October 14, 2010
On the 18 Express bus
Ballard, Seattle, Washington
“I’m going to get a tattoo, and a real piercing. I’m going to do everything you can’t do when you’re not 18,” she said.
“I’m going to tell my dad he has a grandson.”
“1980s Businessman”
or
“He knows the secret to time travel but not to good hair”
November 18, 2008
Seattle, Washington
February 17, 2007
Bus stop at 15th & Campus Parkway
University District, Seattle, Washington
Thin, scrappy-looking black man, rumpled clothes. He rants about all the things that are wrong in the world: the city, the police, the buses, the ex-wife.
“I make up for it, though…I go to the beach and watch the sun set on the ocean.”
December 16, 2009
15 bus to downtown
Ballard, Washington
He has two backpacks on the seat next to him, a sleepy expression, an unkempt mustache, and an honest-to-God rat tail. As I settle into my seat, he pulls a full sized bottle of some clear liquor, bare of paper bag, from inside his coat. Ducking his head slightly, he surreptitiously takes a swig.
A pasty, bulbous white man with thin gray hair and matching tuque and flannel shirt gives him a big thumbs up. Rat tail looks a bit sheepish as Pasty grins at him.
“Hey,” Pasty mouths with great exaggeration, “It’s Christmas!”
2003
Lansing, Michigan
I lived in Lansing, Michigan, for two years, and during this time met some of my favorite Bus Folk. When I boarded the route 1 one day in 2003, this gentleman was sitting there: slightly overweight, mussed, thinning hair, sunglasses, and a white t-shirt on which was written “BLUES MAN,” orange and blue marker in a childish script. Until this point all my bus photos had been candid, but from where I was sitting I couldn’t get the shot in my usual sneaky fashion. I knew I needed the photos, so I came right out and asked him.
“I love your shirt. Can I take a picture of it?”
He agreed, and explained to me in slow, deliberate tones, “This means I like an American style of music called the Blues.”
Once I snapped the picture, he turned around to show me the back: it said “CAT LOVER” in that same scrawling hand.
“The Paper-Thin Touch of an Aging Fop”
2003
Lansing, Michigan
“Oouhp, passed it again. Christ. Gotta start paying more attention. Jesus, how long’ve I been saying that to myself? Promised myself, gotta be, what, forty, fifty years? Just a kid. Fifty-five, sixty? Josephine gone since… and that was nineteen—and now it’s—so, Jesus, what, sixty… five years? Always getting lost then, always getting lost now. Terrific. Sixty-five years this same street, still, I miss the, turn—the uh, stop, miss my stop. Ehaaa…” - Joe, May 2007
March 17, 2006
245 bus to Crossroads
Bellevue, Washington
Sitting across from me is a man in his late thirties with a round, boyish face, short, thin brown hair, and a pathetic attempt at a beard. Glasses frames purchased perhaps in 1987 and a Microsoft lanyard around his neck, his slacks navy blue and his shoes nondescript work boots. Yet his shirt is teal-green crushed velvet with shiny mother-of-pearl buttons, and his jacket of patchwork leather.
He’s reading a hardcover British edition of Harry Potter 7, and has headphones in his ears.
What in God’s name might he be listening to?
Late July, 2009
The bus stop at Queen Anne & Mercer
Seattle, Washington
Sitting on a bench waiting for the bus, canvas tote bag in her lap, knees and feet together, she is a petite, feminine sort of woman. Tidy sandals, knee-length denim pencil skirt, crocheted, cream-colored sweater, she buttons it with dainty fingers, her movements bird-like quick. Hair in a casual bob, glasses fashionable but understated, delicate ivory skin; and there, in the center of her face, quite the largest nose I have ever seen on a woman.
