Professor Psycho

There is a feeling that everyone who takes public transportation is familiar with. It's not limited to the New York Subway system; I've experienced it on SF Muni, the London tube and even BART. You push your way in through the sliding doors, you glance around and, what luck, there's still an open seat. You sit down, pull out your book and begin to read. Then, as the man next to you starts to yell, or shake, or pour baby powder in his hair, you get the feeling. The, "Fuck, I sat next to one of the crazies" feeling.

This morning I sat next to an expert New York historian. He was chalk full of New York facts - the origins of subway stop names, the history of Coney Island - and he opted to spend the entire 30 minute ride into the city lecturing our subway car. It was actually sort of interesting and I might have appreciated the education had he not been yelling directly into my right ear.

"When the early Dutch settlers first came to Coney Island,” he boomed. “It was overrun by rabbits. Thus they named it, Conyne, the Dutch word for rabbit, the English later shortened it to ‘Coney.’”

He would be silent for five minutes and then start up again, “It's a common misconception that Union Square is named for labor unions, but was actually created in the early 19th century by the important and historic intersection of Broadway and the Bowery. For all you people that just got on the train at Union Square, remember, it was named for the intersection of Broadway and the Bowery back in the early 19th century."

When I arrived at work this morning, I looked up a number of his musings on Wikipedia. Apparently, everything he said was true and historically accurate. How does someone so well-educated wind up a crazy person spouting random facts on the subway?