Subway changed Rick McGuire’s life.
No, he didn’t meet his forever person on the A-town top train like fiancés Anastasia Gregory and Spencer Seabaugh, nor did he find “American Idol” fame after starting a career on the station platforms as the singer Just Sam.
Instead, the subway system, which celebrates its 120th anniversary on Sunday, gave McGuire a career spotlighting the commuters, chefs, trendsetters and tourists buzzing beneath the city’s surface.
“The subway is like the eighth wonder of the world,” McGuire, 40, founder of the virtual people-watching center @SubwayCreatures, told The Post.
His viral videos include everything from early glimpses of Gotham’s legendary Pizza Rat to clips of Grammy winner Ed Sheeran performing “Eyes Closed” with subway artist Mike Yung.
“Down there,” said McGuire, a New Jerseyan returned to Brooklyn, “you’re surrounded by some of the most fascinating people.”
“People moving around New York City,” he added, “where they’re free to be themselves.”
“One of the best things I ever saw on the subway was, years ago, there was a person whose luggage wheel got stuck between the train and the platform,” he said. “The boy was panicking because the train wasn’t able to move until that wheel came loose.
“So everyone got off the subway car and pushed the train until the wheel came off. It was one of those really great New York moments when strangers work together — but not necessarily to be helpful,” he laughed. “They all just didn’t want to be late wherever they were going.”
Here are more unforgettable subway memories that New Yorkers shared with The Post.
Hide and scream
Thomas Trube, 54, of University Place, was listening to music while waiting for NR trains on 34th Street when something jolted him.
“As I was looking around, I saw people pointing at me on the platform and shouting,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t know what they were showing, so I ignored it. Then I saw someone really yelling at me and they were pointing down and I saw this big rat sitting on my shoe,” he said.
“Without missing a beat, I stomped my foot as the subway doors opened and the mouse flew into the train carriage. It was like a complete horror movie, people were screaming as the door closed – banging on the windows.
“I missed my train.”
Payday is upon us
Queens native Jocelyn Alonzo, 21, had no idea her choice of shoes could earn her a few bucks while riding the 2 train.
“A guy came up to me and said, ‘Can I take a picture of your socks?’ “, said Alonzo. “He offered money. What did I do? I was like, yeah.”
While initially shocked by his proposal, she couldn’t deny herself the free cash, so she kicked off her rainbow socks and posed for the camera.
“Of course, the guy definitely had a foot fetish, it was so weird,” she laughed. “But I was like, hey, this is New York, you know, maybe it’s normal to do weird things like that.”
Fight club car
Bushwick resident Bryan Montanez, 28, loves the subway system and insists more good than bad happens.
Still, he has seen “some crazy fights” — most notably on a recent J train excursion.
“I saw a man who woke up at 1 in the morning,” he recalls. “He totally beat it [the man who woke him up] and then apologized to the rest of the train. He said, “Sorry guys, I was just sleeping.”
“We went from Delancey to Marcy watching 12 rounds of Mike Tyson.”
I’ve got your back
East Village resident Nolan Myerson, 75, has also seen fights on the subway, but once joined a fight that had nothing to do with him — all because he didn’t want a stranger to ruin his life.
“Two gentlemen who got on the train together kept arguing and all of a sudden, they started fighting and punching each other,” Myerson said.
The fight escalated when one lost his mobility and hit his head on a pole, leading to profuse bleeding. But he still tried to hold himself and fight.
“This big white guy jumped on his back and tried to take him down,” Myerson said. “I jumped on the white guy’s back and I did it because he was screaming, ‘I’m going to kill you.’ I said, ‘You don’t want to do this. You’re going to ruin your life. Get away from him and get away from his now’ and he did.
Expressive art
For tattoo and painting artist Mira Miriah, 32, of midtown Manhattan, the subway is her painting.
“I love seeing people’s outfits on the subway, the layers and jackets that people wear for fall. I use them as inspiration for my paintings,” said Miriah, known online as @girlknewyork.
She has sneakily done artwork of people reading on the train, taking care of their kids, some people doing graffiti, and a lot of Mets fans.
“I always include the Mets in my art, the Mets are the best,” Miriah said. “One is of three female Mets fans on the subway, depicted as the Three of Cups from a tarot deck.”
Love at first fight
Violinist Anisa Marcano, 22, rides the ACE line in Manhattan every day, but she got the shock of her life after a drugged-out New Yorker started attacking her.
“I just sat there and didn’t say a single fighting word, [but] then she gets up and she starts swinging on me. [Meanwhile] no one on the train does anything,” she said. “And I’m like, ‘So nobody’s going to help me.’ I literally shouted it on the train.”
Marcano said the nutjob followed him onto another train but eventually went to another victim. She recalled getting off the train in tears when she saw a passer-by witnessing the entire devastation approaching her.
“This guy comes to me after and says: “I saw what happened on the train. You are so brave. That’s my name, by the way. Here’s my number if you need help,’” she said.
Paying it forward
Anthony Darden, of the South Bronx, saw the rough side of things in the ’80s, recalling many violent robberies. He is now proud to see that civilization has returned to the metro in recent years.
“This time on the 2 train around Route 149, the whole car gave money to a homeless man. He probably got off with more money than the people on the train,” he said. “It was good to see that.”
A dollar well spent
East Harlem resident Ivan Torren, 73, also recalled an act of generosity when he met a Hispanic woman who was trying to carry 200 bottles she had collected in exchange for money.
“I said in Spanish, venti botella, 20 bottles for $1. I wanted to give her something and she started crying. She grabbed my hand and kissed it. She didn’t say a word.”
Although Torren’s gesture made a difference in that woman’s day, it ultimately “felt terrible.”
“I said, this woman is really suffering so much that a dollar would mean so much,” Torren added.
A day to remember
For 60-year-old Nathaniel Heidenheimer of the Union Square area, taking the subway on the afternoon of September 11, 2001, is etched in his memory forever.
He recalled a special F train line running through the Upper West Side around 4pm on Smith Street in Gowanus.
“It was very, very, very slow … I remember in Brooklyn the air was very clean,” said Heidenheimer, who recalled interactions on the train with anxious New Yorkers, unsure of what had happened.
“There was an energy that was edgy and very, very different. People who would normally never talk to each other in their lives were thinking so ‘WTF’ that they were in a different time and space mode.
“Everyone was stripped of their sense of normalcy.”
Party lines
Brooklynite Randy Carr, 72, said after all her years of living in New York, she had never been part of a single subway party until September.
“I was on a train where a guy was playing guitar and singing, now it happens all the time, but this guy was really good and started taking [song] request and the whole car was singing,” Carr said.
Although she couldn’t remember the songs that were played, she will never forget the energetic feeling that permeated the subway.
“The whole car was singing along at one point. It was really great,” she said.
Showtime!
Digital nomads Rachel Faulkner, 32, and Frank Ponce, 38, often travel in and out of NYC, but an L train ride last winter stood out.
“There was this group of old ladies who were having an absolute blast, the party was on the train for them,” Faulkner said.
“It was also my birthday and someone else’s birthday on the train,” Ponce added. “They started singing ‘Happy Birthday’, it was loud and everyone started joining in.”
Soon, no one on board could resist the feel-good moment.
“It started with two or three people and eventually it became the whole car,” he said. “We were on our way to a show, but the show was right there.”
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