Highlights from the Late Night A Train

Tonight, Matt and I took the late night A train in from Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Now normally we'd have taken the F train, but for whatever reason the F was not running.

At any other time, the A train is fine. In fact, it's the exact same line I take to and from work every single day. While I have grown to hate ukeleles riding this train, it's otherwise fairly tame.

However, tonight was Saturday night. And we got on at around 1am.

We sit down and immediately notice the loud event going on at the other end of the subway car. There are several large, laughing black women cheering at a big dude with a rolling suitcase. Suitcase Man, who I shall henceforth refer to as "the bartender," has several differently colored plastic bottles. These bottles, he announces to the car's occupants are $5 bottles of Puerto Rican vodka. Special deal for buying multiple bottles. High quality!

The bartender makes a quick sweep of the car before getting off at the next stop, yelling all the way about the Puerto Rican vodka.

Next stumbles in a short Hispanic man, who sits across from us. The doors close and he begins mumbling to himself. Odd, right? No, not really. This kind of thing isn't new..... we ignore him.

To our right at the other end of the car are several possible drug addicts and one definite drug addict. He's trying to make conversation with random people, but everyone's ignoring him. He says someone's hair is fabulous, shouts a couple things in our direction, giggles, and goes back to looking crazy.

At the next stop two gentlemen stumble onto the train. And by stumble, I mean "stumble onto the train giggling like madmen at nothing because they're high as kites." They take their seats to our right (we're sitting next to the door so they're a few feet away).

Definitely-A-Drug-Addict notices Chuckles.  The following exchange takes place:

Crack Addict: What's so funny?
Stoner: Hahahaha
CA: What's so funny? What's your name?
Stoner: Mwuh?
CA: What's your name? Why's it so funny?
Stoner: My name?
CA: Yeah.
Stoner: It is a name representative of an entire denomination of religions!
CA: Wut.
Stoner: My name is Christian.
CA: Why's that funny?
Stoner: It's not.
CA: Hm.

At this point, Mumbles (the Hispanic gentleman across from us - what, you can't keep up with all of them?) notices the giggling girl next to Matt who has decided she has a lean on his chair.

While I am not entirely sure of the full context of the conversation, I heard the following phrases:

"What's your name?"
"Where you from?"
"Me? I'm from everywhere."
"You need me to shoot someone for you?"
"Yeah, no seriously. It's easy to shoot someone. I'll show you."

Then Mumbles moves over to sit next to Matt and the girl and they proceed to exchange names and possibly info on hiring him as a hitman.

At this point we're finally back in Manhattan, with only a few stops to go. And on comes Mr. "I Am Out of Cocaine and Really Pissed About It." He stands down where the bartender originally was, shouting that we're all "F*cking d*cks who can suck my f*cking c*ck!"

Oddly enough, he's the least frightening of all the crazies on the train.

We FINALLY get to 23 St and promptly hop off the train. Matt and I don't really say anything to each other, because we immediately notice a young guy standing by the trashcan with a wallet and a ton of credit cards that clearly don't belong to him. We book it up the stairs.

As soon as we get to the surface, I tell Matt to make sure I never work late enough to need to take the A train home, and we vote on whether this train ride was scarier than the one to the Bronx where Matt thought the guy next to us had a gun.

Not trying to freak you out, Mommy, and I promise that 99% of subway train rides have one or less of these types on them, but tonight was just like being in a bad 90s cop movie about NY.