Observed on the train

+ A girl with a YOLO tattoo behind her ear. I wanted to ask her if I could take a picture of her tattoo but girl had total bitch face on and I didn't want mess with that. You would think someone with YOLO tattooed on their neck would be a little more laid back.

+ A girl brushing her hair for the whole entire trip from Copley to Cleveland Circle. Her hair will never have knots again.

+ A group of high schoolers blasting music from a phone and dancing on the train. When the doors opened one of the girls said "yo I think that's teach", her male companion who was holding said phone,dropping them beats yells out "YO! YO teach!!!!!" I'm not sure if this was an actual teacher at their school or some person called Teach.

A little less yelling please

On July 1st the MBTA fare increases went into effect. No one was happy about this, especially a train operator on the B train. When I'm riding the T into work at 8 a.m., the last thing I want to hear is yelling. I like my morning train ride to be quite and usually it is. We're all in a morning stupor and talking takes energy. On this morning though the T operator was yelling at someone at every stop and if you've ever taken the B train you know there are a lot of stops.

"SIR! SIR! YOU NEED TO ADD FIFTY MORE CENTS! SIR!"

The guy is right there. He's going to give you the fifty more cents if you calm it down and let him. She was also pissy that people's Charlie cards were not reading on the first tap which is clearly the card holders fault. It has nothing to do with the machine.

Of course I tweeted at the GM of the MBTA. Of course I got no response. At least I got my frustrations out via twitter.

Really, there is no need to be so nasty. The customers are the ones paying more money for bad service. You'll get to retire early with a pension. I would be in a better mood if I got that deal.

There's a knife on this train - adventures in city living

I was taking the T home after a busy day at work. I was hungry and tired and still had many stops to go before I made it home. I'm listening to my ipod when I start to hear shouting over the music. I look to my left and see an older man clearly angry about something. I pause my music and hear this older guy yelling at an even older guy. "Fuck you I was in Afghanistan and Iraq! I will fucking stab you, I have a knife." (I highly doubt he was in both Afghanistan and Iraq. I think he's a bit too old for that.) And he did have a knife and not just some tiny pocket knife, he pulled out a rather large folding knife.

The guy he's threatening says something back to him that I can't hear but I can tell that whatever he says pisses off the guy with the knife. "Fuck America, fuck all of you!" A younger guy tries to calm the situation down but the knife is still out. The train stops, the doors open and the guy with the knife gets off the train.

At this point I'm not really sure what to do.  Do I call the police? Alert the T driver? While I'm thinking this over our train is suddenly surrounded by Boston PD. This was within a minute of the guy jumping of the train. The T driver let's us know that we won't be moving for a few minutes. Everyone pulls out their phones and starts tweeting, texting and updating facebook. After a couple of minutes the T driver makes another announcement "sorry about the crazy person". Why thank you for the apology.

The police finally realize that the guy has left the train so we are let go. As the train starts to roll away we see a cluster of police cars up ahead. There's a guy in the middle of about 6 cops, they caught him, the train cheers.

Sometimes you just get a vibe from someone and we all got this vibe. This guy just looked crazy. From what I gather the guy he flipped out on bumped into him. It's the B train at rush hours. If someone doesn't bump into you I'd be shocked. In all my years of taking the T I've never actually seen anyone pull a weapon. I have had my butt groped and a guy threaten to rip my head off for looking at him (fun fact, I hadn't even glanced at the guy) but never a weapon.

Living in the city is always an adventure. I probably won't tell my mother because she worries about my city living life which is funny because she grew up in a rough part of Boston and told me all these stories about how she took care of herself. I think she still thinks that Boston is how it was in the 60s and 70s which was a lot worse than it is now.

My leg doubles as a cane rest. Adventures on the T.

My commute to work was interesting this morning.

My stop is near the beginning of the line so I always get a seat. Two stops later an old man with a cane gets on the train and sits down next to me. I feel something cold touching me leg. I look down and notice that the man's cane is leaning up against my leg. Well this is awkward.

I'm afraid to say something. He's an old man and maybe he didn't realize that he had placed his cane on my leg. Then he starts coughing and wheezing. Now I really can't do anything. The man can barely breathe. I can't ask him if I can move his cane off of my leg now!

I sit there hoping that his stop is before mine but of course it's not. Once the train pulls into my stop I gently move his cane so it's resting on the seat and not on me.

He doesn't even notice.