearly scared.

I didn’t take his taunts. Instead, I walked up to a conductor outside the train and told her, “Look, this guy is threatening us. I think you need to do something.”

She was nice, but said the window of opportunity for her was closed.

So I trudged on, heading up the escalator. Sure enough, he was waiting for me at the top of it, and started in again. I cut him off with, “The police are on their way.” He dusted.

Curiously, I did see a cop right then and stopped him. I explained what happened, and he clearly didn’t care if I had a knife sticking out of my back. He wasn’t going to be bothered. He treated me like a crazy person.

So off I went to the LIRR section of Penn Station to complete my journey home. The 8:49 was loading, and I could see that it was a crowded train, with lots of kids tugging balloons on ribbons. There must’ve been some type of event at the Garden.

I sunk down in an empty two-across and cracked open a beer. All was right with the beer until the low-level hum of dozens of conversations was interrupted by a very loud, “Fuck you! You ugly piece of shit! You pimply fat-assed, ugly bitch.”

I looked to see a guy who looked like Vito from The Sopranos. He was standing near the door, yelling at a heavyset woman, about 5’ 3”, sitting about three seats away.

The guy kept at it. There was a kid on my car who looked like she was ready to break the window and jump out, she was so scared. And the yeller’s anger was clearly climbing as his control seemed to be slipping away.

Finally, he crumpled up his beer can and threw it at the woman, who reminded me of the nurse at my grammar school. And then he stepped toward her.

In front of the woman was a middle-aged couple, a guy who didn’t exactly sport the build of a gym rat and, we were to learn in a minute, his wife.

The husband told the yeller, “Okay, that’s enough.”

The guy kept coming, now threatening the husband. So the hubby stood up, in an act of courage that went beyond admirable. Because there was going to be trouble, clearly.

I and another guy walked over, though I had no idea what I was going to do.

Meanwhile, the woman who’d been the target of his abuse slipped into the next car. Soon a conductor charged into the car with a kid in a knit wool cap and jeans. He opened his coat and showed his badge—an undercover cop.

The abuser immediately turned into an altar boy, denying that anything had happened. But now the hubby and his wife were telling the cop what happened. At that point, the doors opened at Auburndale, and people started to get out. One of them was a tall lanky guy who said to the cop, “I saw exactly what happened.”

The abuser smiled and told the cop, “Now you’ll get the real story,” as if he was suddenly in the clear.

The guy exiting turned to the drunk low-life and said to him, “You were a threat to this car, and what you did and said was outrageous.”

Then he turned to the cop. “You should arrest him.”

With that, the guy exited. Unfortunately, the rest of the crowd was not as sympathetic. The cop told us that the train would have to be held there until backups arrived, and he turned to the wife whose husband had stood up to the creep and said, “You’re the one who wanted this.”

I could see that the cop was losing his enthusiasm for doing right.

The husband suggested that the perpetrator just be kept off the train and that the train proceed.

Unfortunately, the perpetrator’s stop was Auburndale, so he got off essentially scot-free—no doubt to tell the tale the next night over a few beers down on Track 16.

–PeterFromPort

A plague of locusts, an alien landing, even your garden-variety meteor strike–these are all acceptable reasons for one of the nation’s busiest rail systems to suffer bible-scale delays.

But rain, even at the level we experienced Monday? I don’t get it. It’s as if the Founding Commuting Fathers figured a heavy cloud cover was as much of a weather risk as they were willing to take. A guy in a handlebar mustache and straw boater, looking out the window and then yelling to the yard, “Don’t bother firing up Engine Four, Percy. We’re already getting a sprinkling. Best not risk wet tracks.”

The commute on the LIRR started with a hint of promise, at lest for veteran riders of the 8:18 out of
Port Washington. The 8:08, the busiest morning train on my line, had been cancelled. Ours not only got a green light, but left on time.

Then we stopped somewhere past the Sunnyside train yards for a 45-minute view of the Citicorp tower in Long Island City. Quite a tower, indeed. But I would’ve had my fill in, oh, maybe 8 minutes.

Too much traffic going into Penn Station, we were told. Even with cancelled trains and lengthy delays? What, everyone decided to jump in their individual trains and chug into the city instead of driving?

I later learned, however, that we were fortunate to be thrown off schedule by a mere 45 minutes. Colleagues made it into work hours later than usual because their usual modes of transportation just stopped for awhile (in Jersey) or were lengthened to an Abu Ghraib level (from Staten Island; don’t they use boats in any case?).

Fortunately for the LIRR, the evening commute wasn’t bad. Beer suppliers had managed to deliver their usual supplies, and there were virtually no delays by the late evening.

The computerized ticket kiosks in Penn Station pulled a HAL 9000 yesterday, all but telling would-be ticket buyers, “That’s not going to happen, Dave.”

In a fit of will that would have pleased the famously rebellious cyber-brain from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the machines refused to work as programmed during the evening rush hour, leaving angry LIRRers without their new monthlies on the first commuting day of April. I don’t know how it works in that other train terminal in town, but a grain of sand has yet to be flushed from the well-oiled commutation machine that is Penn Station. We can land a man on the moon, but the only way you can purchase a ticket with a credit card at Penn is via the relatively new vending machines. So when the kiosks go down, you either have to be carrying an extra few hundred in spending money, or hope you can find an empty stool in Fast Tracks until the machines come back online.

I view the need for instructions on shampoo bottles as a serious indictment of our school system. But the real condemnation has to be the big doh! that easily adds four minutes to my commute every morning. Any doubts were dashed this morning, when I once again had to stand rock-still in what should be the express line of the “up” escalator at 53rd and Lex.  

It’s not a hard concept to grasp: People who want to passively ride the steep ascent keep to the right. Those of us who want to walk as the escalator speeds us along stick to the left.  Yet more often than not, some dunderhead gums up the works. They stand there with a long, hostile queue behind them, hearing the pointed pleas to step aside. It’s not that tough to squeeze to the right, even if the slow riders won’t open a little space for you. But the clogger often sticks there, looking like the proverbial Sawmill deer in the SUV’s headlights.  

Amazingly, they’ll sometimes indeed clear the way—only to have some other dimwit assume the role of spoiler.  

This is why the concept of a formalized escalator express lane needs to be explored.

–PFP

My ride this morning convinced me that Long Island has a serious health problem on its hands. Yes, TB is back. I know because a sufferer was on my train, hacking up a lung aboard the 8:18. 

I’d stag-leaped into my usual Long Island Rail Road car at 8:16 a.m., heady from having all that time to make the seat next to me look uninviting (try an empty condom wrapper once and you’ll never go back to mere newspaper). No sooner had I staked out my six feet of overhead rack when I heard proof that I’d made a woefully bad seat choice. From behind me came a death rattle whose source I knew well: The Phlegm Monster.  

My wife and I dubbed her that after the first time a hacking fit made us turn around in unison to see who’d slipped out of their iron lung. Instead it was a middle-aged woman with the worst case of congestion since Ratso Rizzo walked the streets of New York. She and everyone else must know it, because she sits as far removed as she can, and everyone obliges her by keeping a cordon of several empty seats around her. 

We avoid her like the plague because, well, she very well could be a carrier, given her coughing, throat-clearing and general de-stuffing activities. But by the time I realized this morning that she was within expectoration distance, it was too late for me to find a two-across with any chance of accommodating just me for the trip. All I could do was yank up the collar of my jacket and breathe through my New York Times as if it was a surgical mask. 

Worst of all is the cascading effect of her barking, snorting, wheezing and rattling. A well-behaved, sniffle-free car suddenly turns into the ward of a TB asylum as the standards are lowered. 

Tomorrow, I’m bringing an actual surgical mask.

–PeterFromPort