I Work From Home and You Don't

There are always too many people milling around the station. They have time to sit around, read a newspaper, have coffee or breakfast, or wait in line to buy a magazine or a winning lottery ticket out of this rat race. Well, that is what it's all about. I mean we all want to get out of this rat race. 

We know the rats are winning. Remember that ugly blue-striped building? We go to work every day so we can some day stay home and not go to work. There are plenty of good jobs in the city, plenty for us to leave when we get tired of the crowds, the endless walks, the broken sidewalks, tripping potholes, sudden-stopping tourists, Bible spouting commuters. 

If we look long enough we'll see Murray the groundhog frolicking in the safe zone under the catenary wires. Murray is fat, dumb and happy. He doesn't have to commute to work in the city. Neither these days does Proud Mary, nor I. I write from home.... 

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NYC Subway’s ‘Courtesy’ Campaign Against Manspreading Backfires

‘Dude, stop the spread!’ The New York Subway adverts that will bid to tackle the scourge of ‘manspreading’

• Posters are aimed at men who spread their legs and hog space on trains 
• Campaign will carry slogan: Courtesy Counts: Manners Make a Better Ride 
• More customers than ever are crowding onto New York underground trains 
• As many as 6.1 million riders were used the Subway on a single day in 2014 

 If you ever commuted to work, you'll enjoy reading Anthony Buccino's latest collection "This Seat Taken? Notes of a Hapless Commuter" about the joys and follies of getting to and from work in the city using metropolitan public transit. 

 This Seat Taken - Notes of a Hapless Commuter by Anthony Buccino

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Riding Under the PATH Train

We are gliding under the Witt Penn Bridge in Jersey City. There on the north side naked trestles await the next generation bridge. The thunder we hear riding under the PATH train bridge! We are clear soon enough to see the commuter train exit the bridge heading west to Harrison and Newark.

PATH commuter train travels parallel to the Passaic River in northern New Jersey.Anthony Buccino 

How many times have I been on that PATH train while we stopped as the bridges were drawn to let some tall masted ship pass by? From where we stood, sardine-like, in the tin can railcar, we could only ever guess at the holdup outside. How many times have riders looked north from those trains and guessed at the real name of Fraternity Rock rising from the swamps.
Our Hackensack Riverkeeper boat tour is heading south on the Hackensack River. We'll cross Newark Bay and head up the Passaic River to the Route 3 bridge north of our group's Nutley hometown.

Capt. Hugh Carola, just call him Captain Hughie, explains what we pass on the shores: a power plant here, a peak-power plant there, a jet-engine power plant there, an abandoned power plant yonder.

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This Seat Taken? Notes of a Hapless Commuter

This Seat Taken? Notes of a Hapless Commuter
By Anthony Buccino

If you ever commuted to work, you'll enjoy your ride reading Anthony Buccino's latest collection "This Seat Taken? Notes of a HaplessCommuter" about the joys and follies of getting to and from work in the city using public transit.

Buccino's bus and rail commuting tales and observations are collected in this new 224-page book which is available in print, on Amazon and Nook.

Buccino spent 12 years editing business news copy at Dow Jones & Co. for the Ticker, NewsPlus and The Wall Street Journal professional web pages in Jersey City and later at the NewsCorp building in the Times Square district of mid-town Manhattan.

For his first year working in Jersey City, Buccino actually drove the 12 miles each way to work and home. An average commute would take 20 minutes to reach the city and at least another 20 minutes to cross the city to his parking lot near the Hudson River. It wasn't long before the crosstown traffic and the monthly parking fee, nearly enough for a car payment, persuaded the author to use mass transportation to get to work for the first time ever.

For 11 of those dozen years, he rode public transportation including NJ Transit buses, Newark City Subway, Port Authority Trans Hudson's PATH trains, the occasional NYC subway and DeCamp buses.

For five years, Buccino wrote about commuting and transit in metro New York-New Jersey for NJ.com. His transit blog on NJ.com earned the New Jersey Society of Professional Journalists Excellence in Journalism award. Many of those blurbs are gathered in this collection.

Bus driver McGrumplesteen

Standing in the wet snow as more wet snow falls on our head, we decided to take the next bus that came along and it turned out to be the DeCamp #8412 driven by the ever so delightful driver Grumpy McGrumplesteen. In one moment aboard that bus, we already knew that when we got off in New York, our day was going to be much, much better than this ride.

continue reading Bus driver McGrumplesteen at your service

This Seat Taken? Notes of a Hapless Commuter

By Anthony Buccino

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Copyright © 2011 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

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Ever Miss Catching The Bus by thatmuch?

Would-Be Passenger 26 On The 199

Heading home after a long busy day at work, you hustle and push your way through the crowds of tourists and slow-pokes, walking as fast as you can without looking like you're rushing or about to break a sweat. One thing on your mind, get to the bus terminal and get on the bus and get home. Is that three things or one? No time to think about it, it's going home time....

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Paying to park, a day earlier

Back in the day when some of these parking lots were free to park in, you could simply buy your pass and go. Now, you have to buy a parking space, too, for the month and hope it's still there when you show up.

The solution to the parking space scrim is to make the monthly passes available a day earlier so that the people who don't read these press releases will be surprised when they can't get a space. Perhaps the ticket machine knows how many parking spots it can sell?

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Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Two New Poetry Collections

VOICES ON THE BUS by Anthony Buccino, a new collection of poetry about commuting in northern New Jersey is now available in print or for download.

ONE MORNING IN JERSEY CITY by Anthony Buccino, a new collection of poetry written in and about Jersey City, the Hudson River, lower Manhattan, seagulls and pigeons is now available in print or for download.

Click here for more information on either book, and to read a preview.

Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

'most useless drivel'

Yep, that's me being referred to as the author of "most useless drivel" and you can judge for yourself.

TRAVELLING with the DEAD

It's a curious book of poems by Carole Stone
to be reading on the PATH train
a couple of weeks before Christmas.

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