It's curious. My father was in the A section of The New York Times not long ago, along with several other articles in various publications and a terrific short film on his work that's already won awards and been accepted to multiple festivals, and now there's myself on the front page of The Seattle Times. I'll say it made for one interesting driving day on Tuesday....

I can't think of two people less interested in fame– especially him. The goal has always just been to be ourselves, authentically. For myself, am I happy that 31,000 people have visited this site in the last day? Of course I am.

I desire to expand my readership because I would very much like to publish this blog in book form. The feedback I get on it is just too potent, and somewhere out there is a publisher willing to take a chance on the fact that there aren't currently any inspirational urban/ bus driver-customer service/ celebration of compassion/ non-fiction short story collections in existence.

Putting aside the fact that the article is about me, what gratifies me about it is that it's headline news about something positive, about service work, about the timeless and timely nature of compassion. I really can't be thankful enough; and thanks also to you readers for sharing in the perspective and coming to the site. There's bus stories aplenty waiting in the wings, but for now, some updates:

I've revamped the Films page and posted below with links and background on two recent film projects;
Updated the Upcoming Shows area– I have one show running currently, with two more in September;
And added a new page compiling the various videos of me telling stories about town. There's more of those in the offing, as well. 

​I also want to bump the recent "Well Hullo" post, a sort of "Intro to Nathan's Blog 101" from the other day for newcomers. 

For those of you who've commented and emailed– I will get back to you! I'm just a lil' overwhelmed at the moment! Bear with me as I work on the site and scoot out the door to drive another shift!

People have been asking about these for years. 

I've withheld these for ages on the technical grounds that public online viewability often disqualifies films from festivals, but that's starting to be less of an issue now. These two shorts have had their rounds at respectable venues, and I'd rather you all just had a chance to see them. They're complicated, imperfect, delicate; designed to reveal themselves slowly, to be taken in more than once. Six of my films have played at festivals; these are the most recent two.
​
Regulate (pictured above) stars Eleanor Moseley and Ryan Cooper, among others. In it, a recently remarried woman in her forties, whose daughter is suspected of terrorist activity, finally decides enough is enough with regard to her theatrical and overbearing ex-husband.

The general idea was to shoot a chamber dialogue piece with greater-than-normal attention to aesthetics (see more below). Although I've received a lot of compliments on the film's visual design, I say the main cause célèbre here is Eleanor's performance, particularly her closing monologue, shot in a six-minute unbroken take. ​This premiered at the Henry Art Gallery and was an Official Selection at the 2016 International Women's Festival and two other festivals.
Full (twenty-eight minute) film here; IMDb link here.

I don't talk too much about the genesis behind my projects, but I'm told sharing is caring. If you're in the mood for a tell-all, check out Regulate's hour-long commentary with yours truly. 

​I'm not sure how I managed to talk that quickly for that long without any dead air.... Every question you could ever lob at me about theory, regrets, successes, content and formal decisions– good and bad– gets answered in this hour. Put it on while you do the dishes. This is how I see film.
​

Rejuvenate has been showcased on this blog before, but never in its full fifteen-minute form. Commissioned by Real Change, this film showcases the lives of two street newspaper vendors as the colorful, vibrant people they are.

We see a lot of stories in process on the street, and we wonder where these folks come from. With Rejuvenate I wanted to offer a window of sorts, and not the usual dour one: I find tiresome the approach of filming the homeless in unsophisticated static shots of desaturated brown and grey. Just because documentaries focus on content doesn't mean they should get away with a lower bar for visual aesthetics. Here we focus on communicating to the viewer with dynamic camera movement, natural lighting, and rich color.

We'll leave sociological analysis to the experts; this is a vérité celebration of two faces in the crowd as fleshed-out people with energy and dreams like yours and mine. Rejuvenate premiered at the 2013 Real Change Annual Breakfast, at the Washington State Convention Center, and was an Official Selection at the 2016 Seattle Transmedia Film Festival and the 2016 Grand IndieWise Convention. 
​Full (fifteen-minute) film here; IMDb link here. 

Here's a newspaper profile on me written by one of the film's subjects, Tricia Sullivan.

Information on my other films here. 

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Thanks for watching– on a big(ish) screen, I hope! 

Photo by Ken Lambert for The Seattle Times.

If you read the blog, but don't read the paper, check out yesterday's front page article in The Seattle Times. I'm enormously indebted to Jessica Lee's reporting and Ken Lambert's photography.

If you read the paper, but are new to the blog– thanks for stopping in! There's a wealth of material here, ready for you to explore via the sidebar of story categories on the right, the bestselling book you can buy, and photography (yes it's all film!) and movie tabs above.

Check them out if you like, or explore this little Reader's Digest curation I've prepared for y'all:

Stories in Written Form:

• Two of the more impacting moments I've found on the street- the morning after Little Leon's mother died, And a eulogy for a woman who was hard to love but impossible to forget. And a third story, if you're looking for short and sweet.
• Bus life comes in many flavors: funny, heartbreaking, inspiring, silly, and, er, one-of-a-kind.
• Once it was easy to keep politics out of conversation; not so anymore. My words right after election day, but also just before: a reminisce of what the possibilities of October 2016 felt like.
• I was three blocks away from the 2015 Paris terror attacks, which you may know killed or injured 505 people. I was listed as missing by the US Embassy for three days and found by CNN through an international search spearheaded by my friends (thanks, lovelies!). Thoughts just after the attacks here; photographs here; looking back a year later here.
• I wrote film reviews when I lived in Hollywood, and still do occasional write-ups for this site. Visit the On Cinema page for in-depth analysis on technique, approach, and recomendations of films you may never have heard of, but just might love; or last year's bus driver movie, as reviewed by a (film critic!) bus driver. 
• The "Great & Terrible" 358 (now called the E Line) was once the Grand Poohbah of bus routes, and made the 7 look like Sesame Street; check out this breakdown, written during the route's last days. I loved it out there. Most of my blog stories from winter 2012/3 and 2013/4 stem from it.
• This past July marked the ten-year anniversary of my being behind the Metro wheel. Some ruminations, complete with embarrassing child photos.

Stories in Video Form:

• I tell stories around town. I know you have a second to procrastinate; here's a pick-me-up video speech about me, not an animal person, having some serious issues while cat-sitting in a luxury apartment.
• A fight on the bus and the context which came after.
• You read about Leroy in the article; here's me telling the story of how we met in further detail.
• Tons more here, including a TED talk and a lecture on how millennials (don't) communicate.

Podcasts:

• No time for a video? Try a podcast. Here I am pre-COVID on the Northwest Urbanist speed-talking about all things urban growth and transit in Seattle, and here I am post-COVID on The Urbanist talking about... well, just about everything, including COVID's impact on transit. Much more on the Press page.

Thanks for sharing in the hope of helping others, in believing in the possibilities of goodness. I started this blog thinking it represented a minority opinion. I'm so happy to be wrong.

Newcomers, thanks for your replies to the posts– which I will attend to shortly. I reply to every single comment on this site. 

UPDATES:

• 2018 was a banner year for me- I made a film, published a book, won a number of awards, and began popping on the radio and the telly a lil' more regularly. Here are highlights with commentary from that tumultuously exciting time.
  
• Highlights from 2020-2022– new videos, stories, essays on people and film.
  
• Drugs on buses: it's what everyone talks about now. Here's my take, as informed by my experiences on the street, and here are reflections on the recent UW Drugs on Buses study.
  

She looked apprehensive. 

I probably did too. The clock had just struck midnight, and angry voices boomed in our periphery. She was out there, waiting for the bus in a white and yellow summer dress, breezy, perhaps wishing there was someone around, anybody, besides this angry yelling man approaching. I was inside my darkened bus, waking up disoriented from a short nap. The shift was almost done, and it had been a breeze… but it's never over 'til it's over. 

Bus drivers sometimes ride my bus to get a feel for the night 7, different ways of handling it. Certain passenger friends call a ride on my 7 "Bus Therapy," while some drivers have dubbed it "The Nathan Vass Refresher Course." I doubt it qualifies for that lofty moniker (I prefer calling it my "office hours"), but I did have an evening where three operators, unbeknownst to each other, all came out to ride the last half of my shift. I was telling them it's never over until it's completely over, 'til you've parked the bus on the lane inside the yard. You could be a hundred feet away from home base, and it could all still fall apart.

As it happened, we were about a hundred feet away from home base, these drivers and I, wrapping up the shift, when… wouldn't you know it, a woman came running out of the bushes with blood on her hands and waist, waving her arms and asking us for assistance with her boyfriend, who had been stabbing her. 

It's never over 'til it's over. 

We called for help and she got the assistance she needed. I try not to offer relationship advice to random strangers, but given the circumstances....
"Um. You might think about dumping this guy," I said.
"Oh God yes," she said.

It was with these thoughts I stood and stretched out of my nap. Some real angry voices out there. I sighed. It didn't matter how carefree the day had been. In its last minutes you still might have to step up, summon your better angels and steer the moment as best you can. 

I opened the door and turned on the interior lights. Summer Dress and I made nervous eye contact, neither one of us quite sure what was transpiring. She was still standing out there, I was standing by the farebox, as a belligerent voice came closer….

"Hi," I said to her with kind eyes. Any friendly stranger is a friend, not a stranger, in an intense situation. 
"Hey," she replied. Cute blue eyes, short, with headphones she knew not to be listening to right now. 

"DON'T NOBODY TALK TO ME THAT WAY," said a tall man in dark clothes and a beanie, a bass-inflected gravel rasp to his throaty din. It sounded vaguely familiar: where've I heard that voice before? Ah, yes. I put it together right before I saw his face. Marcus loomed in out of the shadows, walking down from the bus behind me. 

Boy, does it ever pay off to know a man's name. 

You never know when you'll see someone again, or how. The genial history he and I have paid off in spades now. The present instantly defused, and the girl's eyes lit up with surprise, comfort, and relaxation as I said in a friendly tone just a tad quieter than normal:

"Hey, Marcus." Pause. "You don't sound too happy."
He exhaled. Calming down. "Naw, man. This guy trying to tell me to 'take my shit and get off the bus.'"
"You can always hang out on my bus..."
"Ah know. But this guy's just…"
"I'm sorry to hear it, dude. You know you can always hang in here."

The young lady was searching her purse for change. She looked up at him, saying, "oh, you go ahead."

I think Marcus realized then that he was scaring people. He looked at her now, over the rims of his wire-frame glasses, not lasciviously but how a father looks at girls his daughter's age; with caring. I love watching people think. He deflated further back to his normal self and said, "oh, no. I always let ladies go first." 

He smiled and she returned the same, feeling the tension slack loose.

I said, "so he was givin' you some attitude?"
Marcus didn't even need to vent. "I'm okay," he said wearily. "It's just too hot for all that!"
"Yeah, we gotta keep it low-key!"

Tone of voice. Choice of words. I've asked hundreds of people, including Marcus himself, to step off the bus at various ends of the line. I've never told them to though, and I've definitely never used the words he quoted the other (brand new) driver as saying. If I told all those people to "take their shit and get off my bus," I don't think I would even be alive. Instead I have the respect of friends in more corners of society than I ever could have imagined, corners I never knew existed. Seeing the young lady realize she could relax, that everything was okay, that for some reason this driver knew this guy by name and they could talk things down… I didn't know that would be the highlight of my night.

It's never over 'til it's over.

What a phenomenally continuous and steady turnout and unqualified success of an evening. I couldn't be happier. Thank you all for coming. 

Did you miss my show opening this first Thursday past? Never fear, the work is still there. Shift Gallery is open Fridays and Saturdays, 12-5, through all of August and into Saturday, Sept 2. Some words of mine here; gallery location, etc information here.  

Image courtesy BBC.

Christine and the Queens was coming to town, and I needed to go alone. Her music is just too special. It was an October night, 2016, and I was riding into downtown, basking in the glow of a happy driver's bus when I recognized two faces boarding at the next zone. Were they my friend Taylor and a companion of hers, entirely by surprise? They were. How could I miss Taylor's enormous 'fro? She exploded with delight upon seeing me– and her friend Clay, incredibly, who knew me too: I'd met her on my own bus for the first time just a week before. I was so glad I'd struck up pleasant conversation at the time; you never know when you'll see someone again, or how. What were they doing on this fine bus, I asked. Where were they going tonight? Were they going to see exactly the same show I was, Christine and the Queens at the Showbox?

They were! We blow up all over again. I marvel at their welcoming kindness, and we agree to go as a group. Of course. There is a moment of stress standing in line– Taylor realizes they're missing a ticket. They've only one ticket between the two of them, and the ticket-taker is being the stickler he needs to be. Do the high-school girls in front of us just happen to have an extra ticket, which they volunteer upon hearing our dilemma? They do! We're bowled over. We're now a group of five, discovering the common interests we share. They shoot on film, like I do; what's old is new again. 

Waiting for the act to begin, I'm struck by the growing energy of the space. Christine (real name: Héloïse Letissier), a French chanteuse who can wear a suit like nobody's business, identifies as pansexual, and much of her following is genderqueer, gender-neutral, gender fluid, gay, bi, trans, lesbian, whatever term you like… and all of her following is accepting of such identifications. The younger set has less need to draw division lines in identity components which once were lifelong rigid: sexuality, profession, religion. They've discovered grey areas which can exist alongside black and white. Maybe people can be who they are, search it out; perhaps they don't have to squeeze into an existing type. Look at this crowd under dimmed lights, all stripes and colors, beautiful not because they were young or good-looking, though they generally were, but because they were tolerant. 

Christine's music largely isn't about sexual identity, however. It's not reactionary or militant. It's about the joie de vivre of being alive, the potent high of generosity and felt emotion. Here she is now, a petite fireball bubbling over with– would you believe it? Kindness, an all-inclusive love. 

She arrests us at the outset with a pronouncement. "There is only one rule for tonight–" imagine her wavy locks swinging as she traverses the stage with a showman's flair– "not a complicated rule, quite simple really." The cute French accent. This was to be a room with no judging, she explained. All accepting. "This world is so strict!" she cried, in mock horror. We laughed in rueful understanding, pleasantly perplexed by her buoyant perspective. In her attitude she was onto something. "I used to be so concerned, about fitting in... and then I just decided to stop caring!" An attentive lull in the crowd, as she exploded with: "And then it became so easy!" Her appeal was invigorating not because she closely replicated existing patterns of cool, but because she was none of them. The epitome of charisma, complete and whole; all this, just by being herself, making silly faces and shrugging it off. 

Afterwards we tumbled out slowly, awash in the post-concert high. The high-schoolers made their way home, and we three took a turn about the block, too involved in the recent experience to speak. "I want to talk to her," I said aloud. My friends, I think, spend more time in bars than in airplanes, and they thought Christine and sundry might be headed for a nearby dive. I spend more time in airplanes than bars, though, and I felt she'd be scurrying out the Showbox's back entrance for a hotel and a plane. I gently guided our stroll toward the alley between First and Second, and we paused, noticing three figures slipping out the back door and approaching. Was it her? Was it?

Of the few hundred people who attended, only we would get to share in this moment, twinkling on a damp sidewalk next to an alley. Christine and her two companions paused, and we understood who we all were. It was not a time for pictures or autographs, but brief and deeply felt thanks, congratulations in a mixture of English and French. She was less the international pop star than a person my age, gracious, saying something charmingly ordinary about getting out this rain. 

Taylor, Clay and I go to the Alibi Room. I'm telling them how important this restaurant is to me, the intersections that have happened here… then I notice a figure seated against the far wall. Is that my best friend from high-school, Anna Harrison, whom I have not seen in years? At this point tonight expecting miracles seems downright reasonable. It is her. Had she just come from… Christine and the Queens? You know the answer, reader. I go and sit with her wonderful accepting friends, stunned as Anna explains to them how I've achieved my childhood dream of becoming a bus driver, and they receive this news with actual genuine excitement. I can't believe their unironic support of something so easy to laugh at. I feel safe. Anna introduces me around as one of her best friends, and for a second I think she's referring to someone else. 

Taylor and Clay insist I stay with this group, as they head out to bus home. I want to drive them; my car is nearby, and I know the bus is a long walk from Taylor's house. Maybe it's instinct for a bus driver to want to give people rides, but they see the joy I'm in and insist. I tell them where the bus stop is and what time it comes. They chuckle at my encyclopedic knowledge. An hour later I'm driving home and as I turn onto my driveway I remember– yes, this is the time Taylor's bus would be pulling in to the transit center. Should I go see if they yet need a ride? Maybe the timing will be just right.

Is the timing just right? Are they just now starting their fifteen-block walk home in the midnight rain when I roll up, identifying myself by hollering, "Christine and the Queens!"?

I believe in miracles, again. They're beyond thrilled. I feel a need to thank something. I am so grateful for so many intersecting things– the odds of Taylor getting on that bus going to the same venue, the odds of having met Clay only a week prior, the miracle of the girls in line with the extra ticket, the impossible possibility of being the only ones to meet Christine, the serendipity of Anna in the Alibi Room, her gratitude and that of her friends, the timing of being able to drive these two home…. 

But what I remembered most was the energy of that room. The world made sense in there. These beautiful outcasts, the marginalized, the brave, the delicate, the forgotten… together as one under vaulted ceilings. This is what the world will look like thirty years, I thought. This was the vanguard, not the cutting edge of electronics or technology, but of acceptance, the human organism at peace with itself.  I savored it all: one of the girls in our group saying to another this is just what she wanted, to have a great time out and meet cool people. Someone singing the lyrics in French to my left. Christine herself locking eyes with me and holding the gaze for the long, long fadeout of the album's closing tune. All that we said, in a moment… in that room, all of us misfits were one, centered about, embraced as whole. There was no judging tonight. It was a spiritual experience.  

And it would only get better. November 2016 was around the corner, and the election; I talked with a young man from Barcelona. "I love America," he told me. "You guys are leading by example. You had the first black president, elected twice, and now the first woman president… it's going to be great. It's going to be so great." I grinned, shivering with enthusiasm. The beauty of that room was becoming real. Tangible progress was happening, and was about to expand significantly. There would be new laws and leaders, a voice and a place for these fellow compatriots of mine. Things were going well. 

There was a future we could almost touch.


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The New York Times: Trump Cites Familiar Argument in Ban on Transgender Troops.

If you haven't read it already, my thoughts from November 9, two weeks later: The Day the Music Died.

Christine and The Queens: "Christine."