RainbowFriends.Net

When I first moved to San Francisco, I got a temp job working in the finance office of the SF Housing Authority.  It was smack in the middle of the Tenderloin District.

Since I’d come almost straight from rural Armenia, the Tenderloin was a terrifying sight to behold.  Where was the America for which I’d been so homesick for two years?  Certainly it wasn’t here, with homeless people lined up on the street, corners smelling of piss, human shit on the sidewalk, crack being dealt right in front of me.  I promised once I got settled I’d do some volunteer work and educate myself about the issues.

I got settled.  I trained in massage therapy to learn how to touch people with intention.  I no longer take the Geary 38 to the Tenderloin, now I hop on the California 1AX which takes me straightaway to the Financial District.

You can learn a lot about life riding buses. 

On the 38, the bus was diverse, often full of immigrants, mostly Chinese and Russian, speaking Chinese and Russian to each other or on cell phones.  Come to think of it, the 38 was always noisy.

On the 1AX, it is always silent.  I never answer my phone on the express because I don’t want to receive cold death stares.  The people look more like me, wearing what I call “biz-cas“, armed with iPods, newspapers, paperback books so that no one ever has to talk or look at each other and everyone can pretend that they aren’t riding the bus with other people at all.

Even boarding the bus is different.  I got the following diagram from Stuff Asian People Like.  In this case, the blue represents the 1AX and the red represents the 38:

Just for fun, here is a diagram for the marshutka I used to take from Berd to Yerevan in Armenia:

The black dot on the right is the driver.  That dot is always a man, and he is always smoking.  He may even have a shot of vodka.  The other black dot is me, and I am sitting on the marshutka because I’ve arrived at 8 am even though it won’t leave until at least an hour later when the other black dots show up. 

Eventually there will be about 12 people in a white van-like vehicle, and they will all stare at me and ask where I came from and if I’m married and why not and if I want to marry an Armenian man and why not and hey you speak pretty good Armenian and where do you live and who do you live with and how do you like Armenia and what is better, Armenia or America and how much money do you make and how much do your parents make and where is your family and do you know the entire ancient history of Armenia… all this while listening to a tape of Tata over and over.

Anyway.

You can learn a lot about life riding buses.