The #50 bus runs east/west, and connects my home turf of West Seattle to the Rainier Valley. I ride it fairly often, daydreaming or sleeping or whatever, but today I’ll pay attention, and review the ride.
The route starts from Alki, a beach at the tip of the West peninsula. This is where Seattle was first established before moving downtown, and for some reason there’s a miniature Statue of Liberty. The beach is crowded with swimmers in the summer, but in November it’s sorta nice, with not so many people, and post card views of the ferries and water taxi sailing by.
My bus was parked and waiting at the stop, without a driver. Across the street, a big black man was smoking a cigarette, but I didn’t know he was the driver until he approached the bus, dropped the cigarette, and toggled the secret switch near the right headlight, which opens the door.
“You waiting on me?” he said. “You should’ve just stolen the bus!” He said it with a smile and a Santa-like twinkle, then climbed the stairs, sat behind the wheel, and motioned for me to follow.
“Yeah, but where would I park it?” was my witty retort, and the entirety of my conversation for the day. Not another word spoken to anyone.
Flashed my pass, took a seat, and we started across some back streets, past the apartment where my pal Bruno lived and died.
The bus climbs Admiral Way, to the Admiral Theater, a great old-time cinema I never go to any more, because they only show new movies, and 99% of new movies suck.
There’s also a Carnegie library branch that’s walking distance away, but just out of sight from the bus.
We turn south on California Ave, and go past Bebop Waffle Shop, which smells inviting, but it’s an invitation I haven;t yet accepted. Across the street is the locksmith that duped my keys in the 1980s, and again two years ago.
How is it possible that a fat man such as I could live in West Seattle for 2+ years now, and still have never been to Shug’s Soda Fountain & Ice Cream Parlor? That’s an oversight soon to be corrected, maybe on my way back from the waffle place.
Onward past Hiawatha Park, and West Seattle High School, and Coastline Burgers. I once didn’t have a hamburger there, and might very well not ever.
The bus does a little loop-around at Alaska Junction, which is the heart of West Seattle, and home to Easy Street Records & Cafe, A la Mode Pies, ArtsWest Playhouse, Husky Deli, and more. It’s one of the city’s coolest intersections, but even there, like everywhere in America, there’s Starbucks and Chipotle and a branch of Rigor Mortis Bank, etc.
After the Junction, we roll through ordinary urbanity for a while. There’s an American Legion across the street from a Veterans of Foreign Wars, and then the bus turns onto 35th Avenue, with a stop in front of West Seattle Stadium.
Here’s a happy memory, not at the stadium but at the bus stop. Coupla weeks ago, two Lime scooters were parked the long way there, almost entirely blocking the sidewalk, which ought to not be allowed but happens constantly. So I dragged and dropped both scooters through a hole in the fence. Just being a good citizen. You’re welcome, Seattle.
At the next stop, a Muslim woman, burka bound, sat in front of me, and a 60-something white woman sat in front of her. Both ladies were talking to the air, having hands-free conversations on their phones. The Muslim woman spoke a language I do not know, and the old white woman was saying things like, “When I get home, we can smoke some pot and finish the whiskey from last night…” Juxtaposed, their two one-sided conversations made the next few blocks pleasantly surreal.
Then it’s Avalon Way, and a steep section of Genesee Street, where another memory popped up, this one from decades ago. I worked with a pretty woman whose Ford Pinto got stuck in the snow on Genesee’s upward slope, so me being all gallant, I dug it out for her. This earned me a thank-you handshake, and nothing more, and you wonder how I’ve turned into such a grouch.
Genesee goes past a big dumb golf course, but then comes to Delridge Playfield, which must be one of the city’s most popular parks. If it’s daylight, there’ll be a crowd of people there, kids and grownups and fun, and indeed, there they all were.
The bus turns onto Delridge Way, leading to the skyscraper-high West Seattle Bridge. Ask any westsider, and they’ll say the bridge is a lifeline that connects the city to its westward peninsula, but to me it’s a big and ugly eyesore, a freeway lording itself high over the city and its people, and leaving Spokane Street in perpetual shadows.
Whenever I’m on a bus crossing that bridge, airplane height, I have phobic flashes of the driver in a suicidal mood jerking the steering wheel and plunging all of us over the edge to our deaths. Our driver today, though, is Black Santa, and he wouldn’t do that, I’m sure.
The bus goes along 1st Avenue South through gritty ol’ Sodo, past many warehouses and bums and what’s left of the industrial zone. Then we cross the railroad tracks, past delicious Aliberto Jr’s and the Sodo light rail station, and then the bus turns south onto the busway.
You’re wondering what the heck is a busway? It’s a strange idea, that’s what. Once, it was 5th Avenue South, a long alleyway of back doors to sooty manufacturing and industrial boneyards, but in the late 1980s, the street was closed to ordinary traffic and became a dedicated “bus way.” With no other traffic, buses zip through Sodo a few minutes faster, but the stops are still back doors, along a street nobody wants to be on.
Seems to me, passengers on the ten routes that travel the busway would be better served with a bus-only lane on 4th or 6th Avenue, where people actually have destinations, instead of making people walk a few extra blocks to and from a cold strip of otherwise unused asphalt where there’s nothing but buses.
Maybe Metro Transit agrees: The busway is due to be obliterated in a few years, replaced with the new light rail extension to West Seattle.
At the end of the busway, the #50 turns onto Spokane Street, which is still under the freeway, so it’s a concrete nightmare. The bus twists between a dozen on-ramps and off-ramps and onto the dregs of Columbian Way. Columbian is a nice enough city street once you’ve climbed the hill, but that part of Columbian is nothing but an extended on-ramp to Interstate-5.
Triumphantly, the #50 emerges on 15th Avenue in Beacon Hill, a pleasant enough middle-class section of the city. Out the window and into my notebook I jotted Cafetal Quilombo Café, a Mexican restaurant that looks promising. MacPherson’s Fruit & Produce has been at 15th and Columbian for longer than I can remember, and it’s still the place for affordable veggies and such.
The bus leaves Columbian for a hairpin detour into the VA Hospital, crossing the parking lot and going right to the front door. That’s gotta be very appreciated by the veterans and even the staff. Four people get on and three get off there, and then we’re back to Columbian Way.
At Beacon Ave, the #36 route crosses ours, and there are several dueling Asian stores. Then we follow Columbian down a long hillside, and the roadway curves slightly and becomes another incarnation of Alaska Street (which means we’re now on the same latitude as Alaska Junction in West Seattle, where we were twenty minutes ago).
At MLK, the #106 crosses our path, and there’s the Columbia City light rail station, and lots of recently-built apartments, and not much else.
After a mile of pleasant old-style residential, the bus turns onto Rainier Ave for a few blocks, in Columbia City. That’s where I got off the bus, between the funeral home and the public library, because my destination was Geraldine’s Counter, two blocks up Rainier (and I’ll tell you all about that tomorrow). After lunch, I hopped onto the next #50 to continue my crosstown ride.
On Rainier Ave, the #50 runs alongside the #7, until Beacon Cinema, which is confusing because it isn’t on Beacon Ave. It’s a newfangled theater that shows old movies, and I do most of my movie-watching at home, but if I’m actually going to the movies, it’s often at the Beacon.
Then we’re on Genesee Street again, leading to 50th, then Wilson, then Seward Park Ave near the water. There are lots of quiet streets, and autumn leaves, and it feels like the next stop will be Walden Pond.
We emerge from the quaint quietness at Othello Street, cross Rainier Ave again, and soon we’re at the Othello light rail station. That’s the bus’s destination, says the sign on the front of our bus, but if your intent is only connecting with the light rail, the #50 has already stopped at the Sodo and Columbia City stations.
Everything around the station looks like recent construction, mostly high-rise, and none of if jumps out as being interesting. There’s an Asian deli, but it’s in a soulless building, and we’ve ridden past half a dozen Asian delis getting here. There’s something called Bang Bang Kitchen, a snickerworthy name for what looks like a trendy place, probably pricey and full of the right kind of people, which is the wrong kind of people for me.
Ooh, is that a snap judgment? Yeah, I’m full of them, but choosing where you want to go — and where you don’t — is a lifelong series of snap judgments.
My driver on the return ride was a maniac, determined to bring the bus to the speed limit, 30mph, between every bus stop, when the stops are only two blocks apart. Vroom, then brakes, then vroom, then brakes. Some drivers are like that, and you could complain, but I didn’t. I simply rang the bell, got off the bus, and took the next one.
This route runs about every twenty minutes during the day, and my next bus driver knew how to drive a bus.
The #50 is a long ride, about an hour and ten minutes, so counting wait times, the round trip took three hours. Most of it was fairly smooth, by bus standards, but it’s left me butt-hurt.
There’s a real nice seat cushion at home, left over from a career of office work, which I’ve now stashed in my backpack for longer rides like this.
11/4/2024
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