Before the story can be told, a few logistical details must be mentioned. My flight to Johannesburg left early on New Years day out of New York. It was a no brainer that I needed to spend the night in the city. I discovered that three of my grade school friends were also headed to New York for New Years, so we planned to leave Boston together on the controversial Chinatown bus, the “Fung Wah.” (The Fung Wah bus offers an unbeatably cheap $15 one-way trip ticket between Boston and New York. I think they should adopt the slogan “Fung Wah: Where Adventures Begin”. Each time I have ever taken the Fung Wah, something totally wacky has happened thanks to the unsavoriness of the Fung Wah clientele.)

My father kindly drove us to Boston. There was a wicked snow storm,  and the roads getting out of Worcester were exceptionally bad. This fueled my excitement to switch hemispheres and not have to deal with the winter any longer. We just barely made South Station on time to get on the 2 p.m. Fung Wah that I had booked for Mike and I.

But the 2 p.m. Fung Wah never came. Mike and I waited in line ever so patiently, as the crowd behind us piled up (apparently quite a few people were also headed to New York for New Years). Our host in NY, Jared, had not yet booked tickets, and after waiting in the massively long ticket line, he tracked us down, stating that we had made the right decision to book early. He wasn’t sure how he was going to get there, but the Fung Wah was clearly not the solution.

Mike and the Fung Wah in Connecticut

Mike and I waited. And waited. 3 p.m. passed. With no bus in site, Mike left for the bathroom, and came back with Big Macs foreach of us. I’m not a big fan of McDonalds, but the occasional Big Mac really hits the spot. We devoured them. I soon got a text from Jared saying he (and our other companion, Morenike) had left on the Greyhound. While it was somewhat enraging to hear that they had left before us without booking a ticket, I was glad that out hosts would beat us to the city. I didn’t want to be stranded in Manhattan with all my luggage for Africa, and no where to leave it.

Finally, just before 4, the Fung Wah showed up. Spotting it first, I shouted “It’s the Fung Wah bus!” The crowd erupted. I was proud of the reaction I’d induced. But the celebrating ended, and people started aggressively crowding the doors. A second bus showed up. Another eruption of cheers. More crowding. As the passengers of the bus filed off, we scrambled to get on. The short Chinese employee opened the door to let passengers on, but the crowd began stampeding. A couple of tall dudes pushed past the employee, cutting right past us, and the entire line. Other people rushed out a different exit, and the employees of the Fung Wah screamed at them to get back in line. After waiting for several hours for a bus to show up, none of these people wanted to be left behind for celebration of New Years in the city.

Security showed up, and threw most of those who had cut back inside. As it turned out, the huge dudes who cut us didn’t even have tickets yet. Once the situation calmed down, and we were loading onto the bus, Mike quoted the joker: “When the chips are down, these civilized people will eat each other.”

The ride itself was fairly uneventful, as none of the most aggressive people were admitted onto the bus. We arrived in the city just before 9, dropped our bags off at Jared’s Chinatown apartment, and then went out for dinner.

By 11:30 were attending a “hipster” party that Jared had brought us too. At midnight, the hipsters set off fire crackers inside their apartment. I was starting to think these people were pretty much on the level.

Just to confirm, I asked Morenike if this was in fact a “hipster” party. “Ha ha, YEAH!” she exclaimed. “These are Jared’s friends!”

I asked Jared the same question. He smiled cautiously, responding, “In New York, there is no ‘hipster’.”

Eventually the hipster party cleared out, and Jared lead us to some other party at 382 Lafayette.

There were a bunch of people crowding the entrance way, and Jared and Morenike insisted we push past them to the elevator going up to the party. Others had the same idea, and the elevator was so packed with drunk kids that I couldn’t turn around.

The door opened, revealing that we were in between floors. Oh crap. The elevator went down, opened again for the same result. The elevator went up one last time, and stopped between the 5^th and 6^th floor. The doors didn’t open this time. Some belligerent drunk guys started shouting and swearing at the other belligerent drunk guy manning the elevator controls to hit various buttons, but nothing made a difference. The elevator was stuck.

Depending on who you asked, there were between 15 and 17 people stuck in this tiny elevator rated for 2000 lbs. We had clearly asked too much of it.

The belligerent drunks kept blasting each other, too loudly for anyone to actually have a civil conversation about how to get out of the elevator, making the whole situation even more uncomfortably claustrophobic.

After a few minutes of tolerating these assholes blast each other, the elevator started to smell strongly of smoke. I had been quiet up until then, but now I was really started to panic. I feared that we were going to die of carbon monoxide poisoning, and these drunk assholes were making it impossible negotiate any good plan.

Drunk losers. Door Open. NYFD Above

Mike called 911. I started ripping the ceiling panels apart, punching a hole through the roof of the elevator. We didn’t have time to wait for the fire department. We needed to find our own way out, and this seemed to me the obvious solution. But as I punched more ceiling out, one girl who had otherwise been quiet started screaming at me to stop. I looked, and she was sobbing, her mascara running down her cheeks. She was clearly very scared. I stopped, feeling badly about increasing the stress of the situation… though as the elevator was starting to air out, I was silently relieved I had done what I did.

Mike got through to 911 (though we had to keep reminding the drunk assholes to stop swearing at each other so Mike could hear the 911 operator) telling them very specifically that were stuck in a crowded, smoky elevator on 382 Lafayette in Manhattan. The fire department was coming. The dickheads continued to slam Smirnoff out of a large bottle.

Within minutes, we heard the Fire Department banging around above us.  It was very relieving. Eventually a voice shouted in a thick New York accent, “This is the New York City fire department. We need one more tool, and we sent someone back to the station to get it, but we should have you out in 10 minutes.” (After spending the whole night with hipsters, it is very refreshing to hear the accent of a more “normal” New Yorker… not to generalize too much. Like I said, the hipsters were good people.)

Escaping

We cheered. At this point, everyone in the elevator decided to get to know each other. We introduced ourselves, saying our name, and which school we attended. There were quite a few people from Washington University in Saint Louis, a few from NYU, one from Muhlenberg, one from the University of Vermont, and some others I have forgotten. People started dropping names of friends they had at these various schools. It was surprising, after arguing at these strangers in a small, crowded, smoky elevator, to learn how connected we all were. But I don’t mean to get too sappy.

After what felt like a lot longer than 10 minutes, the fire department finally opened the door above us up, dropping a ladder down through the hole I punched through the ceiling. One of the drunkards commended me on punching the hole in the ceiling, saying it was the best thing anyone had done to help the situation. As much I was ready to be rid of him, I was glad to know that not everyone was upset with me for that.

We let the girls out of the elevator first. None of them had been shouting, swearing, or ripping apart the ceiling, so it seemed like the thing to do. My friends and I were next.  The drunk assholes got out last.

The apartment the elevator let us out into was the apartment of the party. With nearly a dozen members of the NYFD there, the party was over. I don’t think anyone cared. I was very grateful to get out of that elevator, and I know the others were too. Morenike, Mike, and I shared a very sustained, and extremely comforting group hug.

As soon as the drunkards got out of the elevator, they got into a fist fight. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. But I was surprised by the reluctance of the NYFD to break them up. They then bolted down the stair well. On the way out, I noticed a bloody hole one of them had punched into the wall.

That's the hole I punched out!

The whole experience was very (literally) sobering. We got back out to the street after 3 a.m. We met some friends of Jared’s at the International Bar, but none of us ordered anything. We were done celebrating 2010. When we started meandering back to Jared’s apartment at 4 a.m., there were still plenty of drunk people wandering the streets, and subways. New York City felt to me like a giant terrarium for people. I can’t imagine what it must be like to live there.

I got to bed just before 5 a.m. The hardwood floor I slept on was too uncomfortable to really fall asleep, which was all the better, as I had to be up by 6:30 to make my flight.

The early morning A-train to JFK was filled with some very, very tired looking people. I was also exhausted, and could not have been more eager to get on a 15 hour flight, and pass out.