Notes on Commuting by Bus in LA

October 3rd, 2005 Posted in 2005

Prior to moving to Los Angeles, one of the first things I heard about it was the traffic. More specifically: that you could spin around, jab a finger randomly in any direction and be pointing at it. According to the men on the street who had my ear, the highways of LA were one big smog-spewing, fender-bending snarl of commuting automobile, and to be avoided at all costs.

Granted, the advice was hardly applicable. When I moved to LA I didn’t (and still don’t) own a car, making the traffic warning about as relevant as a Do Not Run Around The Pool sign to a paraplegic. Nonetheless, it had been with the dreaded Los Angeles traffic in mind that I’d selected my first apartment, in the middle of a vast suburb and a mere ten-minute stroll to work.

A year took the bloom off the suburban rose for me. This past weekend I finally packed my bags and moved to a more urban section of Los Angeles. Why? It turns out the husbands, wives and two-point-four children of suburbia hate the idea of department stores, restaurants, malls, pubs and retail outlets anywhere near their flawlessly maintained gated communities. They’ll gladly hop into SUVs and drive for hours, if necessary — so long as it keeps the Walmarts and Burger Kings out of their backyards. Living there had meant a quick walk to work and a three-mile safari to absolutely anything else.

I’m now within spitting distance of a farmer’s market, a shoe store, an Irish pub… brothers and sisters, I’ve even got a K-Mart now, and it is beautiful to my eyes. However, as a tradeoff for all this retail splendor, I’m now a good six miles away from my office. For the first time since I moved to LA, this Monday meant I’d be… dun dun DUN-NN-NN… commuting.

And it turns out it’s not so bad, really. Maybe I got spoiled on my first commute by unnaturally thin traffic, but riding the bus from home to work, door to door, took about thirty minutes.

OBSERVATIONS

● It being my first day commuting, I paid close attention to all the posted signs so as not to commit any bus ride faux pas. One such sign made it clear that the empty seats at the front of the bus were exclusively for the use of the handicapped. I took note and walked to the back of the bus, where limited seating forced me to stand in place for the rest of the trip.

The commuters who boarded after me, conversely, had no such qualms with prying valuable bus real estate from the feeble hands of the elderly and infirm, planting their asses in the forbidden seats with little moral hand-wringing and, on the contrary, looks of innocent satisfaction. One such voluminous ass was attached to a woman with a sizable birthmark on her face, leading me to spend a good ten minutes wondering whether her deformity technically counted as a handicap. After running her through my handy three-question Deformity Checklist® — “One: If riding in an elevator with them, would I unsuccessfully try not to stare?”, “Two: If walking past them, would I awkwardly avoid eye contact?” and “Three: Are they sort of gross?” — I decided that, yes, a face-covering birthmark definitely qualified.

● Maybe it was the Jackie O sunglasses and horizon-encompassing afro tricking me, but I could have sworn Erykah Badu shared the 9:00 cross-town Rapid with me.

No fans of Ms. Badu’s delicate soul-infused melodies were in evidence, however, as the songstress was forced to stand for the duration of her ride.

● At one stop, the bus driver misjudged his turn and drove the side of the bus into a tree, resulting in a sound like Rush Limbaugh sitting on a bag full of empty Coke cans. The tree was sufficiently large to survive the collision relatively intact. Given that it stood about two feet away from a crowd of people waiting at the bus stop, however, there were nonetheless some rather pale-looking and frightened faces huddled into the bus soon after.

LESSONS LEARNED

1.) Bus driver training isn’t as stringent a selection process as one might assume. Stand far away from the bus stop, preferably flat against a building.

2.) Failing that, be a tree.

3.) Under no circumstances will being Erykah Badu get you special treatment on a Los Angeles bus. Being Dave Matthews may result in a fine.