If my bus were as entertaining as that, I'd ride the bus, too.
I wish my town had awesome buses like that. Ours feature ads for crisis pregnancy centers and smell slightly like pickles.
I ride the bus, but in Italy the senior citizen are the bad asses to watch out for. They elbow, push and nudge their way to the front of the crowd (there are no lines in Italy).
They will knock you over if you let them.
What a cool experience! I haven't been on a bus in Austin in 20 yeas - must try it again.
If you keep riding, you can amass a collection of public transportation stories that rival those of mimi smartypants. 8-)
Ha! I came to comment but Jennifer already said what I was going to say. Only substitute Israel for Italy. There are no lines here either, and the senior citizens are the pushiest.
Your bus experience sounds awesome.
The last time I rode MUNI, I sat next to a man who was ROLLING A JOINT. Just rolling it in plain daylight, like he wasn't sitting on a bus at 11am on a Sunday morning. He was also talking to his iPod.
The awkward part was that my dad was sitting on the other side of me. And he was all "is that man rolling a joint? And talking to his iPod?" and I was all "What? No! Of course not! This city is perfectly safe!"
I love the bus here in Austin. I commute to work on it every day. My commute would be 20 minutes by car, and it's 50 minutes by bus, but I enjoy the bus so much more. And people aren't trying to drive into me. There are always interesting people on the bus in Austin. My favorite is the woman who is always encouraging the unemployed and underemployed to get jobs and hooking them up with people who can help them.
As a white girl who's been married to a black guy for almost 20 years now, I can tell you that "in a minute" has been part of my husband's vocabulary for as long as I've known him. It's the Detroit version of "talk to you later". It seemed weird to me the first time I heard it but I don't even notice it anymore.
Kudos to your bus driver. That job has to be one of the roughest out there, and the fact he still stands up to the young punks is admirable indeed.
I have to admit, I am curious to know just where scorpion girl had been keeping herself with the early closing gas stations. Such a mystery.
We don't have a car so taking the bus is just what we do, but it's very common here in Vancouver. But we're going to be moving to a very car orientated city (no, not Detroit) in the fall and everyone has been telling us we'll need to get one. After Dutch's post about cars/buses a few weeks ago I thought, oh damn, maybe we will have to get a car. But this post has given me hope. I just hope the bus drivers will be as cool as yours.
You and Dutch make such a compelling case to move to Detroit. I am seriously considering it these days. Much work for ESL teachers?
Thanks for this bus story. Its a good one. I will also start integrating 'in a minute'. We'll see how that goes over here in India. ha!
squindia - There is a lot of work in Detroit if you are and ESL teacher for Spanish to English.
There is probably some work in the suburbs for people who speak other languages, expecially Arabic. There is an International School in the suburbs as well, but teaching jobs there are extremely competitive, and I am not sure what they do with ESL.
Around here nearly everyone takes the bus because we're all so eco-friendly. *eye roll* There's even a special "drunk bus" that runs until 2am for all those late night revelers.
Oh how I wish a driver on the 7 Haight would do this! I actually witnessed an obnoxious wannabee-gangster teen push an 80-something little old man to the ground when the elderly gent got upset over the kid shoving him up the steps. Bus riders yelled at the kid, "respect your elders"!, but the driver completely ignored the incident. Fancy this, the elderly man picked himself up off the floor, brushed himself off and put up both fists, clenched, ready to box. Muni rides in SF - perfect case study for any psych term paper. Thanks for the great post Wood.
Jen
Awesome! I took the bus all the time when we lived in Minneapolis (I prefer the L over the bus now we are in Chicago).
In less fun bus lore, my friend and I were once harrassed in a pretty violent tone for twenty minutes by some creepy young dude who was convinced we were lesbians so hot for each other that he had to tell us over and over again how much we "wanted it". He was so loud that everyone else on the bus was dead quiet. Instead of confronting him ourselves and risking what we perceived to be a potential for some serious physical harm, we kept waiting for the bus driver to do something. It turned out that the creepy young dude and the driver were friends. When it was his stop, they totally shot the shit and made it clear they knew each other. Everyone on the bus was not amused and I heard several saying they were going to complain in addition to us. I never saw the bus driver or the creepy dude again.
Oh, this is great, Wood. I love buses and rode them frequently growing up in New York City. Why so many people take taxis everywhere in Manhattan I will never understand.
i'm totally with scorpion girl- one of the things i hated about being in a smaller city was all the stuff that closed early! how dare those owner-operators have their own lives! the nerve. i guess there have been a few incidents here lately of people being attacked on buses and the drivers ignoring it (not even calling the cops), which is surprising b/c most transit workers here are pretty badass.
last time when dutch posted about the whole urban transit thing pnuts dad and i chatted about how we feel we have entered into the privileged old age of purposely choosing to not take the bus or train anymore. public transportation, while pretty damn convenient here in queens, totally schivatzes me out now. i told him "i did my time, enjoyed it as a kid, tolerated it as a young adult, now i'm 30 and i want my kid strapped in a car seat in my hermetically sealed station wagon taking me directly from my home to my destination, thank you very much." what an old spoiled brat i've become! sigh.
welcome to the neighborhood!
thanks for supporting DDOT and puredetroit.
see you on woodward one these days.
wood, a bird just wonked into my window here, and i thought, i wonder if wood is going to have juniper paint some sweet little birdie suncatchers for dutch for fathers day? because i just decided that's what we're doing! 
There was an urban myth when I lived in SF (several friends swore to me they saw this themselves, so it must have been a myth) about the 30 Stockton. A little old lady gets on a very crowded bus carrying two live chickens. When the driver tells her she can't bring live chickens on the bus, she steps off, breaks both their necks, and gets back on, without comment from driver or passengers.
Nothing but love!
My bus driver was like Ms. Crabtree from South Park. I used to get a nervous stomach on the way to school, and she'd yell at me. Then I'd vomit in her puke-specific Sanka can, which she'd force me to carry to school, clean and return it in the evening.
I hate buses.
After moving back to Houston (where I grew up) from New York, I refused to buy a car and used to take the bus. I got so much material from my daily bus rides that I managed to write a small collection of short stories.
And I can't tell you how many times nice, white, heavily made-up women would pull over to the bus stop in their Lexuses or Mercedes, look me up and down to make sure I wasn't insane, then offer me a ride. Because nice white girls don't ride the bus in Houston, ya know.
I have been a little hesitant to take DDOT, not because the city council has been fighting for months about whether they should pay for armed officers to ride each bus, but because I really can't believe the pure experience of it could ever match MUNI.
I was a regular rider of the 31 Balboa and 38 Geary in San Francisco, and there was just so much awesomeness on these buses it's like they ruined public transportation for me forever. There was guy on the 31 who had a giant hole in his face. There was simply nothing but scar tissue above his lips, and he was always well dressed. There was a brilliant schizophrenic dude on the 38 who I always found myself sitting next to who would have debates with himself about the merits of obscure mid-century european philosophers. I used to write down the names he would mentions and then google them only to learn this man was apparently very, very smart. he wore white sneakers and a baby blue backpack and when he got off the bus downtown he would sprint away. then there was the homeless man with no legs who used to roll around the tenderloin on a skateboard and who you could always watch from the 31. They called him skateboard, and I think he recently got run over.
MUNI was the absolute best.
The buses are way under-rated here in New York City, but I love them.
Just the other day I was on the bus while it was raining outside. A mother with a sleeping child on her shoulder was trying to get off the bus with a suitcase and her folded up stroller. The driver got out of his seat and helped the woman off of the bus, even making sure that she and her belongings were under the shelter of the bus stop. That beautiful moment renewed my belief in human kindness.
A lot of people do the park-n-ride thing here in MSP, but some of the city routes have been pretty scary recently, with numerous assaults and even shootings. Yikes! I think they are also debating armed guards here for certain routes and times of day.
in-a-minute is my favorite. hilarious.
Oh, I wish I could do the bus thing here in Toledo! I would love to just sit and knit to and from work. I tried it once, and my 20 minute commute became a 90 minute nightmare with 2 transfer during the 7 mile trip.
They are also notorious for being late. One of my co-workers has no other transportation and she arrives here nearly 2 hours early rather then take the bus scheduled to arrive 15 minutes before she starts and risk being late to work. Ugh. No wonder they are always complaining of poor rider-ship.
Public transpo is even a bit crazy here in the Very Vanilla SLC. Call girls, tweakers, aluminum hat-wearers--gotta love it.
I salute you--I have lived here since I was 12 and have never once been aboard a DDOT bus. Maybe Maggie and I will catch the Woodward bus to meet my husband at the DIA--some of our neighbors do that a lot.
that bus driver could (and should) kick some Muni driver ass!
Dude, I wish I could get loud, tattooed people to sit next to me on the MUNI. I tend to get horrifying old perverts in chaps (if you don't believe me, I have a cell phone photo) or aggressive trannies. Or better yet, the very loud psychos off of their meds.
The guy in chaps was the worst though...there I was knitting away, trying very hard not to check out what he was offering...not looking...not looking...can't see you...lalalala....
God, I love San Francisco.
I love taking public transportation where ever I travel. Got some of my favorite travel stories from doing that. I always try to sit next to the cleanest looking person, it generally makes the trip more pleasant.
I used to take a bus every day in Minneapolis, and the conversations I would have with people...
One man informed me that his standard poodle was "his heart" and also that his kids didn't know he was leaving everything to the dog.
A Deaf man rode the bus every day, too, and was a pervert. He would try to grope the non-regular passengers, and then pretend he didn't understand why they didn't want their nipples tweaked.
I wish we had buses around here that took me someplace besides to Stop & Shop and back. There's nobody exciting trying to get to Stop & Shop in the middle of nowhere. I used to love riding the bus in Boston, even if nobody interesting was on it - I've got this weird thing for public transportation, and I'd get rid of my car in a second and ride a bus everywhere if I could.
Your Detroit bus driver reminds me of the ladies who drive the buses back in San Bernardino. They're always courteous but they can give it to you when you're being a jerk and they had really long nails. 10-4
Wood, you're just all kinds of awesome.
Wow Wood, a story about bas-ass wonderful Detroit bus drivers on Tuesday and the drivers all go out on strike on Wednesday. What power you have, woman.
There are so many amazing bus drivers! When I lived in Oakland, you could just tell that the bus drivers were a major social contact for the elderly and the disabled. They did social work--talking to them, making sure they were OK, etc. Honestly, they used to restore my faith in humanity.
I love eavesdropping on public conversations, except for me it's always on airplanes or in airports. The bus system here is very limited and expensive.
I LOVE the bus. I had a fun experience on the Boulder bus the other day, when 2 passengers in the back got in a fight over a seat (it was CROWDED), and the bus driver stopped and ran back while everyone was yelling about someone being hurt (which I don't think was actually the case.) Everyone got off, very confused and annoyed at the fighters, and I walked home laughing. So much fun! Thanks for your Detroit bus story. I'll look forward to hearing more!
LOVE this post. What an experience on a bus. And in Detroit! Damn u can spin a tale out of what most poeple might not have even bothered to retell, saying instead, "you had to be there." I feel like i WAS there.
great post Wood!
That's cute Wood. I don't think "in a minute" is going to catch on though. In New York there are hardly no gas stations. No one needs them because we have cabs.
Hardly ANY gas stations.
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