From NYC: "8 Million Stories: Bus Justice" [a Top Ten Bus Stories nominee], by Andrew Tavani (New York Press)

This story originally appeared at nypress.com at this address: http://www.nypress.com/article-19453-8-million-stories-bus-justice.html. This link no longer exists. A copy of the original story appears below. 


Trust me. Even though the M96 won the 2008 Pokey Award—a dubious honor presented to the most sloth-like bus in the city—and has been unable to stay on schedule for…maybe forever, the bus once took me someplace I thought I might never go.

One evening, I boarded at West 96th and Amsterdam, early in the bus’ cross-town route, and luckily got a seat around the midsection of the bus, which was pretty much standing-room only. As if the glacial pace at which the bus made its way east wasn’t painful enough, for some reason that evening, the M96 took a detour, headed down Central Park West to 86th Street and crossed through the park. Apart from the detour and the crowd, it was shaping up as a typical, uneventful bus ride.

Things changed suddenly, though, when the bus exited the Park and crossed Fifth Avenue. A black guy sitting toward the front on the driver’s side, who had been calm and anonymous till then, stood up, looked menacingly at a white guy standing in front of him and launched into an incoherent diatribe, the theme of which was about being overworked and underpaid. 

“Hey asshole, join the club!” I felt like shouting to him; but I didn’t have the balls to do it. I wasn’t a real New Yorker. I was a transplant who grew up in a polite Pennsylvania suburb and moved to the city in late 1999 to work in TV. A guy in his late twenties, the only New York I knew was the touchy-feely, post- Giuliani Apple. 



At first, the white guy looked confused since the verbal assault was unprovoked. He gave the disgruntled dude a look like, “Are you talking to me?” And not the Travis Bickle “Are you talking to me?” look; I mean the, “Are you talking to me…or the guy behind me,” kind of look. It was unclear who his fulmination was directed at due to its magnificent incoherence. After a moment, the first man raised his voice and lurched closer to the white guy. “I’m gonna fuckin’ kick some ass!” he announced, finally articulating a meaningful sentence. With that, a look came over the white guy’s face that suggested, perhaps, he was contemplating kicking some ass. 

Meanwhile, the bus crawled along to its stops and the driver did his best to stay poised and not squash any pedestrians. A few people got off here and there, but most people were waiting for the bus to resume its route along 96th Street. Everyone was riveted by the drama unfolding. But, as entertaining as it was to witness a performance ripped from an episode of Law & Order, there was something ominous about the way the provocateur was clutching a messenger back slung over his shoulder and a paper shopping bag. 

Despite the baiting, the white guy kept his cool and the furious guy lost interest in him, so he turned and addressed the people holding the bar for balance. Obscenities continued flying, and his babble became even less intelligible. The chrome bar offered no response to the lunatic. For a minute, the situation looked like it was diffusing—until the guy finally noticed he wasn’t getting any reaction. 

He then turned and faced a diminutive weary Latino man, dressed in a shirt and tie, who was standing a few feet away. The rabble rouser didn’t mince words. He hurled racially charged invective at the Latino guy and began punching his fist, like some greaser from The Outsiders readying himself for a throw-down. The Latino guy stood calm, seemingly unfazed.The crazy guy once again repeated that he was going to “kick [his] fucking ass!” 

No response. 

The Latino guy was a silent pillar of self-control. 



And then the malcontent tilted his head, looked deep into the Latino guy’s eyes, dramatic pause and all, and asked, “What are you going to do about it, faggot?” This was intriguing: Rather than transporting its passengers swiftly eastward, I realized, the M96 had become a time machine that transported us to the old-school, politically incorrect NYC I’d only read about—a city complete with bad manners and violence. 



An incredulous look flashed across the unflappable Latino guy’s face. The bus came to its next stop, and the driver opened the front door. The Latino guy sprang into action, grabbing the bigger man by the throat. To the surprise of the passengers, and with the panache of The Caped Crusader, he threw the insane guy out the front door of the bus. The guy tumbled into the street, his belongings spilled onto the blacktop. The passengers erupted in a catharsis of cheers and tension-relieving laughter. The little man knelt down, picked up a bag the ejected man had dropped, stood up and tossed it out the door where it smacked the guy—who was still lying on the blacktop—in the head. 

I gazed out the window at the guy on the ground trying to orient himself to his new bearings and the fact that a few of his of teeth were on the street. 

People on the bus grabbed our savior, congratulated him and said he had done enough. Our hero was exalted and inundated with high-fives and handshakes, even a hug or two for dealing a dose of “bus justice.” As the bus justice hero strode by me, I nodded at him and said, “Congratulations, buddy,” feeling like I’d finally been baptized a true New Yorker.