Tag Archives: urban bus ride stories

Cool Headed Bus Driver

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One man stays calm as others fall apart

“So got a ride home,” I texted my wife from the edge of Downtown Seattle. “My bus ride to work was full of megadrama from start to finish. Bus driver had nerves of loving steel.”

Started to title this little urban vignette, “Nutty Old Woman with Umbrella and Angry Nasty Fella make my Bus Ride most Unforgettable.” Nope, too long and negative. The bus ride was a bit nerve wracking at times, however, and brought up another uncomfortable metro mix of amusement and anger and fear and sadness and compassion and bafflement regarding what we humans do as we live our lives.

Shortly after boarding the bus in Shoreline and taking a seat, an elderly but nimble short woman wanted to get off, screeching at the driver in an unintelligible manner. She appeared to be of East Asian ethnicity, but who knows any more and how much does it matter? So the bus driver kindly stopped between designated bus stops to let her off. As the driver began to pull away, however, the same old lady ran along the side of the bus screeching and banging on the metal hull with her closed-up umbrella. She whacked the bus hard! The driver stopped and let her back on.  Continue reading →

Woman who said Jesus Christ as she sat in a wheelchair snapping fotos

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Seattle/Shoreline bus riding urban vignettes

Saturday 8 February 2025

Another winter day at the bus stop on Aurora Avenue in Shoreline, a northern suburb of Seattle. It’s even sunny instead of pouring rain or snowing. A White woman dressed against the cold sits in a wheelchair shooting pictures with a camera. Exhibits the passion of a photographer. She’s an artist. This wheelchair photographer person takes pictures of sunshine beaming thru the fractured glass of the bus stop shelter. Multiple cracks were spiderwebbed out but the glass still held. Winter sunshine thru all those cracks had a scintillating effect. 

“Jesus Christ,” she murmured softly in awe and loud enough to hear even with hearing aids stuck in my ears like Frankenstein bolts. 

She stopped to admire the beauty in what she saw.  Continue reading →

Fone Guy & Eye Patch Man

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Stories from the Streets and Buses of Seattle

First noticed Fone Guy at a bus stop sitting inside the shelter on a wet, wintry day speaking passionately into his old-style flip fone while I waited for the bus. His voice was as crisp and clear as a lawyer arguing in court and as fiery as a street activist bellowing into a bullhorn. Most of the time, however, he could’ve been one of those YouTubers pontificating like Joe Rogan on the state of everything from wars to boxing matches. We were up in the north end of the City of Seattle where the neighborhoods of Greenwood, Bitter Lake, Carkeek Park/Broadview, and Crown Hill come together in one of Seattle’s somewhat chaotic, funky, octopus intersections. There I stamped around waiting for the southbound # 5 to head south down thru Greenwood and up along Phinney Ridge. Fone Guy was dressed like a laborer but without any particular jobsite uniform. His heavy coats hung open around his burly, middle-aged frame. Dawned on me he was probably homeless and the bus stop shelter was his office. In those moments, however, he was King of the Shelter and Emperor of the Flip-Fone. Continue reading →

Bad Bad Bus Ride…& the Decline of America

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A crazy sad madcap urban bus ride vignette 

My bus ride this morning was epic bad, the kind that makes me not wanna ride it again, LOL…well, lol but not LOL.

It’s not funny. No. Sad, yes. Madcap, maddening, tragic, stupid, bonkers Seattle. 

Was insane!

Yes, I’m with the progressive PC Woke crowd, and it’s all gone too darn far, way too far, dammit!, when chaos, anarchy, and disease take over, fear dominates, and citizens are cowed into submission, apathy, and violence.

Apparently the buses bombing straight up and down Aurora pick up the worse of the worse – about 75% if not more of the riders seem homeless. Most appear to have bad mental health, drug & alcohol problems. One old, White man with a shaggy beard kept shuffling around with his pants down around his ankles and no underwear – he tried to hold them up by hand but gave up as the bus lurched around traffic – and tried to hand folks a one-dollar bill. No one took it. Why? Cuz the money looked like he’d wiped his ass with it! He shuggled forward towards the bus driver and offered her a nasty looking dollar bill, too. He seemed confused and perhaps wanted to somehow pay someone for for his ride on the metro bus. She waved him away. Told him to go sit down and pull his pants up. He turned around looking confused with his britches still down with the money still in hand. He left a wad of bills on his bus seat along with folded pieces of notebook paper, but no one dared grab such nasty looking money or attempted to sit down on the same two-person seat. No way! And there were preteen kids on the bus with big eyes! A family of tourists! God! And the old fellow kept babbling really loud in a obnoxious way – except his babble actually RHYMED in a cute way that also grated on yer nerves. Continue reading →

Man on the Morning Bus

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A Seattle Bus Ride Vignette

Don’t laugh because it’s really not funny. OK?

A homeless man got on the bus talking vigorously to himself in gibberish. Plopped down across from me in aisle-facing seats. Scratched his head ferociously the whole time with his right hand as he gripped a crumpled stack of cash in the other. A hundred dollar bill stuck out between his fingers like a squished mouse.

He scratched & skritched & scrotched head so mightily I was afraid, truly afraid, he was gonna fling head lice on me with his right hand all the way from where he sat across the aisle from me. Then I thought he was gonna fling cooties into the back of a young Muslim woman’s hijab as she sat scrolling down her fone in a forward-facing seat. Was gonna holler at the bus driver if he did. Continue reading →