There's bound to be some interesting characters on public transportation every time you ride, which makes you ponder "Why on earth do I still ride this everyday???".
“Across The Bus”
“Across the bus from me is an old man with a big hole in the crotch of his pants, providing an excellent viewing of his old man parts. The second I noticed I got up and stoop in another part of the crowded bus. I look back to see a teenaged innocent looking girl take my seat. That scream. Horrifying and hilarious.”
“The Wrapped Belt”
“I was going to a job interview right outside of Boston about 7 years ago. It was in the middle of the day and a reverse commute (going from Boston to a place outside of Boston) so nobody was really on the train. Approaching the last stop and it was just myself and one other guy. The dude proceeds to wrap a belt around his arm, inject himself with something and basically just passes out on the train. I called the conductor.”
“Everyone Switched Around”
“Multiple Stories here. Once, I was sitting across from a guy eating out of a small hagen daaz ice cream container. He didn’t have a spoon, and was using his thumb. After each thumb of ice cream, he’d let it melt in his mouth and then spit it on the floor. Everyone switched to another train car at the next station. On the bus, a homeless lady started doing assisted flips (using the hand straps on either side of the bus) while freestyle rapping about how young people should love each other more. There was a couple who clearly liked each other, but weren’t at the stage that they had admitted it yet. She kept telling them to hold hands, and composed them some personalized beat poetry. Halloween at 1am, some guy dressed as Borat gets on the bus, hits on all the girls in typical Borat style, and then passes out in the corner. Vancouver buses and skytrains can be pretty odd sometimes.”
“The Twist”
“On the top deck of a double decker bus in South London (UK) while temporarily stopped at a bus stop, I looked down at the bus shelter to see a male in his fifties drinking Super Strength 9% Lager (not uncommon) but here’s the twist he then proceeded to get his private man parts out and pour the beer over it. ‘Some for me, some for you’.”
“Chicken Claws”
“I was riding on the TTC subway (Toronto Transit Commission for all you non-Canadians), one day and across from me I noticed that there was this Asian man sitting with a live chicken in an opaque white plastic bag. I didn’t see much except for the chickens’ claws and this guy was trying to calm the chicken down as he put it underneath this seat because it kept clucking every time the train lurched. At the next stop this young woman goes to sit down beside him and she accidentally kicks the poor chicken and you just hear a big ‘BAKAWK!’ and it startled her, and the guy said ‘No, no it’s ok, it’s just a chicken’ and the look on her face was a priceless ‘WTF?’ You see some really strange things happen on the TTC.”
“Wow”
“As the doors on the Metro are closing, I notice this 30-something year old suit guy sprinting towards the train. He full on dives headfirst into the train, his feet passing through just before the doors closed Indiana Jones style. He stands up, dusts himself off, and says ‘Whoa, thought I was gonna miss that one’ to which the entire train just bursts out laughing. Funniest thing I’ve ever seen after taking the D.C. Red line for nearly a decade.”
“Silence Fills The Car”
“After the Rally to Restore Sanity, I caught a train to get lunch with some friends. Every car is packed, but the one we get on seems particularly boisterous. An old man with a bible on his lap is spouting off about gays, and their detrimental effect on society. To cover up his malarkey, a guy in his full fatigues is leading the entire train in whatever song he can think of; ‘Row Your Boat’, ‘Wheels on the Bus’, ’99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall. During ’99 Bottles, to keep everyone singing, he starts doing a working dancer dance for the old guy, to which the whole car goes crazy. It was loud, cramped, and beautiful. The old fella gets off at the next stop. As everyone is basking in the afterglow of his perfectly human moment, the guy says rather directly “I ship out to Iraq on Monday.” Silence fills the car. We happened get off at the same stop he did. Every person who got off with us either shook his hand or gave him a hug. Hope he came home safe.”
“Should Not Have Glanced Over”
“May seem tame, but I sat beside a lady who was reading a book trying to ignore everyone around her. She kept on reading and I was curious what she was reading so I looked at the cover and it was strange. I side eye glance over at the page she was reading and that was when I realized she was reading her book upside down for 15 minutes straight. Turned pages and everything.”
“He The Proceeded To Serenade The Train”
“I was having a really bad day and decided to leave work early. Midway through subway ride home I’m self-consumed and on the verge of tears when a man gets on with a boombox, a microphone and an unidentifiable black box. He then proceeds to serenade the train with the Michael Jackson song ‘Black or White.’ He starts dancing and holding up the microphone to random passengers to sign the chorus. The next thing you know a sing-along has begun and I can’t stop laughing with the stranger sitting next to me. For the grand finale he presses a button on the black box and BOOM! Bubble machine – bubbles everywhere. He got off at the next stop.”
“This Man Was On A Mission”
“On the train one day, and each time the doors opened at a station, this man made it his mission to get off and kick the nearest bin and run back onto the train before the doors closed again. This went on for quite a few stations. Passengers would help by holding the doors open as he began to tire, before he eventually got off the train for good.”
“She Looked Oddly Nervous”
“I’m on the bus yesterday, and sitting across from me is a guy who’s probably 50 years old or so, and he is absolutely COVERED with prison tattoos. Skulls on his forehead, teardrops, fangs under his mouth, spiderwebs on his cheeks and neck, eyeballs on the backs of his hands, a huge 13 right on his throat, the deflowered Mary on one forearm, and all of them obviously done in prison, faded, with terrible lines. all in all, a pretty scary looking guy. So we get to a stop, and the girl next to me gets off the bus. ‘hey, she forgot her purse,’ says tattoo guy, pointing under the seat next to me. I look down, see the purse, and hand it over to him, and he jumps off the bus, looks at her, and screams out, ‘HEY! YOU! YEAH, YOU, STOP! HEY!’ She looks kind of nervous and keeps walking, and he starts running after her, screaming, ‘HEY! STOP! HEY!’ she doesn’t stop, so finally he screams, ‘YOU FORGOT YOUR PURSE’ she stops, he hands it over, and he runs back and gets back on the bus. ‘I dunno what her problem was, man,’ he says. ‘That chick looked at me like I was some kind offreak.'”
“Never Again”
“I once got on a crowded subway car and noticed that somehow there was still an empty seat left. I was tired, so I sat down without thinking about it. After a little while I noticed that I was getting odd looks from all around. When I looked up, I saw that there was a blood-soaked used maxi pad stuck to the ceiling, directly over my head.”
“This Ain’t Yo Red Line!”
“Was riding the Red Line subway in Chicago at 2am one night about 10 years ago. I was one of maybe 3 people standing and I’m the only white dude of about 15 passengers total — not a big deal until I feel these eyes on me across the train. This black dude about my age (23) is standing in the aisle 20 feet away just pointing at me. Staring and pointing. He was tripping on something, eyes totally bugging out, and he looked like he was probably homeless or mental or both. So he’s pointing and staring me down and takes a couple steps forward and starts yelling at me: ‘This ain’t yo Red Line. This ain’t yo Red Line! This is MY Red Line.’ He takes another awkward step or two and at this point I’m preparing for a fight — I’m not used to fighting or anything, but I’m 6’2” 205 and can handle myself. One of the other seated passengers tries to calm him down ‘C’mon man, just chill. Chill out’ and it deters him for a few moments, but that’s all. Then someone else pipes up. There’s a middle-aged homeless guy there, sitting between me and this pointing fool. He’s on the bench seat that faces into the train. I hadn’t yet noticed him, but he was a sight: Ragged stained clothes and shoes, huge filthy beard and, eating Chinese food out of a bag. Not like with a fork out of a carry out bag, I mean like reaching into a plastic grocery bag (on the floor) and just pulling out noodles with his fingers, beard all full of this stuff. He finally addresses the other crazy dude: ‘Boy, I’ma kick yo face in!’ He says this a few times, and the two start a dialogue. It started with arguing and somehow morphed into a weird understanding between crazy people. After a minute or two, the first crazy dude sits down next to the second dude and reaches to the floor, eating dirty Chinese food out of a plastic bag with his bare hands. They share a meal this way, I make it to my stop and nope out.”
“We Kept Hitting Red Lights”
“My friends and I were on a bus in London coming back from a museum and there was someone yelling on the top deck of the bus. This woman comes down to talk to the bus driver, he come parks the bus goes up the stairs. Then a minute later he comes back down and gets on the radio. Then a man with a Krispy Kreme box comes down the stairs. The bus driver yells at him to get off. The man yells, ‘I’m going to blow up the bus and I hope you all die’. That freaked us all out and we were like let’s get off at the next stop. We kept on hitting red lights and we were freaking out that bus might blow up. We get to the stop and we get off along with a bunch of other people. We speed walk away from the bus as fast as possible. We finally reach back home and we walk right by the bus stop and there was the bus we were on. We stormed past that bus as fast as we could. It took us a couple weeks until we got back on a bus again.”
“My Eyes Were Watering”
“About a month after school started up and I was a freshman I was riding the bus downtown at about nine o’clock. I can’t remember what it was for, I think I was heading to the public library to pick up some research material for some professor who was insisting that we do not use the internet for any of our references. The bus itself was pretty much what you’d expect for public transportation. Uncomfortable plastic seats, the stale odor of vomit clinging to the air, and the smell of degeneration. I thought it was rather cultural. I was also an idiot. As we were approaching the library, two stops away and maybe 15 minutes of actual travel time, we picked up a group of ‘people’, and I use that term very loosely in this context. They were an incredibly ragged assortment of what I assumed to be vagrants. From deep within their tattered clothes and ragged beards they produced bus fair and took seats. I gave them the benefit of the doubt. If they can afford the bus, they’re probably alright, right? Oh man, that always gives me a good laugh, remembering that I actually thought that. That was when I realized that the one who had taken a seat next to me, an older gentleman (Hah!) with a beard down to his ankles, reeked of poop. Not just poop, but seriously diseased poop. This is what poop would smell like if it was weaponized. My eyes were watering, and I could feel myself salivating in preparation for a good hurl. I did my best to try and ignore him, but that’s when I heard it. I heard a wet farting sound, and to my dismay, I could feel something warm on my hand, which I had, in my idiocy, left on the bench we were sitting on. Looking down in horror, I realized that this creature had pooped itself through its pants and it was leaking onto the bunch. I puked. Raucous laughter from his friends ensued as I stood up so that he wouldn’t ruin my pants too. Pooplord stood up with a grin on his face, sniggering. His breath was absolutely foul. I will never forget what he said next for the rest of my life. ‘Can I have three dollars and fifty cents for the bus fare home?’ It was about that time I realized that pooplord was actually several stories tall and a reptile from the paleolithic era. Or, that’s what I wish I could say, because the nightmare did not end here. He grasped my poop-stained hand and said ‘It’s been a real pleasure meeting you son,’ he shook my dripping hand and I wretched again. ‘Hope to see you around.'”
“Insane Woman”
“I witnessed this on a bus to work one morning, I am a passenger. Bus is packed first thing in the morning and this uppity business broad is mouthing off about how its too hot and there are too many people on the bus, etc etc. It’s 7:30 in the morning. Most people haven’t even fully woken up yet. Someone one the bus politely asked the woman to keep her complaints to herself because its first thing in the morning and no one wants to hear her yell. The two of them start going back and forth. The entire bus is watching this debacle unfold as things are getting heated. The lady sitting behind her taps her on the shoulder and asks her to keep her swearing down because she has a 5 year old daughter and doesn’t want her to pick up any bad habits. The woman brushes her off and keeps it up. A minute later, the little girl stands on her seat and taps the woman in the shoulder. The woman turns around and takes a cupcake to the face as the little girl shoves it on her mouth and tells her she is mean and says bad words. The bus loses it and starts laughing at her to the point where she pulls the stop cord early and gets off the bus to catch the next one.”
“The Guy Pulled Out A Weapon”
“One time I was on a bus and some guy got on, admitted he had no money and begged the driver to just take him to the next stop (it was about a 5 minute drive away, but about 20-30 mins on foot). The driver apologized and said he couldn’t do that (cameras would have seen he didn’t get charged, Driver could have gotten into trouble). The guy pulled out a weapon and threatens driver. Driver is protected behind a screen, so sets the alarm and tells the guy to leave as the police are on their way. Guy starts punching screen and trying to get to the driver, jamming his weapon into the ‘cash gap’ in the screen, but missing the driver. Eventually he ran off, when the police came we all got questioned as witnesses. Driver then apologized to the rest of us passengers and continued the journey. He was still friendly to everyone he picked up, as if nothing happened.”
“Mumbling Man”
“My dad drove public transit buses for Edmonton Transit (ETS) for 35 years (with a brief stint on light rail but it was boring so he went back to the buses). He retired as soon as he could because management was not really connected well to reality. As a rider of the same transit system, I can say I agree. Anyway, one of the worst ones for him is he’s driving his bus through a shifty part of town – 118th ave – early in the morning. It was winter so no one is particularly happy to be standing at an Edmonton bus stop… he picks a guy up just outside of a bar. The guy has a sack of change that is large enough to pay for a fare even if it was entirely pennies. He was very likely just playing the VLTs in the bar, apparently he stunk of drinking a bit too. He comes on the bus and says ‘can I get a ride, I don’t have a fare’. My dad goes (like usual), ‘you have to pay or you don’t ride’. Normally ETS is really lax about people paying fares, which is part of their budget problem and part of the social problem with people bumming rides all the damn time. Anyway, he points that the guy has a sack of money. So the guy gets angry about it and mumbles something incoherent about why he doesn’t want to use that money. My dad tells him to get off the bus or pay. Buddy smashes my dad in the forehead with his sack of change. My dad jumped up and pinned the guy to the ground outside the bus and sat on him until the transit inspectors and police came to arrest him.”
“This Old Lady Is Crazy!”
“Not me BUT my grandpa was a driver in Mexico city when he was young, one day he made the mistake of opening the Bus door like 30-40ft before the bus stop, as he was slowing down, this old lady just jumps out of the bus, keep in mind that the bus was still moving, she lands on her head and dies, cops and the newspaper show up, and he ends up in jail, days later his boss shows up and bails him out, apparently cops dismissed the case as an accident, also they could not ID the lady that died and no family/friends showed up, crazy.”
“As Soon As The Police Got There”
“The bus driver blew past a stop where someone was waiting for him and the guy managed to catch up and get on at the next stop. He refused to pay though because the bus driver refused to acknowledge that he had passed both him and the stop completely. This led to a 10 minute long argument where at one point I got up to offer to pay for the guy so we could just move along as it was 11:30 and I had just gotten off a double shift and had to work again at 7am. The bus driver then yelled at me to sit down and stop interfering. So I did. The guy finally decided to get off the bus and wait for the next one. He apologized to us on the bus and then SPIT on the driver and ran off down the street. The bus driver got off the bus and chased the man for like three blocks. He came back on the bus, shut the doors and basically held us hostage while he called the police. As soon as the police got there he gave them the absolute worst description of the guy possible that would’ve led to every black guy in a hoodie getting stopped on their way home and then told the police officers to arrest me too – because I was ‘helping the assailant’. I got off the bus with the officer – gave him my version of what happened. The officer shook his head and let me back on the bus, he told the driver to take off and they would look for the ‘assailant’ and the driver refused. ‘You bring this guy to me! I will not move until you bring him to me!’.”
“The Smell And The Movement”
“Our bus driver was a man named Sammy, who didn’t speak any English, so he communicated with us via high fives. One day, we were driving through the Judean Hills, which is a lot of up and down. One girl started to get queasy and threw up in the aisle of the bus (you know how on charter buses there’s a lowered aisle between the two sides of seats?) So when the bus went up a hill, the vomit sloshed to the bottom of the bus. And when the bus when down a hill, it went back to the front. The smell and the movement caused other people to get sick. In total, probably about ten or twelve people puked, creating a river of vomit, flowing from the front of the bus to the back. We had to climb over the seats to get out of the bus, and poor Sammy looked to sad. No high fives were given that day.”
