Bearded guy #1: Wow! Two Quakers on one train! We could start a riot.
Bearded guy #2: Or whatever the opposite of a riot is.
–Metro North Hudson Line
Bearded guy #1: Wow! Two Quakers on one train! We could start a riot.
Bearded guy #2: Or whatever the opposite of a riot is.
–Metro North Hudson Line
Pudgy tourist mom to sulking pudgy son: You’re not getting it, you’re not getting it!
Pudgy tourist dad to sulking pudgy son: We’re going to a nice restaurant, you are not gonna be an animal!
–Rockefeller Center
Overheard by: wants to know what the kid wanted
(hip girl yells in excitement)
Old woman on street: Grow up!
Hip girl to friend: God! Homeless people spend all day screaming on the street and no one tells them too grow up.
Hip friend: Yeah, it’s not your fault that your dad’s a republican.
–School of Visual Arts
Overheard by: dobby
Salesman: Ah, so soly. Mr. Wong not in today.
Saleswomen: My boyfriend’s Asian. Don’t make fun of them.
Salesman: I’m not making fun of them. I’m making fun of the way they talk.
–Sales Department, SoHo
Bum #1, slurring: Hey! That’s a nice shirt you got!
Bum #2, walking across the crosswalk, also slurring: You look like a catfish! [Turns to guy in a car.] Doesn’t he look like a damn catfish!?
–12th St & 8th Ave
Preppy kid: It’s all fucking Guidos in this place.
Guido: You calling me a fuckin’ Guido?
Preppy kid: (sarcastically) Nooo. No, you’re no Guido. Where’s your gold chain?
Guido: My cousin ripped it off in a fight.
Preppy kid: Yeah, you’re definitely not a Guido.
–China Club
Overheard by: 13Atlantic
Teenage girl #1: When I was little, my mom told me that whenever I had to go to the bathroom, I should say “Excuse me, I have to go powder my nose.” But when I said it to my kindergarten teachers they didn’t understand what I meant.
Teenage girl #2: That’s because your kindergarten teachers, unlike your mom, weren’t bitchy, uptight wasps.
Teenage girl #1: Yeah, I know. That’s why I go to private school now.
–Terminal 5
New Yorker #1: I had to tell my kid when she went to college in Boston that nowhere else could compare to New York, to just find the best of where you are.
New Yorker #2: Yeah, I always found Boston to be provincial.
–6 Train
Daughter: This is a really nice dress for my first wedding, no?
Mother: Well, for the next one you will have more money, so you can get something even nicer.
–77th & Madison
Exterminator, running late: Hey, sorry, but I was doin’ this guy in the Village -I was foggin’ him and bombin’ him, the whole nine yards…
Client, snickering: Wish we could get that kind of service here.
Exterminator, oblivious: Well see, he pays extra…
–106th St & Broadway