"IT'S A WHORE!"This guy didn't look like a hobo. It really threw me. When he started yelling about whores, I wasn't sure it was really him... Glancing at him out of the corner of my eye. He was well dressed, and had new-looking black leather shoes. He had earphones on, though who knows if they were plugged into any actual functioning device.
"THE POPE IS SATAN! HIS PENIS IS WICKED!! IT'S A WHORE!!"He'd yell a few of the old crazy-hobo stand-bys like these, then get quiet. All the while he'd just look forward, seemingly undisturbed. Then a rant of pure unintelligible gibberish began and went on for a good 20 seconds. Other people in the subway car were also ignoring him except one white guy who stared at him as if he was crazy.
He got off one stop before me - very...slowly... Finally after taking the big step off the train (this is downtown LA at 7 pm - so it was almost completely deserted), he then turned and stared at me. The doors to the train shut. There was no way he could get back in and kill me, and he just stared at me, not really smiling, not even menacing, but in a mid-80s John Carpenter Movie type way; something from Prince of Darkness or They Live.
Finally the train pulled away. When I got off at the next stop, it was just me and two other people: a nun (who walked toward the cathedral, then turned the other direction towards who-knows-where), and an Asian guy carrying a pair of black sneakers that looked like they cost $1000 and were built by the top scientists in Yokohama. The second largest city in America and at 7 pm in the city's center, there was no one but the three of us I could see. We rode the escalator up, and it was drizzing a little bit. I walked around for a while and the only person I saw was a guy jogging who ran past me twice from the same direction in about within 5 minutes.