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Chinatown Bus: Ode to a Cheap Thrill

Written by: Jason Notte 03/15/13 - 10:00 AM EDT
Tickers in this article: AAPL

(Ho!) I don't think you're right for him

(Hey!) Look at what it might have been if you

(Ho!) Took a bus to Chinatown

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(Hey!) I'd be standing on Canal

(Ho!) And Bowery

(Hey!)

(Ho!) And she'd be standing next to me

(Hey!)

- The Lumineers, "Ho Hey"

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- On the Friday before St. Patrick's Day weekend a decade ago, I found myself in the basement dining room of Wo Hop -- an infamous, if touristy, late-night Chinese restaurant on Mott Street in New York's Chinatown -- at sunrise eating egg foo yung and watching the staff turn a corner table full of meat and dough into rows of dumplings.

I was working as a copy editor at a newspaper in North Jersey at the time, and both cash and days off were hard to come by. After wrangling a Sunday-Thursday schedule, I decided to make the most of both my time and money by booking a ticket on a Fung Wah bus and crashing on the floor of a friend's bedroom in South Boston for the Saturday St. Patrick's Day parade down West Broadway.

Not only did I get a 5:30 a.m. bus out for $10, but it took me up I-95 in four hours, gave me two days to spend doing the things idiots do when turning an hours-long St. Patrick's Day parade into a two-day affair and brought me home Sunday with a Boston Phoenix and Newbury Comics bag next to me and plenty of time to make my Sunday night shift. The Fung Wah was convenient, it was quick and, now I'm told, it could have very well been the end of me.

Earlier this month, the federal Department of Transportation shut down Fung Wah after the company responded to initial concerns about safety by blocking access to its records. In the past two years it has been cited for 159 maintenance violations, racked up nearly a dozen speeding tickets and has been cited for employing drivers without commercial driver's licenses.