When it comes to crazy people, White Plains station has no shortage of them. From now on I think I will officially dub the man which I’ve talked about a few times as Mr. Chicago, as he always seems to be talking about Chicago. This morning I was sitting waiting for the shuttle, and he sat down next to me. He was having a long conversation with himself, parts of which sounded like they were complete gibberish. He also described a fat woman that looked like Johnny Damon, and about how he would have beaten someone up, had he not been “drugged into submission.” I imagine this guy knows all about being drugged.

I never got around to mentioning it, but a few weeks back White Plains got some new signage. The old signage had a black stripe on the top, not the blue stripe consistent with the rest of the Harlem Line stations. Here is a delightful photo I took of an M7a coming into the station, you can see the new sign over on the other side of the tracks.

Unfortunately, the schedule board signs around the station have not been working too well. If anyone was curious, they are apparently run on Windows XP:

Though it would have been a little bit more amusing had it been like this:

Usually they work pretty well, and I’ve certainly talked about how I liked them before… of course I only like them when they are working properly.

And for no apparent reason, here is a picture of Peggy, my favorite one-legged pigeon.

Perhaps I pay a little bit more attention to the signs and advertisements on the train because I am a graphic designer. Or perhaps it is just because I am observant. Either way, I am often amused looking at the little messages people write on ads, and on the trains. People interacting with their surroundings. Probably stupid people.

Here is my collection to date of delightful bits of train graffiti. Perhaps sometime in the future there will be a part two… and if you happen to have any pictures of anything amusing, be sure to send it to me :D

Advertisements for television shows are quite common on the trains. Apparently this person thinks that TV is shit.

Goldens Bridge tends to frequently get graffiti similar to the one above. My hypothesis is that high school students are the ones making the marks, and Goldens Bridge gets many young people, between the local skater kids and the students that take the train to school. Kennedy High School is right down the street, and a shuttle bus picks up students at the station every morning.

My initial thought in seeing this is that someone forgot to write “For a good time, call…” Assuming that it is in fact a phone number, it is still missing an area code. Trying the various area codes from the New York area, the only promising number is in the area code 914. And that would be Dr. Jim Koo, located in Yorktown. Did someone on the train call information and not have anything to write on? Or maybe Dr. Koo is hoping for you to call him for a good time. He’ll give you a full physical.

Fuck you Conrail? Conrail??? Metro North was formed in 1983, and Conrail was before that. Is someone living in the past, or was this done a long, long time ago?

Apparently I’Am not very good at writing English…

This week has been rather hot. The trains have been hot. Some of the air conditioners are not working properly. As conductor Guy said, “It is so hot you could cook brownies in here.”

Inevitably what happens in the heat? People sweat. If you are some of the great people who hang out in the train station of White Plains, sweating doesn’t stop you from wearing your clothes many days in a row… as I doubt you have an entire collection of shirts that say: “My imaginary friend says you have severe mental problems.”

The Chicago-obsessed, taxi screaming, crazy man also wears the same clothing over again. I saw him over by the telephone last night and saw he had some sort of nametag or ticket in the transparent side pocket of his bag. So I walked past him to see what exactly it was. It looked like some sort of train ticket that actually said Chicago on it. It looked nothing like this ticket, but it would be certainly amusing if it had. And if this guy had photoshop skillz, no doubt it would have been like this, instead of a fake computer print-out.

On the other hand, at least these people stay away from me… and they aren’t this guy:

That’s real nice dude, as if putting your feet up on the seats wasn’t nice enough, he decided to take off his dirty, smelly sandals. And then proceeded to pick his feet. Thankfully conductor Peter came around and at least he stopped the feet picking, and put his shoes back on. Is this National Nail Week or something like that? With all the people I’ve seen picking, clipping and painting their nails, you’d think it was. You know what else is good? Showering, and changing your clothes every now and again.

A week or two ago I mentioned a man that was yelling at taxis beeping their horns… I tend to see this man a lot, some days he is quiet, other days not so much. Today was one of those not so much days. He is a rather large man, and I don’t tend to associate giggling with a person like that. Giggling is like a schoolgirl type of thing… but he was certainly giggling.

Some trains were apparently running late this morning, and the announcement system announces what trains and how late they are. The train to Southeast was running about ten minutes late, trains heading into the city seemed to be on time. Mr. Giggles apparently thinks he is somewhere else, and shouts out, “The train to New York is late,” he giggles for a few moments, and then completes the thought, “because it had to stop in CHICAGO first.”

Apparently he was looking for attention and wasn’t getting any, so he decided to begin interrupting people’s conversations. A man and woman to my right were discussing how their shuttle was late. Mr. Giggles chimes in and says, “Amtrak does allow stopovers.” The man and woman look at him and say, “What?” Giggles continues, pointing up where the train platforms are, “The trains. Amtrak does allow stopovers.”

This is Metro North, my friend… though of course that is probably the man’s problems.

Some of my older readers may recall my mention of a man that stroked my knee while riding the Long Island Rail Road. I do not like touchy people. I do not want to be touched by these people. This morning I was really engrossed with a novel I am reading, hanging out on the benches at White Plains station, waiting for my shuttle bus to arrive. Apparently I was so engrossed that I didn’t see the shuttle arrive. A man, who also apparently rides the shuttle and looks to be a fairly new rider, walked over and placed his fingers on top of my hand, alerting me to the arrived shuttle. I sort of thought this was awkward. Never have we ever had a conversation before, and as of yet we still have not. He just touched my hand and then walked away. He could have say, spoke aloud, or if he was really intent on touching me to notify me, he could have tapped me on the shoulder, right? Perhaps I shouldn’t be quite so bothered by this incident, but it just felt rather awkward.

In other news, the train has been more like a zoo this week… in fact a man was so alarmed by this fact I saw him putting on bug spray prior to getting on the train! (okay, I exaggerate, but he was putting on bug spray!) Yesterday we had an adorable kitten by the name of Trouble. Today we had an obnoxious little dog, who knows what his name was. Not counting service dogs, I don’t really think animals have all that much place on the trains. Small animals either on the passenger’s lap or in a carrier I think are acceptable. But walking your dog on a leash in the train aisle is kind of dumb to me. I certainly hope she picked the dog up when exiting the train. Well, I am sure she did, otherwise I would have been hearing “oh come help, Fido fell in the gap, we need to save him!”

If I owned a building that had an escalator in it, I would frequently switch the direction on it, just to screw with people.  I can’t actually recall a time where I’ve actually seen an escalator  changed to go in the alternate direction… well that is until today. Apparently some funny person at the White Plains train station decided to do so. The north side escalator, which normally goes down, was going up. The south side escalator was not working. (So I am sure this wasn’t a joke, probably a conscious decision, in that it is easier to carry heavy items down stairs than it is to carry them up)

As I was riding up the escalator, I shouted out to my friend, “What the heck is this shit? Are they trying to fuck with us today?” A man observing at the top level began laughing. I’m not sure how long it had been going the opposite direction, but every time a train pulled into the station, it was absolute hilarity. Nowadays people are so focused on their technology, whether it be texting or talking on a phone, or maybe listening to some music, but people really don’t pay attention to what is going on. Several of these people just walked right onto the escalator without even noticing it was going the alternate direction, and were firmly deposited right back where they started. Other people gave some funny looks and walked away. And my favorites were the people that just walked over and stared dumbfounded at the escalator for far too long, perhaps contemplating the meaning of life as they blocked the people attempting to come up.

Let’s just say I was very depressed that I didn’t have my camera on me to take some video of that.

The other freak out of the day was me playing a joke on my friend. Monday morning as we waited for the shuttle bus to come pick us up at the station, I saw a man walk by and he was glancing at her. Just joking around I said, “oh look at him look at you, I think he likes you!” Silly innocent comment. Well fast-forward to later in the day, my friend comes into my office and work and hands me a paper printout of a mugshot. She said, “Is this the man we saw this morning at the train station?!” Apparently she was watching America’s Most Wanted online during her lunch break, and up comes a picture of a guy who is wanted for two murders. It also said that it is possible he is on the run in New York. I assured her that it wasn’t the guy we saw. But quite honestly, I can’t remember. I highly doubt it though.

Anyways, today I thought about Google searching the name of the man, so I asked my friend if she still had the printout she showed me earlier. She left it with me, and I said I would look and see online. Later in the day, I went to her cubicle and said that I had found information about him online. The conversation went somewhat like this:

Me: Yeah, I saw a website that said they saw him not too long ago in New York. At a train station too!
Her: What train station? Was it Metro North?
Me: Yeah, I think so… I’m trying to remember the name of the station, oh what is it called? Oh yeah, Fleetwood.

Of course this freaked her out, since Fleetwood is the station that she rides from… and I was totally bullshitting. So you probably don’t have to worry about that America’s Most Wanted fugitive, Calvin R. Sinclair. But hey, if you did happen to see him, you’d probably notice. He’s only 4’7″. There are elementary-schoolers taller than him! I know by experience… I’m pretty darn short, and even *I* am taller than him!

Ah, White Plains train station, you have the most interesting of people. I think all the rain we’ve been having lately has been stressing people out. The other day the taxis couldn’t seem to do anything other than honk their horns loudly at each other, prompting a rather unkempt looking man sitting on the benches to scream out, “SHUT THE HELL UP!”

Do you know what calmed that man down? Another strange man wanders over, singing “I’m here to save the day!” He sat next to the other man, and they began a conversation. The two of them, certainly a match made in heaven.

Another guy I tend to see at the train station is a man that despite the warm temperature, is always wearing a winter coat. He also gets into very animated conversations with himself. He does keep to himself, and doesn’t bother anyone, so that is always a good thing. While sitting around waiting for my bus the other day I watched him play a game with himself. I’m not quite sure what the rules of this game were, if there were any at all. But he had a handfull of coins that he would shake in his hand, as if he were about to roll some dice. Then he would throw the coins to the ground, count them, and then start the process again.

For all the crazies I see at White Plains, I’ve been told that the real crazies hang out on the trains to Wassaic. Apparently a man felt it necessary to use the train to take a patio bar set somewhere. And not in a box or anything like that. In pieces. When the train doors opened he brought one piece in, then went back out to pick up another piece, and then another. And during the winter, another passenger on the Wassaic train decided to to transport a snowblower. A gas reeking snowblower. Oh the intriguing people you see on trains…

Just as a last note, I know I mentioned once before seeing a lady that carried a clipboard, and I speculated as to what the clipboard was for, and what she was making notes of. Now I am not sure if this particular woman was in fact making notes for Metro North, but I noticed a young man on my train, every single day, carrying a clipboard and walking through the train cars making notes. After watching this for quite a while, I asked… apparently there are people with clipboards that make notes about train car temperatures or things like that. I figured I’d write that since I actually saw that some people found the blog by typing into a search engine mta what do clipboards people do. Apparently other people have typed in why do pigeons scream in the morning and ride the train sex, but I have nothing to say about that.