I had traveled to Colorado from Virginia as a young man. I got off the light rail with a guy I had started a conversation with, a knowledgeable local guy talking about all sorts of stuff. After he followed me onto a bus I realized he was up to something, possibly nefarious. He was an older-ish guy, but smaller than me, so I wasnt worried about that. But sure enough after talking about the bar and drug scene in Denver (thats where I was btw) he offered me some “acid”. Now I figured it was bull shit, and I expressed that to him, but he wanted 40$ for a couple hits he put on a receipt, from a visine bottle… he explained that it was a clevar way to transport liquid acid, which i couldnt disagree with necessarily. Anyhow, it was only visine… but as a short tour guide it was worth it anyway.

Edit: that isnt the “craziest”, maybe, but it was interesting.

Drugs is nothing. Vomit is nothing. I watched a dude drop a duce and thought now that’s something.

One of the first times I took the path train (it’s a light rail in NJ/NYC. Basically another subway line). I sit down, and an older guy in a suit sits down next to me. He’s got like a box in a plastic bag in his lap. No big deal.

This was in like 2002. He didn’t have a cell phone or earphones. Just sitting quietly, waiting for the train to leave.

He started to giggle. Little chuckles. And then escalated to full laughs. It rises and rises until he’s like cackling. And then he calms down, reverses all the way through giggles and back to silence. Never said a word.

I don’t know what was in the box. I didn’t ask. I assume he just got away with a killer heist.

All the people still refusing to do anything but drive massive empty cars by themselves when directly adjacent to and around mass transit.

Entire thread and not one mention of human poop?

Once an old guy asked me to hold the door for him when the train stops so he can stand up and get out. I did but he took very long to stand up so I instinctively went to help him, the door closed and the train went on. So we both excited at the next stop and wanted to get the train back. It was the worst possible stop because the walk was crazy long and the old guy crazy slow. Me being way too helpful, I walked with him and he told me about how his family never visits him anymore and all kinds of trouble in his life, while one train after the other passed by. Eventually we arrived on the other side, got back to the original stop and exited. I escorted him to a taxi. He was very thankful for the adventure and I was a few hours late to work.

A woman jumped while I was waiting for the train at my home station. It wasn’t pretty…

A singing and commentating bus driver! :-)

i had a dude walk up to me and say “never just take unsolicited advice”

possibly the best advice i ever got. total mindfuck though

Waiting for a matatu and one dude starts beating the shit out of another. Two separate times.

Cool dude gets on near Bakersfield, sits next to me, drinks a 12 pack and tells me how he murdered people in prison.

Various people smoking crack, meth, and fety on trains and buses

Dude gets asked to turn his music down, goes on escalating and frankly impressive rant for 10 minutes about how he’s going to cut the guys head clean off with his machete

Various guys jacking off

Various rants against every race

Spent 90% of my life taking public transit and I love it. Big public transit fan and I wish people would intermingle more in general.

But, if you talk loudly or listen to music on the tinny speakers on your phone, you are the scum of the earth in my eyes. I’d rather have a dude strung out on heroin on the train than you, absolutely no hint of sarcasm.

Back when I was in college I road the bus every day. Nothing even remotely as crazy as most of the comments here describing happened that I witnessed on those hundreds of bus rides There was the dude wearing a parka when the heat index was over 100, or the guy weeping holding a bouquet while heading into a residential area and those are honestly not that interesting because shit happens but I do have one story:

One fairly quiet bus ride I was seated in some of the sideways seats near the front and a lady seated across from me was reading a newspaper. My eyes are drifting as I’m listening to a podcast and suddenly I realize on the front of the paper this lady is reading is a photo of my dad. I asked her “excuse me, could I look at that paper quickly? That’s a photo of my dad there and I want to see what he’s been up to to get in the paper but hasn’t told me” and it turns out he helped run a Wikipedia edit-a-thon event at a local library to help encourage new contributors.

Bus driver driving new route didn’t know about a gate. Slammed brakes. Disabled person flew off their wheel chair and landed face first.

And also a lost elderly person wandered onto the bus one time. So I presume happy ending cause driver ended his route to make sure she would be driven back home.

Someone called the bus driver “woman” for being sensitive during an argument so he called the police on them.

Somebody jumped in front of the train. I only caught it out of the corner of my eye and I thought it was a suitcase at first. I couldn’t fathom that it could be a person. I actually got on the train but when it didn’t move it dawned on me what had happened and then someone else confirmed it. Everyone just stared at each other in disbelief and then we all silently excited and went on about our way. Fuck, I completely forgot about that.

Weirdly, when I finally got to my destination there was a nun on a stretcher being rolled out of the building by EMTs. Strange day.