As New Yorkers, taking the subway is a part of our daily routine. Whether you take it to work or to school, the chances that you’ve had some pretty weird experiences in those cars is very high. 

Over the course of the past two weeks, highschoolers shared their funniest subway stories and they shared some, well… interesting anecdotes. Whether it’s a two-hour subway breakdown or a guy throwing bread at some teenage girls, there’s always a story to tell about the New York subways.

Starting off with our personal favorite story: Wonder Bread. Isn’t it just so… wonderful? Well, if your name is Molly, then you might have some bad memories associated with these innocent plain white bread slices. 

It was a normal day on the F train, and Molly, a freshman at LaGuardia, was just sitting with a friend on their way to school and then, “a guy wearing a tutu threw full slices of wonder bread at my friend!” If you were this person what would you do? Throw it back? Well, maybe the real question is what color was the tutu?

Have you ever heard the expression borrow a cup of sugar from a neighbor? 

Well, on this C train ride Natasha Trinidad, a sophomore at the iSchool, had a pretty similar experience. “Some guy was asking for baking soda. Don’t know why.” Maybe he just really needed to bake some cookies.

Maybe those were just some bad cookies, because these next couple people really needed to use the bathroom. It might surprise you how often New Yorkers see people using the bathroom on the subway. Definitely a common but unintended purpose of the train system. Amy, a freshman at the iSchool, was on the E train when she saw someone peeing directly on the seats. 

Ezra Tishcoff, another freshman at the iSchool, saw a man “pooping on the train, and then pick[ing] it up with a plastic bag.” Ezra says the experience definitely opened his eyes about how some people react when nature calls. “I mean, it’s a little gross but you gotta do what you gotta do.” 

Well… maybe not in that case. In another bathroom related story, Nina, a senior at Bronx Science, once saw “someone peeing themselves because they couldn’t hold it in.” Well, all I know is that you’ve got to have a lot of courage to not be embarrassed to pee on the train. 

Never have I ever seen someone eat weird food on the train. If your name is Edie Kindall or August Moreno, your answer is definitely “I have.” You know those cans of hotdogs? Edie says she “saw a guy eating hotdogs out of a can.” 

This might not sound very alarming, but what he did next will be (here it comes), “And then drinking the liquid.” See, maybe a can of soda or even a can of fruit would be understandable. But hotdogs? And to top it all off, “[He] dropped the can lid and picked it up to put it back on.” The Department of Food Poisoning must be on speed dial for this guy. 

Next, (and if you get squeamish easily you may want to skip this one), the most New York cuisine. August, a freshman at the iSchool, saw “a guy eating a pigeon.” No further comment.

Living in New York, pigeons are constantly around us and annoying us, so much that they can be considered part of the New York population. According to Elyse Venturim, a freshman at the iSchool, she witnessed a “man singing opera with a pigeon on his shoulder.” As if that isn’t weird enough, the man was “dancing in her train cart” as well. I personally have felt the urge to break into dance moves, but what about singing? 

Violet Lane, a senior at our school, shares that when she was on the train in late October she was just singing some tunes. “Some guy told me to stop. So I sang louder.” It’s good to get the tunes out! (And maybe the dance moves too.)

Subway breakdowns are annoying, and definitely the bane of a N.Y. commuter’s existence. Junior Domi Fabbri, had one of the most tedious breakdowns yet. He says, “This was one day during hybrid school and I was coming in, and I did not have my phone because it was broken. Because I did not have my phone I did not know that there were delays on the C train.” Apparently, C trains just were not running because this guy got in a 3 train and changed the tracks from express to local. “I was on my train and I was stuck for two hours in a tunnel with no phone and this one guy just started rolling a blunt and smoking in the train and hotboxing the whole thing.” Some say weed is the best form of relaxation (for legal adults of course).

Is there a legal age for religious conversion? Maybe, maybe not but a train isn’t really the place you’d expect this conversion to occur. But for Leon Villagran, a freshman at the iSchool, that was the case. While he was on the train, he didn’t specify which one, he “talked to this religious guy that was trying to convince [him] to be Catholic for like 2 minutes.” I’m just wondering if that guy has ever converted someone successfully. Maybe not the best place to find willing converts. But, I’ll bet he gets quite the reactions.

Sometimes, long subway rides can start to get you really hungry, so it’s always good to have some food on you. For Leo Nusbaum, a freshman at Midwood Highschool, he didn’t need to bring his own food. Leo was on the 3 train on his way back from school when he “saw someone cooking on a grill” and they even “offered [him] some grilled zucchini.” Well Leo, I hope you enjoyed that zucchini because that is a once in a lifetime experience.  What you need, the city will provide.

Picture this, it’s 8:00 am on the Q train and the cart is way past capacity. This may seem like a very normal experience, but for Ezra Tishcoff, this normal morning took a weird twist. As the train reached the station, he expected some space to free up, but instead a “Big 6’ foot something dude, who is very jacked” tried to get on the crowded train. Since there was no space, he bumped into “some lady and she screamed at him, telling him to ‘get out the way!’’ To this, the 6’ foot responds with “snatching the lady’s weave off of her head and throwing it onto the platform.” Just as we thought this story couldn’t escalate any more, Ezra tells us that “as the lady went to pick up her weave, the guy tried to steal her purse as well.” Now that’s a guy we don’t want to mess with.

Speaking of dudes in a bad mood (and ready to take it out on someone), Able Bloodgood, a junior at Bard, had a really weird experience with one once. He was on the 2 train and “this guy came in in a Grinch onesie and started yelling about how Christmas sucked, New York sucked.” Funnily enough, Able says it was closer to Thanksgiving than Christmas. Maybe he got his dates mixed up, but I’m pretty sure that speech was better for after November 20th. 

Kadiza Aktar, a sophomore at the iSchool, was sitting on the train when a “dude on the train ran out [of the cart] screaming that he was spicy white.” Once he got onto the platform, he “saw the Nostrand Ave sign and started screaming that it was the love of his life.” What a… character.

Gwen, a sophomore at Bronx Science, was on the 4 train when she saw a “crazy dude doing a crossword puzzle with an imaginary friend.” And she says that’s just part one! He also was “having a book club with his imaginary friend about Superfudge by Judy Blume.” But Gwen, how do you know he was imaginary? What if he was just invisible? 

If you go to the iSchool, you probably have pizza at least once during the school year. Ariah Rosaria, a freshman, might associate differently with the pizza now: “There was this guy on the train who tried lassoing pizza with a rope.” Move aside Naked Cowboy, now we have a Pizza Cowboy in town. She added, “Then he threw the pizza across the train and went into the other car. Very weird.” Very weird indeed. 

New York City is the perfect place to make a fashion statement, but where do we draw the line? Sasha Leitner, a freshman, said that, when she was on the C train, “Someone with only a Batman g-string on came onto the train and started stripping.” Now I’m no fashion-expert, but I think the line should be drawn way before that. Maybe at a Spiderman g-string. 

This one is quite short but we think it speaks for itself. Joy, a freshman at LaGuardia, was on the 2 train and all she shared was “mormon choir.” That leaves us with a couple questions. How big was the choir? Were they singing? What were they singing? The possibilities are endless! Maybe she should have sung along?

Finally, a story from each of our writers.

I’m Castle Bloodgood and I’m a freshman at the iSchool as well as a member of the iNews module. My subway story begins on a really, really hot day in late August. I was coming back from getting my ID picture taken, and I was sweaty and overheating. I got on the E train and ended up transferring to the 7 for a shorter walk home. When I got on the 7, we were already above ground and these two guys went into the car. They were wearing matching shirts with some initials on them and a dance group name, and one of them was carrying a boombox. When they got to the middle of the car they gave a little speech about love and friendship, and just when I thought that they were going to come around and ask for money then be on their merry way, they both threw their shirts off. They both started dancing on the straight down pole. They went on like that for like 2 or 3 stops, alternating on the poles and running around until they got off. I just think if you have that kind of pole dancing skill, you should really sign up for an agency or something. Call Alvin Ailey immediately!

Hi, I’m Briana Melguizo, also a freshman at the iSchool and a part of the iNews module. My story takes place on a cold day in late February this year. I was on my way to Manhattan to get something to eat. My friend and I got on the Q train, and it was probably one of the most packed trains I have ever been on. I looked to my left and there was a man sitting on the dirty subway floor. This man was wearing a French beret, suspenders, a striped shirt and some tan khaki pants. In his hands is an accordion. To put it all in a picture for you, we’ve got a very French looking man sitting on the floor playing sad songs on his accordion.  It was a gloomy day, and this guy really got the memo. 

Every New Yorker has a crazy subway story. Sometimes they’re a little crazier than others, but you’ve gotta love the consistency. You can always depend on one really weird experience on your subway rides. And even though after reading this article you may never look at Wonder Bread or cans of hotdogs the same way, (if you even looked at a can of hot dogs normally before), we hope you enjoyed the stories.