Sunday, June 29, 2008

Holy driver

By Amy

From a male bus passenger who sat in the seat closest to the driver:

"Holy driver, you've been down too long in the midnight sea
Oh what's becoming of me.

Ride the tiger
You can see his stripes but you know he's clean
Oh don't you see what I mean

Gotta get away
Holy driiiiii----va---ahhhhhh!"

(An aside: Behind me live some twentysomethings in a punk/metal band. One weekend they had a blowout party, and I heard Dio emanating from their house into mine, like a rainbow in the dahhhhhk!)

Monday, June 23, 2008

Food fright

By Jim

 "No eating on the bus," the big driver bellows. An oblivious young woman sitting toward the back of the No. 44 keeps chomping on french fries. The bus sails on, plying the asphalt sea with its human cargo. Again: "No eating on the bus!" She keeps eating. The driver checks her out in the rear-view mirror. What's with her? At the next stop: "No eating on the bus!"

Is she adrift in music, earbuds hidden beneath her long black hair? Is she deaf? Does she question authority? Hard to know.

A couple of miles later, she pulls the cord. The bus stops. She goes to the back door to get off. The door doesn't open. She pushes on it. Nothing; it's locked. She calls out, "Back door."

The driver answers, "FRONT DOOR."

She walks to the front door, and the front door closes. There is no escape.

"Do you speak English?" the driver says.

She turns to face her interrogator. "Yes." 

"I told you three times not to eat on the bus."

She looks scared. "I didn't hear you."

"Everyone else on the bus heard me." (The driver is correct about that.)

She doesn't answer.

Then the front doors open. Fry Girl is free.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

No longer the observer

By Amy

Last month, while working out with my personal trainer (I love saying that), I broke a bone in my right foot, the fifth metatarsal--the bone between my ankle and little toe. Since then, I have been wearing this big, black orthopedic boot that hits me right below the knee and is square-shaped and oversized around the foot. I wish I had a matching boot for my left foot, then I would wear miniskirts and stomp around like a bad-ass Bride of Frankenstein.

But instead, being off-balance, I walk with a limp, and if I remain standing long enough, my foot begins to ache. The doctor gave me Vicodin for the pain, but that seems excessive, like blasting at flies with a shotgun. 

Last week I was standing at my usual bus stop on MLK on my way to work. The bus didn't seem to be coming anytime soon, and my foot was starting to ache, so I walked the few blocks south to the covered bus shelter, which has a bench with two seats. On the way to the shelter I passed the Friends of Trees house with its unwelcoming, overgrown yard; the office of the mysterious accountant G.A. Sosanya; and the bright yellow Battery-X-Change, where, at least according to their sign, they will swap your dead car battery for a new one ad infinitum.

An overweight white guy in a baseball cap and T-shirt, I'd say in his late 50s, was standing near the shelter. As he watched me lumber toward him in my oversize boot, he set his cup of coffe on one the bench seats, so I was forced to take the other one, despite having the sensation that this man was standing too close, invading my personal space. But I get that feeling every time I share the shelter with another stranger--it's a tight fit.

As soon as I sat down, I pulled a book out of my purse and began reading, which in mass-transit commuter language means Do Not Fuck With Me.

The big man looked down at me. "Tell me," he said, "do you know if Lake Grove is near Lake Oswego?"

"I don't know," I said. I really didn't know. I went back to my book. Get a clue, buddy, I thought.

The man paced back and forth in front of me for about three minutes, humming a happy and ridiculous tune over and over, as if to fill the silence between us. I looked down the street for the telltale white rectangle of the bus with its black sign and comforting orange letters. It wasn't coming.

Another man stepped into the shelter. 

"It's not easy being green!" he yelled. 

He was chunky, black and around 50 years old, wearing a baseball cap, polo shirt and pristine white sneakers that glowed like they just came out of the box.

"Hey, isn't that from Kermit the Frog?" Humming Man asked.

"I am an American Negro," the black man yelled, and then began singing another loud song. He was so close enough to me that I could smell the beer on his breath.

I put my book face-down on the bench. "Hey, guys," I said. "I have a broken foot and it hurts, and I just want to sit here and be left in peace without both of you in my face."

The black man continued to sing, loudly. I got angrier. 

"Look," I said to him. "I'll give you a dollar if you just be quiet until the bus comes." I dug my wallet out from my purse and opened it. Two fives and a ten.

"It's your lucky day," I said. "The smallest I have is a five." I gave him the bill. 

The man wouldn't stop talking, confirming my suspicion that he was not of the ilk that could be persuaded with mere money.

"I am an American Negro," he shouted. "What are you?" he asked me.

"I'm white."

"Yes, but what are you?" he asked.

"German, I guess," I said.

"Hey, I'm German too," the white guy said. 

Right then the bus pulled up, and the black man was mumbling to himself about how he was "going to buy a hamburger and beer with my $5." He never did board the bus. 


Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Schadenfreude

By Amy

You could say the bus driver was in a bad mood. Earlier on the route, he had to kick off a thirtyish-looking man with a baby face for trying to start a fight with some teenagers. 

"I let you ride for free, and this is how you pay me back," the driver said to Baby Face.

Baby Face got off without a fight, but flashed some gang signs at the teens as the bus drove away.

A while later, we braked at the on the east end of the Hawthorne bridge, the last stop before it crosses downtown into Fareless Square. Passengers board, including a guy in business attire.

"I don't have any change," the businessman says, showing the driver his empty hands.

"Then you going to have to walk across," the driver says. 

The businessman steps off. The driver slams the door after him and moves on.




Friday, June 13, 2008

TriMet Buddha

By Bob 

Graffiti on the back of a seat: 

"May you never go mental,
may you always stay gentle"

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Where to?

By Bob

It was a Sunday night on the 11:30 No. 12 Barbur. About a dozen TriMet riders were snoozing, texting or listening to their iPods.

The ride from downtown to the 'burbs was going uneventfully until a little bit after the stop at S.W. Hamilton. At that point, the drivers usually pick up speed because not many people get on or off until we hit the Burlingame Freddies.

However, on this night the bus didn't pick up speed. In fact it slowed. Suddenly, the driver yells back to the passengers: "Does anyone know where this route goes?"

People perk up and look at each other in bewilderment. One gripes, "Jaysus, we're never going get home tonight."

The driver then adds: "Please, tell me where to go. But don't direct me to your house. People are always trying that."

Finally, one enterprising soul offers the driver some sage advice: "Just follow Barbur until you hit Sherwood."

We were saved.

Although when we arrived at the Barbur Transit Center, the driver mistakenly tried to enter at the first stoplight, which is the exit marked with a Do Not Enter sign. But someone told her to go to the next light and turn left. She did and most of the relieved crowd exited.

Your humble correspondent left the bus a little later at the 53rd Avenue stop, leaving the driver with an encouraging: "Thanks and good luck."

Pen and ink

By Jim

On the late-night No. 12 to King City from downtown, one tatted-up fellow with a shaved-head -- except for a longish pony tail -- says to a fellow traveler, "Can I see your ink?" They examine a parlor-applied forearm tattoo for a while. Pony-tail man then rolls up his sleeve to show off his bicep handiwork. It isn't much to look at, pale-blue blotches. Indeed, it is his work -- "I did this myself," he says. "I used a staple I sharpened on the concrete. It took about 12 hours of stabbing. When I was done, my arm had swollen up to twice its size." Penitentiary "artwork," apparently.

No apologies

By Lisa

It was lilac, plush and very large. But the Hispanic man in his late 40s didn't seem to mind that he was holding a stuffed elephant the size of a small woman on his lap. In fact, he looked straight ahead, his eyes inches from the back of its fuzzy noggin, and ignored it. The late-night No. 12 is a reasonably well-behaved crowd. We ignored it too.

Come to Willard

By Jim

At the 4900 block of SW Barbur, there's a bus shelter. As the #12 bus stopped there about 10:45 p.m., a woman passenger, around 20 years old, says, "I like to feed the rats at this stop." The stop is nestled next to a bushy, overgrown hillside below the OHSU complex. "Sometimes they'll come right up to you," she says.

Monday, June 9, 2008

Little red lie

By Amy

Snippet of a cell phone conversation overheard one night last week: "I can't come over, sweetie. I'm covered in fake blood."

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Swing shifter

By Amy

I catch the No. 6 bus to work in the afternoon on weekdays and ride it south on MLK, over the Hawthorne Bridge and into downtown Portland, where I get off on Southwest Third Avenue. After work, at night, I wait at a poorly lit stop in the Park Blocks on Columbia until the bus picks me up and deposits me near a Popeyes chicken restaurant in Eliot, the Northeast Portland neighborhood where I live. The commute is about three miles each way.

I ride the bus for the wrong reasons.

I don't ride the bus to save the environment, although by using mass transit I help reduce pollution and the use of fossil fuels and gasoline (now above $4 a gallon). Plus, the city buses run on biodiesel, a fuel made out of what used to be the cooking medium for some poor soul's Chicken McNuggets.

I don't ride the bus to save time. When I drove, it took me five minutes each way to my work (which shall remain unnamed) --a straight shot over the Fremont Bridge and onto I-405 through downtown. No problem. But on the bus, my ride is usually 30 minutes each way, provided nothing goes down to slow it up. And on this line, shit can go down at any given moment.

No, I ride the bus because about a year ago, sadly, the hotel lot where I secretly, shamelessly, flagrantly parked for free for two years came under new ownership, and the new owners caught on to my game pretty quick. And parking downtown is pretty expensive, at a minimum for me at that time about $5 a day. So over the course of two years I saved--well, a lot of money. The point is, I got one over on the Man--the hotel space was empty, so why not use it?

I didn't want to pay to park downtown--parking prices kept going up. Plus it sucked trying to find parking amid the constant construction that is still going on right now. Then my work offered employees a new program that lets us buy bus passes before the tax is taken out of our checks. So I bit. A lot of us bit.

So I'm busing it. I share space in a box every day with strangers, other sentient beings, who, as the Buddhists say, have the potential to repel me, attract me or completely escape my radar.

My coworkers, friends and I who've gone public transit enjoy swapping bus stories. I'd like to share my stories, and let them share their stories, with you.