SF Mem 1

You are riding Z Bus. No, this is not an approximation of a fucked-up French accent. I did not do K through 12 at the l'ecole Francais, you privelaged sons of junior league bitches. This is the transbay bus, route Z as in Zed is Dead. This is the bus for ye who fear the BART tube, does the tube rest at the bottom of the bay or does it float in hydrospace, a liquid cushion protecting it from the inevitable 7.0+ from the Hayward fault. Like most people, you are not privy to the engineering merits of the tube and prefer the light above ground to the cold murky green depths of the bay, all shark shit and man-made muck. The Z bus picks you up in the transbay terminal which also houses the Greyhound fleet, a village of schizophrenics and hippie burnouts, and a legion of diseased pigeons molting in the shit crusted rafters. The south wall of the bus terminal is a grid of dirty glass panes, bathing all who wait in an afterwordly glow. Coupled with your bleery vision, the cavernous space is the scene for a fellini-esque anxiety dream. The Z bus waits for no one, last east bound bus at 8, hope the J Church got you downtown in time. You are a cross commuter, the majority heading to the city in the morning, you are emeryville-bound the quasi-town built on drained marshland and landscaped post-industrial waste. On the cross commute Z bus, only half the seats are taken and most everybody chooses the same position day after day, congregate in the same groups. You and your coworkers have names for some of the people, the harraser, is the 50 year old lech who loudly explains to the bus driver the origin of his favorite seafood dish. Do you know why they call it Putanesca? Sneaker boy works for the music magazine officed in the old jelly bean factory. He always wears converse, but the colors never match, black-left, white-right, or maybe on Fridays one purple one red, a testimony to his deeply iconoclastic ways. The CGI effects people are a surly bunch and usually just stare out the window, they are migrant workers, moving back to LA to do commercials after the summer blockbusters are done. What does it do to your psyche to find out that you have spent 80 hours on a 15-second scene for a B-movie that will most likely go straight to DVD? The evening ride, the last half of the bridge, the downtown skyline comes into view, it's like finally unsquaring your shoulders after being at attention all day long. Between the equinoxes in spring and fall, if you catch the right bus, you witness the most beautiful sunsets you will ever see. From your high moorings, you see straight over the bridge rails, the toy boats and thumb-sized freight carriers with their paperclip cargo. Like a jumper's last vista, it is painfully beautiful, maybe the cooling sun is further cooled through the first tendrils of the evening fog, and the sky begins to bruise purple above the blackening spires of downtown. It is a private moment shattered when you hit the cold-surface, the bus takes the first exit off the bridge, the wide-arcing off-ramp circles around the Merril-Lynch building and you reach the terminal and must pass through the throng of the eastbay-bound, their slack and myriad faces in the evening light are like so many choppy waves fighting past you, reminding you just how tired you trully are.