The storied Route 7 now has an expiration date: 2032. At that point, King County Metro will change it to RapidRide R Line, a bus that will run between Rainier Beach and downtown Seattle. This new line will require the transformation of Rainier Avenue, a former highway with a reputation for fast cars that regularly crash into buildings, poles, and people.
Route 7 also has a bad reputation: Its buses are often so late that they get clustered—you have massive gaps between no bus at all and two or three buses arriving all at once. The situation, which hasn’t much improved since the introduction of some bus-only lanes in 2022, was even worse when the 7 ran from Rainier Beach to the University District, with stops in downtown and Capitol Hill. Those dismal days, the ones before Route 49 began service in 2005, experienced useless clusters of four to five Route 7 buses.
But I still love the 7. It’s the people’s bus. And not only that, it’s the Asian/Black/Latino bus. It’s not infrequent that one takes the 7 and finds the only white person on the bus is the driver. This route is minority majority on wheels, even to this day, despite the considerable gentrification of large sections of South Seattle. The 7 keeps it real; it remains faithful to the city’s historically most diverse area, Rainier Valley. But this diversity is not just racial. It’s also about characters. The reason why the 7 has so many great stories is because it serves so many different types of personalities, some of which are, for sure, very unusual.
It was on a Route 7 bus that I experienced one of the strangest characters in my life. This incident happened some eight years ago, and around the point the bus leaves Rainier and turns into Little Saigon.
That day, the trip between Columbia City (where I live) and Little Saigon had been unusually uninteresting. But that all changed when we got to the stop by the Boat, an iconic Vietnamese restaurant. For some reason, the doors at the back of the bus were jammed. And a man (short, mixed-race, and full of something that was eating his mind) kept screaming at the driver to “OPEN THE BACK DOOR!” It was like his whole life depended upon it. But the door would, again and again, partially open and then abruptly shut. And with each failure, the man’s heat and voice would rise with greater force: “OPEN THE BACK DOOR!!!!!”
The insanely intense temperature of this man rattled the nerves of everyone in the back of the bus, which included its only white person: a woman who appeared to be a college student. She had blondish hair and bluish eyes that disclosed her growing fear of the screaming man. The door yet again attempted to open and failed. But before the man’s head exploded, a middle-aged Black man (who reminded me a little of Howlin’ Wolf) dressed in dungerees stood, rushed to the door, and rationally determined the problem: the door was jammed by an abandoned Coca-Cola can. He picked it up, and the door finally and smoothly opened, and the fury left the bus to lord knows where.
The young white woman, relieved that the end of the world was over, turned to her enlightened savior in the dungarees and thanked him profusely for resolving this chaotic situation. He calmly looked at her for a moment. Raised his eyebrows. And began barking. Like a dog. A very big dog. One that was neither aggressive nor friendly. She was totally stunned. He did not speak human. He only barked. And sounded like a Great Dane or maybe a Bullmastiff. In either case, the barking was so convincing that it was hard to believe a human throat and mouth produced it.
The whole back of the bus was also stunned by the hound man in the dungarees, who returned to his seat barking to himself. The look on the white woman’s face said it all: What planet am I on? In what world does a person perfect the cry of a dog? Only the 7, baby.
