The bus rides.

The other day after my evening class i walked to the bus stop. It's a dark bus stop, about 4/13ths of a mile from my class where San Pedro meets Ashby. There was a man there. I stopped a bit away from the bench where he was to sit under a tree in even darker, shady night light. It's about 8:20pm. The man starts talking to me. Obviously drunk. Obviously sad and regretful about his life. His name was Mike. I don't know if he was sincere or not. It seemed he was when he said he received his BA from Palo Alto college. It's a two year college. He had a wife. Now he just drinks and has a job picking up trash. He wants to be a tattoo artist. He was covered with random markings on his body.  none looked like anything to brag about. He said he was a scratch paper for others to draw on when he was younger. We got on the bus.

mike

Yesterday after class, about 9pm at the bus stop, a 37 yr old man was at my first transfer at Broadway and Jospehine, down the sidewalk from Sams burger joint. he was talking to another gentleman. a few minutes later he declared.."ya'll wouldn't mind if i smoked a joint would you?" I didn't mind. no one else seemed to care. There were about 5 others. so he started smoking. a bus stopped in front of us for about 10 min. for the drivers to change. .. All the while the man smoked his cannabis cigarette. When the next driver showed up in his bus, all his people transferred on to this bus in front of us. As they were passing by, there was a young black male passing by, and as he passed, the white man smoking the joint tapped him on the shoulder. The man turned around and looked to a see a white man appearing to raise a joint to him. .. it looked to me like a "wanna smoke?' gesture. i couldn't tell. i thought it was strange. the black man kept walking but then turned and asked, "hey,...what chu want?" He proceeded onto the bus. A few seconds later he reappeared outside the bus with 3 others with him that had gotten on the bus just prior. It was another guy and some young females. They came out wearing pomp and attitude, ready to put fear in a white man. They walked up to the white man and started asking questions in an accusatory way. this is like right next to me. They were threatening and walking around with their chins up ready to throw down. kinda strange, but amounted to nothing. The man with the joint handled it well. I got on the bus. The black young men and women got on the bus right behind me being really loud talking a bunch of shit like they were all tough for their display of random machoness. Then to my surprise, the white man got on the bus, and came all the way to the back where we all were. he sat right next to the black gentlemen and started talking to them. He had no intentions of being a jerk at all. He was being real nice to the guys saying "i thought it was a nice gesture." The young men continued to be assholes. The man who smoked the joints' name was Allen. He just lost his kids. He's from Louisiana. He's a manager at Sonic, but loves to paint houses and do stain.  As the younger kids got off of the bus, Allen decided to throw gang symbols and start talking childish to the young men after they were off the bus. They were looking at him like, "'we'll remember you." it was an odd scenerio.

I see lots of interesting things on the bus. Lot's of different people. Lot's of things going on. Lot's of bible readers. Lot's of students. Dirty workers. Loud mouths. Hispanics. Blacks. Whites. Chinese. Restaurant workers. Lawyers. Single mothers. Smokers. Drinkers. Texters. A lot of people.

Anyway. I enjoy taking pics on the buses. I feel kinda awkward doing it cuz i don't want people to see me. but heck. i do it anyway.

Adamo