I like to think of BART as one of the great socio-economic and cultural equalizers of the Bay Area. People from all over, of vast backgrounds, careers, and motivations, come together to ride the train.
But anyone who has commuted on BART — an aging, decrepit, overcrowded train system that makes the average person’s daily commute a living hell — likely has a story to share. And they’re most likely gross or horrifying.
Personally, though, my most memorable moment was more heartfelt — witnessing a train car of people jump into superhero action to help a woman who had just passed out. For a moment, instead of everyone staring at their cell phones, they helped each other.
In an effort to find more rainbows in addition to the every day shit show, we asked Bay Area riders to tell us their best stories from the train — we weren’t disappointed.
Top Me off with a Little Gas
Scotty P., BART rider since 1978
“So I was sitting on BART, and we had just pulled into a station. A couple walked by, and I noticed that they had just come from the previous car. As they walked, they tossed gasoline onto the floor of the BART car, which they poured from a can they were carrying. And then they walked to the next door and did the exact same thing. I think they were just walking down and going into every car pouring gasoline onto the floor. It’s the craziest thing I’ve seen on BART.”
Chocolate or…?
Brienne G., BART rider since 2008
“I was on the train once, and I saw a woman sit down on what she thought was chocolate. She even touched it to confirm it was dried. She said out loud, ‘Well, my jeans need to be washed anyway, so it’s fine.’ She realized shortly after that it was not chocolate.”
Sardines Have It Easy
Brad E., BART rider since 2008
“I was on BART coming from the Montgomery Street station. When we got to Lafayette, it was just a madhouse because the trains were running 15 minutes late. I was being pushed against one of the walls, and people were just shoving into the trains because they didn’t want to wait for subsequent trains due to the delay.
You could start to feel the train sway, because people were shoving their bodies in. It was so tightly packed, one of the supervisors had to come downstairs and close the doors and lock it. Once it was locked, we were packed in like sardines, and the A/C wasn’t working. We eventually got to Walnut Creek, and they had to have someone come pry the doors open one by one.”
Lost in Translation
Naomi R., BART rider since 2014
“I was at SFO waiting to BART home after a long trip, and an older woman approached me to ask for help getting on the train. Through pantomime and Google Translate, I discovered that she was Ukrainian and had just arrived in the United States for the first time. She called her friend, who was waiting for her in downtown San Francisco, and I talked to her for a moment. She told me to have her get off at Powell. The woman and I had a long BART ride, chatting via Google Translate, and she told me how nice it was to be in a country not at war. She then started asking me questions about myself, and upon hearing my age and that I was single and baby-less, she told me — in English —that I needed to stop ‘dancing dirty all night with my friends’ and ‘settle down with a husband and have a baby already.’”
BYO Chair
Christine G., BART rider since 2017
“There is a guy I see regularly on rides to the East Bay, usually in the evening. He has officially given up on BART seats. He gets on with a little mini camping chair — like one of those ankle-highones with three legs that fold up to about the size of your arm. And it doesn’t matter if there are empty seats available or not. He gets on, unfolds the seat and plants it right there. And there he sits, taking up the space of a sitting person right in the aisle or in front of the bike area. He is prepared and doesn’t care at all about what he is doing. I find him fascinating.”
Don’t Bring Your Judgement Here
Sarah L., BART rider since 2013
“I was on BART late at night on the way home from Pride in San Francisco. A bunch of young tech interns in town for the summer got on the train, very drunk. They pointed at an older lesbian couple and yelled a profanity at them. Everyone on the train gave them the evil eye, and several people stood up to defend the women. One woman said, ‘Boys, you need to respect other people,’ and another one said, ‘You need to use your indoor voices on the train.’ The whole car started clapping afterward to applaud the women, and the interns stopped talking after that.”
Seafood Buffet
Anna W., BART rider since 2012
“One time I was getting on the BART, and it was one of those scenarios where we were all packed in like sardines. And I was standing in the aisle. A gentleman sitting closest to me pulled out a can of oysters and opened it. He slowly started putting each one of the oysters into his mouth. The smell just went everywhere — and he just casually kept on eating his oysters. There was nowhere for myself or my fellow BART riders to move. We just looked at each other with sad eyes the whole ride.”
On Belay
Hannah N., BART rider since 2017
“There is a woman I ride with in the morning. She must get on some stops ahead of me, heading downtown. She carries with her this beast of a carabiner. Like you would think she is going rock climbing and will need it to support her full weight. And without fail, every morning, no matter how crowded the car is, this lady will use the carabiner to clip her backpack in front of her to one of those handles meant for the standing passengers to hold onto. She takes up an enormous amount of space for it. No one wants to stand anywhere near her because her backpack just swings as the train moves, like her own personal coat rack. She just sits there while this happens and nonchalantly does her makeup. I guess the floor or her lap is too good for her pristinely bright-blue backpack.”
Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner
Ray B., BART rider since 2017
“I was once standing on the BART platform with a friend, waiting for the train to arrive. My friend and I were both holding pizza boxes when a man walked up to us with a full rotisserie chicken in hand. And by ‘in hand,’ I mean, like, in his hand, not in a box. The man said, ‘Oh, you got pizza pizza! I got chicken chicken. Wanna trade?’ We kindly declined.”
Throw Some Hot Sauce on That
Morgan M., BART rider since 1999
“A lady aggressively asked for my leftover burrito once. I handed it over, and she starting eating it, then turned to me and yelled, ‘Bitch, this needs more spice!’”
Hold the Door!
Gretchen C., BART rider since 2017
“I was on a train during rush hour, going back to the city from Oakland. It’s always pretty empty going in this direction until Embarcadero. The door opens at Embarcadero, and immediately a group of three or four people jump in the car and stand along either side of the doorway, asking everyone to please step aside for an older man to get on the train. I look out the window to see a very elderly man standing up from a seat and quite literally inching his way to the train, shuffle by shuffle. There is no way he would have made it even a quarter of the way to the train from his seat before the doors would have closed.
The conductor began to yell at people for blocking the doors from closing until she realized what was going on. This crew of good Samaritans got the man situated in a handicapped seat, since he was completely out of breath. They asked him where he was getting off, and the group all echoed that they would still be on the train and would also help him off.”
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 Aarti Shahani, technology reporter at NPR. More coming soon, so stay tuned!
