Life in the Big Crapple

I miss the New York where I didn't have to worry about crime on the subways, where I could afford a place in a nice area of Manhattan, and where the economy was good enough to make $1,500/week waiting tables! The biggest dilemma back then was that all the best domain names were taken and we had to wait a month to get a table at Nobu!

Tuesday night I opted to take the F home since the Q's been a hassle late at night due to track work in Brooklyn. My roommate had warned me not to take the F at night, but I had already taken it twice with Ris-boy, and just couldn't bear the idea of dealing with the Q's tendency to crawl, stall, and skip stops late at night. I was so tired that I hadn't taken notice of the fact that all the people that had been sitting around me had gotten off one-by-one at their respective stops. There I was sitting virtually alone, staring at the wall in front of me, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw something that wasn't right. I turned my head to see, standing not more than five feet away from me, a tall, tattooed guy violently jerking off while staring at me. I leapt from my seat and sat at the other end of the car near more people. Luckily he got off at the next stop, but I was freaked out for the rest of the night.

Saturday night, around 7:45 p.m. I got on the train at the seemingly safe Q stop right by my house when a woman in another car started screaming bloody murder, "HELP! HELP! CALL 911! HELP!" So, before the doors shut, I, along with anyone else with quick reflexes, ran for dear life out of the cars and up the stairs to ground level. Two guys who were much faster, pushed their way past the crowd. The last glimpse I caught of them was at street level where one of them passed something off to the other one right before they ran off in opposite directions. I assumed it was a gun. The conductor shut the doors locking in more than half the passengers along with the remaining assailants who had caused the screaming at the beginning of the ordeal. Upstairs we all started talking to each other to find out what the fuck had happened. My knees were shaking as we all crowded around the station window that overlooked the halted train with people inside. It turned out that five teenagers jumped two guys and took their wallets only to discover they weren't carrying much cash, so they proceeded to beat the living daylights out of them and steal their cell phones! That kid hadn't been passing off a weapon, but some fucking phones! They kicked the shit out of two guys for a couple of phones! How sick is that?

As the boys did their perp-walk, a Haitian woman screamed at them, "DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND YOU CAN'T DO THESE THINGS! THIS IS WHY PEOPLE ARE AFRAID OF BLACK PEOPLE! WHEN YOU CAN'T GET A CAB, THIS IS WHY! BECAUSE YOU MAKE TROUBLE! HOW DO I RAISE MY SONS WHEN THEY ARE SURROUNDED BY PEOPLE LIKE YOU? YOU WANT SOMETHING, YOU WORK FOR IT! BUT YOU DON'T CARE, AND NOW YOU GO TO JAIL!!!" She was so mad she was shaking.

The scariest part of all: the cops took 15 minutes to show up! All those people were being held on the train with these violent kids and those poor guys were sitting there bleeding!

And our billionaire mayor thinks taking cops off the beat to help our budget is a good idea. What a fuck wad.

These days, my main priority in terms of what I'm going to spend my money on (besides rent, bills, and food, of course) is, first, a self defense course for women, and then once I finish that, a Tae Kwon Do or some other martial arts class. I'm beginning to think that carrying mace isn't enough.

So, stupid shit happens in threes, right? Tonight at work, some people paid with a bad credit card. At most places when a card is declined, the display on the computer just reads 'declined.' At this restaurant, it still prints out a slip that's almost identical to the normal slip they have to sign, but it says DECLINED in small letters at the bottom under the signature line. Well, my eyes have learned to scan for that word. However, for some reason, this time the slip didn't say 'declined', but it just didn't have the total amount on it and in a different place, it read, 'invalid'. Apparently this is what happens if the card has expired. I didn't realize it because I was pretty busy at that moment, so I just dropped it off for the customer to sign, which she did, and then she and her companion left. My manager was the one to pick up the check and notice. Well, it's house policy that when this shit happens, the waiter is responsible. So I had to pay out more money than what I made in the whole shift to cover that check!!! Now how am I going to pay for a self-defense class?

P.S. - Here's a little something that helped me get out a little aggression:

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� Ris 2003 - You steal from me, I hunt you down and torture you with a belt-sander.
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