toaster

I would like to take a few minutes to tell you one of my favorite self defense stories. I went to college in Chicago. I lived there for ten years and saw some pretty weird things and had a few close calls. After graduation a friend of mine moved to NYC to get a masters degree. Rent near his school was too high so he had to live in an outlying area and commute. He was an artist. He was also huge, but a real gentle guy. He had to take the train through some pretty rough areas. Occaisionally bad guys would give him S**t.
Over time it started to get old so he decided to do something about it.
He had an old gym bag that was covered with paint. He had an old broken toaster the didn't work anymore so he figured "WTF this ought to work". So he put the toaster in the the bag and and started carrying the bag with him on the train.
Heres where it gets good. A few days later he's riding along minding his own, when he looks ahead and sees a couple of guys in the forward car coming along giving passengers a hard time. Now he's a little scared so he picks up the bag off the floor and sets it on his lap. Just before the would be perps get to the door of the train car he takes the toaster out of the bag and sets it on his lap on top of the bag . When the bad guys come through the door hes starts rocking ,forward and back with the toaster on his lap, letting out little grunts, whispers and an occaisional giggle. The bad boys took one look, turned around and headed back in the direction they came from. My friend road the train for three years. No one hassled him again. Plus, He never had to share his seat . Unless he wanted to.

oldman

thats a great pre-emptive strike !!!

when i first moved to NYC my friend who is very very unique wanted to see the ghettos of harlem/ uptown but since he was white he was scared he would get into trouble. he went to a salvation army and bought a bunch of ratty clothes, disguised himself as a homeless man, doused himself in scotch and dirt and made his way up to the wild 100s...i still think hes a mental case but he just lay around on the corners and checked out harlem from the perspective of a temporarily homeless, upper-middle class caucasian architect from toronto....no one bothered him at all. needless to say, hes a great dude.

One of my professors used to live in NYC and would ride the subways to work. He said the most effective way to avoid getting hassled by the crazies was to just calmly read his newpaper or whatever, and when confronted, to just speak gibberish to them, and generally be crazier than they were. Seemed to work for him...