Pistol Pete and his Moby Wrap

So, there is a guy standing directly in front of me on the crowded 1 train coming downtown from Upper West Side. I don't recall the stop(about 5 years ago) we were at but it was somewhere near midtown. He has his baby in what seemed like a Moby wrap in the front of him. The train is crowded it's rush hour and people as usual are packing in because they don't want to wait for the next train, which we all know is directly behind that one 99% of the time(and probably empty). A lady literally pushes him out of the way by pushing him where the baby is attached to him. He precedes to tell her,"You know what you're a bitch. You can't see I got my baby right here, you pushed him to move me out of your way!" and her response is," You're a bitch." He then says," I don't give a shit I'll slap you!" She responds with," I will slap your goddamned face!" Yes, folks the baby is literally in the crossfire of this altercation. I'm directly behind him thinking,"Why can't I just be on the other side of this train?" (Which is usually the case when I'm in the presence of these incidents.) This altercation goes on for what seems an eternity and I'm sure it was all but 3 minutes. Then the the guy tells her he's going to kill her and I'm thinking,"OH SHIT, this can't be heading in a good direction." The guy with the baby, YES, I repeat the guy with the baby pulls out a GUN and points it at her. The woman looked like she literally shit her pants. Everyone in the train literally squeezed in the other end of the train. Someone yells in the background," Damn, dude you can have my seat!" Within seconds we reached what I remember was 34th street Madison Square Garden, everyone ran out of the train in shock. Needless to say that woman ran as quickly as she could to get away from him. I'm sure she'll think the next time she selfishly pushes someone to get on a train. He put his gun away and stayed on the car,which was next to empty. I'm by no means justifying what he did but, I find humor in this in a way that you laugh at the stupid things people will kill each other over. I know most of you are going to have a different perception of NYC but its not always like this I think my luck happens to fall along the lines of ALWAYS running into the craziest folks riding the trains. For the most part this place is a great place to be but you're going to have  those rare occasions when someone gets crunk when you least expect it. You just better have some comfortable shoes to run out of the train!

Going from a Driver City to a Subway/Taxi City

I came to NYC to work for an Americorp program called CityYear and of course living on the small stipend they provide you with you wouldn't be able to survive by having a car in the city. Also, its just impractical to have one unless you can afford the 300-500 dollar per month parking lot fees. So, the only practical thing to do here is take the train. City Year gave us a FREE monthly metro card for 11 months   and you have to take public transportation to get to your work sites, so really its not such a bad deal. I'll explain further by adding that I am originally from Texas and we drive EVERYWHERE there.

So, stranger interaction was a rare occurrence. So, it was an immediate culture shock, to say the least, to have my world collide with so many strangers every day on the trains. I've been here 5 1/2 years now and have had insane interactions with complete strangers on the subway and I normally share it with the few people I know appreciate the stories. Now here I am wanting to share it with EVERYONE via the Internet. I will do my best to keep up with new stories and also share old ones as well. I love to hear anyone else's experience taking the train. Most of mine are hilarious and disgusting, so you best have a spew bag or have a sense of humor because some of these stories can be awful(in a good way). Stay tuned!!!