A TALE OF TWO TRAIN TRIPS

You can learn much about a culture via a mundane experience or two.

On the night of March 2, 2020, shortly before the Scamdemic began, I went to an ice hockey game in Newark, New Jersey’s Prudential Center. My favorite team, the New York Islanders, was visiting New Jersey.

That night, I rode a NJ Transit train to Newark, 35 minutes north of my New Brunswick-area home. When I disembarked at Newark’s Penn Station, I traversed Market Street to the arena and, as I often have, bought a $60 ticket from a guy on the sidewalk by handing him a twenty-dollar bill. It’s easy to negotiate when you’re sincerely willing to walk away from a transaction.

A large section of Islanders-logo-wearing fans had visibly and audibly congregated in one slice of the arena. I moved to that area. It was fun to join voices with them and high-five each other when our team prevailed in overtime. It was pleasing to be among other humans, especially in winter, when many people hibernate.

Two weeks after that game, after saying something about some virus, the NHL abruptly terminated its season two months early.

Frozen, but thawed, blood bank samples have shown that this “highly contagious” virus was circulating in the US for at least three months before the panic began in March 2020. Life had gone on as usual between November 2019 and February 2020. Yet, death rates didn’t “spike” until March, after officials announced a crisis.

Hmmm…

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When the following hockey season belatedly began in mid-January, 2021, Newark’s Mayor ordered all arena entrants to wear masks and show vaxx cards: initially, for one shot; two months later, for two shots. I resolved to forgo any experience or spend time with any individual who required me to mask or inject.

It bothered me that those who masked and injected were so easily bought off by the threat of being excluded from a setting or a social group. They didn’t recognize their power to say “No.” They didn’t see that authorities couldn’t sustain any of the Covid charade without public compliance. As was Adlai Stevenson when questioning Khruschev during the Cuban Missile Crisis, I was, as with other transactions, like buying a ticket, willing to “wait until Hell freezes over” before I would give in.

—

Over a year later, on March 3, 2022, the Prudential Center dropped its mask and vaxx card requirement. The shots had predictably failed to “stop infection and spread,” as had been guaranteed. Remember those silly decrees requiring bistro patrons or 16,000 sports spectators to keep their masks up “unless actively eating or drinking,” whatever that meant. As if viruses didn’t spread during bites or sips. Or with leaky masks up.

During the Scamdemic, how stupid did the pols and bureaucrats think people were? It turned out that many people were plenty stupid. While continuing to justify and defend the lockdowns, masks, tests and shots, many still are.

Hockey—and football and basketball—fan groups are subcultures. Basking in players’ reflected toughness, fans consider themselves badasses. Many are profane and irreverent. During the Vaxx/Mask Era, I wondered how these people could look themselves in the mirror and say, “I take no shit,” before wearing face diapers and submitting to experimental shots to prevent a cold. Imagine fans agreeing to wear clown costumes; mask/vaxx compliance was on that order.

I also wondered why pro athletes succumbed to injection mandates. Yes, the players stood to lose some big paychecks. But presumably they have more money in the bank than do striking coal miners. They also have irreplaceable skill sets. They could have said, “We’re well-conditioned young men at no risk from this virus. We don’t let people in suits push us around. Call us when you want to talk reason.”

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On April 15, 2024, I traveled by train to Newark to see another Islanders game for the first time since March, 2020. The 2024 weather was perfect: sunny, breezy, 70-degree twilight. Although the train picked me up on-time in New Brunswick, it lost power ten minutes later. On the intercom, a conductor repeatedly announced that we’d “be moving shortly.” This was false. The trip took an hour-and-forty minutes, instead of the usual forty. I was still in time for the game, though with a much smaller margin than if the train had been on time. I like to watch the players skate in warm-ups.

However, after walking to the arena, there were not, as there had historically been, any Newark men on the busy sidewalks, vending tickets. Though it was concealed by a live, cover-playing rock band, the underlying ticket-hawking silence was eerie. After unsuccessfully seeking a seller for five minutes, I approached an unimposing security guard and asked her where the guys who sold tickets were. She smirked and said, “No one does that anymore. All the tickets are on peoples’ phones.”

This new arrangement wouldn’t work for me. I don’t carry a phone.

She said the team sold tickets at a window inside a separate door to the arena, to which she directed me. One ticket cost $230. This was also not going to happen.

My ticket buying effort was another sign that the cash economy is fading. When even the most basic transactions are conducted by phone, and surveillance cameras are ubiquitous, central bank digital currencies and social credit scores can’t be far away. The NFL just announced that all 32 teams will use facial recognition software on every fan who enters their stadia this season.

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Having failed to procure a hockey ticket, I walked back to Newark’s Penn Station. There, I found many hundreds of people who, instead of characteristically hustling for trains or buses, were just standing around. The arrival/departure board said that service had been suspended on all southbound trains, like mine.

Knowing my pre-Scamdemic transit options, I took the train into Manhattan, eight miles in the opposite direction from my house. Once there, I walked eight blocks from the train station to the bus station, from which I used to be able to ride to New Brunswick. Instead, I found my bus line’s ticket window papered over, suggesting that this line had gone out of business because during and after the Scamdemic, fewer people commuted to the city for work.

Thus, I walked back down to the train station, which was still thronged because of the “downed wires.” After another hour delay, I boarded a packed, standing room train and headed back to New Brunswick. The train balkily proceeded south for ninety minutes until stopping a mile past Rahway in the darkness. This trip normally takes one-third as long.

All of the passengers sat in that metal box for two more hours. Every three minutes, the same conductor made the exact same, twenty-second, intercom announcement about downed wires and said that we’d be moving as soon as they were signaled to proceed. I had brought with me, though was not really enjoying, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. As night surrounded us, Marlow’s slow boat was moving up the jungle river faster than we were moving down a supposedly high-speed rail line. Unlike our trip, the boat took a scenic route in the open air. Though as far as I know, no one on the train died.

Eventually, I had to take a whiz and the train’s only restroom was locked. Between the patronizing repeat announcements and the overall dysfunction, I lost my patience, arose from my seat, walked up to a cluster of conductors and loudly expressed my dissatisfaction, especially re: the announcements. I told them they were pointlessly annoying people and needed to stop doing so, though not exactly in those words.

One said he was waiting, just like I was. I replied, again loudly, “You get paid by the hour. You’re making overtime while you wait. For the rest of us, this just sucks.”

He didn’t deny the overtime part. Among other things, I added that riding NJ Transit felt like living in a Third World country, but with higher prices.

We went nowhere. But at least they ceased their announcements.

The whole while, no other passenger said a word. They sat passively, swiping their phones. As during the lockdowns and closures, most tolerated idleness because their screens pacified them. While New Jerseyans can be very rude, they, like most Americans, are too timid to confront authority.

After midnight, the train actually backed up a mile to Rahway. Though eight stops and forty miles remained south of that station, the crew scuttled the train and discharged hundreds of passengers into the darkness. Rahway is fourteen miles from my house. With no phone, I had no obvious way to get home. I figured I’d sleep on the sidewalk or try to. When I was younger, I had done this a few times; stuff happens. But I wasn’t looking forward to overnighting on concrete again.

Adapting, the stranded passengers began to yell out for others about sharing Ubers to various destinations. I joined a nose-ringed young male and another with blue hair trying to go to New Brunswick. After another half hour, our driver showed up. We got to New Brunswick at 1 AM. I paid my $30 share and walked home, having wasted eight hours and $50. But what’s $50 these days?

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I seldom listen to or watch the news. On the few occasions I’ve done so over the past four months, there have been multiple stories about NJ Transit trains breaking down and stranding thousands of people for hours. The reporters note that these breakdowns are common.

When stranded passengers complain, on the NJ Transit webpage, about the delays, they get a bland, passively-voiced, form apology. Transit officials and lockdown politicians don’t care if you stand in stations or platforms or sit on trains for hours. Like Scamdemic Era bureaucrats and politicians, they’re paid well, regardless.

NJ Transit sources repeatedly blame “downed wires” or other “equipment failures” for the delays. In turn, these officials blame these maintenance problems on revenue shortfalls. They say they have less money because, during 2020-2022, many fewer passengers rode the trains. During Peak Coronamania, I rode 1500-plus-person-seat trains with ten others passengers. Buses that fit 60 people often had three or fewer.

While ridership has gradually rebounded in the past three years, it remains lower than pre-2020 because people who used to commute to their jobs now “work from home.” So of course, NJ Transit is short on revenue. When NJ Transit officials and passengers supported stay-at-home orders and when, thereafter, the city’s many business closures made the city unworth the trip, what did officials and riders think would happen?

In order to address this dollar shortfall, NJ Transit announced that it’s raising fares 15% this year, followed by a series of 3% increases every year thereafter. These increases, and the continuing breakdowns, will discourage people from taking the train. Many riders have below-median incomes. Thus, the fare increases will land hardest on the people that Democrat politicians who decreed and enforced the lockdowns profess to care about.

Repeated transit meltdowns and other government funding deficits are yet another Scamdemic legacy. But during the Scamdemic, the “experts” and politicians had to pretend they were Public Health saviors. And that all of the disruption was “worth it, if it just saved one life.”

As if it were ever about that. Or that it worked.