schaudenfreud on the underground
This happened to the young pistonbroke when he was about 16 years old - me and a good buddy used to travel from our homes in north wales, over to Liverpool to catch rock bands and visit goth clubs where (rumor had it), "goth chicks would do anything for a couple of pints of cider". - but I digress - the point is that being spotty-transport-challenged teenagers, we had to use public transport, which for liverpool included an underground system that passes under the reasonably deep river Mersey.

As we got off one of the trains and headed toward the escalators which would take us to the surface, somewhere near the top of the escalator, a short, fat old lady (probably in her 60's or 70's) had a moment of unsteadiness and began to topple backwards - in true comedy style, her arm shot out like a steel claw and clamped on to the collar of her equally ancient but tall and scrawny husband, dragging him with her like the alien queen grabbing Ripley whilst being ejected into space from the air-lock

For a pair of pre-internet, pre-youtube sixteen year olds (for this was the late 80's), this was the equivalant of the holy grail of black humor, and we had no choice but to laugh deeply and heartily (under the withering stares of other people around) as we watched the decrepit pair somersault, cartwheel and slither down the entire length of the still rising escalator, bouncing off all those steel steps (and this was no short escalator, my memory may play tricks on me buit this was a jacob's ladder-esque vanishing point escalator).
But it wasn't even over when they arrived at our feet at the bottom, where the curve of the escalator levelled out - of course, the escalator kept dragging their groaning, wailing and keening carcasses up so they were lazily performing bonus forward or backward rolls every few seconds, until some good Samaritan (aka spoil-sport) thought of hitting the emergency stop to allow the old dears to be dragged clear.

Guilty? I sure am now, I'd imagine that the poor brittle boned pair were in quite a bad way, but the callous youth I was at the time felt barely a flicker of compassion and only saw what we see now when we watch a nice compilation of faceplants and skateboarding prat falls.

Length?.... bloody long, and made of polished stainless steel
(pistonbroke, Sat 24 Jul 2010, 16:44, 4 replies)

The Tivoli in Buckley
...from your opening gambit, I'm betting my right one that you know the joint. I wonder if it's still going?
(Billy The Fish wants to gargle with Lucy Pinder's bath water, Sat 24 Jul 2010, 19:20, closed)

Tivoli
I actually worked there as a pot boy once upon a time, best day was when I met Lemmy when Motorhead played there... :)

I think it is still going, though I heard someone got killed or shot out the back recently 0.o
(pistonbroke, Sat 24 Jul 2010, 20:07, closed)

I had a similar epiphany on the London Underground
As a spotty sixteen-year old on a Saturday trip with my schoolmates to The Smoke in the 1980s, the day held the prospect of Soho strip clubs and underage drinking of overpriced lager, but the main memory I still have of the day is the knobend who decided it was a good idea to take his wife in her wheelchair, and their young child, down the escalator at Tottenham Court Road.

Shortly after alighting on the straight & level section at the top without incident, the guy found himself standing a couple of steps above his wife, attempting to push down and pull back on the wheelchair handles to keep it straight and level, balanced on its back wheels while the front projected into space.

Unfortunately, his downward pressure - and the fact that the wheels in contact with the step didn't have their brakes on - conspired to cause the wheelchair to fall backwards and begin to bounce/roll down the steps. To give the bloke his due, he didn't let go of the handles even when lying face down on the stairs at full stretch, having been dragged to that position by the weight of the wheelchair.

The chair only stopped rolling because of an obstruction behind it that wedged into the stairs - their child.

One of my friends had the presence of mind - and a sense of charity and selflessness that comes from not being a Londoner - to hit the emergency stop button and help extricate the family from their predicament. The rest of our group, meanwhile, were booking our places in Hull by barely being able to suppress our guffaws.

(Fortunately, no one was hurt)
( Snappyuk gets BIGGER with free sample., Sat 24 Jul 2010, 19:42, closed)

Oh dear
I laughed at this more than I should have done. Masterful description of a guilty guffaw.

One ticket to Hull, please. One way.
(Draco Rattus ate all the pies on, Sun 25 Jul 2010, 7:40, closed)