Subway Dave

This next blog is about the guy who works the booth at the subway station we go to every day. He's a real character. Last night we saw him at CVS and he shouted accross the store, "Don't forget to pick up my Oxycotin for me you bums!"

I) SUBWAY DAVE: Borrowing Someones Apartment for an Affair

We have had the pleasure of getting to know some of the MBTAs finest while busking down in the subway. One of the people we run into every night is Dave who does the graveyard shift at our local subway station, and he is a real character.

Every day when we go through the station he kids how he wants to use Lisa and my apartment to have an affair with his girlfriend. I keep telling him to use the booth. I mean, what is more romantic than a subway booth. Also, the MBTA workers have those mysterious numbered doors in the downtown crossing tunnel.

I lied and told him that we had a one room apartment, but said that we can put some of the Greg Brady beads up for him, like when Greg moves into the attic on the Brady Bunch.

Subway Dave seems to have a thing for Lisa. When she had a cold the other night, he said she should go home and strip and he would come over with the stethascope and check her heartbeat. He always sends her to get coffee so me and him can rag on each other.

Subway Dave really loves nature. One day we were walking to the subway, and he saw a hawk on top of Blockbuster video and we stood their admiring its beauty for about 20 minutes. He was so enamored with its beauty that he started to cry. It seemed kind of out of place in this urban setting, kind of like seeing a mall in the middle of the desert (hence, Las Vegas).

He is a man of a mysterious past. He has many tattoos, one reading Never Forgive. Me and him always give each other hell. Dave had his wisdom teeth removed last month and he loves to show them to me. He jokes that he removed them himself by eating caramels.

Subway Dave gets very emotional about some of the riders and gets into their lives. The other day he was telling me how he met this beautiful young woman in her twenties, who seemed to have this great life. She had a good job, she had her youth, and yet she seemed so unhappy. It was as if she had an invisible weight on her, she had everything and was in the prime of her life but found it hard to smile. I told him that she needed him.

He told me that he tells people like that to make a list of 10-12 of their favorite things to do, and each day do one of them. Who cares what anyone thinks. If you wanna go climb a mountain, then go climb a mountain. If you wanna go fishing, go fishing. It's your life. Sometimes I feel like Dave is a Buddhist monk of the subway variety.

So, he asks this girl why she is so upset, and she says she's been having some troubles but they seemed to him to be intangible. He said to me, she does not have kids to worry about, house payments, have to worry about supporting a family, things are going to get harder and more complex, and she has everything, but she is still unhappy.

On Christmas we gave Subway Dave a box of fudge, pumpkin bread, and cookies. He was so happy to get the stuff, and bought for us today a copy of the Boston Globe describing how it is now legal for us subway musicians to play on the streets of Boston.

When he got to the booth this morning he saw that we had given a similar box of goodies to the woman on the morning shift, and he was mad.

"I feel more special if we're friends and you just give me a gift. If you give the gift to everyone it makes it less special," he said, disappointed.

We explained to him how we only gave the gifts to our good friends in the subway. It was almost like Dave had this special club, and if we started associating with the other people, we could get blacklisted in a funny way.

Dave always lets us in the subway for free and to show our appreciation, we always buy him coffee from Dunkin Donuts. One time last year, Lisa and I were going to NYC to play a gig, and we saw him on the way, he said the only way he would let us in is if we got him a souvenir from New York. It seems like we are back in the old bartering days, before the money system, when I might trade you a chair I designed for your wagon.