This just in: Federal agents tackled and briefly detained California senator Alex Padilla during a Homeland Security press conference. Also, Audrey Gelman is ‘finalizing the sale of her previous upstate home.” —Emily Gould
EARLY AND OFTEN
The Rent Is Still Too Damn High
We asked the mayoral candidates how they’d fix it.
For today’s Dinner Party interview, we asked the Democratic mayoral candidates what the biggest issue facing New York is, and they all (mostly) said the same thing: Affordability.
LUNCHTIME? POLL
Concrete Jungle Where Bleeearrrrrrrggggghhhhh
Your most horrifying and amazing tales of being splashed by bodily fluids in public in New York.
On Tuesday, I asked a simple question: What’s the grossest experience you’ve ever had in NYC involving someone else’s bodily fluids getting on you in public? And you really delivered! I’ve separated your responses into four categories: vomit, sputum/saliva/mucus, piss, and “other.” Aren’t you scared about “other”?
Vomit
“It was days after 9/11. I was going back to work as an NP at NYU University Health Center. The PATH train was hot and crowded. Guys in suits with their meticulously folded newspapers were standing and reading. I was standing. All of us who used to take the WTC train were now packed on the train from Journal Square that goes up to 33rd. I was getting off at 9th. A pregnant woman was seated in front of me. We got to Christopher St. She vomited all over my scrub pants and shoes. A young guy in a suit sitting next to her, heard her gagging and lost it too. It was like a chain reaction. I must have had at least three people vomit on me. Nobody else standing or sitting said anything — not a peep. It was surreal. The conductor announced "9th." I got off, making my way from 9th to Astor and Bdwy, the pieces of vomit flicking off my pants as I walked. I could smell the smoke from the WTC. Once I got to Bdwy, there was a lot of cops and security — they would give people a hard time. I had my NYU badge, but they took one look at this vomit covered nurse, and let me pass. I got to the office, took off my scrubs — put them in a Hazardous Waste bag and got washed up in the sink. My friends rounded up scrubs that were much too big — but they were clean. Someone spritzed some cologne on my leg … and we all started our day. It's been 24 years, I'm still working as an NP, and I always wear scrubs to work.” —AnnieBo
“Someone barfed on my winter jacket (all over the sleeve) at a bar. I didn't realize until I put it back on — all the way on! — to leave”. —Don't Go to Bars Much Anymore
“When I was a freelance music journalist in the mid-’90s, I was covering a show by a band I was writing about at Tribeca hippie music venue the Wetlands. In the middle of a song, a tall dude standing behind me projectile vomited all over me — a complete shower of hot puke with chunks raining down on me from head to toe. I had to basically shampoo and bathe myself in the club’s bathroom sink, with smelly pink hand soap, so I could reasonably ride the subway. When I got home it took three showers to get the smell off me. I threw away my clothes from that night, including, sadly, my favorite jeans.” —Rain O’er Me
“Once on the L train a woman who was sitting put a brown-paper lunch sack to her face and threw up in it while I was standing in front of her. Her vomit seeped through the paper and dripped onto my feet. I almost vomited in turn it was so disgusting.” —AnonLTrain
Sputum/Saliva/Mucus
“As a teenager, growing up in Ditmas Park in the ’90s, I was exiting the Q diamond at Newkirk when some punk teenager spit and their globule landed on my shins.” —Matt L., Born n Bred Brooklynite.
“One summer at Fort Tilden, a well-heeled toddler (his Mini Rodini rash guard is burned into my memory) sneezed an enormous loogie onto the back of my neck as he walked by my towel. I felt it slide down the *entire* length of my back. The ocean washed us both clean that day: he of his sins, me of his sins. I haven’t worn a low-backed suit since.” —Nalini
“I had just moved to the city in the summer of 2021 and everything was half open half not because of COVID. I was walking around the corner and a woman spit her fully chewed up doughnut into my face.”—Anika
“A man I didn’t notice stepped out of some scaffolding near Union Square and fully spat on me with no preamble. I was just trying to get home. I ignored it so as not to freak out.” —Anon.
Piss
“I’ve seen a lot more fluids than I’ve come into contact with, especially on the subway, which is where I encountered a young woman sitting next to me who pissed herself one stop into my ride with three more to go. My immediate response was empathy, not wanting to contribute to her public humiliation by slowly getting up and crossing the car, so I just sat there in the slight bucket seat of the F (better than the bench of the A) and pretended it didn’t happen. Later it was suggested by a therapist that the incident was an indicator of my own low self-esteem. I wasn’t drenched in pee or anything, but my freeze response didn’t exactly protect me from the very real ways that living in NYC can feel like season one of The Pitt” —Just another girl on the MTA [Ed.’s note: I spent a lot of time thinking about whether I would have gotten up and moved. I still don’t know. To discuss in therapy!]
“An unhoused man was wildly peeing on a corner one day, waving his penis around like a firehose. It was a ‘rounded the corner’ surprise I very much could have done without.” —Anon.
“I didn’t check the seat before sitting down while waiting for the 4 at Union Square. Sat in what was certainly piss. I consider it my New York Baptism.” –Jenny
Other
“Sweat dripping from a man’s underarm onto mine while holding the subway bar.” —AR
“I warned a woman that the subway bench she was about to sit on was wet and she looked at me, registered what I said, and replied “Well. it’s just water” and sat in it anyway. Brave!”—Alix
“This is the opposite of a fluid — we’re talking the driest dry body bits. I was trapped on the Chinatown bus between NYC and Boston with a tall guy in the seat in front of me who kept scratching his head and sending a blizzard of MASSIVE dandruff flakes down onto my legs and into my seat area. Like nearly dime-sized flakes. I’ve never seen flakes that big before or after.” —Head’n’Shoulders
“I was on the 3, heading to a cursed nonprofit job, and a guy sat down across from me, took off his shoes and socks, and started cutting his toenails. This should not have a splash zone, but it did. I never did find out why that man's toenail shrapnel was wet, and I really do not ever want to find out.” —Charlie
“Exec summary: It's poop. I got on an F train and the little "back corner" seat was empty. I noticed a puddle, but it was kind of a wet day and also I thought maybe it was just spilled food. I took the seat and as I sat down I realized it was liquid poop. I'm actually pretty unflappable so I just got up and walked down the car, but I did report it to the MTA via Twitter. My reward for tattling was that they took the train out of service while we were all on it, so we had to stand even longer in the poop train and I delayed F train service for an hour. Oh, I was wearing white mesh Stan Smiths during this and when I got home I threw them in the bathtub and poured a bottle of Simple Green on them and filled the tub. If I weren't 40, I feel like this would be my Seventeen Magazine It Happened to Me Story.” —Anon.
My Favorite
“If you’ll accept a story of my own bodily fluids, here you go: My water broke on a jam-packed, pre-COVID era Q train during morning rush hour. I was standing holding the pole (because, duh, 9 months pregnant and no one cared to move their asses), and as soon as the train emerged past Dekalb and headed over the bridge in the morning sunlight, I heard a loud POP and I was immediately soaked. Dripping down my legs, onto the floor, and eventually all over the seat that a woman (finally) gave me. I got off at Canal, the next stop, and waddled to my OB’s office on Broadway. The seat was sticky and drenched, and several people (men) getting on at Canal darted for my spot :) you’re welcome.” —Jess A. from Prospect Park South
And Speaking of One’s Own Fluids …
This survey prompted me to recover a long-suppressed memory! It was the morning after Halloween, 2002. I was near the Lorimer stop of the L for some reason. Very hungover, I tried to barf discreetly behind a tree. Barf complete, I gather my wits and look up to see my boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, an effortlessly chic girl who worked at the Henry Lehr store (iykyk), coming down the street right toward me. We made eye contact, and it was obvious that she’d witnessed the whole thing.
Thank you to everyone who submitted answers! To all the people who sent in stories of getting blisters, then having to walk barefoot, that’s a different type of (bad) phenomenon.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Way Back When, Pre-Monoculture
Skateboarding and Supreme, before they were A Thing.
“Then we had our house, which was Supreme. No one knew who worked at the store — everyone just hung out in the back, playing cee-lo, drinking 40s. The shop was empty for so long. Then it was like, Something is going on. The lines started. Buyers were showing up looking for the “box” logo. Soccer moms being like, “Yeah, skateboarding!” We stayed protective of each other. We were each other’s family. It was still us and that’s it — no one could break the bubble even as things got bigger. Like, You can be here, but you are not down.” — Skater Alex Corporan on the early days of the store, before the brand became a global phenomenon.
POLYCULE POLYBABIES
Every ‘How I Got This Baby’ Tops the One Before, I Swear
A polyamorous threesome leads to a Big Love–type situation!
You simply must read the whole thing.
Click Your Way Out
Can you get your shattered attention span back to baseline by watching long movies and reading books? Rebecca Jennings finds out.
Bob Odenkirk bought a $1.3 million Clinton Hill two-bedroom co-op (not in the Clinton Hill co-ops — another building) for his daughter who went to Pratt. Hi, Dad, I love you even though you’re not the deep-pocketed star of Better Call Saul et al.
You might think you know high-school teacher Christina Formella’s story — of allegedly having sex with one of her students — from true-crime TikTok and the Post, but it’s much deeper than that.
“Do you hear the people boo?” How Trump’s outing to see Les Miz at the Kennedy Center went.
Mail a box of poop or get a real colonoscopy? The answer may surprise you.
My most sincere apologies to Juli Weiner, a former n+1 intern left off yesterday’s rankings. Congratulations on your TV writing career. You fall somewhere between David Noriega and Kaitlin Phillips.