Monday, August 06, 2007

Q-43 Was My Bus

I have an opportunity to get private personal now.

I grew up in Holliswood, a Queens neighborhood of New York City. There were 9 apartment buildings, each with an A side and a B side, seven floors each and eight apartments per floor. All that makes, just a second now, 928 apartments (plus a few on the bottom floors here and there).

The closest subway station was the last stop (then) for the E and F trains at 179th Street of Hillside Avenue. We lived on Francis Lewis Boulevard which was 204th Street for all intents and purposes (and the Avenue was 87th).

To get to the 179th St. stop, we took buses. One of those was the Q-43 which also transported me to my Junior High School at 218th St., if I recall. Nope, it was 213th Street and 92nd Avenue, south of Hillside.

Well, I just came across a Q-43 story:-

NYC bus driver, rider arrested in seat dispute

A bus driver struck a passenger about the head with a phone after the rider refused to give up his seat to an elderly woman, police said.

The driver, Larry Woods, 44, and the rider, Christian Custis, 22, were arrested and charged with assault and harassment after the incident on the Q43 bus in the Jamaica section of Queens. Woods was also charged with criminal possession of a weapon. The men were arraigned in Queens Criminal Court.

According to police, Woods asked Custis to give up his seat when the woman using a cane boarded the bus at Hillside Avenue and 164th Street on Friday. Custis refused, police said. The driver then hit Custis about the head with the bus' onboard phone.

The men were treated for minor injuries at Mary Immaculate Hospital before being arrested.

No comments: