This Is How We Roll

All aboard the vomit comet:

They are off into the night as another group of revelers — mostly young ladies — comes off the 10:32 from Mineola. They don’t want to give their names, but one is glad to share the recipe for the cocktail she is sipping from a plastic Starbucks cup on the sly: Smirnoff Blue (100 proof), a little 7 Up and cranberry juice.

These must be the “beauties” that a Long Island Rail Road engineer speaks of a little later at Tracks Bar & Grill, where he is convening with two other co-workers at the end of a shift. They would only talk if their names weren’t used.

“It’s beauty coming in and the beast coming home,” the train engineer says of the transformation partying commuters make when they come in fresh and leave haggard.

The engineer and his conductor buddies know too well the iniquities of the weekend ride, a shift usually reserved for rookies.

“At the 12 o’clock hour, there are a lot of fights. At the one o’clock hour, it’s the ‘vomit comet,'” one of the conductor says.

“And by 2 or 3, they’re zombies; the leftovers that couldn’t make the ‘vomit comet.'”

Fabio Bari and Phillip Prado, both 23, are familiar with the weekend routine. It’s barely 1 a.m. and they are making sure to hit the 1:19 a.m. to Manhasset, which if they miss leaves them only with the 3:19. Not an option. “It’s full of drunken animals,” Bari says.

There are worse possibilities, however, than missing the 1:19: “God forbid you miss the 3:19. You’ll be contemplating all the wrong directions you took throughout the night and your life,” Bari says.

Location Scout: Penn Station.