Chinatown bus drama

Rode my favorite form of transportation the other day, the Chinatown Bus. I took it to D.C. and back, and was happy to see that D.C. lines are now more frequent than they were in the early oughts, when the C-town buses first started becoming legit (and I use the term “legit” loosely).

Of course, no C-town bus ride can be complete without its fair share of random events or drama. There is usually always someone demanding to be let on a full bus because they somehow feel they are owed a seat, just because they bought a ticket. This trip some woman was yelling at the driver, telling him to move out of the way, because by the beard of Zeus she was getting on the bus. A friend of mine even told me that once a lady stood in front of the bus until they agreed to take her, or until she stood down. Not sure if she ever made it on the bus, but the moral of the story, people, is that YOU ARE ONLY PAYING 20 BUCKS FOR A FREAKING TICKET. A TICKET THAT YOU CAN REUSE LATER. These bus lines barely operate legally—you think they care less if you report them to the Better Business Bureau? I don’t think so. In fact the bad service, the fight for customers by hawk-eyed saleswomen who can eye a “too-cheap-ass-to-even-ride-on-Greyhound” denizen from a block away, and the whole “will I get a seat?” uncertainty, is part of the adventure of riding the C-town buses. If you want something with a little less “character,” then go pay six times more for a ticket on Amtrak. Yeah, I didn’t think so, ya cheap bastard.

I ask, on Greyhound would you get up to ask the driver how much longer, or demand he pull over to a bathroom, or ask to be let off at some random exit? Yes, all these things have happened while I’ve ridden the bus. I usually want to tell these complainants to save their breath, but in most cases the drivers (who usually can barely speak English) have to give in. All the complainants do, however, is delay the trip for those of us who are just happy to have gotten a seat that isn’t by the stankerific bathroom. In some cases it seems to me the non-Asian riders feel they can bully the drivers because they can’t speak the best English.

In fact, I have mixed feelings about the “gentrification” of the C-town buses. I mostly think it’s been a good thing. On the one hand, to attract the non-immigrant clientele (mostly starving college students and the few brave white-collar workers willing to trade comfort for price), it seems bus lines have instituted a lot of “upgrades”: more frequent service, online ticketing, movies shown in English. On the other hand, I have to suffer a lot more annoying, uppity complaining—plus I was subjected to the Phil Collins blasting from the headphones of the man sitting next to me.

Anyway, I love regaling people with my and my friends’ C-town bus stories. Mine aren’t even as interesting as my friends'; the worst that happened to me was that one of the buses I took back from Boston was having “brake issues.” Luckily it was before we took off, and we were transferred to a different bus. And once, after the rest stop most buses take halfway through, the driver got a call when we arrived in D.C. that he had left a woman behind. But here’s what some of my friends have gone through:

A friend of mine saw a man, she thinks an angry passenger, pull a knife on another man by the C-town bus. She also once rode an airport-shuttle-like van to Boston, and it had very bad shocks.

Another friend riding it to D.C. sat near a man who was eating a whole bag full of crabs. He had to suffer the stench and the loud crab-eating noises.

I’ve heard several stories of C-town buses breaking down on the side of the road.

Some have called the C-town buses “the chicken bus” because they are barely better than the stereotypical rural buses you think of in third-world countries on which people are carrying livestock. I always thought this was rude and somewhat smacked of racism. Except that my coworkers’ friend actually claimed to have sat next to a chicken in a cage on the bus. I don’t know if this is just urban legend, but it really happened, to a friend of a friend….

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RCNY Sighting: Maybe I just thought of this guy because I was thinking about Chinatown buses, but twice this summer while walking back home from the subway I’ve seen a tall black man wearing those big Asian straw hats, the ones that you think of when you envision the stereotypical image of an Asian person working in a rice paddy. I’m not sure whether to be offended or flattered. Is he trying to honor another culture by wearing traditional garb? Or is a he a waiter or host at some Asian fusion restaurant that tries to instill some kind of authenticity by making their staff wear “traditional” garb (you know, like how the Penang waiters wear sarongs)? Or is he just crazy? I guess I’ll never know…