Twenty-seven minutes into Sunday, but that's just for those counting at home. Broadway and East Pine is the center of the world for some, and here, where lights and faces streak through the slow-shutter filter of a thousand bustling doorways, it's still Saturday night. Listen to the clang of tongs on a concave surface, steam wafting out of industrial kitchen doorways; rich laughter from on high, the hearty, deep-throated kind, spilling out of a dance hall two floors above. Ancient wood and brick watch the world turn. A singing voice plays at half-speed, gravelly, nestled in an alley too dim and dank for touch. Young legs walk past, oblivious for now; they'll hear his tune in dreams.

The sidewalks and crosswalks and plazas and roadways are littered with good cheer and revelry, as the youth reach out for Dionysus, flailing for ecstasy and touch, belonging, urges we knew in the days before language. Here is an American male with a story, crossing Pine street at an amble, over the rainbow-painted crosswalk several lengths behind his friends. They toss their hair and adjust their skirts just so, with each minute trying themselves out for size, working toward a sharper conception of self. 
​
Is he downcast? Hard to call from this angle. A hipster would wear his sneakers, and his pants are fitted, riding the crossroads between casual and covetous; the grey sweatshirt compliments his chocolate skin, classy but no big deal. He's closing in on finishing out the crosswalk when one of the waiting cars honks at him impatiently, and honks again. The girls turn back to look. Is he angry? Is he–

And then he starts to dance. He stays in front of the angry car, look at that sweet backstep, his elbows angular and alive, hips rotating in from another planet: this is the face of a whole body smiling. 

The girls are loving it. Everyone does. The honking car made him the locus of attention, and he's bounced the energy around for all, flipping it away with a sprightly jolt of his shoulders. My bus is empty, but I laugh to myself in the dark, warm in the intersection's new flush. A hefty Waste Management truck drives in, turning into of my field of vision, the driver's face moving close to mine– and you know he feels it too. His white teeth contrast in the dimness, grinning abundant before he even saw me. Any drudgery, any burdensome weight of his job is gone, and for now it's just his beaming eye contact which acknowledges a common perspective, solidarity among us folks who drive heavy equipment around in circles. We're smiling at each other without bothering to think about it.

The things we get to see out here.

There's so much police, fire, and medical sprawled out everywhere you'd think it was the parking lot at Bellevue Psychiatric. This place looks like Willowbrook State in the eighties. The intersection is blocked at East Pine and Belmont, and we're not going anywhere fast. "Looks like we're gonna maybe be hangin' out here for a second," I inform the passengers, adding that this might be their best stop if they'd wanted Broadway up ahead. Parking brake with all doors open, heat turned up. 

I like standing up, going for walks, especially after lots of sitting, and given we'll be stuck for a while I step out of the bus and do so. I have a mild inclination to ask for a timeline from one of the officers on scene, that I might update my passengers, but they're distracted and busy. I'll do that later. For now I'm going to enjoy the night sky, and the rare pleasure of ambling around in the center of a blocked intersection. 

There's another 49 on the other side of the street, stalled as well. Still in the middle of the road, I amble over to the driver's side, and Jeremiah opens his operator window. We shake hands and talk cameras and photography. We chat it up as if we're in a hallway at someone's birthday party. Nevermind all the chaos surrounding; he has a film camera he's thinking about giving away, and we're absorbed in discussion about bodies and lenses, the value of developing passions in life. 

Then I notice a girl noticing me. "Listen Jeremiah, it was good talking," I say as I bid him farewell. She's sucking on a 4th of July pop, the patriotic colors glowing from the swirling blue and red police strobes. Blue eyes and thin, pale, that scattershot gaze which takes in everything; wavy hair and skin wrapped tightly around shapely cheekbones, that easy beauty the youth don't know how lucky they are to have. She's made up tonight, hint of a sparkle on her lashes, lips twinkling in the streetlight. She avoids eye contact, downcast, a wounded animal hiding behind the breezy exterior. That's Zoë.* 

"Zoë, hey!"
"Hey!"
"Gimme a hug!"
"Hey, whats goin' on over there?"
"I dunno. Must be somethin big, this type a response." There's a cocktail of Fire, Medic One, four Seattle Police trucks, with a King County Sheriff or two thrown in for appearances.
"Yeah."
I'm not that interested in calamitous details, though. I turn to her. "How are you?"
"Good. I saved someone's life today." Imagine her voice, husky but spry, riding the cusp between adolescent insouciance and genuine ardor. At some point in each of our lives we discover it's okay to be passionate about things.
"No way!" I exclaimed.
"Yeah, down by the convention center, this lady was overdosing and I was just walking by and I saw her and I gave her Narcan."**
"Oh my goodness,"
"Nobody was around, she was on the ground, and I hit her with the Narcan. It was fuckin' awesome, well not awesome, but you know,"
She's trying to sound cool and collected about it, but I'm totally blowing her cover with my enthusiasm. We balance each other out. "Oh yeah! Zoë, you're amazing! Saving people's lives! I'm so glad you just happened to be right where she was over there."
"And I just happened to have the Narcan too,"
"So crazy. You saved a life!"

A passenger strolls over. He'd said he'd go talk to the cops, ask them to move; their cars were only inches away from not blocking everything.
"Hey," he says to Zoë. I'm invisible to him, with her standing around. "I thought he was the bus driver." 
Zoë: "he is." 
Me: "how's it going? What'd they say?"
"Just some drunk guy, really high."
"Oh my goodness, that's it? Thanks for talkin' to them. I get kind of intimidated when there's a bunch of 'em."
Zoë smiles.
"Not really my crowd!" 
"They said they'd be outta here any second," he says. "Oh, there they go." 
"Right on. Sweet, let's do this. Thanks for talkin' to 'em."
"Yeah."

She and I, walking back to the bus, life around us curving back to normal.
"How are you, how's Northgate?" I'm returning to an earlier conversation. She's one of those street faces I encounter intermittently as the years turn over.
"It's good. I got this new charger. I thought I lost my charger, but my dad got me this portable one 'cause I'm always losing mine."
Luddite Nathan: "What? I didn't know they made portable chargers!"
"You serious?"
"Yeah! After you," I said at the bus doors during a pause in her talking.
"Oh I'm not getting on, I'm meeting someone."
"Okay. Hug." It just felt appropriate. "Stay strong," I whispered.
"You too."

They say you need to embrace someone for longer than thirty seconds for the pituitary gland to release oxytocin, the neuropeptide which reduces cortisol levels and promotes feelings of trust and bonding. It's what's released right after childbirth and makes mothers forget all the agonizing pain and actually love their child, and is the primary biological basis for positive social connection. I'm not sure the full thirty seconds is always necessary, though. The instant held, a half-second of connected stillness drifting outside of time, as sounds dimmed enough for a whisper to register. 

I realized afterwards that was a moment I hope never to forget. But why? I barely know this person. We talked about phone chargers. Why was it so meaningful? I drove up Broadway as oxytocin coursed through my hypothalamus, but that was the how, not the why. Science is great at explaining the former, but not so much the latter (have you ever noticed how kids get bored when we answer scientifically why the sky is blue? It's because in our answer we've only given them the how).

The world is my great love, I realized later. Not her, not particular age or demographic groups, nor any one person. I think I just love everybody, the whole collective.*** We all have fervent passions inside of us, and some of us are so good at channeling all that feeling into one person. I marvel and admire that, but I'm wired differently. That would for me be missing something huge. To turn away from these strangers whom I adore, in whom I see bits of myself, to be told I couldn't embrace the masses as I do, that would be akin to... well, cheating on the world! I once watched two men beating each other up in Pioneer Square, and was nearly brought to tears. You guys are my friends, I thought to myself. My human friends. You're so much better than that. 

--
*A friendly face who's been roaming the streets for only slightly less time than I've been driving the bus. You might recall her from this writeup on the 70. She's the girl sitting in the back.
**Naloxone, the opiate antidote.
***One of the reasons I love Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, which unlike most films which are built around protagonists as individuals, considers humanity as a collective.

"Alright, Cloverdale is next," I told them, "by the Mini-Mart. And South Lake High School. Also, this bus continues up the hill, to Prentice. We're goin' to Prentice Street tonight."
"You make it sound good!" a voice behind me exclaimed. "Make me wanna to go up there!"
"I try to advertise it as best I can!"
"Hey, it's workin'! Iss better than so much of this…." She was referring to the automated announcements.
"Tryin' t' send out some of those positive vibes, you know?"
"We need that. Especially, especially on this line."
"Ah heard that," chimed in someone else from the peanut gallery.

As the crowd thinned, a young teen in a beanie, sweatshirt and backpack came forward, asking how long have I been driving, do I like the job. 
"How does it feel?" he inquired, after I'd told him I'd been at it eight years.
"It feels weird to say it, doesn't feel like it's been that long. I just feel like, I come in to work drive a bus, go home do somethin' else,"
"What's been your craziest day?"
"Oh man, I don't even know where to begin."
"Yeah but–"
"The craziest, I don't even know. So many things come to mind." Visions spring to the fore, quickly replacing each other– men attempting to destroy each other, death threats and late-night whispers, a ranting LSB-Dub, hot saliva on the inside pane of your glasses, kids in the back shoving an old man around, the careful pickup of used needles, police disposing of violent drunks by putting them on your bus, human waste from every orifice, words and smells and minds which don't make sense, glass breaking, a Navy Seal beating up the guy in the wheelchair….

"I don't even know," I said aloud. 

Those aren't the crazy things, though. The craziest thing is all of the thousands of times my living room of a bus, filled with its disparate, far-reaching collection of unacquainted lives, each in the middle of its own important drama, has been able to get along together, with no meaningful problems worth writing home about. That's what stuns me into storied awe, and reminds me of the great possibilities of our human family.

But that answer's not egregious enough. People want the deplorable, the heinous and insufferable. They want to wake up. ​He asked, "you ever been hit?"
"Me? No, not yet. Fingers crossed!"
"Good, man. I seen this driver get hit downtown, with a bottle."
"Aawwoohh, that's terrible!"
"Yeah,"
"But you know, you ever feel sometimes they bring it on themselves?"
"Exactly, he was being an asshole." Which doesn't in any way justify the assault, even if it might go some way toward explaining it.
"See, then I'm not surprised,"
"Some guy didn't have no fare, he said you better pay, then dude hits him."

"Man, he could've avoided that. For me, I say hey to everyone, how's it goin', and it kind of defuses the situation." He didn't seem like a youngster whose friends often say defuses, but he got it. People tend to be smarter than conversational circumstances allow them to reveal. 
He indicated his understanding by way of paraphrase: "Bring 'em down a notch."
"Exactly, sort of help folks feel relaxed, easy...." Acknowledged. "Right from the start. I try to set a positive tone, say hi to folks, we have a good time. Puttin' out that good energy, you know?"
"Iss da mindset. If we keep it positive, keep it open instead of, 'this is gonna suck,'"
"Exactly. Exactly! If bus driver comes to work says, 'I'm gonna have a shitty day,' he's gonna have a shitty day! But if we start off with an open mind, and just go into it with this good attitude,"
"'I'm gonna make this work,'"
"Yeah. I'm gonna do my part. And it don't matter what they do. I'm gonna do my part, try to be good, look for the best in people,"
"You should a motivational, you should be a youth mentor!"
"I would love to do that!"

The automatic voice got a word in edgewise, announcing "Sixty-second and Prentice," the next stop. "Prentice," howled the mentally unstable man seated nearby, embarking on a spoken-word poem low on substance but admirably high on rhyme. He was the only passenger besides the boy remaining, stepping out now, but not before leering in close to our boy and continuing with his rhyming monologue. I wish I could remember it. Our young friend leaned back a little, uncomfortable at what was clearly a new type of interaction. I laughed off the awkwardness and wished the man a good evening, joking after he left that he's always rhyming like that, how he needs to put out an album, except maybe somebody else ought to do the music.

I may have been joking, but he was feeling reflective. He readjusted his backpack, saying, "I always feel weird around homeless people. I could never imagine what it's like to be homeless."
"It sucks," I said. "I got friends who've been there."
"I could understand you start up a business, and it goes bankrupt. Or you lose your job and then your house. But what I don't get is dudes on the street, day after day asking for some coins so they could get some more alcohol."
"I know what you mean! I feel like there's two types of homeless, the 'Have-Nots' and the 'Will-Nots.' Some folks it's a genuine misfortune hits them, and now they're hustlin' for new jobs, workin' their way back up,"
"Yeah," he agreed. "That I get. But I don't get this whole standin' 'round street corner all day... it's like this. You give a Have-Not a thousand dollars and he'll come back at you with three thousand. You give a Will-Not a thousand dollars and he'll come back with a pair of Air Jordans and some True Religion jeans!"

That got a belly laugh from me. I couldn't have said it more succinctly myself. So perceptive, this unassuming young face on the nighttime stretches of Rainier. Did he realize the genius of what he was saying, in his appreciation of responsibility and easy recognition of contrasts many people fail to differentiate? We commiserated a little further, and then it was time for him to grab his bike and head home. "You should be a mentor for youth," he said again. "you're cool to talk to."
"You too!"

He got me thinking. I have more to say on the subject of responsibility and perception as it pertains to homelessness, but that's a post for another day. On the bus, whether as passenger or driver, there is a lot of time to think....

[This story is now featured in my latest book. More here!]

"Hey, Bashi."

He tells me I'm his favorite, the best. He asks if I remember him.

"Of course I remember you!" I was just about to ask after his young son when he beat me to the punch with–
"My son, he asks about you!"
"He asks about me? I was just about to wow, he remembers me! That's so nice. Seems like a cool guy, smart guy. I remember he always knows all the street names." I couldn't stop grinning the first time this little kid got on and began quickly rattling off with, "the next stop is Holden after that is Othello after that Frontenac after that Holly then Graham then Kenny then…."

"Every single one," Bashi laughs in reply. "He is genius!"
"Smart guy!"
"Yeah, he asks, 'where is my bus driver?'"
"Yeah, I was gone for a while, working early morning on different routes. But I'm happy to be back here in the nighttime!"
"And I say 'your friend, he works at night!'"
"Yes!"
"You were doing school?"
"Yes."
"Let me give you some advice." He started telling me how good I am at my job. Curiously, this is the only part of the conversation I couldn't remember well enough in the minutes afterwards to write down with accuracy; I think I block rhapsodic praise out sometimes. Too much to let into the head! I recall instead the small glimmer of metallic tooth fittings in his smile, glinting in response to the dim fluorescents.
"Some drivers make it really hard," he continued. "You make it easy."
"I like the people!"

Bashi formerly worked in Metro Customer Service. He's extremely knowledgeable on the rules, the official language, the complaint system, and so on. He's aware of the type of driver who tends to get a disproportionate amount of complaints, but he's also cognizant of the sort of passenger who complains often. Bashi has a point he's working toward, but he's circling around it for the moment.

I'm thinking about liking the people and making it easy. I say, "when I was on the Eastside–"
He beats me to the punch again, correctly anticipating my thought: "they are totally different over there! Did you know, I used to work for Metro."
"Yes, I remember you said customer service,"
"They have a different attitude."
"Attitude, yes!"
"They complain!" he exclaims, and we laugh. It's true. The societal norms are different enough to warrant contrasting results on either side of the lake: in South Seattle, unhappy passengers will simply curse you out in person, offering a 'verbal complaint,' as it were. In the 'burbs, they'll remain silent for now but strike hard later, using official channels. I'll refrain from using terms like passive-aggressive or schadenfreude to describe the behavior of this latter category.

"One little thing wrong, and they type up a big long letter!"
"It's so true," I say. "There's a different feeling sometimes too, the attitude, where they're looking down on me. I am the service worker, they are the rich, whatever, I don't know anything…"
"They are bothered very easily."
"The 7 is the best route. Here, they just get angry and yell at you right here." I can recall more than once watching drivers on Eastside routes abusing their riders in ways my 7 passengers simply wouldn't tolerate. Would they file little electronic complaints? No, they would physically intervene.

Bashi: "You know what I'm talking about!"
"I drove on the Eastside for two years."
"They don't say nothing at the time, but later when they go home to the computer… still they don't say anything, just a lot of big words. Vocabulary. They say 'thank you,' then on their expensive phone they complain to your boss."
"It's more simple here, more clear. Here they just say the F word."
"More simple, yeah. Here they say 'fuck you.' 'Shut the fuck up.' Then they forget about it!"
"Bashi, I'm glad you got on my bus!"

This conversation is an older story which happened some time ago, and had I posted it then it would have ended differently than it will now. I've been mulling over the ideas discussed above since. Something's been rubbing me the wrong way. What didn't feel right?

Our own attitude, his and mine, that's what. The gleeful criticism that of others. 

A few years ago I would have been entirely on board with this skewering of the passive-aggressive upper class. That's really what we were talking about, not geographical disparities but classist ones. The story would have ended with something along the lines of Bashi's clear-eyed discernment cutting through the gauze of classism masquerading as educated grievances. His remarks above are certainly accurate, but I feel a bit differently now. I agree with Bashi's comments, but not their sentiment, nor especially their all-inclusiveness. 

The fact of the matter is, I know a few too many wealthy people of impeccable quality of character, who because of their experiences or observation are unimpeachable in their compassion, perceptiveness, and lack of entitlement. These same folks might be the first to point out that their perspectives are pretty unusual within their status group (what is it about cloistered lifestyles that breed apathy so?), but regardless, I cannot comfortably make generalizations which cast entire swaths as caricatures, any more than I cannot tolerate the same being done against the homeless and low-income whom I know so well. 

Quebecois filmmaking wunderkind Xavier Dolan was speaking recently about some editing decisions he made during the completion of his 2012 magnum opus, Laurence Anyways. The film is a three-hour intimate epic following ten years in the life of a man who becomes a woman, and the enormous havoc that wreaks on his relationship with his girlfriend. Among other things, Dolan endeavored the film to be a piece which didn't judge its marginalized protagonists, but simply regarded them. He shot a scene which ridiculed the snobby elite who so disapproved of the film's central union, but couldn't in good conscience include it in the final picture. Why?

If Dolan's aim, he said, was to celebrate the uncelebrated without judging them, it would be hypocritical for him to ask the audience to simultaneously judge others whose views he found backward. To be ideologically sound, the film needed to espouse a worldview in which no group is maligned. The solution is not to snark the snarkers, as it were, and return the same contempt we ourselves can hardly stand; but rather to venture out on higher roads. Trust others to be malleable, capable of expanding their views, whether or not they are. Nothing's more disappointing then being the receiver of an unbelieving gaze, the stare which sees nothing in you beyond your presentation.

Stirrings of these thoughts were galvanized out of latency one morning this past summer while driving a trip on the 3, inbound from Queen Anne. At each zone, silent commuters came aboard. Today they were particularly unresponsive, and I was reminded of my days on the 545, where lack of interaction is chronic. I was thinking of Tom Wolfe's description of maids who feel like furniture, taken for granted and ignored into nothingness until they do something wrong. At Prospect Street a gentleman in a crisp coat tapped his Orca card glancingly, such that it did not scan. He tried again. 

"Come on in, don't worry about it." That sounds fine in print, but I said it in a pejorative tone. Why did I do that? I added, "We'll get it next time," which I never say, especially never in this clipped, grossly unacceptable condescending attitude I was wearing. I was grouping him as one of those, another one of them, and falling into the trap of returning the disregard I assumed he had for me. 

Isn't them just about the worst word in the world?

He looked up and noticed me for the first time.
"Are you Nathan?"
Totally nonplussed: "I am!"
"I love the blog. I really love the blog. I love the attitude of it."
"Thank you! So much!"

I felt utterly shamed. I spent the rest of the ride reeling with chagrin, reflecting. This was the best moment of the entire week. His bearing in the face of mine was the stronger, and it was exactly the correction I needed. I greeted the remaining Queen Anne residents with what he had reminded me: that, like my more boisterous riders on the other side of town, we all have more in common than we don't.

Thank you, friend, for opening my eyes a bit further.

"Can I request a night stop?"
"Sure!" 

She specified a block in between stops along the Prentice loop.* She was a demure east Asian woman I've seen before but never spoken with. Now that we were alone on the bus, she said, "You're probably the most nice driver I've ever seen. You are so nice to everyone. It is really great to see. We run into some crappiness out here."

Her voice was reedy and small. She explained further, in a voice that knew the awkwardness of her words but needed to quietly say them anyway, because they were true. Sometimes a phrase will sound trite, but where else do you turn when you have no recourse but the truth? Haltingly, she said, "I have brain cancer. What I'm saying is, seeing you being so nice makes life seem worth living."

My thanks to her hardly seemed adequate. It was important for her to share, and it's all she wanted to say. We may receive many compliments or affirmations in our lives, but sometimes it's the most spare, unaffected, and passing of them which still us to the bone.

---

A young man named Ghost was on my 7 last night, also making use of the Prentice routing. In a different way he said something similar. We were having a wide-ranging conversation, making use of the expansive time from Capitol Hill to the bottom of the Valley.

At one point in Pioneer Square he said, "you know why I smile at people now?" 
We'd been discussing the value, and rarity, of doing such. He was sprawled out over the first two chat seats, a gangly octopus dressed in oversized swaths of black cotton and polyester.

I said, "how come?"
"'Cause I read this article once. It said,"
"What'd it say?"
"It said, it was talkin' about this guy, this guy who was gonna kill himself but he didn't commit suicide 'cause somebody smiled at him."
"Oh wow. Oh wow." I looked at Ghost, processing. "That's, talk about making a difference in someone's life."
"Yeah. Just because somebody took a second to smile, made him feel human again."
"Acknowledgement."
"Yeah."
"Wow."

---

*The Prentice loop is at the tail end of the 7 route, and although the 7 is very frequent (every 10 minutes all day with frequent service til midnight, plus 24-hour service) only a few trips continue on to do the loop. The Prentice Street (upper Rainier Beach) neighborhood is served every 30 minutes until about 10:30pm, and sometimes less often than that. That may sound like pretty good service, but for this transit-dependent part of town, it isn't. Elsewhere, mediocre bus service is an inconvenience. In places like this, it shapes lives. People who don't ride the 7 will tell you the Prentice service, which used to be more frequent, is underutilized and therefore not as many buses are needed up there. Actual passengers will tell you the only reason the service is underused is because of how infrequent it is. 

This is one of the great catch-22's in transit planning: if the service isn't used, the company will reduce the amount of service. If the service is reduced, nobody will use the service because it isn't good. An example of the opposite would be the 545 which, upon being introduced as a frequent, all-day express route between Redmond and Seattle that ran every 15 minutes or less and covered its distance in speeds comparable to driving a car, many thought was actually too good, and believed there was no ridership to justify its existence. But people came. They materialized, because the option was so attractive. Now it's one of Sound Transit's busiest routes.

Last year there was a sixteen-car accident that shut down Rainier Avenue in such a way that a shuttle bus had to be devised that night to ferry passengers from Rainier & Rose to the end of the route up on Prentice. For convenience the shuttle driver (a friend of mine!) drove every single one of his shuttle trips up through the Prentice neighborhood. Despite the fact that Prentice service ends at 10:30, he kept going up there until his shift ended at 3am. People used the service on every trip, all night. Not only did many people ride up there, there were people waiting for the bus up there at 2am, long after bus service would normally stop. Though I don't feel every 7 needs to go to Prentice, it's undeniable that if the service was improved, people would use it.

The least Metro could do is address the (in)famous 60-90-minute gaps in Prentice service during both weekday rush hours, when there is no service to or from Prentice exactly when it is most needed. There was a time when folks thought running 10-minute service south of Othello was extravagant, but now we're accustomed to the glut of people traveling between the Henderson loop and Rose, who would definitely be walking if the service wasn't as frequent as it is. No 7 driver hasn't heard the familiar "I'm just goin' to Rose" less than a thousand times.

Planners! Feedback from a neighborhood that doesn't email in quite as much: the peak-hour Prentice gaps, plus the early quit time for bus service to that neighborhood, are the complaints I hear about the most. The consistent positive feedback I get refers to the evening through-routing with the 49, and the direct service to downtown (if the community ever finds out how the RapidRide+ corridors will split the route up, they'll riot!). The suggestion I hear most that isn't a complaint is the idea of dividing the tail into 2 terminals: every other 7 should serve Prentice, with remaining trips serving Rainer Beach Station. Or better yet, have outbound 7s turn right on Cloverdale, L on MLK, L on Henderson to either the Henderson layover or Prentice, for better connectivity and a single route from downtown that hits all three "hubs" of Rainier Beach: the light rail station, the high school, and restaurant row.