Craziest Things You've Seen in NYC?

Good afternoon monkeys. As much of this site must work in NYC or used to work in NYC, what are some of the wildest things you've seen go down in the city?

 

I haven't spent a lot of time in NYC, so my craziest thing is a bit mundane. I saw Barry Greenstein (professional poker player) at a table in the New York Players Club circa 2004-05. I think he was sitting at a pot limit Omaha table, but can't 100% remember (table was obviously a bit too heavy for the likes of me). I went there a couple times--the last time only a few weeks before it was raided by police (May-June of '05?). I was hoping to run into A-Rod or Jeter there, as it was rumored that they and some other Yankees frequented the place. For those of you in the city, the club was at 200 West 72nd Street. Not sure what's available for card rooms in the city nowadays, but that place was really cool.

 

Not sure if you're asking 1) blind sizes (I usually played 2/4 hold'em there; always wanted to play 5/10 but never had anywhere near the bankroll for it at the time); 2) if I comment on the twoplustwo poker forums (I don't); 3) or if I did a 2+2 program after college (I didn't).

The Players Club was a fun experience. I never had the cash to really sit and play the way I wanted (I was 18-19), but it was such a cool atmosphere and the energy was palpable. Was glad I was never there when it got held up or raided.

I played at another underground card room out in Hempstead a few times. It was this nondescript shit-hole in the back of a strip mall, but they ran great tournies. I think it was operated by the Hungarian mafia or something. Kinda shady.

 

Was outside on the deck of a penthouse when Malcolm X's daughter pulled out some 420. Was just her and I out there. What a crazy/chill evening.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

Not sure bout the craziest thing but.. Met Kunar from Big Bang Theory and Tiesto who were both living in a building I did a short stint in. Tiesto refused to be referred to as Tiesto, and always had his big black suburban waiting for him before he came downstairs, right out front, with the driver at the door waiting to help with luggage so that he didn't have to spend time on the street. Kunar would go up the street for meals with his family though.

 
iBankedUp:
Not sure bout the craziest thing but.. Met Kunar from Big Bang Theory and Tiesto who were both living in a building I did a short stint in. Tiesto refused to be referred to as Tiesto, and always had his big black suburban waiting for him before he came downstairs, right out front, with the driver at the door waiting to help with luggage so that he didn't have to spend time on the street. Kunar would go up the street for meals with his family though.

What did Tiesto what to be called?

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

Living in NYC in 2008 with all the companies going down in flames was something.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 
Donald Drumpf:
How so? What's the wildest thing you saw relating to the crisis?

Just imagine having a close circle of friends, many of whom went to top schools and thought they had secure jobs when then joined a couple years prior. Then seeing companies get torn apart, bought and sold, and hearing that certain friends were just 'gone'. You had lunch/brunch with them last week and now they are just not there. The industry changed and the pieces are around you, including severed relationships with people you thought were going to be there for years to come.

It was slightly unexpected and then very drastic.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

Homeless people on the train, I thought they were invented actors from Stallone's movies from the 80s.

-MikeFromBaruchII Son of a VP at a Boutique "If you cant work transactions why not advisory?" - Quote Leverage Leverage Leverage - Motto

 

Very true - you can literally go at any time of the day to the areas you mentioned and you'll see some crazy s*it.

I'm talking about liquid. Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough not to waste time. Fifty, a hundred million dollars, buddy. A player. Or nothing. See my Blog & AMA
 

I saw the first plane hit live. Aside from the marginal difference of it being unprecedented in my case and not in yours, the feeling you're describing was exactly the same. For everyone around me, too - it was as if the entire world ground to a silent halt.

Array
 

Seconded. This is exactly where I was the moment the first plane hit, standing on that street corner.

That same corner later on in the week of the attack. Those green awnings on the left are where the TD Bank now stands: ![http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UnQUEZTX7vQ/U4uFAgPg-uI/AAAAAAAAAjs/c4nO7IaBf…]

I remember hearing a jet turbine and looking straight up, saw a gleaming 747 flying low, and about five seconds later it collided with the north side of the tower, which is what you can see in that maps view.

I think (at least I hope) that the city will never again see a time like that day, or the weeks that followed. I lived a few blocks away from the towers at the time, and there is just no comparison to what the world was like following the events of 9/11.

[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UnQUEZTX7vQ/U4uFAgPg-uI/AAAAAAAAAjs/c4nO7IaBf… http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UnQUEZTX7vQ/U4uFAgPg-uI/AAAAAAAAAjs/c4nO7IaBf…

Array
 

One of my old bosses has this story, it had me crying in her office.

She was on a floor in the 30s of the North Tower, but only because she was going down to pick up a friend and grab a coffee. Her office was on floor 95, would have been directly in the impact zone. not even 5 minutes after she left that floor the plane hit. They evacuated and just started heading away...eventually she said she watched the north tower collapse while riding out of the city over the East River. It was so chilling to listen too.

 

One of the few times I've been to NYC, I get back to my hotel from a day in the city and turn on the news. There had been a string of poop related incidents in Midtown, where a homeless man was throwing his feces at people. They finally nabbed the guy that day as there had been 3 reports of this happening. Needless to say, he was in deep shit.

 

Pre-drink got out of hand and one of the interns thought that butt-chugging would be a one-way ticket to a return offer. When he realized people were more disturbed than impressed he proceeded to call everyone a GDI goob while on all fours.

Welcome to the jungle.
 

serious answer: if you rectally administer any substance the effect will be much greater and quicker, this is because your colon and intestines are mucus membranes and the alcohol or "whatever" is quickly absorbed into the blood stream without the need of digestion.

By ingestion you usually retain like 40-60% of the property of the substance, insuffulation retains more of the property but is not recommended for liquid substances. Rectal absorption you retain 90% of the substances effect and is the quickest way to administer any "medicine".

 

A few years back I was taking the E train downtown on a Thursday evening when a homeless guy whipped his junk out and started beating it off in front of some poor girl. A bunch of us kicked the guy off the train at the next stop. I've also seen a homeless guy taking a dump at the top of one of the stairwell exits of Chambers Street on a Saturday morning. The tourists were mortified.

 

Tough call after 20+ years in the City. I'll go with a tie between:

-- Conference bike pedaled down Broadway at 2am by eight totally drunk Hasidic Jews, with the Rastafarian steersman in the middle, helpless with laughter.

-- Fraternity brother took a part time job as "sandwich board" man, they dressed him up as a giant bottle of New Amsterdam beer, with his face sticking out of the neck, and wearing tights. He stood around on a sidewalk in Midtown with any & all passersby mocking him, including some of his own bros, who took pictures. He quit after a day on the job and we had to talk him out of committing suicide.

 

not nyc but i've seen a guy slowly walk to the end of the train platform, climb down the stairs onto the tracks, and run from one side of the tracks to the other side literally three or four times. each time he had to jump over two (maybe four) 3rd rails along with four train tracks. honestly thought he was trying to end it all but ended up being fine, climbed the stairs on the opposite side that he came on and walked off.

 

Both NYC and Newark have the most batshit insane homeless people I've ever seen anywhere. Like, walking down the highway in the center lane, holding up traffic while clearly high, ignoring the people honking at them....and then a cop ignoring them. People in cities are depersonalized to an amazing degree, and even more strangely there are no shortage of charities that actually want to help people. The rationalizations you hear from people about this are an excercise in the absurd.

Get busy living
 

Once, on the subway, I saw a real thug looking guy get up for an old lady to sit down.

That was pretty crazy.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 
Ehmerica:
Some guy humping a statue of a little girl.

Did this happen to be downtown, across from a giant bronze bull?

The only difference between Asset Management and Investment Research is assets. I generally see somebody I know on TV on Bloomberg/CNBC etc. once or twice a week. This sounds cool, until I remind myself that I see somebody I know on ESPN five days a week.
 

not exactly true..section 8 pays what the govt decides is the "market rate"...but that is often below what the actual market rate is for a non section 8 apt. Owners decide to take the section 8 rent because its guaranteed money and easier than chasing after people who don't pay their rent and the eviction process is long and a pain in the ass.

However, in the long run, rent stabilization and rent control (different from section 8) is a disincentive for real estate developers to build more housing...which creates an artificial shortage...but it affects prices (and housing availability) in NYC a lot.

just google it...you're welcome
 
Port Ricky:
People thinking that high rents are cause by 20 billionaires living in Midtown and not millions of people paying way below market rent because of rent control / rent stabilization / Section 8 / NYCHA / 80/20 set asides etc etc etc...

Yes, let's blame poor people and policies intended to protect poor people for high rents. Amazing. Zoning laws are the issue. Ancient residents in the east village, lower east side, west village, etc. prevent anything above 6 stories from being built so you have 6th floor 2br/1ba walk ups that are 100 years old going for like $4000 per month because we need to "protect the character of the neighborhood". NIMBY anyone?

Like, jesus, we can have rent controlled housing to ensure the most vulnerable people have housing and also have sane zoning policy that doesn't choke the supply.

Stop blaming poor people and policies meant to protect poor people for high rents. Blame NIMBYs who refuse to allow buildings over 6 stories to be built because they don't want their neighborhood in the most densely populated few square miles in the country to change.

 

We don't have to house poor people in the most expensive zip codes in North America. Poor people need housing...Detroit needs residents....light bulb?

Also, there seem to be very few blocks in the entire city that don't have at least one active construction site. Are you claiming htere isn't enough construction going on? And that has nothing to do with record levels of concessions on new market rate apartments.

Look, there is nothing wrong with being poor, but there is nothing right with it either.

 

Here is what I do know: I pay a shit ton of taxes, some of which is diverted to create an artificial housing shortage that then makes me pay 7 figures to live in a neighborhood in queens where half the people don't even speak English; while people that don't even work live for almost nothing in some of the most expensive real estate on the continent.

"Then move"

Brilliant - me, the guy paying it all, should move away to make room for more takers. Got it.

 

Immigrants who make Queens a vibrant and amazing to live is what makes the real estate worth 7 figures, not affordable housing. World class chefs from China immigrated to Flushing and Elmhurst and offer the best Chinese food you can get outside of China for like $5. A couple miles away you can get some of the most amazing Caribbean food in Jamaica. The idea that the residents of fucking Queens are lazy/don't work is laughable. Queens is literal manifestation of the American dream. Queens has some of the most upwardly mobile communities in terms of socioeconomics in the entire country.

It sounds more like people speaking other languages other than English is what annoys you.

 
Controversial

Do you live in Queens in 2018?

I have no problem with other languages and yes I get that the immigrants are hard workers. It's about the standard of living. People come from the 3rd world and what they consider acceptable is a 3rd world standard. That means packing 20 people to a house that was intended for 6. That means 24/7 traffic and everything else that goes with overcrowding. It's like why move 10,000 miles from home and still live in shit?

I own a 2000 sq foot house in Queens that has 4 people and a cat living in it. If the average person in the market for my kind of house bought my property there would be 3 times as many people living in it guaranteed. The house would be illegally divided into 3 units and rented to three families guaranteed. Multiply this 10s of thousands of times and it causes problems.

But the point is....I shouldn't have a home worth $1 million that fits this description while I pay for people to live almost for free in Manhattan. Get them the fuck out, take those units to market, and let me live like a fucking white person in Finance in Manhattan for less than $4 million for the love of fucking God....

And nothing you write is going to change my mind on this so just save it. Say whatever you want - Racist, asshole, blah blah blah....this is NOT why I went into Finance....

 
Funniest

Here's an NYC story that's actually heartwarming.

A couple years ago on Labor Day Weekend my ex-girlfriend's sister was in town from Nigeria so we all went to Times Square for the obligatory tourist visit.

Times Squares is always packed on summer holiday weekends (families and young kids in NYC for the first time) and this particular day there was a big traffic jam where a fire truck with its sirens wailing was frantically trying to get through an intersection to get to an emergecy.

Times Square traffic is always a train wreck, but the drivers got really overwhelmed with the sirens and honking and shouting from the firemen, and this intersection just locked up with five or six vehicles angled all kinds of different ways and no one knowing how to unjam them. All these different people are standing on the sidewalk shouting at different drivers to move different directions. It was tense, disheartening, and a total shit show. Time sort of stood still for about 40 seconds as everyone worried about the fire presumably burning nearby.

All of a sudden, a street performer--dressed in a full Spiderman costume--burst into the middle of the intersection and took control. He must have saw a way to unjam everything because just started pointing and gesturing each of the different drivers, who all followed his directions without any hesitation, presumably because he was dressed in a Spiderman suit.

So Spiderman clears the intersection and the firetruck passes through, with firefighters saluting and honking at Spiderman, who salutes them back as the crowd claps and cheers.

The best part was that there were a couple of kids standing in the crowd who were right at that age around four years old where the lines between what is fictional and what is real is not quite clear to your mind yet. Their reactions were absolutely priceless. This little guy about four years old was losing his mind like "It's Spiderman! IT'S SPIDERMAN!!!" He was 100% certain that he had in fact seen the REAL Spiderman save the day, just like in the movie.

It was one of the few times where I didn't capture something on my smartphone (I try to use it minimally) and really wish that I had.

"Now you's can't leave." -Sonny LoSpecchio
 

It was a few years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. Such was the poignancy of this event.

I was at the typical upscale cocktail mixer at a rooftop bar, filled with pretentious people. It was a balmy summer evening, so the men were sweating, looking awfully uncomfortable in their suits. In the midst of this chaos walked in a tall man with wavy blonde hair, piercing blue eyes, and a chiseled jaw that could have been sculpted by Michaelangelo himself. The crowd immediately gravitated to him, their eyes gazing on him, watching his every move. He was not wearing a suit. Instead, he wore just jeans, a shirt, and a black fleece HBS class jacket.

Despite the casual demeanor, he carried himself with gravitas, the type of presence only worn by those who have been winners their entire lives. While the other men were drinking fancy overpriced cocktails, he drank a Bud Light, a perfect complement to his confident casual look. As he walked around the room like a T-Rex in his prime scouring for prey during the Jurassic Period, the men sheepishly nodded at him while women devoured him with their sensual eyes. The man locked eyes with his target: a tall elegant blonde with a lithe yet fit toned body, wearing a dress that accentuated her sexy figure but still maintained class. Men were chatting her all evening but with no success, as she was waiting for a true ALPHA male to take her.

After exchanging a knowing smile, the type of smile that indicates that they both knew what the night would bring, they chatted. He whispered in her ear: "Do you want to DCF with me? I will lower your cost of capital and elevate your value to a level you could only dream of." She laughed and blushed. She did not understand what he actually said, but that was irrelevant. It was his raw confidence and charisma that drew her to him.

After about 30 minutes, he held her hands and walked to the elevator. The men were stunned at what they just witnessed. He looked back, with a smirk on his face. It was the smirk of a winner. The smirk of a champion. The smirk of an ALPHA CHAD.

NOTE: This post is a work of fiction.

 

Suicide from the 12th floor. Landed on a guardrail and head severed instantly. (Didn't see the actual impact, but saw it immediately after impact due to the impact noise). Contrary to what you see in the movies, dead bodies don't bounce. This was.in FiDi, near the entrance to the BatteryPark tunnel. I believe the guy worked in finance.

 

Few years back a drunk guy walked up to a gay couple walking in the village and said something to them before shooting one of the guys in the face. It is amazing how fast police drive through the busy streets at night when there is a guy with a gun running around. I just stood there in awe of what happened...

I was about half a block up the street. Here is the article

 
Esuric:
I guy shitting blood on the M

Hmmmm. You should probably get that looked at. Not only is that disgusting and unsanitary, shitting blood probably isn't good for your health. Also, your sentence structure needs work. ;-)

The only difference between Asset Management and Investment Research is assets. I generally see somebody I know on TV on Bloomberg/CNBC etc. once or twice a week. This sounds cool, until I remind myself that I see somebody I know on ESPN five days a week.
 

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“Elections are a futures market for stolen property”
 

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