Stuff you miss while you're listening to podcasts

This morning between the North Berkeley and Downtown Berkeley BART stations, I could hear hysterical laughing from one man over my headphones. I began to notice people around me looking around so I turned around. There was a man in an odd white beanie sitting at the other end of the car. As we pulled into the Downtown Berkeley BART station, two BART cops got on the train where the loud man was sitting with his wheelchair. They politely asked him to step off the train so they could talk to him and he got pretty belligerent. Amongst the things he said to them:

"You're messing with someone and you don't even know the consequences;"

After being told by the cops "Come on, let's go, you're holding everybody up" he replied:
"No, you're holding me up!"

"Get your ass out of my face or I'll punch your lights out;"

and

"I'll beat your ass!"

A few BART police officers have had REALLY bad publicity over the last two years and made (in my opinion) bad decisions. This has led to an overall distrust for and lack of respect of BART officers (though sitting through Voir Dire for jury duty a few months ago made me realize that this distain is not limited to the BART police).

But watching the two BART police officers this morning reminded me of the dangers of generalization. These two officers were patient and gentle with a very belligerent passenger. They kept their cool and never yelled. They could have forced him into his wheelchair but they gave him plenty of space and never came within an arm's reach of him.

Finally, the man conceded and wheeled himself off the train. It very much reminded me of Puck every morning when we try and put him in the living room to leave for work. He backs out and barks, pawing at the ground and growling (obviously, he doesn't want to leave). If you're calm and tell him repeatedly to come, he'll eventually puts his head and his tail down and retreat into the room. Watching the man this morning, it was just like that.

Once he was off the train, one of the officers explained that they had received a call about a disturbing customer and asked if anyone had made the call. One man raised his hand.

It really makes me wonder what I missed while listening to my podcast! I've been on BART with a fair share of disruptive passengers and usually people just ignore them. This man may have been particularly annoying.

Muni

Yesterday on Muni, a guy realized he was at his stop about 5 seconds after we stopped (with plenty of time to exit). Instead of quickly getting up and walking off (or heaven forbid, getting off at the next stop one block later), he dove out of his seat into my back and took both arms and shoved me out of the way. So rude and totally unnecessary!

At the next stop, the next guy to exit the bus was only wearing dirty socks (no shoes).

I think I'll stick to BART.