August 31. 2007 FIGHT NIGHT!!!

8/31/07 THIS WAS ONE WILD NIGHT ON PUBLIC TRANSIT HERE IN CHICAGO. I'M GLAD THAT I RETURNED HOME UNSCATHED AND IN ONE PIECE.

SB Green Line train. I am riding to Ashland/63rd to go to my home on 69th Street after checking out the Cobra Lounge rock club in the Near West Side neighborhood. It has been a quiet, calm ride from Ashland/Lake to Halsted, but as the train is approaching the Halsted stop, a fight between two pre-teen boys breaks out on board. One of them, runs off the train with the other right behind him, falling onto the station platform, and the fight continues from there. One of them somehow throws a Ziploc bag containing something wrapped in white paper back onto the train. Passengers, me excluded, watch the fight, and even the train driver stops to watch the fight! When the fight ends, he closes the doors and then the train pulls off to Ashland/63rd.

LATER
SB #9 Ashland bus I am about to board this bus which I found sitting at the Green Line stop to get to 69th Street and home, but an obese man who was already on board and was put off by the driver for punching someone on the bus, gets back on the bus and punches the driver! Drama goes on once more! As passengers intervene to make him stop being so violent, an empty wheelchair goes flying out the rear door of the bus and lands upright onto the ground! The man who started all of the mayhem gets off the bus and leaves the vicinity, but the driver tells everyone that the bus isn't going anywhere because he has to call the police.

A woman on board the bus says to another that she just got off a Red Line train in which six teens got into a hysterical fight on board. I surely was jubilant when another #9 Ashland bu arrived. I returned home safe and sound, and in one piece, unscathed, after all of the Friday night madness.