Winding Down

This is what BART looks like during the high commute hours the Wednesday before the Christmas holiday. It will probably stay like this through next week. I'm torn between really enjoying the light train and resenting the fact that I'm on my way to work while others are snug in their beds on their days off. Or they're rushing around last-minute packing and wrapping presents, trying to get to the airport just in time to stand in an obscenely long line. Yeah, I'm going to go with that vision.

Are you comfortable?

One of my biggest pet peeves (I dare say it's my #1) is when people are inconsiderate/not aware of others. (I'll spare you my pages-long list of times I encounter this on BART. There's something about public transportation that brings out the selfishness in people). This guy decided to get comfortable on the ride home during peak commute hours. People were standing while he stretched. Did I mention he was listening to music on speaker? The only solace I find is in the high amount of his surface area in contact with the germ-ridden BART seats.

Occupy

The BART train this morning was eerily empty.  Oakland police had began their raid on Occupy Oakland campers three hours prior.  As I glanced around the train, I realized that my lack of blogging (which is directly correlated to my obsession with reading the A Song of Ice and Fire series) is resulting in me missing out on the chance to document an incredibly important part of history. Since I am just someone who likes to write the funny things she sees during her commute (and not a journalist), I'll let the Wikipedia summarize the Occupy movement for you:

Occupy Movement

My perspective of Occupy has been mostly from a Bay Area resident and commuter's standpoint. My fear of crowds and aversions to confrontation and being arrested make me a poor protester. We stopped by Occupy SF one afternoon early into the movement. Occupy SF has NOTHING on Occupy Oakland. Much to my surprise, Occupy SF was relatively small. While the protesters were passionate, their causes were not unified and the most shocking thing I witnessed was a pair of naked men with their "accouterments." While I was there, protesters were polite to the police and vice versa (which hasn't always the case: San Francisco Police Confront Occupy SF Protesters Market Street Overnight and Occupy San Francisco Protesters Attacked Two Officers, Police Say)

From what I understand, Occupy Oakland has the flavor of a Vietnam-era protest. Occupy Oakland protesters are persistent. The police have raided their camps twice now (while the right to protest is protected, the right to camp is not). The term raid turned out to be an appropriate term: tear gas, flash-bang grenades, and rubber bullets were used against the crowd of protesters to break up the camps in the October 25th raid and 32 protesters were arrested in the November 14th raid.  Yet Oakland protesters keep coming back (and in the case of the November 14th raid, refused to leave).  On November 2, 2011, 30,000 peaceful protesters convened on downtown Oakland and marched on the Port of Oakland and shut it down (impressive, considering Oakland is the FIFTH LARGEST PORT in the U.S.)!  Say what you want about Oakland, but it's got passion!

So how has all this affected me on BART?  Rather minimally to be honest.  I receive emergency updates from BART and the City of Oakland.  When a protest is planned, I make sure to leave the office by 4:30 pm so as not to get stuck in the BART commuter rush AND delayed trains.  The latest I've ever been is 45 minutes.  This has only happened twice.  The BART trains generally will skip the 12th Street Oakland stop if trouble's a-brewin' downtown.  The worst circumstance was last Thursday, when a man was jumped by five men near an Occupy Oakland camp (Occupy protesters swear he was not affiliated with the movement) and killed.  That, and the fact that the brakes went out on the train I was on (do you know what happens when the brakes go out?  They restart the car, since everything on the car is electric.  Which means we sat in the dark in a tunnel for a few minutes), made for a very long start to my three day weekend.  A man lost his life that night, though, so I will NOT complain about a long commute.

This guy...

...was a total mess. We went out to dinner with friends in SF on Friday night and got on the 11pm train to head home. When we got on the train, he was going after this burrito. (He could have been filming one of those terrible Carls Jr. commercials). Then, all that frenetic energy swiftly left him and he promptly passed out. As he slumped over to the side, his hand barely kept a grip on his burrito. You can't see it in this photo, but he had burrito juice running down his pants leg. There were wrapper pieces and rice particles sprinkling the seat next to him. At one point, a girl walked over to him to wake him up and ask him what stop he needed. He replied "huh? Oh, the next stop." She then asked him if he knew which one that was and he confirmed that he did. Then he passed out again. He finally got off three stops later. We reached the stop and he bolted up and stumbled, almost horizontally, out the doors. I really hope he took a cab or walked home.

I'm so fired

I just was reviewing my neglected blog and noticed the sidebar where I ask you to send me your stories.  At which point I realized I haven't checked that email in forever.  As Murphy would have it, a friend of mine had shared a story with me.  On March 30.  So sorry, I wasn't ignoring you!!!!  Here it is and thank you for sharing!  You're right M., BART is so disconcerting.

Hi Christy,

I'm enjoying your BART stories and have one of my own.

After 30+ years of backpacking, I pride myself on my sense of direction. That feeling though was shot to hell on my one and only BART ride about 2 years ago.I visited my daughter in her first year at Berkeley and we took the BART to SF so she could visit a dance studio she was interested in. The ride over, or rather under the bay, was uneventful, except for the fact I couldn't stop trying to estimate the tons of weight pushing down on the car I was in.

The ride back though had me totally confused. We walked down the stairs and got in the car and for nearly the entire ride back to Berkeley I was convinced the train was moving in the wrong direction. Watching the lights and the wall move past the window, I would have bet (and lost) big money that we were going the wrong way. It wasn't until we had traveled some distance and I started to recognize the stations we had passed traveling west that I finally relaxed. If I could only have seen the sun, I would have been OK.

M.S.

Protests in the Air

 There's an electric air in San Francisco lately.  Between fighter jets flying overhead every half hour (Fleet Week) to hundreds of protesters lining up outside banks (#OccupySF) throughout the financial district lately, there's a lot going on.  On many afternoons, we've been able to hear protesters from our office window.   Apparently, the air of protest is contagious (or maybe it's just San Francisco).  There's a Church of Scientology a block up from work.  The doors are very rarely open, so I was a little surprised when I walked past on my lunch break to see people in front of it.

I was even more surprised when I noticed these people were holding signs and wearing masks.  Upon closer inspection, you could see that they were wearing CREEPY masks.  Then, one of the protesters grabbed a boom box and this is what I heard:  <this song>

That's right, the Church of Scientology got rick-rolled.  Awesome.

 

This seems like a good note on which to return to blogging

I want her self-confidence

Recipe for Amazing Awfulness: 

Combine:

• 1 stand-up bass
• 1 kazoo
• 1 tamborine
• 1 severely off-key voice 
• 1 lacy dress
• 1 pair of Vans from the 90s

Directions:

• Find and put on semi-dressy dress.   Make sure it shows some cleavage.
• Put on low-rise socks with Vans shoes.  Take tamborine, attach to right shoe. 
• Take kazoo.  Either place in mouth to play or in cleavage for holding.
• Take popular songs (i.e. "House of the Rising Sun" and "Walk the Line") and distort them so that they're virtually unrecognizable. 

 What you get:

People will be awestruck and scared, yet entertained.