Is this New York?

Last night I had dinner with my wife in Richmond Hill and took VIVA Blue home. This VIVA ride was a little more interesting than normal.

Instead of the usual quiet ride home with the business people half asleep, reading a book or staring forlornly out the window, we had some interesting characters.

The first we noticed was the black man, "Rapper", sitting on top of the standing room area in the middle of the articulated section of the bus. He was literally sitting on the top of the place where riders are supposed to be leaning against the backrest and holding the pole. He had his rap music blaring from a cell phone sized piece of equipment. Periodically "Rapper" would tap his hand against the poll. This caused even more noise as the metal from the rings on his hand met the metal of the poll. Other passengers just gave him the lazy dissapproving look or were trying to ignore him to the best of their ability. Trust me on this, it was not easy to ignore him.

Across the aisle from my wife and I were and older gentleman and a lady. The lady and man were talking about relationships and how there never seemed to be any women interested in the man. This lasted for about halfway on the trip from Richmond Hill to Aurora. Then she started saying he shouldn't be drinking. I looked over and he has a LCBO special pulled out and proceeded to drink straight from the bottle. It seemed I was surrounded by loonies on this bus.

At Bloomington Road on our trek northward three young teens get on the bus. One of the three was no more than five feet tall, 100 lbs (soaking wet with a brick in his pocket) wearing an earing with a huge rock. Man was this shrimp trying to look tough to his "Homies". At least this was somewhat typical of the area, a suburban kid trying to look tough. I laughed later that this kid probably wouldn't last five minutes in Long Island or Yonkers nevermind Brooklyn or the Bronx. In fact the kids I taught in Rockaway Park (Queen's) would've eaten this kid as a small snack nevermind lunch.

At one point I thought I was reliving my days of weirdos on the New York City Subway. But then again, it truly wasn't like New York, in the half hour trip not once did I see someone selling DVDs. Alas, this wasn't a true New York experience.