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Me to bus driver: “Thanks, have a nice day.”
Bus driver to me: “I hope you have the best day you can possibly imagine, and I hope you can’t possibly imagine the limits of your imagination. The fare is $2.50.”
Thanks, bus driver. Barring a slap fight with one horny centaur, I’d say I had a pretty good day.
Former Stranger news writer Cienna Madrid has been a writer in residence for Richard Hugo House, a local literary nonprofit. There, she taught fiction classes and wrote 4/5 of a book about a death-row... More by Cienna Madrid
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I had the greatest bus experience of my life on the #9 in Portland, late one night after we got off the train. As it started to fill up (this was around 10 PM on a Friday night), the driver told as all to start cheering wildly whenever a new person got on the bus. The amazing thing was that everyone played along. Put me in a great mood to enjoy the weekend.
Horny centaurs, eh? Sounds like someone’s been dipping into the good drugs.
A driver of the 10 recently opined to a bus that my boyfriend was on as he approached SCCC: “Pine and Broadway, Seattle Central Community College establishment of higher learning. Or learning high, depending on who your friends are.”
One of my favorites (among otherwise miserable public transit experiences in LA) was the driver singing War’s “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” as we drove in to Chinatown.
a day without a slap fight with a horny centuar is like a day without sunshine.
Don’t forget the obligatory smelly/crazy person that has to get on! (seriously, happens to me like every day)
@6, on the other hand, no one ever gets in my car and soaks down the seat real good with urine and feces before I sit down in it. And no one has ever punched me in the face while exiting my car.
Good bus moments far outshine the bad ones. Unless someone full on stabs you with their AIDS needle or something.
I once had a late night #2 driver who entertained all us drunkies with a trivia challenge. It was the best ride home ever.
@ 7, there’s a first time for everything.
@5: …in that 90% of days in Seattle are both. ZING!
One of my best bus driver moments: I was dressed up with a snazzy coat and looking pretty fine, except that I was wearing tennis shoes because I had a long way to walk and no way was I doing that in heels. The bus driver looks me up and down and says “You’re so elegant! And your shoes – so practical!” Love it.
Back in our high school days, my GF and I were trudging home through one of those Chicago blizzards. An out-of-service CTA bus pulled up next to us and the driver, upon ascertaining that our destination lay between our current location and the garage to which he was headed, gave us a lift most of the way home. It was right nice of him.
Buses here are awesome. In India, you have to compete with chickens and livestock when you board a bus.
@12: Only car drivers pay taxes now? You fuck off.
@12, considering that bus passengers take thousands of cars off the road every day to make your car commute possible in anything less than 2 hours, a notion that never seems to enter your tiny brain, you should kiss the ass of every buss passenger that makes your privileged lifestyle possible. Fuck off yourself, arrogant ass.
@12: We bus riders pay taxes too. And if more people rode the buses, they’d be at capacity more often, and so would be more cost-efficient. Back to http://boards.4chan.org/b/ with you, you miserable little pile of garbage!
@7 You don’t have kids then?
@ 12 – You mad.
Last night, I didn’t get out of the office until about 9:20. I was feeling grumpy and annoyed, so I mixed a screwdriver with one of my emergency tiny vodka bottles and drank it on the way to the bus stop. I was feeling somewhat better by the time I got on the bus, but then I noticed that sitting across from me was a guy
wearing a kilt
eating spaghetti.
And it MADE my FUCKING DAY.
Glad to see Seattle is as overeducated as ever.
Does anyone remember Smiley from back in the day? I think he drove the old 7 that went from the Hill way out to Rainier Beach, or somewhere. He was some kind of wonderful for the happy busriding making. He’d have a whole sardine-canned bus stuck in traffic on a 90 degree day cracking up, singing together and amazingly enough for Seattle happily interacting with each other. A real mench he was.
@22: Yes! I loved Smiley! He was driving the first time I saw a naked man!
The only way a bus commute can be better than a car commute is if you don’t own a car.
@23 how do you mean?
I got several fine blOwjobs driving I90 but never got one on a bus, probably because I only dated ladies, not ho’s.
Sorry to hear The Stranger doesn’t pay you enough to afford a car. Someday.
@7- I envy you and your punch-in-the-face-and-urine-free car experiences.
@12- Or you could stop paying so much to get back and forth to work.
I ride a bike myself. According to the Grouphealth Community bike challenge calorie counting majigger, I’ve burned 13,500 calories so far this month getting back and forth to work. If I was driving I’d either have to eat less delicious food or get fat. And I fucking love eating, so not only do I pay close to nothing for transportation, I get to prevent my own diabetes.
@ 22, I think I got that guy a couple of times. When I first moved to Seattle in 97, I had to take the bus up to First Hill to get my driver’s licence – took the 3 or 4, I think – and the bus was driven by a guy like that. A black man in his mid-30s maybe? (That would make him around 50 today?) Anyway, I got him on another bus a couple of years later.
@22 I got Smiley a lot riding the 48 to school 6-9ish years ago.
@31: Leave East German footballer Martin Busse out of this!
Or learn to fucking spell.
Or pay $10/gallon for unsubsidized gasoline.
Whichever.
…and once and for all: roads are fucking subsidized too:
http://www.uspirg.org/home/reports/repor…
@31 I own a car AND I use mass transit. Or, for short hops, my bicycle. In our town, it’s often faster and easier to jump on the subway or bus than grab the car. Plus, you don’t have to give up your parking space.
So, yeah. Mass transit takes cars off the road.
Seattle has some nice bus drivers! I think friendly, happy bus drivers are symptomatic of a population that loves its city. And by implication, symptomatic of a city worth loving.
If you love your city, and its people, then being a bus driver, and driving its people around to its destinations is not such a crappy way to make a living.
@21 Wtf does that mean? Is that supposed to be an insult? I guess being overeducated is not better than living in a trailer paradise jacking off to Asian porn all day in Kent, but them’s the breaks.
@31 I have a car and subsidized parking, idiot. I take the bus anyway and many other commuters do the same. Go back to your little spider hole.
@31 “tools and shit” you say. And does you 10 mpg off road vehicle sport a pair of truck nutz? Yeah, I kinda thought so. Moron.
What the hell is wrong with you people? @ 31 is a “troll.” Your responses are exactly what he wants. Get some thick skin, okay?
@38 exactly. Leave it to the professionals like those in Trollhunter.
I was just looking for a reason to use the phrase “truck nutz”.
@41: If you carry 300 pounds of tools everywhere you go, either you’re a welder, or you don’t know how to manage what equipment you need and what you don’t.
I do love the “Mass transit sucks and is unnecessary because I’m one of the 1% of people for whom a motor vehicle is pretty much necessary.” argument. It makes as much sense as saying we all need to be injecting insulin because some people are diabetic.
@12
I do pay ten bucks to get to work… Over the course of two round trips from Seattle to Bellevue.
I might add that I also own a car, which I drive when it is my turn to carpool during the two days that I do.
I’m also pretty certain that a good number of riders also have cars, but would rather ride in a relaxed environment (You wouldn’t know since you’ve presumably never taken the ST-550) and read before a long day of work rather than spending their commutes having to deal with puerile, entitled (Yes, you are), road-raging asshats such as yourself.
@22 He still drives the 7, I ride his bus every day or two, when I miss the bus I usually catch. My favorite moment he provided me, and the rest of the bus, with while bumbling down Jackson:
“I’ve got a song to sing, it’s about passengers always standing at the front of the bus:
Why do passengers
Always stand
Close to me
Close to me
We’ve got so much space
In the back
But you always stand
So close to me
Close to me”