Musings on the #7 bus

Riding the #7 bus during the day is a completely different experience than riding it during rush hour. During rush hour the bus is very full with a diverse crowd, but heavily weighted towards downtown commuters. During the day, the #7 bus is like an orchestrated display of the diversity and the challenges of the 98118 zip code.

On a single ride my neighbors include a shy teenage couple from East Africa, the girl sporting colorful, flowing garments of her native country and the boy, jeans and a t-shirt with a silk-and-flannel scarf that looks like something out of old aristocratic England. Latinas with their small children. Older couples - Russian? Ukranian? - with large shopping bags and babushka-wearing women who remind me of my great-aunts. Elderly Asian men, some of them prouding wearing baseball caps identifying them as US military veterans. Two men in front of me, Pacific Islander or Native American, sharing the challenges of getting back on their feet after release from jail. African-Americans of all ages, many of whom know and greet each other warmly. A young white woman next to me looks exhausted, almost sickly, and falls asleep sitting up. And a woman who is hard to peg - tall, black, elegant, with elaborate tattoo patterns on her neck and face, dreadlocks, and a colorful African-style tunic over shorts and a pair of pink Chuck Taylors.

The bus progresses slowly, so slowly. We make three stops to let people in wheelchairs on and off. There's significant turnover at the spot where the food bank is operating that day, and at the service center for the blind. The aisle fills up, the seats designated for the elderly are all taken, and the bus driver starts letting people get off the back without paying just to keep things moving. All in the middle of the afternoon.

There is no sign of other people like me, able-bodied middle-class white people who could just as easily drive. Who don't need the food bank, or the wheelchair lift, or the seats reserved for the elderly, or the service center for the blind. We live in this neighborhood too, but you wouldn't know it to look at the #7 bus.

I always appreciate these occasional mid-day bus rides, because they remind me of so many things. The beautiful, lively diversity of my neighborhood. The countless ways that my life is so much simpler than many of my neighbors. The grace and laughter with which people move through the challenges of life on a daily basis, as they chat and laugh and read on the bus.