Thanks to the generosity of John B, the author of the Find a Metro DC [iTunes], we’ve got five application codes to give away for his iPhone app. I’ve decided to do it in three parts. The first contest will start right now and run 24 hours. At the end of it we’ll give away one code. Then we’ll do another one for another 24 hours and another code. Friday we’ll give away three more codes – one more random selection as well as the two winning story entries.
So that’s the contest? The bare minimum you have to do is post a comment here – you can just say “gimmie” if you want, just make sure you enter a valid email address for us to contact you if you win. That puts your name in the hat for the day’s random drawing as well as Friday’s random pick.
If you want a shot at the “bonus round” then just tell us your best mass transit story. You can do one in each theme.
Today’s theme is funny. What’s the most amusing thing that you’ve seen on the Metro or a bus? Circulator and Fairfax buses are fair game too.
UPDATE And we have a winner! Random.org, given a choice between 1 and 32, spat up the number 16. Congratulations Cia, I’ll be emailing you the code shortly. The additional random pick and story pick will happen Friday and be announced in their own post.
Well I used to say something in my profile about not quite being a “tinker, tailor, soldier, or spy” but Tom stole that for our about us page, so I guess I’ll have to find another way to express that I am a man of many interests.
Hmm, guess I just did.
My tastes run the gamut from sophomoric to Shakespeare and in my “professional” life I’ve sold things, served beer, written software, and carried heavy objects… sometimes at the same place. It’s that range of loves and activities that makes it so easy for me to love DC – we’ve got it all.
Throwing my hat in because I lost my Metro app when I had to return a perfectly working iPhone to AT&T in order to replace it with a perfectly working iPhone because AT&T is absolutely insane.
And also because I want to see if there is a Metro app that has better data than the other ones. I would imagine that if they took the WMATA data and added about 20%, it’d be way more accurate ;)
gimmmeeee those digits. hah
amusing? i pretty much only see disgusting things on the metro.
once i was riding a packed car home and this crazy guy gets on and starts to complain about the government and how they dont do nothin’ for the homeless. everyone looks around and is trying to avoid him.
oh, and when people get stuck in the doors. (thankfully, i haven’t gotten stuck in the doors yet since i have a fear of things closing on me)
I could def use a good metro app. Thanks!
I’d like an app for that!
Not a funny ha ha story, but I was once standing on a semi-packed train (right after a bus unloading at Vienna), headed into the city. A friend of mine had found a seat, so I stood next to him and chattered about video games and news and such. I’m hardly the only one talking, and I thought I could barely be heard over the train itself.
Five rows up, a woman turns around and says, “Excuse me… could you keep it down?” then goes back to texting. All I could think was, “Lady, what are you doing on public transit at all?”
I’ve seen a lot of things on the metro, but I once saw a pile of money on the ground at Tenleytown and there was a kid who saw it too and he just dove down on the ground to grab it like he was stealing a base in a baseball game.
People playing musical chairs.
One time a rather unstable fellow came on to the Metro with a handheld shopping cart full of bags and foul-smelling clothing. He dropped a big plastic carton of yogurt on the floor which smashed open and rolled all around the train. So much for the no food policy.
Also, before I lived here, I was visiting for the millenial New Years. I’m on the Metro at about 9pm – 3 hours before the start of a new millenium for chrissakes – and it may as well have been 8:15am on a Tuesday morning. People with briefcases, no joke. I’m from Boston and get rather extroverted on New Years – and I say “Does anyone in this town know how to have fun?! It’s New Years!” Some snot-nosed kid around 10 says “Shut up.” All the adults giggle in tacit support. I was like “mental note: never move to this town.”
Yesterday, the Metro car was completely quiet, except for a really tiny kid (like 2-3 yrs old) singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” After about 30 seconds, the whole car started laughing. Adorable.
I’ll take it
gimmie!
One day I was riding the 30 bus down Wisconsin to work and a lady got on with birds in a cage. She was obviously a little wacky, too, talking to the birds about how they were going to get their beaks trimmed and how nice they’d look.
However, what really blew my mind (unreformed New Yorker) is all the OTHER people on the bus who were talking to her about her parakeets!
Gimmie!
Official entry.
Funny? Don’t know.
Gross? The very first time my boyfriend came to visit, he’d been in the city all of five minutes when we got on the Metro. And a woman puked. On him.
Transit – Vote with your feet.
Was on metro mid afternoon on a work day, most seats full, not packed. Was sitting in the seats near the doors that face forward, right next to the seats that face into the center of the car. Two women were sitting in the facing the center of the car seat, so I was pretty close to them. They were playing with an IPhone, looking at VERY close up photos of… vaginas. I think maybe the photos were of each other’s vaginas. Then heavy make out session started, with one sitting in the other’s lap and feeling each other up.
WOAH.
When they left the train, there was much giggling. :)
Gimmie.
So back to my first year of college, in 89, my friends used to go thrift shopping a lot. The #1 place to go was Value Village, near the Rhode Island Metro stop (It’s now an auto parts store). For those that remember, it was best thrift store in the city. And yes, 1989, so it wasn’t your friendly RI Ave as we know it today, in fact quite the opposite.
Anyway, this one trip, my buddy had on lobster pants. Not pants in which to catch lobsters, rather white denim jeans with bright big red lobsters all on them. There’s four of us, and amongst the bad clothes we get a lamp, and a full dining room table, complete with four chairs, because there’s nothing a college dorm room needs more than a full dining room set.
Well we head back to the metro, roughly 4pm, and have to carry everything under the tunnel there by R.I. Avenue (which at the time had just been written up by the city paper as one the most dangerous places in the district, in what was at the time the murder capital of the world).
We get to the metro, and ask the attendant if we can take all this back on the metro. (Important DC life lesson learned at that moment, never ask, just do, especially in the Barry era). Life long DC metro station attendant looks at us like *we’re* on crack. No, need to wait until rush hour ends. RI Ave metro is also a major bus terminal. It’s very very busy during rush hour. OK fine, 3+ hours to kill.
So we set the table up, outside the turnstile entrance, place all four the chairs and start going through our purchased booty. Two of us run back to grab McDonalds, and we proceed to have full dinner, at the table, sitting outside the metro, as tons of people rushed around us. 4 skinny naive little white kids, lobster pants and all.
Welcome to DC!
oh, sorry, I don’t have an iPhone, so don’t consider me, just sharing my story.
Enjoy!
Gimme! Also…
Once, I was on a bus going downtown around 10 am on a Sunday morning. There was a guy on his phone, explaning Very Loudly about his last fight with his girlfriend, and his stint in rehab, etc.
Cut to four hours later: on a bus going back home. At the next stop, the same guy gets on the bus, again on the phone. The conversation seemed to pick up EXACTLY where I’d stopped hearing it earlier. Either he was very long-winded or a brilliant performance artist.
The most amusing so far was a guy that was singing Michael Jackson songs in between mumbling incoherently and crying about his death. As well as amusing it was a little creepy.
Man, the best story comes from a guy without an iPhone? There’s no way I’m topping that. Also…gimme!
I <3 WMATA
The funniest thing I’ve seen on metro?
“Bust A Move Guy”
http://www.wtfmetro.com/2009/01/metroman-special-bust-move-guy.html
I’ve ridden the metro a bzillion times and have never seen anything really funny. I’ve lost some faith in humanity several times, but that’s not funny. Gimme.
metrolicious!!!
Saw a woman arguing with a young man who carried his coffee onto the metro train. While I also believe in keeping the metro clean, it was more than amusing when she started physically trying to remove him from the train at the next stop.
is this just for Iphones?? is there a find a metro app for blackberries?
Woo!
During the holidays last year, a man was on the Blue line to Largo doing a version of bar trivia, but all Christmas/Jesus related. He was giving out dollars for correct answers. Kinda cool, until I realized he was trying to save my soul.
I gave him back his dollar.
X2: Woman gets on at one stop, leads the whole bus in a prayer to Jesus for safe travels and gets off at the next. Does she do this for every bus?
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Gimme
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