Yup, this was the day when I decided I had to quit my job. I had biked up to 14th and Broadway to take the 800 bus from Oakland to San Francisco and heard a white woman with scraggly, long brown hair threaten a man with that phrase. This wasn’t fucking worth it at 2:40 in the morning.
I had been taking the night bus for almost two years now. I hated driving! When I lived in Texas, I experienced bumper-to-bumper traffic getting to high school or taking my car on I-10 to get to Austin for college. I hate how people cut you off and scream at you. I hate how it’s a waste of gas and bad for the environment. I’m lucky to have lived in London — where the Tube and double-decker buses moved smoothly, unless there was a delay due to a person under the train. In New York City, it was a dream to be able to take the MTA subway anywhere 24/7 between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens. I skipped the Bronx and Staten Island.
I moved to California thinking the Bay Area transit was similar. Nope. The Caltrain stopped just after midnight — same as BART. I nicknamed myself “Cinderella” because I’d set my alarm for midnight on my phone so I could catch the last train at Civic Center from my friend’s apartment in Hayes Valley and get back to Oakland in time.
Every night was an adventure or a nightmare, but isn’t that what makes working in news exciting?
Then I got a new job at a TV-news station in San Francisco where the morning shift starts at 4:00 a.m., when no BART trains are running. I could have gotten a car — but the job barely paid — so I didn’t think it would be worth it for the gas and insurance, and the too many parking tickets that previous production assistants had warned that I would get if I didn’t keep track of the meter.
In the beginning, I was paranoid that my bike would fall off the rack on the bus, so I brought my foldable Dahon silver bike—which I had nicknamed “Mustang Sally”—onto the bus. I’d huddle up with the bike toward the front and stare out the window. Well, “Mustang Sally” died after too many bumps and hills around SF. Her middle fold was collapsing in and was a death trap. I had to toss her and got a sturdy Trek bike (regular non-foldable), which I nicknamed “Grey Gus.” I strapped the bike to the front of the bus with a latch and took off my bike lights, because I was scared someone would steal them.
Every night was an adventure or a nightmare, but isn’t that what makes working in news exciting? One night, there was a middle-aged graying black man with a hospital intake wristband wearing sweatpants and a beanie, with his other clothes in a see-through plastic bag from the hospital. He sat down behind me and said, “I’m not crazy.” Then he proceeded to list his birthday, his social security number and where he’s from, and kept repeating, “I’m not crazy.” This man needed help — and shouldn’t have been on a bus.
Another night a twentysomething white guy with dreadlocks, a blazer and a collared shirt started screaming, “Fuck you! You’re all fascists! I’m not paying! Fuck you!” The bus driver wasn’t taking his shit and got three sheriffs to escort him off the bus.
The stench was unbearable sometimes, like when there was an elderly white lady in a wheelchair. She smelled like she hadn’t taken a shower in six months and was bathed in urine. She would be right in the front of the bus, and the bus driver would put the air conditioning on full blast because she’d probably faint if it weren’t for the circulation of the toxic fumes.
Another time a woman with bare feet stepped onto the bus with proper change and walked to the back. She smelled bad too, kept mumbling to herself and pounded on the door to be let out instead of waiting for the next stop.
I’d occasionally see an old Asian man with salt-and-pepper long hair, a hunchback and a cane who wobbled to a seat in the middle. He wouldn’t make noise and kept to himself. There was also a Latina woman with leggings and a baseball cap who was constantly on her iPhone, playing music to avoid the world as she rushed out at her stop on Market and 3rd.
“Hey, night bus!” I turned, and there he was — my fellow commuter. I apologized, “Oh, it’s you! I’ve never seen you in the daylight. Thought you were one of the crazies.”
The night bus wasn’t all bad. The bus driver was usually the same large black woman with a pulled-back, low, straightened ponytail, and she took cigarette breaks before we headed to the city. I respected her so much, as she dealt with screaming folks who didn’t want to get off or weren’t willing to pay the fare. I always would say “Good morning” when I got on and “Thank you” when she got to my stop. She smiled and said, “You’re welcome.”
Once she went past my stop, but we were both overwhelmed at that particular moment. A pasty brunette guy who worked in security started claiming that this husky dude had assaulted him and threatened to called the cops. The husky man denied it and kept goading the security guy to call the police. The security guy actually called the police and described his alleged assailant. The bus driver and I were listening in on the conversation, but we both tried not to be involved. I pulled the bus-stop string. She didn’t stop, so I asked her if she could stop. Yeah — she got distracted, but so did I. We didn’t know if a beat-down was going to happen.
I got along with a tall, lanky construction worker. He always wore his union sweatshirt and carried a coffee he had brewed from home. For almost two years, we had been taking the same night bus at 2:40 a.m. on weekdays. One day, when I was getting off BART on 12th Street and City Center in the afternoon at 1:30, a guy started yelling, “Hey, you, girl! It’s you!” I kept walking because I didn’t want to talk to a crazy. “Hey, night bus!” I turned, and there he was — my fellow commuter. I apologized, “Oh it’s you! I’ve never seen you in the daylight. Thought you were one of the crazies.” We both laughed. I introduced myself and found out his name is Vincent. Whenever we were at the bus stop, we had the same resigned, tired look on our faces — but now we both said hey.
Homeless and poor folks would often come up to us and ask for change. Vincent said, “No, boss,” but may have given them a fist-pump. I’d said I had only a Clipper card and didn’t have change. Vincent warned me that opening a window would make it freezing to sit next to, with the Bay Bridge winds gushing in. He got off earlier near South Van Ness.
The angry security guy was a regular, but so was a plump red-headed woman with a loud laugh who recounted her nights working as a bartender at a gay bar before she headed home to Berkeley from San Francisco. Sometimes I didn’t mind listening to her stories, but sometimes I wished she’d shut up, because I was trying to sleep.
I had a pattern. I’d take off my black-rimmed plastic glasses and shove them into my leather messenger bag. I’d roll up my hand-knitted scarf into a ball and lean it on the windowsill. Then I’d pull my gray beanie, which I had bought from Portland’s Widmer Brothers Brewery, over my eyes and try to sleep. I was mostly in and out of consciousness while the bus crossed the Bay Bridge, passed the toll and zoomed past the blinking Coca-Cola sign.
I got off at 3rd and Market and biked on the sidewalk past homeless folks on cardboard and shoved into sleeping bags like burritos in front of stores like Papyrus and banks. I’d go the wrong way on the one-way streets on the sidewalk — but there were barely any cars or people out. I’d biked pass Punchline, Subway, the Embarcadero Center and the Battery.
With the glamorous life of a struggling journalist, I locked up my bike in the garage and touched my company card to get inside. Then I stumbled down the stairs to go into the archives and tried to nap in a purple and teal sleeping bag I brought in on top of a cot that another production assistant had probably left. I had a tiny beige pillow that I rested my head on and heard the whirring of the air conditioning overhead. The next steps after being a PA (production assistant) are writer, assignment editor, producer, reporter or anchor, but over time, the upper-level jobs didn’t really call to me, and I stayed stuck in an entry-level position.
Mondays were the worst. Boom — gunman in Las Vegas shooting at innocent concert-goers. Boom — wildfires in Napa burning homes and killing people inside. Boom — another tragedy to make me depressed and hate my job.
Instead of experiencing excitement and joy as I entered the newsroom, I felt nervous that another horrific event would happen. Death and destruction — whoopie. Over the course of a weekend during which I worked, there were just car crashes and shootings and nothing else. The magic of television had evaporated into the toxic wildfire smoke from Napa to Santa Cruz.
Eventually, I got a new job and quit. I won’t miss teleprompting the news. I won’t miss taking the hour-long bus ride in the middle of the night to San Francisco. I won’t miss the precious sleep that all my friends were getting — but I wasn’t. Goodbye, 800 night bus! It was nice knowing you, but I’m sticking to biking to my new job in Oakland and avoiding crazy hours.
Hey! The Bold Italic recently launched a podcast, This Is Your Life in Silicon Valley. Check out the full season or listen to the episode below featuring Alexia Tsotsis, former co-editor of TechCrunch. More coming soon, so stay tuned!
