On Transit

var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-2978030-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); My name is Alia. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and spend a lot of time on public transit—usually BART, but sometimes buses or Caltrain. It can get old, but there's always something new: I listen in, look over shoulders, and deposit stories here. I avoid identifying individuals, either in words or pictures—but at the end of the day, public transit is ... well, public. I'm happy to chat about the ethics of eavesdropping (or anything else). Drop me a line. Credit is given where credit is due; all other words and pictures are my own. Let me know if you see something you like.

[ontransit]

That’s all she wrote

A year of radio silence presumably speaks for itself, but I’ll put a bow/post on top to make it official: this BART blog is retired. I’m still commuting (!) but have less time to write, these days ... and in the age of ubiquitous smartphones there are legitimately far fewer transit interactions worth remembering anyway. (The homicides lately notwithstanding.) 

Anyway: I’m leaving these old stories out here for you, dear Internet. Enjoy. :) 

[ontransit]

in which I realize why girls get tattoos

“Excuse me,” he says to her, “but what does your tattoo mean?” It’s curly black script on her upper arm. He’s craning his neck from the high collar of an expensive softshell to see it; she’s not actually wearing one of those felt tiller hats, but would. 

“Um, it means, ‘the blood that’s shared’? It’s from a Salvadorian revolutionary poet?”

“Wow, that’s so amazing.”

“Yeah, I just grew up reading it and it just really resonated with me, you know?”

[ontransit]

The ‘L’ word

“Bro, check this out. Last night I [mild to moderately graphic sexual act redacted because I think my mom reads this] and she told me she loved me. Ha! What a fucking riot. Like, look at these texts, bro. ‘Ok, my love!’ ‘Bye, my love!’ ‘Kick butt at work, baby!’ Like, who the fuck does this bitch think she is?”—Eavesdropping hazard: developing trust issues from men I’m not even dating

[ontransit]

Cat ladies gone wild

“I’ve been making this tea for my arthritis and it’s wonderful but it has a very powerful smell. So, people come over and they either think there’s a skunk or that I’m smoking pot. Then again, I love skunks, so I don’t mind it. They’re the most beautiful thing. And my raccoons are also gorgeous. I’ve got to stop feeding them; that’s my resolution for 2017. I cut back on the birdseed and I cut back on the cat food—I don’t even leave them a full thing of cat food, usually, but it’s just that they’re really, really hungry.”—in case you were wondering why there’s a critter problem in your neighborhood

[ontransit]

A couple of design modifications on my car last night.

Also I see I mixed up my book reviews and my BART-stalking last week ... fixed now, sorry!

[ontransit]

I was told there’d be swimming

Siblings: boy, 10; girl, maybe 12. Parents on devices one row back.

Boy, palms and nose to the window, outraged: “That’s not water!”

Girl, ponytail and contempt: “Well ob-vi-ous-ly we’re in a tunnel.”

Boy, extraordinarily and immediately red: “Well ob-vi-ous-ly it was a joke.”

[ontransit]

This one’s tough, which is why it’s a month late.

He’s reading an article about the terror attacks in Nice. He looks a lot like the man in the mugshot. I imagine he knows this.

I’m projecting too much into these two frames, I admit—but I felt his reaction in the pit of my own stomach. It’s familiar, if you’re our shade of beige in this country these days, from that moment that follows the hope between headline and the copy, the wince after you’ve held your breath and crossed your fingers for, “please don’t be my color, please don’t have my name, please don’t look like my family.”

Anyway, if you don’t know that feeling—didn’t acquire that reflex after Charleston or Aurora or Sandy Hook—I'm glad; I don’t wish it on you. But I hope you understand it, and I hope you vote.

[ontransit]

And what is causing the delay is, we have a passenger experiencing a mental health crisis who has set his shirt on fire on the platform. So, sorry about that.

I am impressed with the operator’s use of empathetic terminology here (vs. the more common and not entirely uncalled for “crazy motherfucker”)

[ontransit]

And the winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award for use of PA system goes to ...

Via the world-famous Jenny Odell:

lol forever at the Bart station agent who—when a guy in the station was ranting about "blowing hillary's head off"— started chanting "hillary! hillary!" into the station speaker system (and then 5 minutes later when the guy was still going, getting back on just to whisper sultrily: "hillaryyyy.....")

[ontransit]

Daddy, I want to kiss you! I want to kiss your eyeballs! No, the inside of your eyeballs! ... Are the insides white?

There’s only one way to find ouuuut ...

[ontransit]

On a packed car, still attempting precarious selfie with meringue pie. It looked delicious; props.

[ontransit]

Two women in their late thirties are talking in the aisle behind me. One’s phone rings. There is a brief, curt exchange (”Yes. ... Fine. ... Well, yeah, obviously. ... I said, fine!”) and she hangs up.

“This is exactly what I was talking about” the woman says to her friend. “It’s unbelievable the tone he takes with me. And about what? She’s crying? Really, a two-year-old is crying? I mean, come on—you think?”

I can’t hear her friend’s response, but the the first woman eventually interrupts. “Seriously! Seriously! Why are we married to people we don’t even like?”

[ontransit]

prepare culture

The passenger in front of me is on her phone, tapping out her agenda in 15-minute increments.

10:15 Make gel 10:30 Warm media 10:45 Make tea 11:00 Run gels 11:20 Split cells 11:45 Excise/purify/locate 12:15 Go to yoga 1:50 Send sequencing 2:15 Transform 2:45 Meditate 3:15: Heat shock 3:30 Diagnostics

The glorious state of Modern Woman is such that it's not immediately obvious which parts of her day are dedicated to genetics experiments and which to various rituals of self-actualization. Her towering to-do list is a mix of household errands, retail therapy, and cryptic strings of letters and numbers that only after Googling do I understand to be the names of proteins. My feelings are 30% regret over my choice of major and 70% wanting to high-five her.

GET IT, GIRLS.

[ootocomic-blog]

[ontransit]

Part of the reason I write very little here these days is that these “conversations” are all I ever overhear. I confess to Googling cell phone jammers (out of my price range); I confess to pure hatred. I confess, of course, to occasional transcription. 

I’m wondering if it’s worthwhile for you to, like, Google ‘brand process’ or something so that you can kind of get what I’m doing here? ... It’s, like, the hierarchy of what values you want to communicate. It’s important. ... The name should be one word that’s most indicative of your functionality. Short is better. Or an acronym. ... I’m su-uper-excited to help you.  ... The fundamentals of what the business is doing— like they’re not unclear, but they’re not clear. ... 

Hello? Hello, can you hear me? ... Oh, shoot, I cut out for a minute ... I was saying something consequential, and a little bit funny. I was saying ...

Clearly there’s some confusion on this point, so let me do my part to correct the record. There are exactly two acceptable things to say into a cell phone while on BART, and they are:

Hey, sorry, I’m on BART right now, can I call you back? Great. Thanks.

Oh my God. What hospital is s/he at? I’ll be there as soon as I can.

That’s it! That’s all! Easy! Now go forth and STFU.

[ontransit]

5-7-5

BART and the LA Metro are in a weird transit-themed haiku battle

... and it’s glorious.

[ontransit]

Meanwhile, on the D.C. Metro ... subwayding. 

I actually appreciate the fact that the station stayed open that long. Like, you're a courageous American; this is the capital of the free world; go forth and choose your own adventure! Walk, bus, taxi, Class 2 rapids down this escalator—why should Big Government tell you how to live your commute? 

I’m also impressed that the escalator in that video is still working. Here not only would it have stopped, it would ... well, I just wouldn’t get walk through water in a BART station, is all. 

[ontransit]

at the peak of the market

A couple in their mid-twenties joins the line for a train out of the city. He’s tall and staring vacantly over both of our heads, she’s wearing Banana Republic and pretty, deliberate lipstick in a shade I imagine recommended by a page titled “Fun-and-Fierce/Knock-’em-Dead /Boss-Ass-Bitch Shades for Summer!!”

“Baby, I know you think it’s a bad idea,” she’s saying, “I just want to understand why.” Her hand is at his elbow.

“Because it’s the peak of the market,” he says, still looking over her head. “Everybody knows that. And when it’s the peak of the market you should wait for it to go down.”

“But I think it’s not predicated on the market, it’s predicated on the fact that we’re not married and we’d have to borrow money from my dad.” She says this lightly, pleasantly, like a cashier or a camp counselor. I’m listening closely now.

“O-okay.” He retrieves his phone from his pocket. “You know what, I was just making conversation.”

“Well this is what I do with my brain,” she says. Her Fun and Fierce lips are smiling broadly but her eyes are not.  “You tell me what you want to do and I think about how to do it. Do you not know me at all?”

This last question begins cheerily, as a joke, and ends in the faintest tremor. It’s a strangely striking note in an entirely typical conversation—the kind of thing you could write into a script and audition 58 people before getting anything close. I’m impressed, play it back to myself in my head.

I lose track of their conversation in the crowded train, but when the crush clears at Ashby she is standing alone in the aisle, crying quietly behind Knock-’em-Dead sunglasses.