bus – Clara Hsu

Happy 100

Muni’s 100th Birthday. We got free rides today. Hooray!

Dore said they should scroll “Happy Birthday Muni” instead of “Go Giants” or “Go Forty-Niners” on the buses.

There should be birthday cakes and balloons and flowers and champagne.

There should be bands playing at major bus stops.

I guess we’d have to be satisfied with the exhibits on the transit shelters along Market Street.

None of the bus drivers had uttered a word about the special occasion. None of them looked particularly jubilated. Most of the buses had a piece of scrap paper over the fee machine, as if it was broken and we were lucky to get a free ride.

Management!

TREASURES FROM THE MUNI ARCHIVE at THE SAN FRANCISCO RAILWAY MUSEUM, streetcar.org; Adithya Sambamurthy/The Bay Citizen.

Night Rides

Vern hasn’t taken public transportation for over twenty years. He has a car and drives everywhere. But tonight after a good dinner in the inner Sunset his car decided to play dead. We left it to the towing company and walked to catch the N Judah, which miraculously appeared just as we got to the street corner.

Taking public transportation could be quite enjoyable. Cold night, warm seats, and the tram gliding swiftly down the streets. At the transfer stop the next bus wouldn’t come for another 30 minutes. We took a brisk walk to Tart & Tart, a dessert place on Irving and 8th, and had a lemon sweetheart.

Bus and tram rides are a part of being in the city. Vern will remember this when he goes sailing in the Pacific Ocean as a deckhand.

“I will send you fresh salmon collars,” Vern said, “overnight them from a sea port.”

Photo by Bryan Dempler.

Faces in a Bus

It was seven in the evening and raining. As I sat down in the #44 bus I glanced around me. Everyone’s face, including mine, was expressionless. Except for a hello to the bus driver, there were no eye-contact, no exchange of pleasantry between the riders. We were merely cargo being transported from here to there.

A boy opposite from where I was sitting hid his face on top of a soft carrying bag, which he clutched tightly on his lap. If he was sleeping he had assumed a strange position. From Glen Park to Mission Street he never raised his head, and I seemed to hear muffled groans as the bus rattled on. People got on and off without paying him attention and my stop was quickly approaching.

“Are you alright?” I went over and sat next to him after someone got up.

“No,” the boy looked up. Tears were rolling down his face. A pool of water was collected on his bag.

In the next thirty seconds he told me someone broke up with him because he said he was too young.

“I’m sorry,” I put my arm around him. I had missed my stop. “But I can tell you definitely that things will get better. You have to be strong.”

The lady across from us handed him a tissue paper.

“I’ll try,” he sobbed.

I got off the next stop, feeling sad.

We were not cargo after all.

How Cultured Are We?

At a bus stop, a man defied the driver, wouldn’t let a disabled woman have her right of way. When he saw the annoyance on the passengers’ faces he warned us to keep our mouths shut. His hostility jolted me out of my usual daydream.

Walking down Kearny Street, an eight inch knife flew out of a window, narrowly missing a pedestrian. My awareness was heightened. The homeless seemed more vivid and conspicuous, parading in their rags. In Bart, people stare down at their cell phones and plug up their ears.

Are we a society segregated by technology? How cultured are we when one man’s arrogance can silence a bus, and the homeless are accepted as part of the cityscape? A sadness permeated my day. I have no answer to these questions.

A Mop for the Spill

It took only a cup of coffee latte to decommission a bus. An old lady spilled it. There was nothing to mop it. The driver called command central, a spill…a spill…and herded the rest of us off the bus like a flock of sheep.

Sometimes I wonder why a bus doesn’t come and when it does, is so crowded. Now I know things like the spill and other mishaps may be the cause. Putting aside the blame, which in this case was clearly the passenger’s, I wonder why buses aren’t equipped with a little housekeeping compartment. A towel would have taken care of the matter. A dustpan for debris? And insist the guilty ones clean up after themselves. Yes it may still throw the timing off, but offenders won’t get to walk away from their mess like spoiled children.

Synchronistic Serendipity

I missed the #44 bus last night, watching it passed as I stood across the street on Fulton and 8th. I could have waved. It might have stopped. But it was crowded and I decided to let it go. At the bus shelter it said 18 minutes before the next one. I took a walk in the ripping wind. Glad to be bundled up in my winter coat.

The bus looked empty when it arrived. After I boarded someone in the front said hello. It was Zach T sitting on an electric scooter. Hello, I said, I just met a friend of yours yesterday and you were on our mind. I sat down across from him. New bike, I observed. Yeah. He nodded. It’s fantastic.

Zach is probably in his early twenties. When we fist met at the Sacred Grounds he walked with a limp with the aid of a walking stick. But when he read his poetry was fiery and punctuated, fabulously hip-hop without a trace of debilitation. Sometimes he just came to listen. Huddled in a corner, left as quietly as he came.

He told me he missed two buses. I told him I missed one. That was all that it took to meet up. It was late at night. Few people got on the bus as we chatted. He invited me to draw and paint with him and his friends. I said yes I’d like that. He got off at Mission and Silver. I got off a little further down and trudged uphill.

The #11 Bus

Stick shift and bad back do not make good bedfellows. But I’m the kind of person who likes to sit in front of the computer until the last minute and then dashes out the door. When I am forced to abandon my “third leg” because of back spasms I have to reevaluate my priorities.

The world has always been what it is. Only when I enter it at a different portal do I notice new things like fresh air, the fog, the wind, sunshine, the moon and the rhythm of my heart. As a poet I write about these elements often enough. But they are through the imagination and not so much the body. Taking the bus I find an entire community of its own as we rub shoulders and smell each other’s odor and listen to each other’s conversation. A long walk navigating between people and animals, observing the glorious old cinemas that have deteriorated into garages and sundry stores on Mission Street, I find my slowing metabolism speeds up. It is all good. #11, as we call legs, is the bus I’m taking these days. Unlike Muni, I can depend on them.