I Hate DeCamp

I Have a Date With a Pretty Lady on May 22!

I know because this ad in the bus station promised me.

Seriously, what is it with casino advertising? You might think the promise of gambling alone would be enough to lure the addicts, dead-enders, and sad old people who constitute the majority of any casino's customer base. But no. Instead, casino operators strain to create an image of a Life Style that effervesces with Class, Glamour, and Sophistication -- which, translated into the language of advertising, means easy sex with prostitutes.

Dinner and a Movie

Date night? Friends visiting from out of town? Here's a tip: as a shopping and dining destination, Port Authority and environs are getting classier practically by the minute. Newcomers DVD Lingerie and 2 Bros. Pizza are already being referred to by the Hell's Kitchen smart set as "the Barneys and La Goulue of Ninth Avenue."

Watch out, Time Warner Center!

Empty Statement Is Delivered With Emphasis!

(Port Authority, Ninth Avenue and 40th St.)

A Damning Indictment of an Entire Nation

Today the Times features a profile of Joe Manniello, Port Authority barber, as part of its "One in 8 Million" series.

I've never been to Switzerland, where Mr. Manniello once lived, but it must be a pretty awful place. "I didn't stay long in Switzerland because I didn't like the Swiss people too much," he says.

He has been cutting hair in the Port Authority for the last 36 years.

Would You Like to Come Up and See My Sketches?

"I call this one Junkie No. 3."

The View From My Window

Port Authority, 9:45 AM.

(Apologies to Andrew Sullivan.)

The Audacity of Dope

Last night I saw something you rarely see: a DeCamp driver too stunned to take full advantage of an opportunity to be rude to a customer.

A soft-spoken young man, clearly not at ease with the English language, boards the 66 at Port Authority. He's trying to communicate something to the driver, but it's not getting across. I hear the would-be rider say something about "my first time." The script starts to play out as it always does in these situations. The driver's voice rises until he is bellowing at the guy: "Where are you going! WHERE ARE YOU GOING!" as if through sheer volume he's going to break through all barriers of language and culture that separate them. Giving up hope of ever getting through to the guy, or perhaps just tired of shouting, the driver, supremely annoyed, calls out to the rest of the bus, "Can someone please sell this gentleman a ticket?" and pulls back from the gate. 

Multiple people offer to sell the guy a ticket. Various exchanges follow. But somehow the transaction is not completed. He's wandering the aisle, proffering his money to anyone who will acknowledge him, even as the bus careers into the tunnel. Finally the driver yells, "What's going on? WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM, MAN?"

A passenger, not the man in question, replies, "He needs change." Driver: "Change?" Passenger: "Uh, for a hundred-dollar bill."

At this point I'm expecting the driver to slam on the brakes and throw the guy out a window, but something odd happens. The driver sputters. He stammers. He stutters. I imagine little flecks of spit forming on the windshield. He is so astonished by this guy's colossal ignorance--innocent ignorance, to be sure, but ignorance nonetheless; I mean, people just don't do this sort of thing on a DeCamp bus--that he cannot get out whatever insult or expletive that is caroming around his mouth. His speech has been rendered as useless as that of the bewildered foreigner.

At last, the driver heaves a big sigh, as if to say, "I'm done. I don't care anymore what happens here." Someone gives the guy a ticket, free. Everyone's relieved. And then foreign guy makes his way to the last unoccupied seat on the bus--only to find it occupied by a giant suitcase whose owner is unwilling to move it.

The Nerve Center

During the Monday evening rush, a DeCamp dispatcher or bus handler or whatever you call them uses a pay phone to -- I'm not kidding here -- locate a missing bus.

Choice quote: "What do you mean he's somewhere on Grove Street? The guy who left 10 minutes after he did is here already."

What Do the Port Authority Police Do?

Sure, we know they're good for directions to Jamba Juice, but do the Port Authority police ever do any, you know, policing?

During the Friday evening rush, the bus station resembled nothing so much as a bum convention in full swing: ranting lunatics shouting their apocalyptic visions of doom or lotto picks or whatever at passersby, winos listing to and fro, a catatonic sprawled in the Ninth Avenue and 41st Street vestibule. Waiting on line at the ticket window, I was hit up by a panhandler, as the second coming of the Manson Family lurked uncomfortably close by, on the ticket line without being of it.

Is it too much to ask not to have to run this gauntlet--that's not a metaphor--just to get to and from work every day?

What's Wrong With This Picture (Aside From the Image Quality)?

A.) It's 6:45 PM, yet the 6:40 66 has yet to arrive at its designated gate (412).
B.) Ten minutes prior, a bus pulled into Gate 412, leading everyone waiting on this massive line to believe they would mercifully soon be boarding the 6:40 66 and beginning their weekend. Then the bus abruptly  backed out of 412, pulled into the neighboring gate, and sat there doing nothing. Perhaps you can see it sitting there at Gate 413, idle, as it still was when the 66 finally arrived a few minutes later.
C.) No one from DeCamp is making any effort to explain to its curious and, let's say, concerned customers why their bus is late, when they might expect it to show up, or why there is a perfectly functioning  bus napping at Gate 413 instead of doing something useful--like picking up passengers, just for example.
D.) All of the above.