Navigating the Subterranean Passages of NY PENN Station

Last week I had this lady with a travel desk, with a full crochet kit, a 22oz of malt liquor and #4 sub from the local deli with all the onions and vinegar you ever wanted.  I was hoping she would be getting off at Secaucus, but she ended up trekking it all the way to Watsessing Avenue where so many of the eyesores seem to dwell.  At least it wasn't August, because these people will board the train and commence to devour a chicken caesar wrap on a standing room only train home in 112 degree heat.

I used to commute from the 7th ave side and ride the rear of the train, but now I go with the 8th ave downstairs and get on the very front.  Inevitably it is always unbelievably hot.  NJTransit tells me that this is because it is Amtrak's property and there is some sort of antagonistic relationship between the two entities.  I use all sorts of Special Forces tactics and clever commuting skills to be the first person on the front quiet car for the 6:10 (formerly the 6:08 and before that, the 6:18) to Montclair, and still - no matter what seat I choose on the empty car, I inevitably end up putting up with all kinds of bizarre behavior.  Last week I ended up with a guy in front of me, one guy directly behind me and another to my left.  As soon as we pulled out and into the tunnel, they began some sick form of synchronized sneezing.  The guy behind me actually coated my right cheek with liquid matter from his mouth and nose.  There is no law in NY or NJ that would allow me to defend myself or to carry out a just and proper punishment on the spot, so I just pulled out the hand sanitizer and wiped my face liberally while breathing through my shirt.

As Dane Cook once highlighted, these people make absolutely no effort to contain, restrain, stifle or suppress their sneeze.  They let it go full blast, but this is the general group thought that really wears on me about this area.  It is a reflection of their general lack of concern for others and how what they are doing affects others.  There is no empathy.  All you have to do is examine the parking game played in the more urban districts of New Jersey and certainly in NYC.  The parallel parking phenomenon is something I used to document.  I once witnessed an entire family of people climb out of a Jeep Cherokee to try and help direct the act, just as I have witnessed large overly extended work vans (the type used by churches to transport parishioners and alternately by contractors to transport equipment) ram themselves into spaces not fit for a bicycle, all at the expense of the luxury cars parked near enough to one another to provide the owners with some degree of comfort and far enough apart to enable either party to pull out without inflicting damage to either vehicle.

Have you ever experienced the late train home, possibly on a Thursday night?  Those are always fun.  That's when the cheesesteaks and chinese food platters come out in full force.

NJ Transit Train Commute: I've never seen so many sickly custodians of germs in my life

I was forced to mingle with the commoners and Klingons on the train today.  I forgot how sickly the general populace is year round, even in the midst of the dog days of Summer!  Once the train leaves my town and arrives in the buffer zone, here come all of the martyrs with their ongoing cell phone conversations, their Dre Beats and their contagion.  How quickly I had forgotten in my time away from the savages (worked from home for the past month) that the entire population here is congested and infected with extreme, respiratory infection year round.  After positioning myself in a window seat in the middle of an empty car, I had to give up my seat and change cars twice in order to escape the productive coughs, extreme sniffle snorts (a grown man wiping his nasal drip with his fingers) and the sneezes.

I grabbed a seat, and it was to be my final option, as we were arriving at the next stop, and the people were already beginning to find their standing room only positions.  Just then, I became unsettled as the person who promptly sky dived (I make a conscious effort to ease into a seat so as not to jostle those already seated or otherwise send them into a trampoline-like projection) into the seat next to me.  With one swift motion, he reached for a snot rag in his pocket, and in the process he elbowed the lady standing in the aisle with the fold-up bike.  I felt a rage coming on.  I raised myself up and began asking those already seated to declare their intentions as regards to their possible participation in the performance of the barbaric rites of the Kleenex ritual being led by the inconsiderate sociopath next to me.

What's the provenance of this tissue ritual?  As soon as they board and sit down, out comes the snot rag.  It was only a matter of time, as I have been literally inundated with coughing, sneezing, nose blowing ritualists on the train to and from work.  There is an Asian woman in my office who is still hacking from an infection she came down with in August of last year!  Today, I was in meetings with sick people at work, even in the coffee shop - someone behind me started blowing their nose.  I'm sorry, but there is something terribly wrong with you if you have to blow your nose like that in July in Manhattan.  You need to be in an ICU with close supervision, not expelling infections over my shoulder for my consumption.

In the Garden State, the spitefully sick savages who think nothing of boarding a public train and sitting in close proximity to others, display this sort of uncouth selfishness in other areas of their life as well.  This becomes especially apparent on the road when they run stop signs or intentionally accelerate sideways san blinker in hopes of sliding their car right through your loved ones, they spitefully walk down the middle of the stairs so as to impede foot traffic to board the train where they force out their coughs upon the innocent and round robin the God-fearing with their orchestrated sneeze attacks accompanied by their all weather, year-round nose blowing rites.  These are the residents of New Jersey.  Perhaps it's a result of so many towns being constructed upon superfund sites and old Army barracks/ammo dumps.

I have vented similar accounts via countless micro blogs, posts and rants on Facebook, but I usually end up deleting them.  The reason is that Facebook inevitably creates an awkward interaction where associates on the fringe of one's life are positioned to peer into every familial moment and privy to everything you type.  So often I have people who I begrudgingly friend after staring at their friend requests for 6 months, only to have them become judgmental from their armchair in Colorado or Nebraska somewhere, as if we go way back.  It is bad enough when someone does not personally know you, but when they have not experienced the stress of the gritty rustbelt commute back and forth between New Jersey and New York City and all the potential pitfalls that lurk at every corner, then they really need to just fall back. 

I do believe that much of this can be attributed to socioeconomics.  The more proletarian the populace is in a municipality, the more likely they are to exhibit these sorts of unsociable characteristics.  That's not to say that with all of the new money floating around in the form of concrete rubble companies, startups and hedge firms that you won't find this sort of behavior amongst some of the newer upper middle class communities.  But, let's look at a place like Bloomfield in Essex County.  As soon as the Manhattan-bound Montclair train pulls out of the Glen Ridge station at Ridgewood Avenue, everyone is bracing themselves for the onslaught of people boarding while continuing a conversation that they intend to last all the way into Manhattan, the Dr. Dre headphones blaring, the extremely obese guy with the wet hair, the lady who combs her Marlboro smoke infused hair balls into the aisle.  And, everyone in Bloomfield seems to have the Bubonic all year round.  No worries though, they'll be tapping you for that middle seat and then look at me annoyed when my shoulders don't magically fold up to make way for them.