“Next time something crazy happens, I’ll say something, if saying something would help. And on the bus, it’s never long until something crazy happens.”

I wrote that a couple of years ago, telling myself to be a better bus citizen. Since then I’ve become a better bus citizen… but sometimes I’m still Mr Don’t Give A Damn, watching the tragedy of the world as if it’s a movie. And you know, at a movie, you just sit there. You don’t say anything. You don’t do anything. You don’t help.

A few mornings ago, I was one of a dozen passengers sitting on a #105 bus at the Renton Transit Center, waiting for the ride to begin. Scheduled departure was two minutes away, when a disheveled guy stepped onto the bus via the back door, but misjudged the height from sidewalk to bus. His foot hit the outside of the bus, and loudly down he went, his few possessions splayed in every direction.

For me, an instant decision: Be kind and help the guy, or don’t. And I don’t know why, but “don’t” won the election.

The man was old, skinny, weak, and as he struggled, trying to get to his feet, I only watched. It was half a minute, all for my entertainment, and only in the last few seconds did I start wondering why I wasn’t helping.

From his clothes, his face, his stuff all over the floor, he was probably homeless, so there was a chance he’d be difficult, maybe smell bad. Maybe I’d have to touch him, either taking his hand to help him up from the floor or with a handshake afterwards, but my backpack was low on Wet Ones™. Was that why I didn’t do a damned thing?

Probably not. I’ve occasionally helped homeless folks, making physical contact, and haven’t been particularly worried about bacteria or contagious disease or anything. He looked no dirtier, smellier, or more infected than the homeless average.

I’d been grumpy that morning, perhaps grumpier than my usual, and at a low cycle in my humanity. Being a grump is my nature. It takes effort to be kind, and on that bus, on that morning, I didn’t put out any effort. I only watched, as that wrinkled and stained old man crawled across the aisle, trying and failing to resurrect himself by pulling on a stanchion. The driver watched, too, in his rear-view mirror. All the other passengers watched, and none of us said anything or did anything.

Finally but slowly and with difficulty, the man who’d fallen rose to his feet. He picked up his small plastic bags and some silverware that had spilled when he toppled, and groaned as he settled roughly into a sideways seat. With his shirtsleeve, he dabbed at blood that was trickling from a cut above his eye.

The driver accelerated, and the bus was on its way.

It would be easy to add a few recent incidents when I wasn’t a schmuck — giving transit advice to people who seemed lost, helping a feeble passenger onto or off of the bus, etc. But on this particular morning, on that particular bus, I did nothing.

It bothered me for the rest of my ride, until I stopped thinking about it. Now it’s bothering me again as I write about it.

A man fell, and I could’ve helped, but didn’t. I’m such an asshole.

8/4/2026

Transit Takes

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The bus stopped, the door opened, and David Crosby stepped aboard. He paid his fare with three one-dollar bills, the driver handed him a transfer, and I think the driver recognized him, too.

It was David Crosby, no doubt about it. He was wearing David Crosby’s mustache, long white hair, pink shorts, baby blue sandals, and a tropical sorta psychedelic shirt that revealed more than a hint of his belly.

It must be rough being famous, though, so the driver didn’t say anything, and none of the other passengers said anything.

He sat in a sideways seat right in front of me, and I said nothing too, for a few blocks, but — this was David Crosby, man, one of the greats of 1960s rock’n’roll. Holding a stanchion as the bus turned, his hair flopped onto my hand, and I could be silent no longer.

“Thank you for ‘Teach Your Children’, man. Beautiful song.” He looked at me, held my eyes for too long, then allowed himself a hint of a smile and turned looked out the window again. We said nothing more, and he rang the bell and stepped off at Juneau Street.

My brushes with celebrities have been few: I held the door for Winona Ryder at Macy’s in downtown San Francisco, a few weeks before she was busted for shoplifting. Peed in a trough-style urinal next to Demond Wilson at a bar in Kansas City. Salman Rushdie walked past me on Telegraph Avenue, in Berkeley. And now I’ve shared a bus with David Crosby, three years after he died.

♦ ♦ ♦

Waiting for a #560 westbound, the bus that was coming was a #560 eastbound. And that can’t be — an eastbound bus would be on the other side of the street.

The lady getting on before me was confused, and asked the driver, “Is this bus going to Westwood Village?”

“Yes,” he said. The lady is a regular on this route, so she usually doesn’t have to ask, and the question made the driver suspicious. “Doesn’t it say Westwood Village on the sign?” The driver, being inside the bus, couldn’t see the sign on the bus’s outside.

“No,” the lady answered. “It says Bellevue.”

“Damn,” said the driver.

When the bus reaches the end of the line, any bus, any line, the destination sign is supposed to be changed before starting the return trip. The driver must’ve forgotten, I thought. That’s why it still said “Bellevue” when we’re going away* from Bellevue.

But that’s the old way, and these are new times. “We can’t change the signs any more,” the driver said. “The computer does that now.”

I’ve been taking transit for sixty years, and in all that time I’ve seen perhaps half a dozen buses with the wrong destination sign, and that includes today. Having “the computer” take over this task is a solution for a problem that wasn’t a problem, but by golly, the problem has been solved: sign-switching has been automated, and it’s probably AI so it’s wrong.

At every stop for the rest of the way, as the driver opened the door, he announced for new passengers, “Ignore the sign, we’re going to Westwood Village.”

♦ ♦ ♦

Another day, another route, the bus pulled into a stop and a well-weathered black bum clamored aboard. He was lugging everything he owned in a subcompact-car-sized-wagon, overstuffed with bundles, plastic bags, paper bags, a pillow, and his tightly-rolled sleeping bag, everything bundled together with twine.

He passed the fare box without paying, and said to the driver, “I’m OK,” which meant he’d secure his load, and keep it out of the aisle. We have very polite homeless people in Seattle.

He pulled a roll of twine from his pocket, and used it to quickly and expertly tie his wagon to an armrest and a stanchion, and then he sat in a sideways seat in front of me.

I wasn’t going to say anything, but the bum spoke first. He’d noticed me noticing his knotwork, and said to me, “I used to be a Boy Scout.”

“You learned your knots well,” I said.

“And I carry the twine to ‘Be prepared’.”

I nodded and smiled, said nothing more. Something about the man’s chipper demeanor warned me that if I said more, he’d pour a conversation all over me.

But I seriously respected his knotwork. This was the RapidRide #F, which makes dozens of sharp turns and myriad smaller twists as it winds anything-but-rapidly toward Renton, and every twist and turn is capable of toppling passengers who aren’t holding something for stability. But through it all and all the way to Renton, that man’s wagon never moved an inch.

8/2/2026

Transit Takes

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our 91st weekly open mike

Let’s see what happens when your host (me) has nothing to say. Step right up, speak your mind, tell a story, sing a song, whatever.

8/1/2026

Anything goes

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