Urban Hillbilly Theory, In Oakland
by crackpipe
I live in the Oakland ghetto most of the time. I ride the buses. The buses are weird during the day and interesting after dark. Paydays in particular. If I add a Friday night + payday = problem.
AC Transit
Oakland area bus drivers approach busstops and apparently determine the number of passengers who are boarding or departing at that stop. If it’s just one rider waiting at the stop, sometimes the bus driver stops and sometimes he or she drives by me, sometimes looking at me directly. They’re rarely on-time. Oakland buses come when they come and the drivers don’t give a shit at best.
Some seem to be haters.
An Example of Why People Are Great
A few months ago, I was riding home a Friday payday night on a packed bus where I was the only white passenger. I don’t feel safe, but it’s not a personal deal; it’s understood we’re all fucking poor and hate our lives, ourselves, and each other pretty equally.
Anyway, it was a darker,colder type of night (for Oakland), and the windows on the bus were closed. Many of the riders were drunk or high and angry or talking animatedly. It’s loud at night: Music is cacophonous; different sources, different volumes, different styles, all of that.
Differing concepts of hygiene play into the picture, as well as gastric aftereffects from differing diets. That night, a loud stinking crowded hate-filled bus, where crimes were, at best, merely pending. I recalled fantasizing we were riding to basic training. At any rate, it’s about a half hour ride to my stop.
I’m 6′0″, 200, and I guess I don’t have a lot of problems unless someone is trained. I smile occasionally and mostly just look at my hands. After a few minutes on the ride, a seat opened next to a large black couple and I sat down. The dude about 6′6″, 300; his apparent significant other about 6′2″, 250.
They had grocery bags filled with food from the food shelter.
Excellent Driver
Shortly after I sat, the driver began screaming and shouting at an older disabled dude with a bottle. From what I could hear, the driver was yelling about how she didn’t have to take this shit and ain’t gonna take it anymore. She pulled over randomly to the curb, exited the bus and paced in circles just outside the door. Her breakdown seemed to blend crying and shouting, and she pulled out a celly and started talking agitatedly to someone on that.
The bus sat there, shut down. After roughly 10 minutes at the curb, some riders left the bus. But at about this time, the large woman next to me said to her larger male friend, “Bitch needs to get back on the bus”.
He nodded, without comment. Eventually, he replied quietly, “Fucking bitch got a job.”
The woman thought about this for a while. Eventually, she responded, “Probably got a car too, rich fucking bitch. What she complaining about?”. I continued to look at my hands; I was off work, what did I fucking care? Whether I’m on a bus or in the grave when some fat busdriving bitch has a psychotic break, it’s another example of why people shouldn’t speak
to me.
We’d been at the stop perhaps 15 minutes when the 6′6″ dude said quietly to his lady, “This is bullshit”.
He stood up and exited out to the curb. I ambled out with him. The driver was mixing sitting with standing and shouting with sort of crying or shaking her head and muttering. Big dude bent down and said something into her ear. Bus driver stood bolt upright as if bit by a snake.
She muttered and slunk back onto the bus. Big dude and I re-entered the bus and sat down without comment. And the bus rolled on, the driver muttering. I arrived home a half-hour late, hungry.
My roommate at the time, a retired UC Berkeley professor, was working angrily on his stamp collection.
I reached for the NY Times and thought about an annoying woman I had dated a few years earlier, prior to my shoulder surgeries.
What a fucked-up world.
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This is just great. I love slice of life stories like this. I’ve been to oakland and its way scarier than LA, for some reason.
Public transit will make you hate public anything. There’s gotta be a better way. And yes, the bus drivers do think they’re better than their riders.
Sometimes I feel I could cut the anger around Oakland with a knife. I worry about our country, but other times just go to work, if that makes sense.
The same thing happened to me one night, complete with the retired Berkeley professor roommate.
exceptional story. i lived in oakland during my college years and this is spot-on. love the ending.
Thanks joe. If the antidote to bitterness is gratitude, i should write more about good times than weird times, but I’m currently not inclined, so it’s pretty bilious, I guess.