I never cease to be amazed by Angelinos out here who muse that they wish they had public transportation as New York City has. Imagine: No need for a car. No need for traffic jams on the 134, the 101, the 405, the 110, the 10, the 5, even the 73. How much better it would be for the environment if only we had a subway like New York’s alongside bans on plastic bags, plastic straws, and cars that run on nearly $6 gasoline!
I listen. I smile. I don’t contradict. I save my arguments for only two subjects: (1) Left vs. Right in America, and (2) Israel-Zionism vs. The Rest of the World.
But what about public transportation, New York-style?
Been there. Done that.
I lived and worked in New York — Brooklyn, Manhattan — until the age of 32. Through many of those years, I rode the subways. I hated it.
New York’s vaunted subways are dehumanizing. Around rush hour, you struggle to get into the car. If you don’t push, you don’t get in. It is survival of the fittest or the meanest. You push, and then the train doors slide to close, but they cannot close because a few sardines are sticking out. So the sticker-outers have to decide rapidly: Do I back off, get out, and wait for the next train — or do I push even harder?
Once in the car, if it is crowded, “fuggediboud” a seat. You grab an overhead strap and become a “strap hanger.” You stand throughout the ride. If the train suddenly stops, as often happens, you lurch — but so do all the other strap hangers, so it works out. You shake left and right with the train. At the next stop, you hope many will exit so you can get a seat. But that does not happen; instead, more sardines fight their way into the can.
This is dehumanizing even when you manage a ride without a worm publicly shouting a warning that all Zionists must get off the train — or else.
In a Los Angeles automobile, you may get stuck interminably long on a freeway, but you control your environment: heat or air conditioning; standard AM/FM radio or XM; Fox or CNN or a sports channel or a 1940s radio mystery or Joel Osteen or Willie Nelson or Joe Rogan. It’s a m’chayeh (Yiddish for a pleasure). Sure, the freeways (Californian for “highway”) could be faster, but you keep reminding yourself, “Would you rather be on the Westside Uptown Local?” It’s similar to if you ever have a disagreement with your second spouse, the best marriage counseling I offer is: “Just think — would you rather still be married to the last one?” Ends all marital hurt instantly. Same with the New York subways.
It’s a big city, New York — almost nine million? That’s practically the same as populate the entire country of Israel, minus the known Arab Muslim terrorists there. In such a massive mix, it is impossible not to have all kinds of people. And the percentage of illegal aliens, murderers, and mentally ill is quite a thing in New York, New York.
One of the gifts of liberalism and woke ideology is that, as long as they mostly vote Democrat, you honor the weirdos, leave them alone, and encourage more to come. You don’t deport Illegals. Rather, you are a sanctuary that buys advertising in Florida to encourage more to abandon DeSantis for de Blasio. You barely imprison murderers. No cash bail. Felonies downgraded to misdemeanors, and then misdemeanors negotiated down to “violations.” And you do not compel the mentally ill to receive caring and loving treatment. Instead, you keep them all around and then ask the federal government for more money to care for these Democrat voters to keep the town blue. Good ole New York.
I rode those subway cars for years and years. From what I read now, those were the good ol’ days. There was this blind woman — I was sorry for her — who seemed to be on every single train, unless she simply was following me. She somehow would enter the car from the adjacent car and would walk the car’s length while playing an organ. People would put coins in her cup. At first, I did too. Then, after a few times, something in me told me: “This is ridiculous. Stop encouraging it.” What if every blind person in New York did that? It was terribly disruptive. And she never played any song I liked — nor that I even barely recognized.
There was another guy who, likewise, seemed to be on every car I rode, day after day, for 20-plus years. His shtik was: he would come at non-rush-hour, would find a seat, then take off his shoes, and then rub between his toes — all eight gaps. Within minutes, the stench was unbearable. He knew it. I don’t know why he did it. Certainly, once the odor started wafting, no one went near his cup to donate; rather, the entire train car cleared out. The blind lady with the accordion never entered. She could not see but could smell. That was the subways.
I left that world in 1985 — 40 years ago. I moved to Los Angeles, got my wheels, and Peace in America!
I did encounter one anti-Semitic attack on the subways. I was an undergraduate at Columbia University in Manhattan, and I went home to Brooklyn every Friday afternoon to observe and celebrate the Holy Shabbat with my Mom of blessed memory and three sisters from Friday sunset until Saturday nightfall. (My Dad of blessed memory had died of leukemia at the age of 45 to my 14.) And then I would travel back to campus after the Havdalah (End of Sabbath) ritual late Saturday night. Because I took college courses with heavy reading assignments, I traveled at non-rush-hour times to be sure of getting a seat, and I then devoted the next 90 minutes each way to doing my readings. That gave me three hours of focus for reading. The blind organ player and the guy with the toes did not do a night shift or weekends.
One Saturday night, a trio of three troublemakers got on the car. There always was the chance of that, and you learned as a subway commuter never to look up when such drek got on your car. As the train stopped at their intended station, two got off and the third swiped my yarmulka off my head, laughed, and was about to get off before the train door closed. My sister, Debbie, had knitted that yarmulka for me; it was brown with my name in light yellow. I did not stop to think. That was Debbie’s kipah that bastard had grabbed off my head. I jumped up, raced at him as he was getting off the train, and kicked him with all my might in his male privates. He stopped laughing, hit the floor, groaned, and dropped the kipah. The train doors started closing, but he was half in and half out, so the doors went back open and then tried closing again. Since his two associates were already outside the car, and he was half on and half off, I kicked him and kicked him two or three more times until he was completely off. Everyone else on the train car looked down, New York-style. No help. Not a word.
The Daniel Penny incident reminds me of the New York City subways I knew. If I had the Marine training and knew how to headlock a guy as he did, I would have done as he did. He did what I could not do; he is a hero. I do believe that Daniel Penny did not intend to kill the maniac who scared and threatened the people on that car. He is a better man than I. All I could do to my anti-Semitic attacker was kick him in the privates as hard as my karate training has taught me and then kick him off the train, aiming at his spine.
The New York City subway is a scary place. There were approximately 1,120 violent crimes there last year, in 2023. Another 538 such crimes in the first three months of this year. We all have heard or read about the particularly insane and terrifying cases of innocent people being pushed from subway platforms and onto the tracks of incoming trains. There were 15 of those during the first nine months of last year.
The police do not do enough of the job. The mayor and city council do not do it. Alvin Bragg is too busy prosecuting Donald Trump and Daniel Penny to do it. If I could have, I would have done what Daniel Penny did. If I had been on that jury, I would have insisted on “not guilty” even if I were the only “angry man” on the panel. Instead, the best I can do is put my name on record in public affirming that Daniel Penny is a hero, and we need many, many more Daniel Pennys because not everyone is an Alvin Bragg with the privileges he enjoys (meantime).
I think back to the early scene in the movie The Joker, and when I saw what he did to the drunk young Wall Streeters harassing that single woman, I was quite copacetic with the pre-Joker’s deed, too. Nothing to do with the violator’s color (one Black, three White). Just a warm fuzzy feeling that it is righteous to rid us of people in our society who abuse and terrify innocent subway riders, ruining their lives every day, whether sexually abusing a woman or shouting about wanting to kill themselves and acting wildly, scaring a car full of human beings who just want to get to work or get home. Daniel Penny is a hero.
A final thought: Have you ever noticed that the media make it their business to find and repeatedly publish the one photo they can locate that depicts the thug and goon as a sweety-pie angel? Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, and Jordan Neely. Thank G-d we are seeing right-wing media in podcasts, talk radio, websites, and social media influencers on our side beginning to even the imbalance that has favored the corrupt left-wing’s fake news vehicles.
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READ MORE from Dov Fischer:
In Praise of G-d and of His Agent for Change — Kamala Harris
Why Trump Needed to Name Some Outliers to His Team
Beyond Comprehension: Harris’s $20 Million Plus, Trump’s Cabinet, Peace of Mind
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