{"id":592,"date":"2006-11-14T17:31:49","date_gmt":"2006-11-15T01:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2006\/11\/14\/the-big-blue-bus\/"},"modified":"2006-11-14T17:45:08","modified_gmt":"2006-11-15T01:45:08","slug":"the-big-blue-bus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2006\/11\/14\/the-big-blue-bus\/","title":{"rendered":"The Big Blue Bus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meet me at the back of the blue bus<\/em><\/p>\n

According to the Wikipedia<\/p>\n

\n

The End (The Doors song)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

this line from the Doors’ "The End" "is almost certainly a reference to Indian mystic Meher Baba’s ‘Blue Bus’ tours of the 1930s."\u00c2\u00a0 Are you buying this?\u00c2\u00a0 I certainly ain’t.\u00c2\u00a0 Because every L.A. musicologist believes that although Pete Townshend might have been a devotee of Meher Baba, Jim Morrison was referring to SANTA MONICA’S BIG BLUE BUS!<\/p>\n

They say that the car companies colluded to kill the Red Cars.\u00c2\u00a0 Which delivered reliable transportation throughout the L.A. basin.<\/p>\n

I wish they’d bring the trolley cars back, because you can no longer go ANYWHERE in L.A.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s constant gridlock.\u00c2\u00a0 If only we had a public transportation system akin to London.\u00c2\u00a0 Or Paris.\u00c2\u00a0 Where unless you’re leaving town, it’s a liability to have a car.<\/p>\n

Yes, Harry told me to just walk to the corner.\u00c2\u00a0 There’d be a bus to Hammersmith every few minutes.<\/p>\n

The 14th & 20th Crosstown is supposed to run every half hour.\u00c2\u00a0 But dependable it’s not.\u00c2\u00a0 Standing at the corner of 20th and Ocean Park at the appointed hour, I waited in vain.<\/p>\n

And then I pulled a New York City move.\u00c2\u00a0 I got into the middle of the street.\u00c2\u00a0 Looking off in the distance for not a cab, but a bus.<\/p>\n

Actually, a cab passed by while I was in my queue of one.\u00c2\u00a0 I should have asked the guy to take me to the Saab dealer.\u00c2\u00a0 But according to the sign my ride would be here in literally two minutes.<\/p>\n

But what if the bus was running FAST?\u00c2\u00a0 What if I’d already MISSED IT!<\/p>\n

The parade of horribles started unfolding in my brain.\u00c2\u00a0 What if the bus NEVER came.\u00c2\u00a0 I wouldn’t be able to pick up my car, and then I’d miss my physical therapy appointment.<\/p>\n

And the reason I HAD a physical therapy appointment is because my back had gone nuclear, because normally I just walk to the dealership, it takes less than half an hour.<\/p>\n

So, if I started walking RIGHT NOW, I could probably make it.\u00c2\u00a0 But at what physical cost?\u00c2\u00a0 I started walking up the street, looking off on the horizon for the elongated blue vehicle.\u00c2\u00a0 Fearful that if I saw it, I wouldn’t be able to make it to a stop on time.\u00c2\u00a0 It would pass me by.<\/p>\n

I made it all the way to Santa Monica City College with no bus in sight.\u00c2\u00a0 But then, as I continued to stride towards my ultimate destination, I saw it off in the distance, appearing like at the end of "Ghost World".<\/p>\n

And that’s how I felt.\u00c2\u00a0 Alienated.\u00c2\u00a0 Like a second class citizen.<\/p>\n

You’ve got to maintain automobiles.\u00c2\u00a0 I play by the manual.\u00c2\u00a0 To avoid retribution down the line, when the manufacturer excuses needed repairs because of a lack of oil changes and top-offs.\u00c2\u00a0 And I usually drive cars forever.\u00c2\u00a0 Not that I plan on driving THIS car forever.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s oh-so-fast, but oh-so-noisy.\u00c2\u00a0 But the time had come for it to be serviced, and I’d left it at the dealership the night before and they’d called me to come and retrieve it and I couldn’t GET THERE!<\/p>\n

Oh, they’ll pick you up in a pinch.\u00c2\u00a0 But there wasn’t a pinch left.<\/p>\n

I ran to the stop.\u00c2\u00a0 And the bus didn’t.\u00c2\u00a0 Even though there was a sign, the driver kept on moving.\u00c2\u00a0 I started to freak, didn’t he SEE ME?<\/p>\n

But I guess drivers have a mind of their own.\u00c2\u00a0 He pulled up fifteen feet down the line.\u00c2\u00a0 Twenty minutes after the appointed hour.<\/p>\n

Now what’s the cost to ride the Big Blue Bus?\u00c2\u00a0 I bet you don’t know.\u00c2\u00a0 And neither did I.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is why I went to the library last night, to garner some information.\u00c2\u00a0 The map said it was only seventy five cents.\u00c2\u00a0 But it had been printed in 2002.\u00c2\u00a0 And the meter contraption by the driver had a slot for a dollar bill.\u00c2\u00a0 Did I have a single?\u00c2\u00a0 I’d picked up three quarters on my way out.<\/p>\n

And you can’t ask the driver.\u00c2\u00a0 Because they no longer speak.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s an intercom, announcing every stop.\u00c2\u00a0 Not that I knew that yet.<\/p>\n

And they figure the only people riding the bus ALWAYS ride the bus, because everybody with ANY cash owns a car in L.A.<\/p>\n

And I looked around the interior.\u00c2\u00a0 Who RIDES the bus at a quarter to twelve in the afternoon?\u00c2\u00a0 No one’s going to work then.<\/p>\n

It was akin to the residents on the Group W Bench.\u00c2\u00a0 I tried not to interact.<\/p>\n

And then a stylish woman got on board.\u00c2\u00a0 She had to own a car.<\/p>\n

But then, when she got off at Olympic I saw that her belt buckle was an iron cross.\u00c2\u00a0 Normalcy was not part of her canon.<\/p>\n

And then a woman from beyond the grave got on.\u00c2\u00a0 And sat RIGHT DOWN NEXT TO ME!\u00c2\u00a0 There’s almost a completely empty bus but you want to be up close and personal?<\/p>\n

I didn’t know whether I was being punked or it was the beginning of a horror movie.<\/p>\n

And the driver was on his own schedule.\u00c2\u00a0 He was barreling along, maybe he WAS ahead of schedule, since no one was riding the bus in the middle of the day.<\/p>\n

Then a FRIEND of the driver got on.\u00c2\u00a0 And started b.s.’ing like they’d been out partying the night before.<\/p>\n

And I’m wondering whether to take the extra loop.\u00c2\u00a0 To go ten minutes out of my way to be deposited four blocks closer to my destination.<\/p>\n

But then we got stuck.\u00c2\u00a0 At Colorado.\u00c2\u00a0 Where a driver switch transpired.<\/p>\n

A healthy woman with a posterior akin to the one J. Lo would possess if she ate at In-N-Out for every meal ambled onto the bus.\u00c2\u00a0 And started WIPING IT DOWN!<\/p>\n

Every inch of the driver’s space.\u00c2\u00a0 She had her own stash of paper towels.<\/p>\n

Now I’m thinking if there’s only ONE person in that space, an EMPLOYED person, and there are that many cooties, what about where I’M sitting?<\/p>\n

And time is flying by.\u00c2\u00a0 The new driver is now encasing her space in newspaper.\u00c2\u00a0 But she demonstrates gross ineptitude.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s brought along Scotch Tape for this purpose, but she keeps forgetting to stick it onto the glass.\u00c2\u00a0 I almost wanted to get up and help, but it would have required reaching, and that wouldn’t have been good for my back, and I was worried what she’d say to me.\u00c2\u00a0 For it was clear I was not a member of the club, and drivers only seemed to speak with those who knew the secret handshake.<\/p>\n

Not possessing the password, I sat there, as time rolled by.<\/p>\n

By now I’d decided not to take the loop.\u00c2\u00a0 To get off as soon as we hit Santa Monica Boulevard.\u00c2\u00a0 But would we ever GET THERE!<\/p>\n

Finally the new driver sat her rump down and accelerated.<\/p>\n

And in two blocks I got off.<\/p>\n

And began feeling like a man again.\u00c2\u00a0 Because even though NOBODY walks in L.A., pedestrians are a cut above those who ride the bus.<\/p>\n

\n

Big Blue Bus<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Meet me at the back of the blue bus According to the Wikipedia The End (The Doors song) this line from the Doors’ "The End" "is almost certainly a reference to Indian mystic Meher Baba’s ‘Blue Bus’ tours of the 1930s."\u00c2\u00a0 Are you buying this?\u00c2\u00a0 I certainly ain’t.\u00c2\u00a0 Because every L.A. musicologist believes that although […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-9y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}