East Portland by Bus
For just $2.50 the 72 bus line connects East Portland to Northeast and North Portland as it mopes along down 82nd Avenue through some of Portlands greatest destitution, and thece and abruptly turns westward . . . bopping along through the increasingly gentrified Northeast Portland and finally down to my work stop on Alberta and 15th. On 82nd the bus connects an old asian residential and business community, a two year commuity college, various strip clubs, porn shops, car dealerships and service establishments, gas stations, some killer independent grocery stores, a fundy college, a high school, a max train stop, and my old standby the IHOP (open 24|7). It's Portland, so there are, of course, a bunch of food carts sprinkled in there, besides. Nearing Killingsworth there is a pretty good view of Mt. St. Helens lurking in the distance. Once the ride turns west, things turn more residential, and its pretty evident that there is a lot more money and care and gentrification being poured into Cully and Alberta than there is along the hulking auto dependant and bike pedestrian repugnant 82nd corridor.
My bike is about 10 minutes slower than the 72 in completing the ten mile jaunt to work, and it is a pleasant ride . . . pleasant unless I'm exhausted from working or the weather is soaking rain or wind or cold or some combination. Then, I often take a deep breath and exchange my sanity for some warmth and dryess. It's especially tempting since line 72 runs about every 10 to 30 minutes, picks me up a block from home, and deposits me across the street from work.
In exchange for this convenience, I enter the 72 . . . a sewer pit into which Portland pours its poverty stricken, ailing, and elderly . . . along with its service industry workforce that has been gentrified out beyond the a reasonable work commute. Friends on a mission to keep a heroin addict awake; kids on their way home from school; sex workers; elderly japanese ladies with bags of groceries; me on my way to work; edgy crank addicts; the morbidly obese confined to wheelchairs; a mom, her two kids in a stroller, and a huge haul from the Walmart; a grimy smelly man with what looks like all of his posessions in bags and backpacks, and one supremely uneducated know it all lecturing the stroller lady (and the rest of us) on the virtue of her crackpot ideas about child rearing.
Add to this scene a little rain and its standing room only. The widows fog up, the wait in traffic is longer. The tension from the closeness of so many strangers is palpable. Sometimes people freak out from the stress of the other humans and begin shouting at another passenger to move over or stop talking; or at the driver to go faster, or at the wind. The 72 is a human cattle car.
One time there were so many wheelchairs on board, that the passengers couldn't get through the front part of the bus at all. Another time, an especially large person in a wheelchair pinned this poor elderly lady into her seat. The elderly lady had just pulled the stop cord and was trying to leave. Her poor little meek calls were so soft, and her tiny body so obscured by the huge person in the wheelchair, that the bus driver heard nothing and jolted off down the road.
Another time, the bus driver had to physically escort out the most agressive and mysoginist prosteletyzer I had ever met. The guy seemed mentally unbalanced to me.
And then there are the bus drivers. I think you need a medal for driving the 72 bus. And treatment for afterward. The drivers must have PTSD. I always admire the ones that have some special zen like center to them. But my favorite is the guy who just kinda keeps a semi shouting running dialogue with all the passengers in earshot . . . cussing out the ones who mostly deserve to be cussed out, and warning the rest of us that he's barelling on through no matter what the fuck. He's a little nuts, which I think matches the tenor of the establishment.
The link is to a great photo essay on 82nd Avenue, down which half or more of my ride travels.
http://www.oregonlive.com/multimedia/index.ssf/2015/11/the_portland_divide_82nd_avenu.html