Here we have a transcription of an interview with yours truly– conducted by the great Erica Weiland, a local writer, editor and media manager, for whose time and enthusiasm I am grateful. The transcript is an unexpurgated record of a huge conversation; this is merely part one. I thought you might find it interesting.

An Interview with Nathan Vass – Part 1

Rainier and Henderson, the bottom of the Valley, deep in the living night. We're in the nerve center for gun crimes and drug distribution– the former up 150 percent in Rainier Beach within the past year. While the recent SPU shooting drew national attention, activity in Rainier Valley tends to go unreported. Locals know the numbers– about 50 shootings, 25 of them documented, 12 murders, and nine assaults since mid-April: it's summertime in the 'hood. Only out here do I hear folks dread the onset of summer.

We in Seattle are fortunate in that we can get worked up over such small numbers. My hometown of Los Angeles is happy to have gone from 299 murders to just 251 in only a year, with per capita crime the lowest it's been in five decades. While one incident is too many, and the loss of a single life undeniably tragic, I might suggest it is not harmful to maintain perspective. Isolated incidents are not always indicative of trends. While we're reading articles with titles like Another Day, Another South-End Shooting, let us try to recall that news reporting is selective.  

Far from making us "more aware," a notion which would be comical were it not so patently wrongheaded, wallowing in crime news in fact builds a view of our surroundings which is not just skewed, but incorrect. Only from a mindset of staggering privilege and reactionary, ignorant fear could we do ourselves the injustice of failing to see the modern miracle which happens in Seattle's greater metropolitan area every day: each night, nearly all three million souls make it home, completely unscathed. 

I remember living in LA and watching car accidents happen in front of me while waiting for the bus home. This was a regular occurence. The idea that most of these other cars– in fact, practically all of them– would not get into accidents tonight seemed so unlikely. How was it even possible? Would LA's twelve million people really follow those colored lights and stripes on the road well enough that ninety-nine percent and change would actually make it home without their cars touching any other cars? It seemed impossible. Impossible! But it happened, every night, and the saddest thing was that nobody noticed. They were part of a truly unbelievable, physics-defying miracle, and no one cared. 

Now is also a good time to point out that crime in our great city, however we're looking at it, is either declining sharply, flat, or slowly declining. Seattle continues its steady decrease in overall crime since 2000, and has 32 percent less crime now than then. Homicides are down by 12 percent and assaults by ten in the last year; the numbers are more dramatic if we go back further. It's worth relinking Dominic Holden's detailed writeup from a year ago, Crime is Not Actually Spiking Downtown, and situating it in the larger context of our tendency to think crime is up when it's just the reporting that's proliferated: violent crime in the US has been declining steadily since the 1990s, and the LA Times article sums up reactions to that fact succinctly: Gun Crime Has Plunged, But Americans Think it's Up.*

All of which is to say, let us try to keep our outlook in proportion. Float above the madness and consider the aerial view. If you read the above-linked Rainier Beach crime article, please also read More to Rainier Beach Than Crime, Violence and Rainier Beach: A Beautiful Safe Place for Youth. Take in the beauty and stories of your Seattleite neighbors, those vibrant faces of all colors, hopes, and commonalities. Recognize the similarities in your dreams. There is no Other. 

Back to Rainier and Henderson, where I pulled up to the stop at about 10:50pm. Open the doors with a smile. A few thugs get on, tall and hulking, heavy in jackets and swagger. These are the hard types, connected, the men the teenagers wish they were. I greet each one with eye contact and some variation of "hey, how's it goin'?"

They appreciate my friendly gaze, equal-handed respect and complete lack of fear. The second shakes my hand after I oblige his imploration for a transfer. The third steps on with a "hey man, I'm tryna go ta work." He shows me a couple faded white plastic cards, incomprehensible to me.

It's eleven o'clock at night in Rainier Beach. Going to work? Really? It seemed like a ridiculous excuse, if that's what it was. Was he trying to "scam the system?"

Nope. I let him ride in any event, and soon saw him halfway down the bus, still standing, removing his coat and other outerwear and suiting up, as it were. He was putting on thick undershirts and some sort of waterproof coverall. Afterwards he put the jacket back on.

"Gettin' all dressed up for the nighttime!" I said.
"Yup, gettin' ready for work." 
"Rockin' the night shift!"
"Yeah, I do the pressure wash, at Safeco. S'pposed ta be there at ten, but don't usually start washing til eleven, so I'll still be early. We wash all the seats."
"That sounds cool. Getting to be out there in the stadium, nobody else around."
"Yeah, iss good."
"Been doin' it a long time?"
"Yeah."
"Good to have a job like that, something interesting, different,"
"Yeah. It's fun."
"Awesome."

There is no other, indeed. I'm so glad I gave him the benefit of the doubt. There are people I know who wouldn't have.

I attended a play some years ago in the Central District's Washington Hall. A ladyfriend was performing, and the show revolved around the subtle mistreatment and unintended subjugation of women in college environments. The playwright was on hand for a Q&A session afterwards. 

Somebody behind me, a middle-aged man, prompted him by saying, "we're all sitting here, in a playhouse in the Central District, and we're probably all left-leaning liberal people, who already agree with the excellent points made by your play. I don't think any of us here believe in sidelining women... I guess what I'm trying to say is, this play expands our understanding, but we already agree with its main points. What can we do to change the minds of people who don't? How do you get this to change the minds of an audience in the backwoods of Arkansas...?"

The playwright looked at the floor for a while. 

His legs were crossed in front of him, and his hands were clasped around his knees. He picked at the cloth of his pants and finally said, "I'm really glad you asked that. Because I think about that question all the time. What you're basically asking is, 'how do you change the world?' And my answer is, you don't. You change the person next to you. And you do that by being yourself. You don't even try to change them. You talk to them, you... whatever. Just be yourself. That's how you change the world. Be something they can see and think about, and maybe they'll change their way of thinking a little bit. It happens not on a mass scale, but on a human scale."

---

*Even if crime is low, it's still worth lowering; how do you lower crime? Community Policing is the new watchword. “A community that watches after each other,” [LA Police Chief Charlie] Beck explains. More from the LA article linked above: "Beck credited community policing for the 17.6 percent drop last year in gang-related crime in Los Angeles. He said the LAPD doesn’t only rely on policing and enforcement, but works with interventionists to control rumors and prevent retaliations. 'Sometimes over policing makes gang identity stronger,' he said. 'You have to watch how you police it. We have just the right prescription in Los Angeles right now.'"

Not all of the conversations I have on the bus are the gleeful bastardizations of syntax which I often record– and which are no less legitimate uses of the English language, mind you!* Here's a sample of a perfectly grammatically acceptable discourse.

"So what's playing at the Benaroya tonight?" I ask as we approach Union. He, a slightly older man in a crisp black three-piece, had asked earlier for Seattle Symphony.
"Rachmaninoff."
"Oh, excellent!"
"Two symphonies, I don't know them too well. Hey, you're the friendliest bus driver I think I've ever seen."
"Oh, thanks!"
"I especially appreciate the announcement of the upcoming stop after the next stop." Referring to how I try to keep folks informed when we're in the CBD in skip-stop heaven, as in, "the stop after this one is James."
"Oh, thanks! It's great to get the feedback. Rachmaninoff, excellent! I'm not as familiar with his work as with other composers."
"Did you ever see that movie Somewhere in Time, with Christopher Reeve, from the eighties?"
"Not for ages, but yes!"
"Well, the main theme for that is from a Rachmaninoff symphony."
"Oh, terrific!"
"But yeah, I dont know these symphonies too well. These were free tickets!"
"Well, there you go! Not a bad way to pass the time!"
"Exactly!" Chuckling.

"Yeah, the last time I was here was for the Ninth symphony, Beethoven. Obviously fantastic," I say, throwing my hand in the air, as if giving up at the act of trying to succinctly express how great it was. I was raised on classical music. To me, it's strange to consider it as a genre, as we consider folk or hip-hop; it's so much infinitely larger. Classical's been around for a thousand years. Popular music's existed for a mere sixty or so. The vast, overwhelming percentage of existing music is classical music, and some of it is absolutely worth your time. As Grand Puba says in the Tupac Shakur tune, "I wouldn't be here today, if the old school hadn't paved the way!"

"Oh, it's such a great place." I forget which of us said this. "It is," the other said. We were both basking in the shared warmth of loving the same thing.
"I have season tickets!" he said.
"Perfect! Well, hope it's a great evening!"
"Thanks! You enjoy the rest of your shift." 

The color of his tone was sincere, and the last sentence carried with it the implication that my time tonight on the road was as valuable as his inside the Symphony hall, if not moreso. What I loved about the exchange was the undercurrent drifting through all of it, which I felt all the more strongly because it remained unspoken: he, the man wearing a suit probably worth my entire paycheck, spoke to me with not a trace of condescension. A good day's work and the ability to appreciate culture existed for him on a spectrum which included not just people like him in the narrow sense, but myself and everyone else. 

A girlfriend once asked me why I like the LSBW (read the post about her or watch my speech on this legendary passenger if you haven't already). I remember looking out the window, thinking for a moment before saying, "because I have so much more in common with her than I don't have in common." 
"Really?" she said, listening. 
I thought so. Just a few changes in brain chemistry and life circumstances were all that separated us. Mr. Rachmaninoff, above– hopefully he doesn't mind my calling him that– seemed to have a similar view, and it felt good to be on the receiving end of that.


*"The myth that non-standard dialects of English are grammatically deficient is widespread," writes linguist Steven Pinker. We can all grasp that language evolves through slang and progresses to new places through colloquial use, but additionally, dialects such as the much-maligned Black English Vernacular (BEV) have just as constructed a framework as the more familiar Standard American English (or SAE, itself a derivation of British English). From Chapter 2 of Pinker's The Language Instinct: "Where SAE uses there as a meaningless dummy subject for the copula, BEV uses it (compare SAE's There's really a God with BEV's It's really a God). Larry's negative concord (You ain't goin' to no heaven) is seen in many languages, such as French (ne...pas). BEV allows its speakers the option of deleting copulas (If you bad); this is not laziness but a systematic rule that is virtually identical to the contraction rule in SAE that reduces He is to He's, You are to You're.... In both dialects, be can erode only in certain kinds of sentences." BEV does not allow Yes he is! to contract to Yes he!, as SAE doesn't allow Who is it? to contract to Who it? Pinker continues, stressing that BEV isn't all about contraction: "BEV speakers use the full forms of certain auxiliaries (I have seen), whereas SAE speakers usually contract them (I've seen)." He concludes with a point my friend and I were discussing just the other day: "He be working means that he generally works, perhaps that he has a regular job; He working means only that he is working at the moment that the sentence is uttered. In SAE, He is working fails to make that distinction."  

You've perhaps seen my photographs of Asia before. I took thousands while there. The act of being alone, traveling alone, with no filter between you and the universe, no companion to direct your thoughts this way or that– this is magical to me. While this set of images might not be as pictorially appreciable as the Asia photos I tend to show at galleries, sometimes it's in these offhand moments and glancing snatches of reality found in the outtakes where you find something truly affecting. They're in the Photography page; hope you enjoy them!

This guy stumbles on like a rock tumbling through an unstoppable river. An imposing physical presence. We're somewhere at the bottom of Rainier Valley. He's clad in a white oversized T-shirt that would be a dress on me, the shirt peeking out from under a  puffy black jacket of colossal proportions. He asks if I go to Genessee, pronouncing it "Jensee."
"Absolutely, yeah. And hey, I'd appreciate it if you kept that closed." I'm gesturing at his paper bag, which contains a bottle of you know what- something other than pink lemonade!
"Oh, it is."
"Thanks man, I appreciate you."
"No probl'm."

At Genessee, he mosies up , leaning forward, peering into the unknown distance. "I think I go one more."
"Oh no worries," I say. "We'll see if somebody else wants this [bus stop]. Thanks for tellin' me."
"Sorry 'bout tha,'" he says after watching me greet somebody getting on.

He's treading lightly, politely. I see him in the mirror, and in my periphery. Quarterback body, gold necklace, and a trim goatee, hints of jailhouse tats peeking out above the shirt.

"Oh, it's all good. So kinda right up there, by Safeway?"
"Yeah. Hey, uh, thank you, for doin,' for bein,'"
Hardcore manliness stops him short from an easy finish to the sentence, but the sentiment is no less real. I know what he means.
"Oh my pleasure man, it's no worries. I like bein' out here." 
"Thanks, dude." He feels more comfortable now, more revealing: "I'm new here. Jus' come up from California."
"Oh wha' part of California?"
"LA."
"Dude, right on!" I exclaim, preempting the next question all Angelinos ask each other, which is, 'what part of LA?' "I'm from LA too, I'm from South Gate!"
To this his eyes light up, all pretense and vulnerability falling away: "WHAAAAA, no way! That's just up from me, I'm from Lynwood!"
"No waaaayyy! Right there!" 
"Oh, you right over there. You in it."

This happens more often than one might imagine. On the 70 I took a couple toward the airport and discovered we all once lived on Firestone Boulevard in Downey. Recently on the 44 a woman overheard me discussing LA, and revealed that she'd come up from San Diego in '96. "There's a lot of us Californians taking refuge up here," I marveled. "There are," she responded. "Some folks don't like it, us bringin' our LA ways up here..."
"They'll just have to deal!"

Strangers in a strange land, no longer strangers. My friend looking for Genessee leans back in his chair in a way he couldn't before. Relaxed now. He'd felt comfortable enough in my space to share that vulnerability, that he was new here, and the payoff was worth it. We pass under the dark trees at Byron, making our own sunshine.

He seems particularly glad that we come from the same mad realm of South Central. The Jungle, as it's called. Whatever challenges he's up to here in the Valley, they'll be easy compared to life in the Jungle, and he knows I know that intimately.
"Out there, you know how they do,"
"Oh yeah!"
We're in fistpound handshake heaven.
"Be safe!" we say to each other at the end of the ride. It is not a pleasantry for us, but rather a genuine urging, a belief that the other's life is worth some extra caution. It's late, and dark, but we're both glowing.

Josh is in his late teens, African-American and something else, tall but not too tall. In our youth we sometimes oscillate between dialects, particularly when we have multiple backgrounds. Regional dialects and generational slang can surface on will for people of any age. Lyndon Johnson would speak differently based on who was in front of him, sometimes employing the heavy Texan twang, other times keeping things to a more civilized drawl. When people chat with me, especially younger folks, they're sometimes not quite sure how formally to style their language. I like when they start out hesitantly but gradually open up, easing back into their normal self. I find myself doing the same.

Josh didn't bother with any of that, though. He seemed comfortable from the get-go. He first accosted me with: "Yo, how old are you?
"Fifteen," I deadpanned, checking my blind spots.
"Naaaaw!"

We did the conversation where we discover my real age, working through the motions of a well-worn exchange, still enjoyable every time. This time I steered it in the direction of jobs. He asks how long I've been at it, when I started, and so on.

"Pay is good?"
"Oh, man."
Laughter.
"It is not bad." I remember my first job at the library, where I was thrilled to receive seven dollars and seventy-eight cents– over and over, with each new hour! "I'm never gonna complain about this job. Trying to justify that paycheck, you know?"
"Ah heard dat!"
"Where you work at?"
"I used to work the shipyards, getting' paid twenty-seven an hour."
"Wow, hey. Somebody's getting' paid." 
"Well, used to. Hey, you know them e-cigarrettes, the vapor ones?"
"Yeah yeah, the electronic things,"
"Are those allowed inside the bus?"
"That's a good ques-, actually they just changed that. I was talkin' about that with someone earlier today. It was legal, but now they're changing it so they're allowed only where real cigarettes is also allowed. How come, somebody givin' you beef?"
"Naw, I's jus' curious, couple drivers sayin' different stuff about the rules,"
"Hopefully they just ask you to put it away. You know, there's so many rules these days. You know how older folks talk about earlier times when there wasn't as many regulations?"
"Yeah,"
"I wanna get back to that time."
"I'm down with Metro, man."
"You and me both! So, working' in the shipyards. That's work."
"Yeah, I used to do welding-"
"Whoa-"
"-but I hadta get outta there, man, too many layoffs. Cause I got kids, bro."
"Okay, so now you lookin' for something a little more stable."
"Well, I got one now, I'm at the dispensary."
"Oh that's right, right there off Aurora. 
"My uncle is a boss there."
"There you go, helping each other out! Symbiotic relationship!"
"Yup yup! Well, actually iss my girlfriend's uncle."
"Oh right on, man. Shoot. Don't break up wit' her!"
"Aw no way, dude, never. She pregnant with my baby."
"That's a beautiful thing. Makin' it work."
"For sure! You always on this one?"
"Same time same place, every day!"
"Coo'. I see you around!"
"You too!"

As he bounced off at Bell Street, gliding over to his next bus, I realized he was the youngster who profanely but wisely counseled the agitated fellow described here. There are times when you realize all the acting, the facades of clothes and cool, are merely a vernacular for youngsters to cope with the impossible business of being an adolescent in the modern age. You realize, as I did listening to Josh's tone as he mentioned his girlfriend and baby, that there is in fact just as much depth of caring in there, and that over time the facades will peel away like so much dead snakeskin, and they'll blossom into the good people they always were. Moments like that make me believe in the future.