It was drizzling (welcome to Seattle) as I was waiting for the #F bus. I’d lucked out, though, and this particular stop had a roof and a single seat for one. Swanky!
Dry and bored, there was only one semi-interesting thing to watch — a skinny white man half a block away, dancing toward me. He wasn’t the Bolshoi; his kicks were sorta spastic and un-artistic, left, right, or high in the air between footsteps, as he approached.
You develop a sense for safety in the city, and with this guy’s erratic and unpredictable moves, I pegged him as about 1.5 on the danger scale, so when he was twenty or so steps away, I stood. It’s safer than sitting. I have mace at home, but Seattle is generally serene, and the canister wasn’t in my pocket, which means I was an overweight and unarmed wimp.
Not to worry, yet. The dancing man danced past, kicking and making odd grunts, but neither were aimed at me, and he continued down the gently sloping hill. His pattern was, three or four normal human footsteps, and then a kick into the air, and sometimes a twirl-around or an arm spasm. Meth was my guess, which almost rhymes.
Half a block away, he stopped, occasionally doing high kicks while talking to himself, though I couldn’t make words from anything he said. A passing truck somehow offended him, and he aimed two kicks and an extra loud shout toward it, but the kicks missed the truck by yards. The dancing man muttered a while longer, kicked the air again, then walked farther off, down the hill, still kicking.
I glanced in his direction a few times over the next several minutes, as he crossed International Blvd, then kick-walked into the Tukwila train and bus station. Logically, this meant that I shouldn’t see him again. After all, the bus I was waiting for would emerge from that station. If he’d wanted that bus, he could’ve simply stayed at my stop, so I reset the danger scale to its usual 0.0.
This #F line runs every ten minutes, but on this day it was late, and 15 minutes passed before it came. I stepped on through the second set of doors, midway back on the bus, where to my unpleasant surprise the dancing man was standing in the doorway. And twitching, because there’s not enough room on the bus for full-on dancing. I needed to maneuver to get past him, and he very nearly smacked me with a flailing arm. Not on purpose, but because he was jumping and jerking like a puppet with an epileptic pulling his strings.
As tends to happen when the bus is late, it was nearly full, so I grabbed a stanchion and stood, a couple of yards behind the dancing twitching man. He wasn’t holding a stanchion, and did a mid-height kick in the air at exactly the moment the bus pulled away. With only one foot on the floor, the bus’s movement nearly brought him down, and with his forward kicking thrust, his near-toppling caused a kick to the elbow of a man standing in front of him.
The man shouted, “What the hell?” and further words were exchanged, none of which were ‘please’ or ‘thank you’. After one rage of testosterone from each man, the dancer kicked the other man right in the nuts.
Or it sure looked like it was right in the nuts, but either the kickee was wearing a protective cup or I’d been optically illusioned, because the other man neither cried out nor crumpled in pain. Instead he took a swing at the dancing man, which led to a swinging punch back. Neither punch connected, but the insults were loud, and after another attempted kick, both men assumed the traditional “Let’s fight” stance.
The driver slowed the bus to the curb, and asked his rear-view mirror, “Is there a problem back there?”
Ever since a memorable ride in autumn of ’24, I’ve tried to be more a participant when such things happen, and less merely an observer, so I participated: “Yeah, there’s definitely a problem,” I said loudly. “This guy kicked that guy in the nuts.”
The dancing man turned and looked at me, seeming surprised but not angry. “I didn’t kick nobody,” he lied, while continuing to twitch. Oddly, the man he’d kicked said nothing, nor did any of the 50 or so other people on the bus. Sheesh. I’d tried to be a good citizen, but I was the only one?
It occurred to me that I might be the dancing man’s next kick in the nuts, so as the driver pulled the bus into traffic, I walked toward the back and found a seat, uncomfortably squeezing next to a tiny old Asian woman whose smallness left enough space for my largeness.
A half dozen rows of seats now separated me from the two men, and from this vantage I watched as they argued and insulted each other for several blocks. After a few rounds of words, the dancing and twitching man said, “The only reason I’m not already beating the shit out of you is that I’m a Christian, a God-fearing man, but don’t push me, fucker.”
“Well maybe don’t kick me, fucker,” said the kickee, and again the driver slowed the bus to the curb. Bus drivers see crazy behavior every day, grow accustomed to it, and tend to ignore it, so this was impressively proactive. I appreciated it when the driver pushed whatever button opens all the doors, and announced over the public address, “You, sir, the dancing man — you will get off the bus now.”
“Fuck that,” the dancer replied, with a high kick toward the open door. “I pay taxes and I paid my fare and I’m riding.” I’m skeptical that he pays any taxes. Sales tax when he buys liquor, perhaps. I said nothing, though.
“This bus isn’t moving until you’re off,” the driver commanded.
At this, a few of the passengers spoke up, because now the tweaker was delaying their ride. “Get off the bus, man,” etc.
“You want me off, come back and throw me off,” the dancing man said to the rear-view mirror, punctuated with his highest kick yet.
“Nope, I’ll just call the police,” the driver said into the PA.
“Call the police,” the dancing man demanded. “Do it! I’m not leaving.”
By now, the dancing man had gone from 1.5 to 4.5 on my danger scale, but police are a steady 7.0 at least, and I didn’t want to see the dancing man shot dead by an impatient officer of the law. Should I walk up to the dancing man and explain my well-informed fear of cops? Would he even understand, or would he assume I was an enemy and kick me in the nuts?
So I said nothing. The driver radioed for the police, and with the public address still engaged, the dancing man and the rest of us heard every word. “Passenger acting erratically and dangerously, and refusing to leave the bus.” After some static over the PA, a voice on the radio told the driver (and all of us) that deputies were on the way.
When the static was clicked off, I spoke again. “Man, another bus comes in ten minutes. That’s gotta be better than dealing with cops.”
The dancing man twitched, looked toward me, and then he high-kicked the fare-scanning box so hard that the front of it fell to the floor. “You’re damned lucky I’m a Christian!” he shouted at nobody or everybody, and then he danced out to the sidewalk.
The driver pushed whatever button closes all the doors, we rolled onward, and he radio’d again, telling the voice, “Situation resolved, cancel that call.”
When we reached the end of the line and all the passengers stepped off the bus, I thanked the driver for looking out for us.
“Ah, that guy was nothing,” he said. “Had a dude yesterday waving a knife around. It turned out to be a rubber knife, but it sure looked real.”
And that’s how I’d sum up safety on public transit. Buy a monthly pass, ride anywhere in three counties, and you’ll often find unsavory characters, sights, and scents, but it’s very rarely violent. And even when someone seems dangerous, it’s usually just a rubber knife or a God-fearing tweaker.
1/2/2026
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