People You Meet on Transit #5

Thanks to Jay Morrison for the photo.

Transit Drivers
Bus drivers are an archetype in North American culture. In the imagination they are generous in girth, have staunch opinions about unions and eat 300% the recommended intake of red meat. The odd one adheres to a strict conspiracy theory, which they manage to work into the most innocuous conversations.

At least, that's what's been ingrained in our collective subconscious along with "Han shot first" and "Dukakis, 1988".

But transit drivers, like everyone else, are individuals. Unique, utterly one of a kind from the 5 billion others who roam this spinning mass of molten iron with the cool, carbon life-form infested shell. Sure, you see the reticent ones, who have a 100 yard stare and coolly watch passengers get mild hypothermia while they take their union-sanctioned 15 minute break inside their cozy bus. But there are other, more colourful characters as well.

In my city, there is one that calls out every stop and what attractions might be nearby. "Macdonald street, Safeway, Plenty Clothing store, Exotic Tanning Salon". I imagine he hankers for the heady years of Roarin' 30's, with it's flappers and Prohibition; when a competent elevator boy could make enough to feed his family of 17 who dwell in a one bedroom apartment in the poorer section of the Bronx.

There is something inspiring about that; someone taking the care to make every stop special in some way. Someone who maintains the verve and energy for their work as very few without a limitless Percocet prescription can manage. Of all the jobs out there where one could maintain an enthusiasm, Bus Driver would certainly be down the list (top of the list? Idle Rich, Space Ship Pilot, Lewdness Censor).

Last week there was a fellow who was talking about a Cleanse he had just finished, and hoping that he had flushed his system fully of toxins. If that isn't bursting through stereotypical boundaries, I don't know what is.

People You Meet on Transit #4

The Raving Lunatic
I've known someone who suffered from mental illness. It's not very pretty, poetic or a sign of artistic merit. It's painful and awkward and just shitty all around. Maybe that's why the Raving Lunatic is always troubling to me. Not that I'm sure he doesn't disturb other passengers, but I have a personal connection with that sort of disease, and well, it helps to have a reason to tell yourself why you are the only person leaving the bus because of the wild-eyed looking person talking to his Texas Instruments calculator and raving about the coming Dark Underprince and his many wing'ed minions, black with pitch and the tell-tale soot of burn'ed souls.

I remember sitting behind two teens, they might have been girls, or two effeminate boys, I'm not quite sure. But one of them comments that "Oh yeah, he has bipolar", and they go on about it like it's a trendy thing to have, like ironic 80's shirts or a passably real-looking fake Fendi bag. No, he's probably not bi-polar, he's probably really moody and wants to pin a name on the endless torment and pain he feels that compels him to wear black and listen to Black Sabbath in hopes of finding messages from the Dark Prince. Real mental disease isn't cool or pretty and certainly not something that sensitive people gather around and attribute to that really cute yet volatile guy with the messed-up-on-purpose hair and well worn but unread copy of Kerouac.

And every so once in a while there is the fellow in the terribly cramped subway compartment, raving. Full-on raving, and not with glowsticks and computerized musak, no, I mean, full on, diatribing about this that or the other. I can see why ipods sell so well. The entire trainful of commuters try to avert their gaze or continue their conversation about Sally and her poor choice of top for yesterday's meeting, but the big bloody elephant is in the room, so to speak.

There are several ways to approach this. One, really hone in on that iPod you have blasting overpriced music into your ears, try for the twenty third time to finish that particularly tricky sentence in the novel you are holding, or just get up and leave, and take the 5-10 minute ding in your commute.

I dunno, I'm a softy or a wuss or some other affable term for someone who can't quite 'take the heat', but I take the ding every single time.

People You Meet on Transit #3

The hipster. This is the guy (I have yet to recognize the gal variety) listening to the newest iPod as conspicuously as possible, with fashionably tousled hair, a rakish grin and a scarf that costs more than my coat.

They are like a Gap commercial come to life, if Gap's name-brand cheerfulness and ability to swing dance at will was replaced with a sardonic mind that framed all the world in either post-Chomskian analysis or as fodder for their next avant-garde three act interpretive shadow puppet dance featuring the vocal stylings of the only ethnic person they know.

It must be tricky being a hipster, since by default everything they say or think has to be sarcastic. Now, at some point, that has to get cliche,so does one layer sarcasm on top of sarcasm? Does sarcasm work like negative numbers, where two negatives multiplied together creates a positive? Are optimists merely pessimists who have gone too far? Or does sarcasm work like watercolours? Where if you layer enough sarcasm together, it all looks like a grey mess and you can't be sure if you just used the dirty water where you store your brushes or have created a new NEW grey which may be featured in your friends next art show at the corner gas and frappucino bar.

I imagine that when multiple levels of sarcasm are layered upon each other - in a slave-like fashion not unlike how the pyramids were built; every layer more difficult to lay upon the previous one, and the all the while the previous layer bringing all sorts of doubt as to it's structural strength - the sheer weight of analyzing everything for pop-culture reference, blatant hypocrisy or whispers of post-consumerist neo-capitalist faux-objectivism must get tiring.

The hipster, I'd imagine, gets crushed.

I mean, you can't seriously wear those twill houndstooth jacket with the army surplus hats forever, can you? At some point it all looks fairly ridiculous. At some point, you are going to be mocking your own ability to mock things, which in turn can be seen as a transparent grab at seeming extra edgy and on the envelope.

Dang, I don't even know where I'm going with this, except to say hipsters are the black holes of the Transit universe, they eventually implode. What comes out the other side, well, someone must know. Do they become the power-broking attorney who works 100 hours a week but smokes weed every three months so they are 'still cool'? Do they metamorphosize into a barrista with visions of finally doing a proper edit of Casablanca?

Where do they go off to? There are no 40 year old hipsters.

Maybe they just eventually save enough money for the downpayment on that Jetta they've been eyeing.

People You Meet on Transit #2

The Uppity
There are a certain class of people who take transit who either believe that they are Too Good for Transit, or else that I'm Only Taking Transit As A Stopgap. Maybe their errari is in the shop, maybe their Jaguar car-pool is experiencing a rough patch, or maybe their job as a mortuary transcriptionist doesn't pay as much as they think. They've deigned to wallow with the masses, as it were, muck about in the public transportation system and bear it. Hey, they might have a fun story to tell at their next Thomas Pynchon Book Club meeting.

There are a few tell-tale signs of the Uppity Up. The first is that their clothes costs more than all the bus-riders clothes combined. The second is that they invariably take a seat, then decide that in order to block the great unwashed from sitting next to them and bathing them in body-odour and/or the overpowering vapours of cheap gin, they take up a whole 'nother seat with their bag.

Now, it might be that their bag contains some secret service document that, if released, would spell the end of the free world as we know it, and lead to a second epoch of civilization, one ruled by a small set of cliquey, hyper intelligent raccoons. It might be they are carrying with them the only known live specimen of the Black Plague. These are all reasonable reasons to take up two seats when you are not, in fact, attached to your Siamese twin.

Every other excuse makes you look like an Uppity Up.

It takes a certain sort of willful ignorance to sit at your seat, your immaculate Italian leather atttache case laying smugly beside you, while what looks to be hundreds of transit riders hang on for dear life, each eyeing the semi-empty seat with covetous eyes and pure anger in their hearts.

People being what people are, generally don't say anything, and just wait out their short and painful bus ride, all wondering how plausible their defense for justifiable homicide would be if they plunged their umbrella through the Uppity Up's heart one or thirty nine times. Sometimes someone speaks up, and asks the Uppity Up, if they could possibly move their attache case so that the incredibly decrepit lady with the 30 pounds of groceries and the advanced case of varicose veins might sit down. The Uppity Up, will feign surprise, as if their vision had not been entirely obscured by the fifty transit riders all standing.

People You Meet on Transit #1

I know blogs are supposed to be about personal experiences and what not. I've tried to shy away from that, mostly because my personal experiences are as incredibly boring as you can imagine. I mean, it's life. We aren't zooming through the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. Life is life, you know, work, kids, family, COMMUTING. So, in a probably ill-fated attempt to find things to write about (see my attempts at book reviews, or thoughts of the day, or even random wikipedia entries), I present to you, People Who Take Transit.

One group that can always fill my quota for the word 'fuck' in a casual sentence are the construction workers.
"So, fuck man, I was, fucking, like, doing that fucking job, right? And fucking, fuck, like, I dunno, that fucking guy just wasn't listening."
"No fucking way. That's fucked."
"You still having that fucking thing. That thing you were fucking talking about?"
"Fuck yeah."
"Alright, alright, I'll give you call later."
"Fucking eh."

It's awesome. I'm not sure what the purpose of the word 'fuck' is in those sentences. They are kinda like filler. Like so many proust quotes at a New York socialites cocktail party, it's just fluff to fill out the speech.

I'm not sure what it is about construction workers or blue collar workers in general, but I usually feel the need to be involved in some manly activity, or to, in some way, justify my manliness in the face of such raw testosterone filled men. I mean, they run big engines, or 'rigs', their toolbox and its contents costs more than my new quad core box, they have union reps, they talk non-ironically about bowling leagues (probably not the last point, that's just their lives being filtered through my understanding of Fred Flinstone).

It's probably just me, being a white collar weanie, in my khakis and sweaters. And I'm certain that the feelings aren't reciprocated. I'm certain that the forklift operator I sat next to yesterday isn't suddenly thinking if he has read up on the latest differences between Plasma, LCDs, and DLP, or hoping that the nerdily guy next to him doesn't ask him if the latest ASUS chipsets are out.

There, is, if you will, a hierarchy of Things A Guy Should Be. Dirty, knowledgeable about anything that runs on gas, a passing fancy for military weaponry (you should, for instance, know the difference between an AK-47 and an M-16 and know that the most over used handgun in action films today is the Desert Eagle), and a sundry other things that I can't publicly discuss lest I be found out by the Guy Brotherhood and beaten with rusty carbuerators (I should probably know what those are). In this hierarchy, geeky things just dont' apply. Things I like to know about, are way down on the list. That is, if you take a broad cross-section of guys.

What am I getting at? I'm not sure. Maybe it's that the construction guys on transit make me seriously consider picking up the latest issue of Lowrider and have a quick browse through Wikipedia to figure out where a winch goes and how it works. Maybe this is just so much conversational 'fuck', if you will, in the great big blather that is the blogosphere.