#5 Phinney

Today's excursion was on the #5 Phinney, a bus which goes north-south from downtown Seattle to a suburb called Shoreline, as far north as you can travel without entering the next county. Having only briefly been a north-ender, many years ago, I've ridden the #5 few times before today, going to the zoo but never further.

It's been decades, though. I've been boycotting the zoo since 1977, when it started charging admission. Screw that. It's a city park, and admission to city parks should be free.

My absence has of course crippled the zoo's economics, but I'm a senior citizen now, which is supposed to bring a discount at the zoo. Perhaps I'll say hello to the elephants and hyenas one of these years.

Not today, though. Today I was only riding past.

The northbound #5 starts at 4th Avenue & Royal Brougham (brōwm), across from the famed "Show Me Ur Tits" Memorial Utility Box, as graffiti has plainly stated since at least 2022, when I moved back to Seattle.

Inside the bus shelter, more recent graffiti in elegant calligraphy says "Where is the love?", which started the song by Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway playing in my brain. It was the soundtrack for my round trip on the #5.

I boarded, and took a seat on the left, near the front. In a sideways seat diagonal from me, sat a pretty woman with the largest nose ring I've yet seen — stainless steel, the size of my entire thumb.

And if a lady wants a ring through her nose it's no skin off mine, but nose rings are beyond my comprehension, and that one was double beyond. Why would anyone want two pounds of metal poking through their nostrils?

Like most Metro routes, the #5 goes along 3rd Avenue through downtown, so the first twenty blocks offer nothing I haven't seen hundreds of times before.

There was, however, a female bum who got on at 3rd & James, carrying a blue Icee and complaining aloud and loud about "that fat-ass man." As I'm a fat-ass man myself, I wondered whether she was critiquing my physique, and when she took the empty seat behind me, still grousing about that fat-ass man, would she dump her Icee over my head?

As she continued babbling about that fat-ass man, I weighed whether I'd continue on my field trip if she covered me with blue Icee. Decided that I would. It was a fairly warm day, so the blue and wet would dry quickly. Delightfully, though, she did not Icee me, instead stepping off the bus, still muttering, before we crossed under the Monorail.

Rolling down 7th Avenue, the block-long Quality Inn (locals call it Low Quality Inn) is closed now, and painted mostly black. The building is old, but looks structurally sound — the city should buy it and turn it into a homeless shelter. But nah, that would cost money, and require someone in city government to give a damn about the homeless, so it's doubly impossible.

Next, 7th Avenue became an on-ramp to northbound US 99, a/k/a Aurora Avenue, which gently climbs across several miles of ugly sprawl — apartments, ramshackle houses, hooker hotels (some closed and abandoned), etc.

At the peak of the hill is Canlis, Seattle's most expensive and exclusive restaurant, notorious for stealing wages from its employees. Tossing a paintbomb at the Canlis sign or a rock through a window has been on my to-do list, but being cowardly, I've not yet done either.

After the restaurant comes the Aurora Bridge, sloping downward as it crosses high, high above Lake Union. It towers so tall, the bridge was long Seattle's top suicide spot, but I'll bet it no longer has that distinction, as a fence taller than me has been added all along the bridge's sidewalks. If that's not enough, the fence is topped with spikes that would make it difficult and painful to hoist yourself over the top.

Counseling? No. A fence topped with spikes? Sure.

The fence alters my plans. I'm in pretty good health for an old, fat guy, so it's not literally on the agenda, but with no health insurance, I've long figured that if or when there's a fatal diagnosis, the bridge is where I'd end my story. Now I'll have to come up with a different finale.

The bus leaves Aurora to go west on 38th Street, where a mural on the wall, under the overpass, shows a few colorful neighborhood scenes.

Then onto Fremont Avenue, where the roadway desperately needs repaving, and the ride becomes unpleasantly rickety.

As we turned onto 43rd Street, a pudgy white man too old to be young but too young to be old came aboard, and sat in front of me. For the next mile or so, I was fascinated more by the unusual tattoos on his arms — an abstract mosaic of colors reminiscent of the Partridge Family's bus — than the rather repetitive scenery out the window, which was mostly homes with occasional apartments, then mostly apartments with occasional homes.

Onto Phinney Avenue the jittery, bouncy-bounce-bounce ride continued like Shake-A-Pudd'n, and as we approached the zoo, the man of many-colored arms rang the bell. As he stepped off he shouted cheerily, "Thank you so much, mister driver, and have a wonderful rest of your day!" And he meant it, and he was gay — no doubt could be harbored about either fact.

Then houses, houses, apartments, houses. Which is fine if you live in one of them, but gets boring if you're looking out the bus's windows.

When a shop finally came into view, it was a 7-Eleven fer cripessake, but soon came Red Mill, a burger joint folks speak highly of.

Mostly, though, as the bus continued it's sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes actually ouch-inducing ever-so-shaky ride, the places we passed were of no interest to me — pilates, dentists, wine stores, non-dive bars, "yoga for all levels," etc.  Pthth.

Ooh, here's something that looks appealing — Rooster's Breakfast Club. I jotted down the name, thinking I'd go online later to check their menu and prices, but then I noticed that Rooster's is boarded up. A sign announces that soon it's to be demolished, making way for a new 5-story apartment building.

"Where is the love?" I wondered, that song still on auto-play in my head.

Onward past strip malls, houses, apartment buildings, the shakes continued, and what the hell is Flintcreek Cattle? By what I could see through the window I'm guessing it's a steak house or cocktail bar, the kind of place that's utterly elite and unwelcoming to anyone with less than a six-figure income.

Yanni's Greek Restaurant looked more a possibility, as did Baba's Halal Burgers & Seafood.

Of course, all these were snap decisions. Out the bus's left windows, then the right windows, I rocked my head and pointed my eyes, seeking whatever might say to me, "Hey, Doug, that looks cool!" So it's possible, nay likely, that I missed plenty. Who knows what might be just a block to the west or east? Parts of Phinney Ridge are doubtless marvelous, amazing, but my view from the bus didn't show much like that, sorry.

After about 90th Street, the bus's bad vibrations began smoothing, thank Jesus God Almighty. And then at some point, Phinney became Greenwood, which begat Westminster Way.

Houses, apartments, and occasionally a small business district rolled along out the windows, and then came Dayton Avenue, and finally Shoreline Community College, where the route ends. I was alone, the last passenger on the bus, and stepped down to the sidewalk.

"Turn off engine immediately upon arrival," says a sign, posted at that last stop. The bus waits there, while the driver takes his/her break, and the next bus was already waiting, its diesel engine idling in disregard for the sign and anyone breathing in the area.

It continued idling for the next 15 minutes, as the driver finished his lunch break. I walked away from the fumes, and explored the edge of the college campus, hoping to recuperate from the ride.

Where is the love you said, was mine, all mine, 'til the end of time — was it just a line?
Where is the love?

Other than Red Mill and possible Yanni's and Baba's, I hadn't seen much on the trip that would warrant my return. I do hope to have a burger at Red Mill one day, but first I will research whether a different bus can take me there. The #5 is too much, it's too uncomfortable being shaken so. Gotta pity the folks who ride that line five days a week.

When the driver of the idling bus finally opened its doors, I boarded for the trip back to the city. Over miles of Richter-Scale bad vibrations, it began feeling like an injury.

I've ridden thousands of miles on city buses, in Seattle, San Francisco, Kansas City, Madison, and now Seattle again, and a not-insignificant subset of those rides have been uncomfortably bouncy. Buses are not like the smooth ride of a limousine, and you expect to be shaken up a bit. On other buses here in Seattle, including the routes I ride most often, there are bumpy zones for a few blocks, but I've ridden nothing like today's round trip on the #5.

Along about a quarter of the route, the shakes were so severe, I felt real pain in my gonads, or in my eyes and ears and brain.

Looking out the bus's window and thinking WTF, I tried to analyze the surface we were riding over. On the worst parts of the ride, instead of a long ribbon of pavement, it's miles of roadway constructed of squares of concrete or asphalt. The bus has three axles, six wheels, and apparently next-to-no suspension, so as each wheel rolls over each of thousands of breaks in the concrete, the bangs and shudders multiply against the next bangs and shudders. Maybe the bus's wheels are spaced at exactly the distance that exacerbates the vibrations? Add in a pothole now and again, and it's shaken-adult syndrome.

When I stepped off the bus downtown, I needed a few minutes to get my legs back under me. They should sell t-shirts: "I survived the #5."

9/20/2024   

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