--- title: Man Buys All the Roses From Flower Vendor on NYC Subway: Video description: Sometimes New Yorkers are completely selfless canonical: https://time.com/3830073/new-york-city-subway-roses/ author: Samantha Grossman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-04-21T20:44:45.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:18:58.450Z og:title: This Sweet Subway Gesture Will Remind You That People Can Be Surprisingly Generous og:description: Sometimes New Yorkers are completely selfless og:url: https://time.com/3830073/new-york-city-subway-roses/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: This Sweet Subway Gesture Will Remind You That People Can Be Surprisingly Generous twitter:description: Sometimes New Yorkers are completely selfless twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Allow This Man to Remind You That People Can Be Surprisingly Generous by [Samantha Grossman](https://time.com/author/samantha-grossman/) ## Samantha Grossman Apr 21, 2015 8:44 PM UTC by [Samantha Grossman](https://time.com/author/samantha-grossman/) ## Samantha Grossman Apr 21, 2015 8:44 PM UTC Two years ago, a woman posted a touching video of an emotional moment on the New York City subway. Now, after being posted [on Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/339iqk/lovely%5Fmoment%5Fof%5Fkindness%5Fon%5Fthe%5F6%5Ftrain/), the clip is making its way around the Internet once again. It shows a woman selling roses on the 6 train for $1 each. A man begins to inquire about buying in bulk and offers to pay $140 for the entire bunch. Instead of taking the flowers with him, though, he tells her to do him a favor and just hand them out for free. The vendor agrees and then the anonymous man gets off the train and disappears. Then the woman bursts into tears. “\[I think\] she started crying from the relief of someone actually being generous,” Maria Lopez, the bystander who filmed the exchange, [told](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/21/roses-nyc-subway-stranger%5Fn%5F7108512.html) the _Huffington Post_. “This one little gesture of humanity is so huge. It’s a testament to the lack of love and lack of generosity in the world. I think people are yearning for that.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3830073/new-york-city-subway-roses/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3830073/new-york-city-subway-roses/"},"headline":"Allow This Man to Remind You That People Can Be Surprisingly Generous","datePublished":"2015-04-21T20:44:45.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:18:58.450Z","description":"Sometimes New Yorkers are completely selfless","url":"https://time.com/3830073/new-york-city-subway-roses/","keywords":["Newsfeed","society"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Samantha Grossman","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/samantha-grossman/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3830073/new-york-city-subway-roses/","name":"Allow This Man to Remind You That People Can Be Surprisingly Generous"}}]}] ```