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Remember how a few years ago a 19-year-old girl climbed down onto the subway tracks to get her phone and got killed by an oncoming V train? It seems the lesson still hasn’t been learned and commuters are still risking their lives to retrieve dropped objects: Tourist Bijan Rezvani recently explained his reasons for venturing down there to collect his precious iPhone.
It's the first time I've had a cool phone that does anything and also the first time I've gone around taking photos of things in my life, so the stuff I had captured was kind of important for me to keep.
More important than keeping his life, apparently. Rezvani survived the mission, obviously, and his story joins a long line of phone rescue nightmares, like the legendary guy who, to retrieve his phone, stuck his arm so deep in a train toilet he got stuck. (It took the jaws of life to get him out and the phone was never found.) It makes us wonder where a phone has to be for someone to not try to get it back.
And when it comes to climbing down on onto subway tracks, keep in mind it’s not just the speeding train you have to worry about, but also the third rail, rat bites and risk of arrest. LAPTOP magazine, who interviewed Rezvani, compiled a list of gadgets they’d be willing to risk death to recover from the subway, like the Nintendo DS and the iPod Nano.
We’ve done some soul searching and are hard pressed to come up with any gadget so indispensable that we’d risk death for it. What about you – is there anything you’d tempt fate to get back from the subway tracks?
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I would have done the same thing for my iphone. Of course I would probably call the A-Team to help me out with that one.
is it an urban legend that an MTA employee will actually go down into the tracks for you and retrieve a lost item?
Wallet. I never thought it would happen to me but I dropped my wallet onto the tracks once. The booth operator was wholly unhelpful ("We requested a maintenance service, but it could take them 3-6 hours to respond"...gee thanks). Luckily one of those garbage pickup trains was passing through on the other side and I waved one of the guys down. He jumped down and got it for me. Saved my ass, couldn't thank him enough.
i once dropped a book & would have gotten it myself but i didn't want to get arrested for being a terror suspect so i told the token guy & he had a cleaning dude use a dustpan on a long handle to scoop it up.
a worker got my phone out of the tracks at the 14th street L platform. nice one!
Once a guy bumped my wife's foot and she dropped her shoe! This was on the LIRR, and unfortunately we couldn't wait for the next train, so we left the shoe there (a cheap sandal...) And the f**cking asshole just said sorry and didn't offer to pay for her shoe!
I would pay a mexican to get it for me. "SI SENOR!"
I dropped my phone on the tracks four or five years ago at the Grand Central subway station. I went to the booth operator and she called a maintenance guy, after looking me in the eyes and just saying "another one". He came by fifteen to twenty minutes later with one of those long poles with a trigger that picks things up.
What the fuck, you people? I've been on the tracks at least twice before--can't remember exactly--to retrieve shit a whole lot less precious to me than a fucking iPhone, and it never occurred to me until seeing this post that I was some sort of death-defying action fiend. If you can't scale a three-foot ledge back up to the platform with a few seconds notice, maybe you should move back to Wyoming, you lazy cows.
About 16-17 years ago I bought a ten-pack of tokens and went down to the platform of Atlantic Ave. While leaning over looking for the early morning train, the little plastic bag full of tokens fell out of my breast pocket. I just jumped down onto the tracks without thinking and grabbed the bag before I even noticed that there was no way back up. A very nice man yanked me up by both my arms just before the train's lights could be seen in the distance. It was a very scary moment and I'm quite sure that I would never repeat it again.
Once, about ten years ago, had a camera lens fall out of my bag onto the tracks exiting the train. Since this was on the Staten Island Railway, that meant no token booths, but since it is more like a commuter railroad the trains run on a schedule.
The going down is the easy part, while the getting back up is a the hard part. I somehow pulled myself up to the platform from the tracks.
A couple weeks ago I had a lens cap pop off the camera as I was getting off of a subway train. It fell to the tracks and I just said to hell with it and left it. I am not rising my life for something that costs that little.
A couple of months ago, I was at nassau ave. walking down the platform, my blackberry popped out from the holster and fell to the tracks. I walked past when i came into the station, So not wanting to get arrested for just jumping into the tracks, I goto him and ask what can be done. He comes back to where i dropped it," Maintance can send someone but that might take a few hours, and I can't go down there i'm to short" he said. Me being 6`3, looked at him and said Can I do it? I'm tall. So he says "I can't tell you to go down and get it. But if you do go down, I won't see it." So after thinking for 5 secs I figured he wouldn't arrest me. So i jumped down 5 seconds later back up to safety.
I don't have enough upper body strength.
it looks more than three feet, more like counter height to me.
but if you're not alone and have help, that's a different story.
see here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/nyregion/thecity/12ipod.html
Provided there's no incoming train, I would offer a "reward" to a homeless guy or mendicant who wouldn't mind retrieving my phone through the sludge. This is ethical, no?
I dropped my iPod on the R/W tracks at 8th Street once. The token booth guy called in a couple of track workers with one of those long grab pole things who were quick, polite, and wouldn't take the money I offered them.
Admittedly if it'd been Penn Station at 5pm I probably would've been screwed, but other than that why fuck around?
What the fuck, you people? I've been on the tracks at least twice before--can't remember exactly--to retrieve shit a whole lot less precious to me than a fucking iPhone, and it never occurred to me until seeing this post that I was some sort of death-defying action fiend. If you can't scale a three-foot ledge back up to the platform with a few seconds notice, maybe you should move back to Wyoming, you lazy cows.
Wow. In one brief paragraph, you manage to combine wholly unnecessary profanity, namecalling, xenophobia, egotism, ignorance and God only knows what else. FYI, subway platform heights are roughly 45 inches, not the 36 inches you claim.
These incidents are just modern day forms of natural selection. See the movie Idiocracy if you dont know what im talking about.
This is why they advise you not to stand near the platform edge. Idiots.
A while back in the New Yorker, there was a little blurb about a gent who dropped one of his gloves onto the subway tracks. Seeing he couldn't retrieve it, he took of the other one and threw it on the tracks as well, figuring one glove doesn't help anyone, and maybe an MTA worker would find the pair. I always liked that story, reminds me of something Bankei would say.
You people who would advocate going down onto the tracks to get your stuff are just the dumbest bunch of fucks on God's earth.
I swear. Just bloody stupid. All balls and no brains.
It's not an urban legend... get any MTA guy to help and they'll get whatever it is out of the tracks for you. It doesn't even have to be at the same station (my daughter lost a beloved object on the tracks at 14th Street and we got a guy at Chambers Street to call up there for us, we went back and got it, no problem). After all, time is not an issue... unless one of these dumb fucks decides to venture down onto the tracks ahead of you, in which case you'll probably still get your stuff back, once all the gut and goo is wiped off of it.
No matter what the item, It's still Russian Roulette...
I like to surreptitously knock iPods and iPhones out of people's hands onto the tracks and then taunt them about it until they lose their minds and climb down to get them.