Trying to Unwind after Stressful Commute

[nhcycling]

Wow! I don’t know how you all do this. I thought the daily 1.5 drive to Boston in bumper to bumper traffic was bad enough before I started telecommuting.

 

[Closet_Gamer]

What a mess. Sorry for your troubles.

Seems like NYC has really imploded again. Quite sad.

I live in Philly. While SEPTA, our public transportation entity, certainly has its off days (weeks) and we have our own homeless problem...overall its quite good.

I've taken public transportation in from the burbs to center city nearly every day for over 10 years.

In that time I've only seen two real police incidents. Once someone got punched in the head and the guy ran away. I think that was during the "knock out game" lunacy. Another time the cops had some guy in hand cuffs but the smile on his face and the casual attitude of the cops made me think this was more in the category of juvenile prank than something serious.

I'm pan handled probably 2-3x/mo and they can generally be sent away in about 10 seconds.

Of course the cops deal frequently with homeless people...occasionally with someone who is so sick/unwashed that the small is horrific. Those situations are more sad/depressing than scary.

The subways are not as nice as regional rail, but in the times I've used them, I haven't felt unsafe. To be fair, tho, it was usually going to a ball game or some other large crowd event on one of the nicer subway lines. I'm far from a philly subway veteran.

Overall though, high marks for the city of Philadelphia right now.

 

[robnplunder]

I used to go to SF Symphony via BART system. It is about an hour+ journey through multiple cities but avoids traffic and finding a parking spot in SF. We now brave the traffic and resigned to fina a parking spot in SF b/c we have run into one too many crazies in the train. The list include a crazy woman picking fight with other passenger, a threes drunks talking loud (racial slurs), a guy talking racial trash, a woman shouting loud into her phone about her breakup, ... Most passengers are OK but it's these few, a small minority, that make us to "drive" to SF.

 

[street]

^ there can be crazies in small town and rural area also. I just don't notice them much because the people that live in very rural areas seem crazy to most, I would suspect. Lol

I have only been in a city with more then 1M people 4 times in my life and that was 4 to many. Lol I wouldn't know what to do with myself if living in confinement of a large metro area. I know that sounds crazy but …...

 

[mystang52]

It's funny, I think it was last week, a subway car door opened at the Penn Station stop, and the few people on the car, tailed out as fast as possible and ran into the next car. I didn't even want to know what was in that car...I also boarded an adjacent car.

Very very soon this all will be a memory for me.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, it became natural to learn certain defensive techniques that simple were intuitive. To wit, I never entered a subway car without first doing a quick overview. I feel for OP. My last j*b before ER involved public transportation and I hated it.
But I never used headphones on the subway, precisely to be aware of my surroundings.

 

[Mr. Tightwad]

This thread demonstrates the decline of Western civilization, and some of the people we share the Earth with.

All too often I think posters here think everyone in the world is as pleasant as the forum members. The world contains many more of the people this thread is about than we realize.