Given that the exact same question is the current top post but for driving instead of transit, I feel this question was needed.
My answer: I saw some guys hooking up a Raclette Grill to the outlet in an otherwise empty German intercity rail waggon. They had it unpacked in one of these 4 person seats with a small table. No idea if that could work or if draws too much power from the board net. I just headed on to the next waggon.
The bus driver watching loud porn on his phone and cheering them on loud enough for the whole bus to hear.
Oh my.
Porn or Skype?
Some guy wearing a large hoodie got on the piss-soaked train right before the doors closed. As he was walking down the aisle he stopped right in front of me, pulled out a Taser, and lit it up right by my face. Right after he opened up his hoodie like the RE 4 merchant and showed a collection of batteries, tasers, Bluetooth speakers and all sorts of other junk. He was the world’s shittiest salesman.
+1 for excellent storytelling
In the late 80s I ended up on a bus from North Minneapolis to South Minneapolis at around 9pm after a school play.
With me were my sister and several of our friends.
I’ll never know if this was in any way an out of the ordinary ride for the time and place. For context, we are all 13-15 years old, all white kids.
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A middle-aged black man holding a very small suitcase gets on and walks to the very back of the bus, sitting next to one of my sisters friends. Out of his jacket he pulls a few red roses and hands them to her. He then begins to flirt with her, angering other passengers and causing the bus driver to scream at him and kick him off.
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A fight breaks out in the front of the bus. Everyone, including the driver and the couple fighting, are laughing. Then one stumbles into the driver and they get kicked off.
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A drunk man comes and sits next to me and my friend Nick. Nick and I are chatting about a game, probably Warhammer Fantasy.
The man asks Nick for a favor.
“What?”
“Teach me your language.”
“What??”
“Teach me Russian.”
“I don’t know Russian!”
“Teach me anyway.”
That’s it. Of all of those I’m now sure the drunk guy was just deliberately fucking with us. But we also all made it home safely. Just a little window into 80s Minneapolis night life.
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I remember on our bus ride to school we passed an old store that had, spray painted on the side, “Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do.”
Months went by and I’d ponder that a bit when we passed it, until someone updated the old quote.
“Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they doo-doo.”
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Guy sets a bluetooth speaker down on a seat, and then proceeds to do a full gymnastic dance routine right there in the subway car. Plenty of “regular” dancing, but also handstands, hanging from the rails, spinning on the floor, walking on the walls, the works. All well-timed to the music.
Didn’t ask for money. Just got off at the next station. Dude just wanted to dance, I guess.
Two, both on the same bus ride:
Old guy comes on with a cart and starts selling cotton candy, with surprising success. 50 cents, and the rest of the ride people are just all enjoying cotton candy in violation of no eating rules (especially sticky stuff).
Girl, probably around 16ish, on a loud phone call with someone in regards to a boyfriend in prison with increasingly more depressing and dire details as the ride goes on except a random moment where she talked about Fortnite. We’re talking drugs, pregnancy, other women, and Fortnite.
Drugs, pregnancy, infidelity, and fortnite. The four horsemen
charge they phone twerk eat hot chip lie
I was taking the train to work and there was this homeless dude sitting there quietly scooping chocolate powder over his head.
Just using the little plastic scoop that comes in the can. Scoop, scoop, scoop.
He wasn’t hurting anyone, so I called it in to the transit authority when I got to my stop. On the one hand, I didn’t want anyone seeing a bunch of brown powder thinking we got anthraxed, at the same time, I didn’t want to be late for work. ;)
“Yeah, there’s a guy on the Westbound train quietly covering himself in chocolate powder.”
“What kind of chocolate powder?”
“. . . I dunno, Nestlé Quik? Does it matter?”
I love that they asked what kind.
The person might have thought chocolate was the color not the food.
Might have wondered if it was something that was going to melt.
Or they had a hankering for some Bosco.
On a bus from El Paso to Phoenix someone smoked a joint in the bus bathroom and got dumped on the side of the highway immediately after.
Two hours later on that same bus trip the bus got raided by immigration and I got into an argument with the officer that wouldn’t accept my ACTIVE, UNEXPIRED Military ID as a valid form of ID and started yelling at me for my passport (I have a Spanish last name). I threw my passport at him and told him to fuck off before I got my command group involved with his. I don’t know how that worked but he got real quiet and left me alone immediately after that lol. There were several people that were pulled off of that bus that night. It was overall pretty shitty.
It worked because cops are terrified of MPs. They know that the MPs can and will treat them the way they treat the normal citizenry.
This is going to get so much, unspeakably worse if Trump wins the next election and succeeds in his plans to forcibly deport millions of people. Of course the law enforcement agencies will “have to” check anyone who looks like they might be an illegal migrant, based on their ethnicity. Ruining the lives of not only the migrants, but countless American citizens as well.
I was reading a book on the train. A guy had the nerve to come up to me and ask me about the book I was reading.
I have peeked at book covers as I’m always curious. One day someone was reading a book called The Arranged Marriage. The plot was hilarious when I googled it.
One thing I noticed when I first moved to Japan:
When you buy a new book (they don’t do this at used book stores), they wrap it in paper. Kind of like we did with our textbooks with paper bags back when I was a kid in school in the US. But they use nicer paper.
This means that when you take your book out, nobody can see what it is. Unless you remove the paper.
That’s interesting. I wonder why?
When you buy products that are deemed sensitive, such as condoms or tampons or hemorrhoid cream or whatever it may be, they also put that in a paper bag instead of the regular bag so that no one can see what it is.
Of course, I found this to be counterproductive because that means you know that person is carrying something “sensitive”.
Maybe with books, that’s why they wrap all of them?
Dude on the train runs a successful business selling plain white socks. See him hustling nearly every day.
How much a pair?
Saw someone poop off the red line train in chicago. Impressive considering he did it in the brief time the doors were open.
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I live in a city, Manchester UK, so I’ve pretty much seen anything you could think of.
- Fighting
- Pissing / Shitting
- Shagging
- Smoking
- Doing heroin
- Once saw a guy jump off the bus as he saw someone that owed him money, ran over and battered the guy
- Football hooligans being loud and obnoxious
- Racists being racist to people that look different to them
- people being arrested
That said I love living so close to a large city.
high speed train. a scrawny dude in a tracksuit asks someone when the train will stop. next station in 40 minutes, someone tells him. (there are only five stops and all in large cities) this reassures him for a while.
30 minutes to the city. dude stands up and asks when will the train stop. the same someone tells him that in half an hour, but this time he doesn’t chill out. he wants to get out, RIGHT NOW. dude gets increasingly more agitated and hovers around train door. he found a hammer somewhere and tried to break open glass in that door, but it’s reinforced so it doesn’t fall apart. at that point someone alerted train staff. he wants to get out, right now, and won’t through that hole. train got stopped shortly after, everyone in that car was moved out to others. other than that dude, that is, now without hammer, repeating I WANNA GET OUT
some of staff tries to pacify him, but it doesn’t work. border guard and some other uniformed officer, both on leave, tackle him and hold until railway security arrive. it took six of them to take that tracksuit dude out to ambulance. (he got to leave train) motherfucker caused 4h of delay for this train and many delays downstream
40 minutes, someone tells him. (there are only five stops and all in large cities)
I want to live where the fast passenger train takes me to the next large city 150km away like it’s easy. I could totally get used to riding an hour to get to the hot springs; it’d be a great ‘down’ weekend.
there are some tradeoffs
that train used to have peak speed of about 150km/h on that route maybe it’s a bit faster by now. these five stops are in three cities, and there’s 250km-ish distance between them. (and all built for EU money) by that 30 minute mark it started slowing down and was something like 60km away from city
People just pissing on the floor in NYC/Boston subways. Not really that unusual.
Never seen someone piss in a tram/subway in Stuttgart and we have an annual beer festival (the Stuttgarter Wasen) Here.
Not public transport, but a street parade on London. I saw a woman squat down, pull her thong to the side under her skirt, shit on the street, let go of the thong and continue walking all in about five seconds.
The saxophone battle that unfurled on the New York City subway ten years ago comes to mind.
I’d never seen that, so great. Thanks
There are night busses in my city, and there are loads of wild stories but maybe my favorite is this wholesome one:
So friends were returning from pub with guitars (some jam night) and didn’t want to stop. Get to the bus and started playing again, few stops another guy with guitar gets on, joins them… So the trip went like all the people singing, players hops on and of on their stops and everyone have a good time returning from pubs.
When we did something like that on few hour long train ride some German girls really liked it, they didn’t understand a word but they clapped after each song.
That sounds like other people would probably find it either delightful or obnoxious with little in between.
