Last week on the el a (half Indian half black?) (mid-20s) girl with knee-high boots with leather fringes and a black purse with shiny metal spike studs sat down next to me, chit-chatting on her iPhone.
In the new style of subway cars, most people face each other, but we had gotten one of the new seats by the doors that face forward.
"Oh I love this," she was like after she hung up, stretching out her feet forward into the empty space in front of us. "So roomy!"
We then started talking about the new style of cars, and she said that when they had first debuted, she was going through a tunnel that we had just gone through and the cars were rocking, and the tunnel was actually scraping the metal exterior of the car she was in.
"There was sparks and everything, and you could see it, and you don't think it takes long to get above ground from that tunnel, but they were going slow and it took forever, and then there was smoke and the smoke started filling the car! We all got up and ran to one end of the car and we call the conductor, and then he goes on the intercom and says, 'Smoking is not permitted in [acronym of the city's public transportation agency] vehicles,' and we call him right back and say, 'No, we're not smoking, the car is smoking!'"
She then said that the sparks and flames and smoke stopped once they got out of the tunnel and the conductor got out to inspect the car at the next stop, but by then nothing was wrong.
A few minutes later, when she got gum out for herself, I asked for a piece, and she gave it to me.
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