So yesterday, Naja and I got tired after 4 hours of looking for freight entrances on 42nd St. in the blazing heat, so we decided to time off-peak bus travel (another project requirement). Well, you think wandering around Port Authority with an exposed digital camera is dangerous? Try riding the damn bus.
We're sitting there, stop watch and notepad in our respective hands, and a rather obese woman with a metal cane sits behind us, one leg up on the seat beside her because, as she tells everyone, she just left the hospital after some surgery on her foot. A child with a coloring book sits next to her (small enough to fit on the leftover seat) and the woman spends the next leg of the trip sweetly commenting on what a gifted artist the child is--beautiful colors, composition, yada, yada, yada. The child and her mother leave a couple of stops later.
By the next stop, it's started to rain and the bus is suddenly jammed with people--mainly older tourists looking to escape the downpour. Well, an older, kinda scruffy looking guy takes offense that this woman is using two seats. She offers to move her leg over so he can sit on the edge, but he wants the whole seat. As they're talking, she becomes aggitated and is tapping her cane harder and harder on the back of our seat. Then it gets ugly. He's screaming, she's screaming back and suddenly, she's up on her knees swinging her cane at him with a LOT of force. The guy in the single seat across the way jumps up just in time to avoid the cane coming down on him. She's slamming the cane against her seat and the now-empty one across from her, making as much noise as she possibly can while she screams obscenities and some rather interesting insults at this guy. My favorite was "unwashed toothless bitch". Then she jumps up and starts jumping up and down (on both feet, mind you, despite her supposed surgery) while threatening to splatter his brains against the bus walls out with her cane/smash his remaining teeth up into his head/shoot him with her gun, if only she had it with her. At this point, I had to stop paying attention to what she was saying and pay attention to the cane: the follow-through on her swings had the thing coming within a few inches of my skull. There was no where to go. I had one arm up for protection and was actually touching her tricep at one point to make it NOT hit me. The guy ran off at the next stop--along with a large number of the tourists. She sits down, still screaming threats out the window about how if he ever shows his face on 42nd St again, her "bloods" will kill him.
She starts to calm until some woman sits on the edge and starts comisserating with her on how stupid the guy was--speaking of stupid... She starts to relive it all and the cane starts slamming on the back of our seat again. Then some idiot in the back of the bus loudly says "Gee, well this is New York City--more entertainment on the bus than in a theatre!" Okay, true, but you DO NOT say it within earshot of the crazy woman... She starts in again with "Entertainment!!! I'll give you EMS! This is fuckin' New York fuckin' City! Fuckin' entertainment...and the summer's just starting..."
I've never been so glad to see someone leave a bus in my life. I've never seen anyone freak like that. Naja said that since she's been riding the bus alone (since she was 10) she's never witnessed anything like it--and she was living here in the bad old days.
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