Video: Racist Ranters And Knives Don't Faze SI Bus Riders

Garth Johnston

Published Aug 11, 2011

Modified Aug 12, 2011

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Garth Johnston

Published Aug 11, 2011

Modified Aug 12, 2011

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If there is one thing most New Yorkers are quite good at it is ignoring the crazies on the MTA. But not everyone is willing to just ignore a ranter! Some people carry knives. Like the fed up man in this video, shot mid-argument on the S46, who went and pulled out his knife:

Unfortunately the video starts well into the fight and ends before anything really crazy happens (besides, y'know, a knife being pulled), but here's how the videographer, Stefhen Bryan, described the scene to us:

The incident began when the black guy started going on about his hate for light skinned black people, latinos and "crackers." He then turned his aggressions directly to the white guy. It was amazing that nobody reacted when he pulled the knife. It was as though it was a normal occurrence, one observed everynight coming home from work. The driver did not see the knife. Soon there after, the white guy was preparing to disembark and by then, my memory card had run out. I spoke to him and told him to ignore the black guy, as he may have been drunk, high, or just plain mentally ill. We (the white guy, me and my wife—the asian woman in the video) all got off at the same stop. He appeared to be a very nice human being, who was riled by an irrational, or unstable individual. The black guy was still talking shit even after the white guy got off the bus. But I managed to calm the white guy down and made him realize it was better to ignore the black guy.

And it is probably a good thing he talked the white guy down, since otherwise this post could have been much more grim (and given Nike another reason to ignore Staten Island).

Meanwhile, in case you were curious, Bryan was in town to promote his new book Black Passenger Yellow Cabs: Of Exile And Excess In Japan, the interesting sounding story of his "incredible journey from a childhood of third-world poverty to an adulthood of sexual addiction in the Land of the Rising Sun."

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Garth Johnston

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