New York has its fair share of weirdoes and crazies and over the last few weeks I’ve somehow witnessed their activities more than normal…

Firstly I experienced the ranting and raving of a woman in one of the lifts/elevators in my office building when she became immensely agitated at another woman’s use of her mobile phone – although I’m not a particular fan of people having their phone conversations in enclosed public spaces it’s not something that I’d start shouting at someone about – clearly this woman didn’t share my opinions as she certainly made her views clear in rather dramatic fashion…

Secondly, on the subway, coming back from work this week, I very nearly witnessed a fight between two people struggling to fit into the same space in the subway carriage. I didn’t hear the beginning of the encounter but I gathered that the first man had made some comment about the second guy pushing into his space. Clearly this infuriated the second man as he flew into an absolute rage, shouting at the top of his voice about how he would knock his adversary to the floor if he dared to touch him. From looking around most of the other people in the carriage were bracing themselves to either quickly move away from, or attempt to intercept, the seemingly inevitable clash. Fortunately the first man seemingly became rather intimated and the encounter never became the battle it seemed to be heading toward. It was one of those slightly intimidating, yet rather exciting moments!

Another bizarre encounter also occurred on the subway whilst I was travelling downtown on an errand for work. I’d taken a seat next to a seemingly ordinary guy, but after a few seconds I realised that this man was having his own dramatically personal rave. This wasn’t just the subtle rave that some people have when they forget their public surroundings, but instead this was a head banging, thigh slapping, foot stomping, body rocking rave. I was slightly concerned that he might jump up at any moment and start dancing across the carriage, but he fortunately retained his seat, and instead gave me a few minutes of bizarre entertainment before I disembarked and left him to his own spectacular devices.

Finally, when I was walking around during my lunch break today I was waiting at a pedestrian crossing when, out of nowhere, and without any explanation, a man appeared, riding a unicycle, clothed in a head to foot pink lycra suit. He rode across and proceeded to grab onto the pole of a road-sign which he then started twirling around. Perhaps he was part of some stunt; although I couldn’t see any evidence that this could be the case...maybe then he was just doing it for the thrill of it…either way it made a fairly average lunch break a little more intriguing.

Moving away from crazy people I went to a particularly good bar last night. It was a fairly standard bar in terms of drinks etc, but what made it hit the high notes was the fact that with every pint you bought you got a free personal pizza…no joke. The pints weren’t that expensive either; $5, which is good/average for New York. Normally I’m happy to eat my way into oblivion but when, with every drink, you got given a decent size pizza, it became a bit of a battle, especially when I finished off a couple of my friends’ pizzas as well…I was slightly concerned that I wouldn’t fit back through the door. Admittedly they weren’t the best pizzas I’d ever had, but the fact that they were free instantly made them taste a thousand times better. I also heard from a friend that there’s a bar in Times Square that operates a similar system, but with hot dogs rather than pizza…a visit is inevitable.

Last Sunday I found myself watching some of the NYC marathon. Bizarrely enough the race went past my apartment building so it was fairly easy so watch the action progress. What wasn’t so great was the block of porta-loos that were dumped outside our building to aide the passing runners and spectators! But that aside it was good fun watching the race progress. Seeing the professionals go past was exciting but what was probably more enjoyable was watching the main race and seeing the random assortment of people try their best to keep going. A couple of highlights included a man juggling whilst running (whether he kept this going for the whole race is open to debate) and a man wearing what appeared to be a female swimming costume who was running whilst smoking a cigar – certainly an interesting combination…
I should also mention a concert I went to a while back with a band I’d only just heard of – the Avett Brothers. One of my friends mentioned how good they were, so after listening to their youtube offerings I decided to go head along and see whether the hype was justified. Basically they were spectacular. Their music was top quality, but what really made it was the absolute energy they dedicated to their performance – you couldn’t help but be taken in by the awesomeness of it all. For a band that I’d only known for a few days they really impressed.