Near-Death in Greenpoint

I almost watched a drunk Polish man get run over by the G-train tonight.

Look. I'm on a short movie gig right now. Additional photography for a Jodie-Foster-directed movie called, inexplicably, "Money Monster". Shooting in the middle of fucking nowhere in Greenpoint, Crooklyn.

It's a three day goddamn shoot so it should be the definition of a short-term employment, but the three days are happening Thursday through Saturday THIS WEEK... and we've got a snowstorm a'brewin' this weekend, kiddies!

So. Thursday night, headin' home, I decide to pick up a bottle of whiskey at the local Greenpoint liquors emporium before I hop on the subway.

Greenpoint, if you're not familiar, has a robust Polish community. And while I'm at this Polish liquor store, this extremely inebriated Polish man slouched in and purchased some liquor just ahead of me. He was slurring his words and moving with great effort. As I paid for my bottle of Tullamore Dew, the liquor store proprietors and I watched the drunken Polish man work with great effort to exit through the front door — as if pulling this door open and slipping outside were the equivalent of solving a Rubik's Titty-Fucking Cube.

I put the man out of my mind as I descended into the G-train station and waited on the Queens-bound side.

A heartbeat before a G-train pulled into the Brooklyn-bound side across the way --

A MAN CLUMSILY TOPPLED ONTO THE TRAIN TRACKS BEFORE THE ON-COMING TRAIN!!!

There was basically no time to do anything except holler out in horror as the train barreled into the station...

... and screeched to a stop a few yards before the fallen man.

The inebriated Polish man I'd just seen buying liquor at Mr. Magorium's Polish Liquor Emporium.

I had narrowly missed seeing this man get turned into subway lubricant but though the train had stopped short of killing him — he was now flopping about the nasty THIRD RAIL, continuing to flirt with a grisly ending.

There must have been some Polish Fairy Godmother looking after this poor drunkard soul because he somehow managed to survive getting flattened and electrocuted during my trip home from work this evening. The train conductor exited his metal subterranean steed, descended upon the tracks and made sure the man was all right and brought back up to the platform before he returned to the train and brought it fully into the station. Photo above taken once the train had fully pulled into the stop.