GOD DAMN NERVE!!! CTA Employees Misbehaving, Night after Night
By Jessika Bialik, one of our reporters from Evanston
A year ago in December, I reported on the goings-on during the night on the Red Line, focusing on what happens to the homeless persons. Even though it was a terrible adventure, I got the bug to follow up on it a couple times… maybe showing I am crazy (Red Line Trains: Unsafe at Any Speed? - StreetSense (substack.com)).
I revisited the situation, and included the drunken guards from “Inter-Con” in May, 2023, who were assigned to protect the passengers on the Blue Line (Guards on Chicago Trains Love Their Booze and Loud Music! (substack.com)).
As a reminder, I love to write. I love to talk about fairness. And I try to fit in as a homeless person on the train… trying to sleep and holding onto my sidekick Claire. Who hates to be called a sidekick.
We love to ride the trains and find out disgusting information that makes us wonder what the f*ck people are thinking. If somebody has never ridden the Red Line and tried to get some sleep, they cannot defend the people who are misbehaving.
CTA employees misbehave. Their speech and actions are inexcusable.
In the middle of the night, there is nobody to complain to. Nobody cares. Nobody is around to stop the CTA workers from doing the sickening sh*t that they do to people.
As I said last December, “At 6’2” and blonde, I am unique in the throngs of people traveling with bags and suitcases, wandering up and down the street, and falling asleep—sitting up!!!—on the Red Line train…How people can fall asleep just sitting there –I do not know! And it is terrible for your circulation, as we are always hearing… “ (Red Line Trains: Unsafe at Any Speed? - StreetSense (substack.com))
My disguise is a weird old man’s (???) toupé and a long trenchcoat. Claire is the cute one, a proud African-American woman, who is the expert on anything having to do with race. Just ask her.
We look either like a straight couple and nobody would know why Claire is hanging out with me (cuz I look ugly in my toupé and thick glasses that are fake) or maybe a lesbian couple (me being even uglier in that role).
We decided to check on the homeless on the train once again and see how things were going. We were shocked this time to see so many rude CTA employees—on duty and off duty—on the Red Line cars and record their comments and actions. It makes us feel there are not enough hours in the day to pray for these people. The employees. Not the homeless. Though they need prayers too—otherwise they would not be on the damn trains.
We wound up parked at 95th, waiting for the train to head back north. The car we were on was the last one in the line of eight. Now, going back north, it would be car number one. It was full of persons, anywhere from drowsy to sound asleep.
A few extra CTA employees entered the car. We knew they were CTA workers because of their sweaters and jackets and badges and big black shoes. They were talking loudly and laughing—like it was 3:00 in the afternoon—totally ignoring the fact so many people were trying to sleep. It would be a good trip—with lots of random stuff to write about. We did not know how bad the night would be.
One topic that keeps surfacing is the use of what we call the “Red Line Spray.” It is a type of spray, obviously, in a little plastic jug. It is like a combination of Lysol, mint tea, alcohol, and gasoline. It smells absolutely terrible. Smelling it gives you a terrible headache for several days.
CTA employees spray it very close to homeless people who smell bad. It is used mainly on the “head car” as they call it, where people who work (Damnit!) and who pay taxes (Damnit!) and have a f*cking place to live (Damnit!) ride, near the driver of the train—so they will be safer than on other cars—away from the driver.
Some CTA train drivers will even try to “CLEAR OUT” the head car, making all the homeless go to car #2 or further back in the stack. This means the people will have NO protection from the thugs and criminals and totally-out-of-control teenagers who walk from one end of the train to the other, kicking sleeping homeless persons, taking their backpacks, hitting them in the face with other backpacks, threatening to kill them, punch them, rape them, etc.
The homeless persons of course do not want to be away from the CTA train drivers because other cars are too dangerous. Constant theft, beatings, fights, rapes, groping, and kicking go on most of the night, on those back cars, if there are no guards or police or K9 personnel around.
So what is this “Red Line Spray” and where does it come from?
One night, a CTA train driver was heard saying, when an off-duty CTA employee asked him what it was and where he got it, “It’s a little concoction one of my colleagues at the Howard Station mixes up… it covers up the ass and sh*t smell of the homeless.”
He went on to say, I’m gonna spray some more and open some windows to try to clean this up in here.” Then, they cocky CTA driver asked, “Wanna help spray some people?”
The off-duty obese Black CTA employee responded, “I’d love to spray some of these nasty stanky-ass people!” She proceeded to grab a bottle of the spray and went very close to the homeless persons—or people who may have been homeless—and sprayed the entire car.
The CTA employees laughed like this was one of the most hilarious scenarios that has ever occurred since the beginning of time. Random persons in the train swore under their breath and they were told to “behave themselves or get off the train.” As things got louder, the people are waking up and moving around and when the train stops at the next station, the driver comes out and addresses the people stirring up a kind of chaos with a harsh warning:
“If y’all have a problem, you gotta get y’all fuckin’ asses on a different car!” He and the other CTA employees laugh like hyenas at a barbecue. “Y’all can’t be sleepin’ and smellin’ like sh*t on here!”
With that, he goes back in, gets a bottle of the spray and hands it to the fat Black woman who begins spraying all over the train.
With this, an older Black woman who might be homeless, grabs her bags and yells, “Y’all are disrespectful!” The CTA worker tells her to get off the train…
The woman responds, “You got a lot of God Damn Nerve!”
With that, the driver screams, “Okay, now you gotta get your ugly fat ass off my train!” And pulls the door back open. “Take all y’all f*ckin’ sh*t and get off my train train!”
Claire is recording, quietly, and she gets angry because her phone “freezes up” when she is trying to get the video.
The passenger—who has paid her fare and does not want to be sprayed or have to smell the spray—reluctantly leaves the train, taking her half-dozen garbage bags with her. She stops and yells in the driver’s window, and he laughs uproariously, closes his window, and moves the train out of that station.
As we go north, some persons with bags and backpacks enter the train car, and others exit. We are told there is police activity at “Lake Street” so we are paralyzed waiting until the trains can move again. Claire and I sit there, waiting, and then we see a south-bound train on the other side of the platform. We make the sign, grab our sh*t, and run to the other train. We are on the very last train—and that one takes off. After a couple stops, we are back at 95th.
This time, people are in no hurry to get the first car “cleaned up” and random CTA workers walk in so slowly they are barely moving. One drags a broom. One drags a mop. They walk in one door and out the other door… cleaning some of the junk off the floor by accident and making a wet strip down the middle of the aisle.
Next, a CTA employee walks in slowly with a bottle of the magic potion. She pours a little bit in the top of the heaters, near the driver’s door on each side—inches from where a person is sitting—and then does the next area, again pouring the strong-smelling poison into the top of the heater. Eventually, an older White man jumps up and screams at her…
“Don’t pour any of that sh*t by me, you wild animal! Or I will pepper spray your ugly fuckin’ ass!”
At this, she yells back “Get off this train, you white devil!”
And she goes out and calls two janitors over, who of course come in and tell the guy to get off the train or he will get arrested.
The man screams back and tells them very specifically to please go away and to go do something with themselves that will not only keep them busy and will be an adult activity they will remember for a good long time. (Editor’s note: This is an agreed-upon version of what the man actually said.)
Eventually, the CTA driver for this train run (they announce the number so that you can write that down for a complaint you can send online… more on this below…). He slams the door loudly, the little messages start playing, bells start ringing, the door start slamming, the CTA janitors and the woman who does not like white devils all run off and start screaming at the driver, and the train lurches forward.
We all almost fall on our asses.
The train leaves 95th like it is never coming back.
The old white devil DOES fall on his ass and has trouble getting his grounding. Other people help him up, back to his seat. The car smells like green minty ammonia poison for killing alligators and rats. We are traveling so fast the train is rocking and shaking.
As we leave the next few stations heading north, the train jumps forward and moves like a bullet on fire. Nobody says anything. A guy across from us is smiling at us and winking a lot.
A woman sitting next to us makes the Sign of the Cross and is praying under her breath. It might be Spanish.
Starting at the fourth stop, we leave the station normally. People breathe a sign of relief. A random voice whispers, “Wow!” We continue north. We sit in silence all the way to the end of the adventure at Howard.
Nothing more is said of the white devil, the spray, or anybody’s ugly ass.
.
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Editor’s note: There a form to complete on the CTA webpages that asks you for info like the train run, car #, CTA employee’s or employees’ badge number, location/stop/station, and other descriptors of when and where when you want to file a complaint. In general, you will receive a response telling you that your input is important and CTA is devoted to making sure all passengers—and employees—are safe and sound and other such good things. The next night you travel on the Red Line, you will see the same exact CTA employees.