It only took 1.5 months of riding Bart daily to finally have my very own "I saw some shit go down" story. I mean, I did ride Bart home from San Francisco after Halloween, to and from the Championship parade, and still didn't have any good stories. The closest recently, besides the usual crazies, would be that I saw a guy puke in a paper bag after game 2 when the Giants lost to the Braves, but even that barely made the twitter feed. Tonight however, shit went down.
So setting the stage: Since I am a creature of habit (may or may not be slightly OCD, jury is still out on that one) I went to my normal spot on the platform, which happens to be the first door on the first train. After some research, this is the least crowded entrance and least crowded train car, so I can always get a seat and I'm used to it. But that's another story. Luckily, thanks to this OCD, I got a front row seat to the action.
Anyways, I'm standing in line, surprisingly not glued to my phone (underground, no reception) and as usual the SF bound train pulls up (not my train), the train doors open and two middle aged guys dash out of the train and run up to the conductor, shouting and arguing with each other and then yelling at the conductor (for explanatory reasons let's call the short normal looking one “Shorty” and the tall crazy one "Dodger"). This goes on for a minute, and not many people are paying attention to the commotion. After a bit, Shorty yells something at both Dodger and the conductor and storms off up the stairs. The train has now been sitting there for a few minutes, and few announcements come on saying the train will be sitting there for a few more minutes and that people should exit the train and go upstairs to catch the next SF bound train. So the train empties out and Dodger starts wondering in and out of a few cars, talking to himself, and then makes his way back up to the conductor. When Dodger talks to the conductor, he sticks his head fully inside the window and yells, loudly, using hand gestures and overly dramatic body language. I can’t really make out anything he is saying but clearly he is crazy.
Then from out of nowhere, 4 Bart cops come running down the platform, tasers drawn, yelling at people to move out of the way, aiming their tasers at Dodger, yelling at him to get on the ground. I am going to pause here for a second because as soon as people saw Bart police with tasers drawn, tension on the platform rose exponentially and EVERYONE was crowded around and had video mode set on their phones. Added to this was, this was happening at an Oakland Bart Station, so people were likely more sensitive to this kind of situation and had Oscar Grant or Johannes Mehserle flash into their heads, causing a heightened sense of excitement/worry.
So, Dodger is on the ground, spread eagle, and Cop #1 quickly removes a large weapon from Dodgers pants and tosses it to Cop #2, they handcuff him, and Dodger is yelling “I didn’t do anything…” whatever, you had a weapon, we’re not in Texas (ok, well Oakland, but still), and they whisk him away through one of those secret doors and that’s the end of Dodger.
Who knows what he did, but he caused a 20 minute delay on a Friday night. I mean, I could have had important plans or something, but I still saw some shit go down. Ok, not really exciting, but just edgy enough I guess.
No comments:
Post a Comment