CTA Tattler

I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

I came across a man once who was yelling "Need some shoes! Ain't got no shoes! Money for shoes!" And he really didn't have any shoes, so he got my change.

Also, you might get executed while being handcuffed down on the pavement.

A dude in Boston asked me "What's the greatest nation in the world? A DONATION."

On Market Street, 1995: "Hey slim! Hey, slim! I know you can hear me slim! C'mon slim!"

Just a couple of weeks ago, there was a dude in front of the Art Institute:

"I need a dollar. Just one dollar. If one dollar is a problem for any of you people, I'll give YOU a dollar out of my own pocket."

The BART is gross, its like the Washington METRO's poverty stricken cousin, two years ago on it the outside of the car was almost black with dirt

From what I've heard, Chicago beggars are a gift from God compared to SF beggars; Aggressive, rude, and all over the place (draws comparisons to the South Park episode mocking beggars and Dawn of the Dead)

Carpeting on public transportation is just asking for trouble.

BART police shot and killed an unarmed man yesterday...
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/01/03/18558098.php

Boston's T does the same thing, or it did when I lived there. The T closed at 1:00, the bars closed at 2:00. Explain to me the logic of this, especially in Boston which is the definition of a college town. (Boston supposedly has the highest concentration of colleges than any city in the world.)

"I don't want your pity, I don't want a job, and I'm not looking for a bite to eat: sir, can you help me get drunk today?"

I gave him a buck for his honesty.

Gimme a dollar.....I'm drunk.
So I gave him a dollar.
NYC (1980)

Last time I rode BART was 1985, and it's been eight years since my last trip on Washington D.C.'s metro. But I'd take either of them over the CTA. I'd also take these rail systems over the CTA any day:

New York
London
Budapest
Paris
Berlin
Barcelona
Prague

BART is really more like San Francisco's version of Metra. It's for transportation between the city center(s) and the suburbs. I've ridden it before and always felt it does its job quite well. The trains aren't immaculate, but they're not exactly filthy either, at least not in comparison to many CTA trains.

The more direct parallel to the CTA there is Muni, which I hear no end of complaints about from the San Franciscans I know.

And yes, San Francisco beggars do not like to take "no" for an answer.

"Excuse me sir, can I borrow your credit card for 25 or 30 minutes?"

A couple years ago in LA

Not here, but in Toronto:

"Sir, could you please spare $18,725?"

[or some similarly specific, high number of dollars]

I stopped and said, "Excuse me?"

He laughed heartily.

Then I laughed heartily.

Then I kept walking, wondering whether the Canadian dollar had just taken a nosedive.

Scott, I heard something like that once in New Orleans... and it was followed by something like, "Now, asking for a dollar doesn't seem too bad, does it?"

A well-dressed older white guy, in a suit, carrying a suitcase.

"Excuse me sir, I have a bit of a problem. I'm trying to get back to the airport for my flight but misplaced my wallet somewhere. ....yadda yadda yadda"

The suit and the story threw me for a loop so I give him a buck.

Flash forward a few years. Same guy, a little greyer, the suit a more disheveled... same story.

I was pretty sure he missed that flight by then...

I hear that "I need to get to X, but blah blah blah" story all of the time. I tell them I'm sorry for their bad luck, but I've just had my pocket picked and can't get where I'm going either.

I had a guy stop me across the street from my home last week. First he asked if I spoke English. He then motioned to my apartment and told me he'd been locked out and needed money to get to his cousin's house to get an extra set of keys. I told him if that was his apartment he'd better pay the mortgage this month because I'm tired of him freeloading. He recovered quickly, though, and claimed he only wanted to know where the nearest Walgreen's was. Definitely the weirdest "I need money get somewhere" con I've heard in a while. I guess it's not really CTA-related begging unless you count the fact that I was walking home from the bus.

the problem with comparing BART to the CTA is that BART isn't public transit like CTA is. BART is like Metra and CTA combined. It covers spans of over 50 miles in its daily routes.

a fairer and more apt comparison would be SF Muni to CTA. and in that comparison i'd say they suck equally.

When I was first living in the city, and more of a softy than I am now, a woman came up to me on a bitterly cold day and asked, "May I have a dollar for a cup of tea?" Well, I'm a tea lover, so I opened up my wallet. Spotting a five dollar bill, she asked, "Oh, could I have the five instead?" I gave her $1 and moved on.

Nowadays, I'll give someone a buck if I happen to have it in my pocket and someone asks nicely, but I never get my wallet out for a beggar. It just doesn't seem wise--or safe.

In Austin, Texas, where I went to grad school, the beggars were so grabby that I stopped carrying a purse.

We honeymooned in San Francisco, and weren't impressed by the public transit system there.

In the late 80s my friend was in Grand Central Terminal in New York, waiting for a friend and smoking a cigarette like the cool 15-year-old she thought she was. A homeless man walked up to her and said, "Hey! Give me a cigarette!" My friend said no. "Aw, c'mon, you're rich! Give me a cigarette!" Again, my friend declined -- so the homeless guy yanked the lit one out of my friend's mouth, stuck it in his own, screamed, "Bitch!" and walked away. I love that story.

What is this Chicago or Disneyland? I NEVER give money to someone I don't know. At least half you pushovers know you're getting conned. Sorry if thats rough, had to inject a lil Chicago attitude :)

LA is a car town that knows it's a car town, and acts accordingly.

NY is a mass transit town that knows it's a mass transit town, and acts accordingly.

SF is a car town that's in denial about being a car town and wants desperately (for PC reasons) to be a mass transit town. So it guiltily makes life a living hell for car owners. Meanwhile, it lacks the civic will needed to truly canvas the city with good mass transit options, so a car remains the most convenient option for getting from A to B. Just try parking once you get there!

So your daughter's cursory assessment of the situation jives completely with my assessment after living in SF for 5 years:

"The public transit here sucks!"

Heard outside the hockey arena in Washington one night several years ago, to the tune of "Deck the Halls":

"Tis the season, my ass freezin'
Dol-la-la-la-lar, get me six pack-a beer"

The weirdest experience I had was when I was approached by a man with no thumbs and he asked for a dollar. Just strange.

The "I told you so" moment was a guy who was standing outside the station entrance asking people for quarters so he could call shelters to find his wife. I was with a friend and we both had no cash, but my friend felt guilty... I told her not to. About 8 hours later that same guy was flat on his ass immobile drunk, shouting at people for quarters.

This is all in the neighborhood of the Chicago Red Line station... sometimes I take a Michigan Ave. bus just to avoid all the people trying to bum cigarettes.

Not transit-related, but just because it's so honest it's funny: On my first trip to Austin just after Christmas '89, I was walking down the Drag, the commercial stretch along the UT Austin campus. Back then, there was a "massage" parlor that took up a fair stretch of one block. There were a few scraggly guys sitting along the wall chatting and, as I approached, one of them called over to me, "Hey buddy, how about five bucks so I can go in and start the New Year right."

They laughed, I laughed, but I decided to spare him the disappointment of anything that cost only five bucks in a place like that.

Overheard outside Michigan Ave. Borders: A guy gives the beggar outside a dollar bill. The beggar yells after him, "You coulda gave me a hundred!" Transit-related because he was right by a bus stop.

I was approached 8 years ago by an extremely tall (at least 6' 8"), smartly dressed black guy who told me that he played for the NBA Phoenix Suns, and was in Chicago for a promotional gig with Reebok. Said he met some girl at a bar, took her back to his hotel, where she drug him and stole his wallet and Rolex, and he needed to collect money to buy a plane ticket back to Phoenix.

I recommended that he contact his agent, his team, or the NBA Players Association:)

"Help a drunk get drunker"
- Bum at McDonalds across the street from Wrigley Feild.

Talking with friends outside of a train entrance downtown. Some guy came up and asked for money. We were deep in conversation and didn't notice him but he persisted for a few minutes, asking each one of us. I finally, said "Here, this is all I have" and pulled a bunch of pennies from my pocket (it really was all i had). He apparently didn't want pennies and threw them on the ground. I chased him down the street.

I took the purple line all the way in this morning and got off at the Madison/Wabash stop.

There's a Dunkin Doughnuts at the bottom of the steps on one side. There was a lady sitting outside door and I heard her say as I went by "I'll die if I don't get a Jelly doughnut".

:)

KevinB

BART ceases running at 1:30 am?
She thinks that is horrible?
She is in for a shock if she ever visits a more-'transit-friendly' city (with pubs and clubs) like London, Amsterdam, or Tokyo.
The trains there cease running at midnight!

I'm late to the party, but I got an e-mail from an acquaintance asking for money lost on a trip. Knowing that a) I wasn't a good enough friend to ask for a loan from and b) knowing he was enough of an organizer to have not only recovered his money, but gotten a new passport to boot, in the time it would have taken to send the e-mail.

All those system shut down at midnight because 'good christians' should be in bed by then (and they save dealing with drunks). England historically had few trains on Sundays because of religious beliefs about what someone should be doing on Sundays.