hustlers

Last time I stepped off a Greyhound in New York City a guy came out of nowhere and grabbed my bags just as I was about to pick them up off the side walk. “Where you headed sir?”. As soon as it happened I knew that I was going to be fleeced. Before I could say ‘Boston’, the guy had taken off into the terminal with my backpack. As I followed him, I desperately scanned for a Greyhound insignia on his clothing. Nothing. He was just some Average Joe hustling for cash. Sure enough, he didn’t put my bag down at the connecting gate until I’d slipped some Greenbacks into his free hand.

I’d just stepped off the bus with the wet seat and the purple perm lady. My friend Joel and I were changing buses in New York for Boston where we’d spend a few days before return for a week in NYC. It was four in the morning, I was unwell and I was groggy from a crappy sleep. Basically I didn’t have any fight in me.

This time around, I arrived in very similar circumstances, on a packed bus in the early hours of the morning, however this time I came from Philadelphia and, thankfully, my seat was dry. Sure enough, the hustlers were waiting for me when I stepped off the bus, a pack of them this time. No one had time to pick up my bag. I dummied, giving no indication of ownership until the last second, which made the protective lunge at my backpack look a bit over the top.

As I walked away I saw the not-so-lucky-ones being escorted away and held ransom. I walked through the terminal and onto an escalator which spat me straight on to 34th St which is in the heart of tourist New York, near the Empire State Building and Times Square.

As I hit the street I had the same feeling that I always have when I arrive in New York City. It’s like I’m inwardly beaming, almost to the point of not being able to contain it. There’s an urge to stop, look up and stare at the skyscrapers, yet I’m always aware of not being too obvious.

The hangover from the red-eye Greyhound always disappears immediately. Interestingly, on each of the three occasions that I have arrived in New York by bus, it has been on a red-eye. Each time, I have been asleep when the bus arrives which has created the surreal scenario by which most of my initial encounters with the city have been in an underground concrete parking lot. The upside of this scenario is the big entrance that you make when you get to the top of the escalator; you’re suddenly in the heart of the place but you have no recollection of actually arriving there.

Anyway, slightly pumped up by my evasion of the hustlers, I felt like I was on a roll and I wasn’t going to let some dodgy cabbie drive me around town a few times before dropping me at my hostel (completely irrational). I saddled up and walked up 6th Ave to Times Square and into the Subway.