When AIDS hit Zimbabwe hard in the early 90s, the saying was this: People go in twos (the husband and the wife; the wife and the husband). The 7 bus also has a thing for going in twos, not to death, of course, but down Rainier.

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Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

31 replies on “It’s Always Like This With # 7”

  2. This is not a surprise. The closer together buses are scheduled (and the #7 is a very frequent route), and the more erratic their individual delay times, the more likely you are to see this. After leaving the terminal, the buses vary from their ideal pattern of evenly spaced arrival times, sometimes early, sometimes late. Once a pair drifts enough that the first is late and the next is early enough to meet, they are bound together and unlikely to drift apart again. If it goes on long enough, they may even pick up a third.

  4. What the hell? Just because you think it doesn’t mean it should come out on the Slog. Kind of sad that you would take a tragedy and link it to your irritation over bus timing.

  5. This is the best post in the history of Slog. “Not to death, of course, but down Rainier” is the finest SENTENCE in the history of Slog.

  6. Wow, has it really been 6 years since they broke the 7 into the 49 and 7 routes?

    One reason they did that is so buses would be more on time. Yet at any time of day the 49 (and apparently the 7) is still behind schedule a good chuck of the time. What’s up with that?

    I look forward to the day when Charles comments on the 48 aka the forty-late.

  7. The first time I ever saw a naked man was when a homeless guy’s pants fell down as he dug for change on the #7. He wasn’t wearing any skivvies.

  9. I’m a bus driver. If the bus ahead of me runs late (maybe traffic) he picks up my passengers too. Then I run early, I might even pass him with no passengers.

  11. Aaaaaand Charles Mudede discovers bus bunching approximately two decades after everyone else in his age group has already figured it out. But of course, it’s new to him, and so worthy of comment and discussion as some deep philosophical blah blah blah….

  12. Ah, the rarely seen Reverse Mudede! The usual technique is to show us something commonplace, lure us in with deceptively boring commentary, and then take an abrupt turn into social commentary or something. I don’t think this version, where you start with the Zimbabwean AIDS and then bring in the bus, has quite the same effect. The reader is tipped off too early, in my opinion.

  13. Gotta agree. This is pretty fucking stupid. One traffic issue on Rainier and the 7 (most frequent runner) will “bunch”. Get over it. It’s normal.

  18. @10: Really? It can’t be worse than making a wrong turn. Instantly satanic enemy #1 of every single person on the bus!

  20. The 7 needs to stop less frequently. There should also be a few busses that cross Rainier valley and hit the freeway without needing to crawl up Rainier at an inconceivably slow pace. You need to be able to get to downtown from there without it being a 1 hour commute when you’re just going 4 to 8 miles. The 7 is ridiculous. I’m blown away that they’re cutting the 7x if we don’t approve the $20 tabs thing. I remember when tabs were based on car value. $100 – $500 for a year of driving your car/monstrosity through town. That was archaic. And super expensive for the monstrosity drivers.

  21. My first thought after reading this was, “Is Charles Mudede mentally ill?” The comparison is so wildly appropriate (was it meant to be amusing? it wasn’t) that it seems he might be.

  22. I have a theory, and Dear The Stranger, please prove me wrong. There is no Charles Mudede, just like there is no actual A. Birch Steen.

    Much like the yearly contest to see who among the laypeople can write something in the style of or a parody of the author Bulwer-Lytton (the “It was a dark and stormy night” guy), or who can write something in Faux-Hemingway, there is a daily contest among Stranger staffers to see who can come up with the most Mudede-like prose.

    We see the winners, posted to Slog.

  23. This seems to be sort of a silly post since the 7 Express is about to be eliminated and the 7 itself is going to have a modified schedule (which is a nice way of saying reduced).

    Because if you think people are going to vote for bus service you’re wrong!

  26. Am I missing something by not understanding the correlation drawn in this post, or is the bar for posting anything on this blog just a bit too low?

  27. @11: It’s actually worse with trolley buses, because of platooning. Normally, an empty bus in back can pass a full bus in front, and so you can make up some time/distance that way. But with Metro’s currently trolleybus fleet, the one in back is stuck, and so the two buses will proceed as a single entity until their terminus.

    Luckily, any new buses that Metro buys will have off-wire capability, thus fixing this problem (and the closely-related one where a broken-down bus cuts off the whole line).

  28. @23 (“Because if you think people are going to vote for bus service you’re wrong!”):

    Is there a whinier, more ignorant of history, economics and politics and just plain annoying group of idiots than Sloggers who think we don’t support transit enough?

    In April 2006, King County Executive Ron Sims announced a program entitled “Transit Now” that, if approved by voters, would provide for a 20 percent increase in transit service by the end of 2016 over 2006 service levels, measured in annual operating hours. In order to realize this growth, Transit Now proposed an increase in the local option sales tax for transit of one-tenth of one percent. The Transit Now ordinance, passed by the King County Council on 5 September 2006 and signed by Executive Sims on 11 September 2006, forwarded the tax proposition to the voters and identified the programs to which operating revenue generated from the sales tax increase could be appropriated. The measure was approved by 56.62% of King County voters in the November 2007 general election.

  30. “Is there a whinier, more ignorant of history, economics and politics and just plain annoying group of idiots than Sloggers who think we don’t support transit enough?”

    Yep. Right-wing idiots who complain that “Transit Now” didn’t do anything when it in fact did a great deal, and ignore the fact that they and their Republican buddies fucked the economy over so bad that sales tax revenues took a huge dump in the last 5 years thanks to their shit policies.

  31. @22–you’re exactly right. The Stranger won’t take Mudede’s access away from SLOG since his inane ramblings continue to generate the most comments. It’s a sad catch 22 since we’re all commenting on this uninteresting blather…

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