Exhausted woman with backpack: Why do I have to be so fat?
–42nd St
Gossip Girl clone to another: Oh my god! Can you even imagine being obese in this weather?
–Lafayette & Spring
Skinny gangster white boy: Yo, dude, are we hanging out with those fat chicks?
–96th St & Lexington
Overheard by: great standards
Chubby girl yelling on cell: Yeah, and her bridesmaid dress totally accentuates my back fat – as if I didn’t have enough problems!
–47th & 3rd
White kid: (mumbles incoherently)
Friend: Alan… Are you pretending to be black again?
–Stuyvestant High
Disgruntled MTA worker, to no one in particular: See? I don’t like human beings all that much. I like animals, they mo’ fo’ real. (venomously) Y’all better be glad I’m not god.
–6 Train
30-something white guy to friends: I live in Mesopotamia, ’cause the gods are gangsta!
–W 83rd & Columbus Ave
Older MTA worker, comforting young passenger: GPS: Guidance, patience, strength. Give it over to god. Trust that motherfucker is going to handle it. Give me GPS and I can handle the rest!
–Union Square Subway Stop
Bag lady, drenched in rain: The joke’s on you, god!
–9th St & University Place
20-something guy on phone: So then she tells me the reason my dad died is because god was trying to hurt me!
–Union Square
Overheard by: talker’s remorse
30-something: I mean…he’s a good looking guy, but then he found god.
–39th St
Deli counter woman calling name on sandwich ticket: Wave bandanna? (no response) Wave bandanna?
Young white guy: Oh yeah, that’s me. I put down my rap name.
–Balducci’s, 8th Ave & 14th St
Overheard by: Margo
Music theory professor, explaining classical idioms: The reason we use these techniques is because the great composers did – Mozart, Beethoven, Bach. They knew what they were doing. Bach knew that Mozart intuitively understood the music. When he reviewed Mozart’s work, he was like, “that motherfucker!” (slight pause) Yeah, more or less.
–Columbia University
Overheard by: Music Theorist
Girl to friends: Imagine this: Spice Girls concert, platform shoes, glitter all over my body…
–McCarren Park, Brooklyn
Overheard by: do I have to?
20-something Whitey McWhiteface to friends: So do you think Lil Wayne tried to become a hipster or, like, it just happened?
–Park Slope
Overheard by: Hopper
Guy to friend, while watching Radiohead: This is a great song to urinate to.
–Liberty State Park
Doctoral student on phone: I can’t do my dissertation on the sex lives of great composers…I can’t… No, it’s just that the subject is too big… Ok, so 1950 to present.
–Manhattan School of Music
Overheard by: Xiao Hoah Dze
Conductor: Please stand clear of the closing doors. And now for your entertainment… (taps on the microphone a pretty decent beat) I hope you all like my beats…I’ve been practicing!
–F Train
Overheard by: Groovin to the music
Black girl: My daddy says I can’t fight her because she’s pregnant.
Wigger chick: Her face ain’t pregnant, is it?
–Subway bathroom, 4th & 6th
Wigger referring to Lhasa Apso on leash: Yo, yo, man, look at that dog. I told my bitch I’d steal a dog like that for her.
Black friend: You like them faggot dogs? I like me a mothafuckah dat can tear somebody’s ass up, like a Doberman or some shit.
Wigger, pausing to think: Man, it’s dangerous to steal a Doberman!
–Gramercy Park
Overheard by: Big Larry
Wangsta teen: Move, nigga, or I’ll cut you with my knife!
Tween girl #1: Oh my God! He said the ‘n’ word!
Tween girl #2: Knife?
–Queens bound F train
Drunk college kid: I had to read Grapes of Wrath. Which, by the way, has no grapes! Pissed me off!
–53rd & 7th
20-Something chick: Non fiction? That’s true stuff right?
–Barnes & Noble, 54th between 3rd & Park
Older sister, giving younger brother a book entitled Living in Sin: Here, this is all about you.
–Barnes & Noble, Union Square
Guy, to friend reading Dostoevsky’s The Idiot: Hey, is that your autobiography?
–Times Square
Overheard by: John
Ghetto white dude: Yo, that nigga is like Shakespeare. Mad gangsta.
–9th St & 4th Ave, Brooklyn
Overheard by: shannon ramlochan
Guy: You can’t talk to me for half an hour about Chaucer and then tell me you have a boyfriend.
–St Mark’s & 3rd
White homie teen: Chicken fill-ett.
Latino homie teen: That’s “fill-ay”. Hah, “fill-ett”. Ha ha ha, “fill-ett”.
White homie teen: You’re teaching me English?
–Wendy’s, Bensonhurst
Hat Tip 🎩 to The Marketing Scientist