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Near as I can quickly ascertain, Seattle's #1 Kinnear bus route has been running up and down Queen Anne Hill for at least eighty years. Once upon a time I lived at the top of that hill, but the #1 climbs it via different streets to a different side, so I'd never ridden it.
#1 is the loneliest number, and I always ride alone, so today I rode the #1.
Despite being Seattle born and raised, I've never heard of Kinnear except seeing it on #1 buses going past. So I asked Google, click, click, and it turns out that Kinnear isn't even a street. It's a neighborhood, and a park, and the #1 goes there.
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After taking the #99 bus from home, I waited at the 5th & Jackson stop, where the #1 begins.
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5th & Jackson is Bum Central, like much of downtown, but sad as it is, you get used to it, almost stop seeing it. Empty beer and whiskey bottles were on the sidewalk, and a dozen people were waiting for any of the six routes that stop there. Some were on their way somewhere, but others were there because they had nowhere to call home.
An old black dude — older than you're picturing — precariously pushed his walker toward the bus stop sign, then pushed his head very close to the posted schedules to read the departure times. Nobody had asked, but he announced, "My #62 comes in six minutes."
"Good to know," I replied, just as a bum walked by, carrying a tree branch about two yards long, with leaves still attached. He was talking to it as he passed, saying it's "a very naughty branch from a bad, bad tree."
When the bum with a branch was beyond earshot, the very old man turned to me and said, "Seattle crazy."
When he said it, I could see that he was missing lots of teeth, same as me. Also got a good look at his walker, which was well-worn and slightly rusted, so in addition to being old and disabled and dentally challenged, he was poor.
"It's not just Seattle crazy," I said. "It's all over America."
"Yeah,"he said, "and we don't do anything about it."
Now, that's a line that could be taken two ways. Did he mean doing something to help the homeless and crazies, or did he mean they should be arrested and jailed? You know where I stand, as I stood waiting for my bus. Tax the billionaires, and build shelters wherever they're needed — but I didn't want a political argument on the sidewalk, so I said nothing.
Still, by having replied earlier, I'd earned the old man's attention. Three buses were coming but none was my #1 or his #62, so he said to me, "Are you headed to work?"
"Nope, I'm never going to work again. I am retired. Just riding the bus for something to do."
"Hey, I do that sometimes," he said. "So what kind of work did you do before retiring?"
That question is usually the start of a boring conversation, so I only said, "Office work," and then parried back to him, "And what did you do?"
He hadn't said he was retired, but it seemed a fair assumption that a withered guy short on teeth with a battered walker was not on his way to work. He answered, but I couldn't understand it, because a passing truck needed muffler work at that moment. After the truck, what came through was, "...twenty-two years in Alaska."
"Sounds cold," was my brilliant response.
"And that's how I got all broken up," he explained. "That damned job wrecked my body, and they didn't even pay for the walker."
"Ain't that America," I said, quoting the bard, and then the #62 pulled up. The old guy waved goodbye at me, and climbed onto his bus, with difficulty.
I was jotting that conversation into my spiral notebook when a 45-ish white woman said, "Excuse me," and she said it to me. I braced myself. Would it be a Jesus pitch? An ask for spare change? Anything but Amway, please.
"Do you know the buses?"
"I know the buses I ride, which is about a third of them."
"Can you tell me how to get to Pike Place Market?"
Well, that's about the easiest tourist question for any Seattle native to answer, so I explained that she could take any bus that stopped where we were waiting — except the #1 — and they'd all get her to the Market. "Just get off at Pike or Pine Street," I said, "and walk a few blocks west."
She thanked me, never knowing that I'd slightly lied. My #1 does go there, but it had been approaching as she'd asked, and I didn't want to escort her all the way, answering whatever other questions she had.
"Any bus but this one," I said again with a smile as I oofed myself aboard, and my field trip on the #1 was underway.
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The bus goes through downtown on 3rd Avenue, like most Metro buses, so the sights were familiar for the first dozen blocks.
There's City Hall Park, which had been fenced off for years to keep the bums out, but was finally re-opened last year. In exchange they fenced off the fountain and benches across the street, to keep the bums out.
A few blocks along, there's the missing skyscraper at 3rd @ Columbia. "Coming soon," says a new sign behind the old fence. The old sign had said, "Opening, Spring 2022," but construction has never started and probably never will.
The destruction was finished years ago, though, leaving nothing but rubble from whatever had been there before. Now an entire city block is only a crater, like the back of my mouth where some teeth used to be.
And the bus rolled on, past thousands of people who don't matter to the people who do. They're drunks, addicts, or otherwise damaged, sleeping in tents or on the sidewalk.
They're the "Seattle crazy." They can't qualify for the minimal aid that's available without submitting detailed documentation, but none of these people could conceivably navigate the complicated forms, required appointments, and proof of their struggles, so their struggles are all they have or ever will.
And the bus rolled on, past a building where I'd banked 35 years ago, at a financial institution headquartered here. That bank and others like it have long ago been eaten by bigger banks and shat out the other end, and yup, the building that had once been my bank is now boarded up.
And the bus rolled on, through the eroded but still appealing Belltown, and then under the Space Needle and past the Seattle Center. Lots of new-to-me buildings around there, but none with any warmth or soul.
There's a bus stop not 200 steps from the front door of the Seattle Center Coliseum, so I don't know why any fool would drive to a basketball game or rock concert there. (And yes, big money has renamed the Coliseum twice since my last time inside the place, but none of the big money went to me, so to me it's still the Seattle Center Coliseum.)
At the corner, are the studios for Seattle's best radio station, KEXP. Outside, a streaming electronic ticker tells what song is playing at the moment, and who's hosting the show.
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Near the Korean Consulate, a black woman with a stroller got onto the bus, so I vacated my front sideways seat. Those seats fold up, making them ideal for stashing a stroller out of the way. I laughed at the lady's t-shirt: "God is dope," but didn't explain the laugh, because she looked grumpy.
Winding through lower Queen Anne, the bus passed through block after block of brick three- and four-story apartment buildings, circa 1920-40. My sister lived in one of them, several decades ago, so I'd been inside, and it was quaint but cool. I especially liked the old-style elevator, with toe-to-ceiling metal gatework that could chop off a finger if you weren't careful. Still have ten, because I was careful. But I didn't spot my sister's old building.
Then the poles came off, and the bus stood still in the middle of the street. For the #1 route and several others, King County Metro runs electric trolleys, with poles that push against overhead wires for juice. The driver put on her safety gloves, stepped off the bus and to the back, where she jostled the poles until they sparked a solid connection, and then vroom, we continued on our way.
Soon we were off the arterials, on smaller streets with one lane in each direction, mostly residential. These are old houses, bought with old money.
We went past cross streets that climb the steepest parts of Queen Anne Hill, and some are paved with brick that looks as old as the hill.
We rolled past more old houses, and old apartments, and then a few modern eyesore apartments — undoubtedly more expensive and less pleasant than the old buildings.
Curiously, around this part of the route, some of the street signs are brown, not the city standard green.
One by one, the other passengers stepped off the bus, until I was the last rider, when means we had to be nearing the end of the line.
Suddenly a wild-eyed black man jumped in front of the bus and started pounding on the windshield. "Let me in! Let me in!" he yelled, but the driver didn't, and of course I was glad.
The bus is for everyone, no color discrimination allowed or tolerated, but there is and should be sanity discrimination. And also, they're not supposed to let people on or off except at bus stops, not simply anywhere someone starts banging and yelling.
Through the windshield, the driver, herself black, had a two-minute conversation with this gentleman, because the bus couldn't proceed while he was in the way. Their exchange was mostly polite, but loud, and as I pieced it together, here's what had happened:
As we'd passed the bus stop at 10th @ Newell, which is the last northbound stop on the #1 line, this man had been running to catch the bus, but neither I nor the driver had seen him. He chased after the bus, and when he caught up half a block later, he jumped in front of the bus.
Which is dang stupid, ain't it? Man vs bus, the bus wins every time.
The driver-lady asked him to move out of the street, out of the bus's way, and also explained that the stop where he'd missed the bus was our last northbound stop. "But I'm going to loop around, and be coming down the other side of the street in like, one minute," she yelled at him through the glass.
After she'd yelled it a second and third time, he smiled and said, "OK," seeming to understand, and he crossed the street so we could proceed.
As she'd promised, the bus turned right onto Armour Street, then three lefts to become the southbound #1 bus. Never heard of a bus that reaches the end of the line and comes right back, without a layover, but that's what the driver said, and that's what the #1 does.
And that's where I got off the bus to walk around a bit. I'd come for some scenery and exercise, and the plan was that I'd catch the next southbound bus. But the formerly loud, screaming, and crazy black man was waiting at the last/first stop, so before getting off I said to the driver, "You gonna be OK?"
"Oh, yeah," she said. "I know that guy. He's demented, but not dangerous."
So after I stepped off, the formerly loud, screaming, crazy black man got on. He was her only passenger, and I hope he was as fully calmed as he seemed.
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The #1 runs every fifteen minutes on weekdays, every twenty minutes on weekends and holidays. That annoys me, because the bus in my not-nearly-as-white neighborhood runs only every thirty minutes — and my local bus has more riders, at least based on my first and only ride on a #1.
How white is the Kinnear neighborhood? I was there for about twenty minutes on a holiday afternoon, and never once was there not a white person walking or jogging the sidewalk.
10th @ Armour is on the side of the hill, with hints of a fabulous view. It's been thirty years, though, since the trees, brush, and sticker-weeds have been trimmed, so the vegetation is much taller than I am. The view is only of wild blackberries, a dozen of which I picked and ate.
With twenty minutes until the next bus, I walked the end-of-route loop the bus had taken, then came back and found a surprise stairway down the hill. The land is too steep for a road, so the stairs connect with the rest of Armour Street, below.
It's 39 steps down, to a narrow road called 10th Place, with old houses and so little traffic that there's a basketball hoop on the side of the roadway, and two grown men were playing in the street. There's also that fabulous view that's hidden by the brush upstairs, of the Interlake neighborhood, and the hill on the other side.
And then, unfortunately, it was 39 steps back up the hill to my bus stop. Huffing and puffing, the upping went slower and sweatier than the downing had been.
On one side of the public stairway there's only brush, and on the other side there's a wooden wall, separating stair-walkers from a neighbor's yard and house. Three small lamps are affixed to the fenceposts, to provide illumination and prevent tumbling in the dark. They're not city lights, though. They're the kind of lights you can buy at a hardware store, installed by the homeowner as a kindness.
After a few minutes and a few more joggers, the next #1 came northbound, turned right onto Armour, then looped around and let me aboard at the southbound stop. Our ride back to downtown was very similar to the ride out, only facing the other direction, so this long report is almost finished.
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Along the #1 route, there don't seem to be many quirky little coffee shops or appealing parks, and there's only one used book store. I wasn't in a bookish mood, so there was nothing that made me want to hop off for a few minutes to explore.
Overall, I'd give the #1 Kinnear three stars out of five — one for pretty views out the window, another for smooth rides with both drivers, and a third for the charming guy who hammered on the widow — that's entertainment!
9/2/2024
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