Surviving the Subway in Style

3 min readJan 27, 2023

How to deal with the crazies, the homeless, and the guy dropping his new album

Photo by Rodrigo Sümmer on Unsplash… this man is SURVIVING

Cities are great! Overpriced food, lots of noise, too many people…

OK, wait, let’s focus on some of the positives. Cities have great transportation systems right?

Well… sometimes?

But they are one of the best ways to get around cities if you’re visiting and/or car-less. No matter which city you visit, they can be pretty WILD to navigate, so let me drop some knowledge on you on how to survive the subway.

Rule #1: Face Protection

It’s 2023 bro wear your mask! Just kidding I’m not a pro masker or anti masker. Masks are fine, pre pandemic or post pandemic. But what really bites is that a lot of people that ride the subway STINK.

Weed smell, people that haven’t seen the inside of a shower in a decade, or just the classic “I went to the gym, didn’t shower, and am now on the subway” stank that men just love to have about them. (Yes, it’s always men who stink.)

So bring and wear a mask if you want to avoid that smell, maybe with gum or something fragrant i.e. perfume/essential oils to put on the mask.

Rule #2: Ear Protection

Some people just play music out of speakers annoyingly loud.

Some people start rapping or singing spontaneously and they’re 2 feet from you.

Some crazy people will start riffing about how (this is what I heard most recently) “THEY’RE GOING TO KILL YOU, YOU RONALD MCDONALD MOTHERCLUCKER” (but they didn’t say “clucker”). In the case they’re actually dangerous, you might want to see rule #3.

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Bring and wear headphones, even if you don’t want to listen to anything. This will stop some crazy people from trying to talk to you, and keep your head from exploding from the sheer awesomeness of random guy #7’s mixtape. The others crazies still might talk to you, but I’ll get to that in #4.

Rule #3: Stay Near The Edge of Cars and Stay Alert

The alertness part kind of contradicts rule #2 doesn’t it? Well you want to protect your ears, but use your eyes to be aware. And also don’t blast the music, so you can hear when someone is about to go on their drug induced meltdown one seat over.

So my recommendation is to stay alert, and stay near the edge of the car, that way you can easily swap at the next stop. In my experience, crazy people just love staying on the same car, hollering and bashing on stuff.

Rule #4: Be a Lack-of-Eye-Contact Master

The thing crazy people most want is someone to look at them. That means they have a reason to eff up your day.

Well don’t give it to them! Don’t look at people on the subway. Just look out the window or look at your phone or something. But you’ll be surprised how many people are willing to start stuff because you look at them.

Also staring is RUDE.