After three years of having to ride the bus everyday to work downtown and then back home to the East Hillside, I've realized that really only two types of people take the DTA. One category of people that ride is: Me. And the second category is: the rest of f&*king c*&ks$#king a!!holes that use the bus. I'm leaving the drivers out of this rant for a variety of reasons. Mostly, I find the drivers neutral in this argument.

First, let me ask you something, old lady with a walker that can barely use the bathroom but still takes the bus everyday to Romano's Downtown Grocery to buy TV Guide and a piece of bread: can you please just sit down when you get on the bus? Just sit down! The bus drivers see you everyday, they know you have your token buried deep in your purse. Look for it after you sit down. You're not going to jail if you don't find it right away. How about having it in you hand before you get on the bus. And you don't have to smile at everyone under the age of forty that I'm sure looks like neat little young person to you. I'm not that cruel to say hurry the hell up getting onto the bus. I'm just saying that once you fully stand inside the large moving vehicle, please sit the hell down. It's for your safety as well as my mental well being. Those front seats are reserved for you. Just like the sign says. Good gravy, it takes longer for you to put a token in the meter than it would take you to walk from 9th Street to Superior St.

And for the talkers, or as I like to call them: people more annoying than a long series of paper cuts across my nutsack: shut up. No one cares. Yes, we all realize what the weather is like today. I just stood in it waiting for the bus freezing my pants off. It's okay to ask the question to the driver to see if he's en route to make a stop on 1st Ave. West. But it is definitely not okay to tell the entire bus why you need to be dropped off next to the Social Services Center. I can guess why you're going there from your look of fat, dull, and lazy. Not one time, EVER, has anyone ever said ANYTHING on the bus that made me walk off thinking I'm a little smarter now. No one's ever said, "You know, our high regard for the well-read man is praise enough to literature." That would be really cool if someone said that on a bus. But guess who said that? Ralph Waldo Emerson...whom I suspect didn't gab much at all. That's why headphones with fresh batteries is the most important thing a man can own. But sometimes that doesn't stop the talkers from tapping me on the shoulders. No, I don't want a piece of gum.

I haven't even addressed little kids crying, the cell phoners, drunks, political ranters, or the strange group of people who rap out loud yet. I'll get to them some other time. But for now, I'm glad the DTA announced a price increase. If it keeps one talker or elderly walker from getting a ride on the bus; then it is so worth it. Just ask the drivers.

© Mark Lindquist

Paul Westerberg wrote that line, and I keep it in my thoughts when I sit at the Buena Vista Lounge these days knowing that in less than a year my neighborhood bar will sit in a pile of parking lot landfill rubble. Lately, it's hard to keep a drinker's game face on and not just start flailing around belligerently demanding "one more shot of whiskey for the B to the mother f-ing V." That little Westerberg song keeps me grounded in these bad times when what I really want to do is handcuff my ankles to the dollar taps and give a middle finger to the bulldozers. Just let the bad times roll, eh, Paul? Just let the bad times roll, baby.

The Buena going away might affect me more than some of the other regulars that haunt the place. I do a lot of my writing there. I feel amused to no end thinking that a published piece started out as a smart-assed idea barely readable on a bar napkin. Someone once told me that half of everything good starts out illegal. I'm adding that the other half starts out on a bar napkin. When you wake up at five in the morning on your couch with your headphones cranked to a CD skipping and find your pockets filled with little pieces of paper reading stuff like "there's no better place to hide when your a wanted man on the Central Hillside than the Buena Vista," you feel sort of stupid and proud at the same time. Even more so when you can't remember writing it and, somehow, it finds its way into a column. A great hideout bar, indeed. And one I'm worried I can't replace.

My parents raised me not to steal, but the other night after a half dozen screwdrivers I decided to poach a small totem from the Buena as a reminder of the inspiration the place gave me. A sign hangs by the door that reads "Maybe life isn't supposed to make sense-Andy Kaufman." It's framed in cheap glass stained by about a decade's worth of cigarette smoke, and I'm taking it. I've stared at that creepy sign for years, so I feel justified to purloin it quietly some last call, throw it in the back seat of a taxi with me, and give it a new home right above my own toilet. That's the other place I do a lot of writing. When my beloved lounge finally closes I'm gonna need all the help I can get. But for now, I'm just gonna let the bad times roll.

© Mark Lindquist