Beware of the Unmasked with Corona

Yesterday, while riding in the recesses of New York City’s cash-strapped subway system, an unmasked man entered my car at Times Square. He stood out like the proverbial sore thumb. We passengers are—by and large—wearing masks and now face a fifty-dollar fine if caught without one on mass transit. Anyway, this lawbreaker compounded his crime with a second transgression: openly drinking a bottle of beer in public.

Unhappily from where I sat, he plopped down directly opposite me. What had been a relatively quiet journey—without incident or an uncomfortable moment—in the land down under became creepy awkward in a New York minute. The inebriate was on the young side—late twenties, maybe early thirties—and not especially menacing. He was, though, clearly under the influence, which created an unpredictability that I would rather avoid, particularly while in subway car in a tunnel during a pandemic. The man glared my way from time to time and muttered various asides. I tried not to meet his leering drunken stare, but it’s not so easily accomplished when you’re sitting less than six-feet apart. In a snapshot in time when we are regularly importuned to maintain at least that distance as much as physically possible, who needs a loose-canon tippler in droplet range?

Straightaway, I contemplated employing my subway-riding nuclear option: the “Charles Manson Rule,” where I make like a tree and leave. Initially, though, I didn’t think this snookered rider merited such a bold move. And, too, I prayed his ride might be a brief one—assuming, of course, he knew where he was going. And so it went—50th Street, 59th Street, 66th Street—and he’s still sitting directly across from me and getting increasingly chatty and a bit louder, too. When this hammered straphanger emptied out the remaining quarter of his beer on a subway car door beside him, it was definitely time to go. I don’t know where he came from or where he was going, but I hope he made it there safely. Maybe, too, he got doubly fined at some point between my departure and his arriving at said destination. It would have taught him a valuable lesson: Drinking and riding the subway without a mask during the pandemic is most assuredly a no-no.

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All's fare again with mass transit.

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The NYPD on horseback in tranquil Times Square. Such are these non-tranquil times...

It's 2020. Is there an alternative?

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)