Do the Bus Stop
According to eHow, “Doing the Bus-stop” has a difficulty of “Easy.” Why? Because all you have to do is get the bus schedule, find some friends or listen to your iPod, find a bus stop with not much traffic for a sure bet of sitting down, and bring some reading material. As per this article, these steps are bound to ensure a safe and enjoyable ride on any bus. However, in my experience at the bus-stop, waiting for the bus didn’t seem like such a fun and enjoyable way to spend your time. The ambiance wasn’t terrible – nothing remotely resembling having hate graffiti all over the bus stop like there apparently was a couple years ago, but still, it seemed as if most people thought of their time spent at the bus stop as “wasted time.” (Contributor, Wooland)
First off, most of the college students that I saw had no idea when the bus was coming, nor did they know which other stops were around the area. There are at least four bus stops within a two block radius of College and Durant (where the Bus Stop 851 is located, where I was). If students wanted to get a seat on the bus and not just stand there, bored, then they would go to a different bus stop. However, they do not. Why? Because most people waiting for the bus just assume that it will arrive when they want it to, and that if they wait for five minutes, it will appear miraculously. This is not the case. The bus is, in fact, not telepathic. You would think Berkeley students would not assume so… I guess not. There were two types of people who I observed: those who had done the research and those who did not. The researchers never stayed for more than two minutes because they knew exactly what time the bus came, and if they missed that bus, they would walk over to the next bus stop to catch the bus at an earlier time. The second type of person has two subtypes: one who is fine with waiting for fifteen minutes for a bus because he is equipped with reading material, a phone (including contacts who are willing to talk or text with him), or some sort of music playing device, and one who is not.
“…A woman walks by balancing an Arizona Watermelon Tea can on her head…”
The majority of people I encountered were Type Two, Subtype One personalities. They looked at the time sheet when they arrived at the bus-stop, then would walk and stand on the opposite side of the sidewalk in the bark next to the tree I was sitting on. Because there is no bench like other bus-stops, people would either stare blankly ahead of them while listening to their iPods, or sit down on the ground and text. The Type Two Subtype Two (T2S2) personalities were the ones who were pacing up and down the sidewalk, sometimes listening to music, would walk into the street frequently to see if the bus was coming, then not see the bus and therefore look at the time sheet for the fourth time, see that there was at least five more minutes until their bus came, and resume the pacing process.
“…There’s so much trash on the ground…Taco Bell lids, wrappers, brown bags…”
While most people are calm at the end of the day, just listening to their music and probably reflecting on their jobs or what homework they have to do that night, these T2S2 people just cannot deal with not doing something productive all the time. If they had somewhere to go, you would think that they would be the type one people who research beforehand, and maybe then they wouldn’t be at the bus-stop pacing, but would do something productive like walk down to the previous bus stop so they could catch the bus before, be able to sit down (actually get a seat) and stop stressing out. Alas, most of the pacing is done by the older generation: people without backpacks…the adults.
“…No one is talking…at all…it’s silent. Large cars make more noise than small cars…”
From a young age, we yearn to be like adults, as the three children who were sitting next to me one of the days evidenced. The boy, smiling and feeling his chin, exclaimed, “I think I have some stubble!” The girls replied, “You’re not old enough! You have to be an adult to have it!” This anticipation that kids have to “finally get old enough to…” drive by themselves, have a cell phone, get facial hair…whatever the case, is completely ludicrous and in fact, most adults wish for the reverse. Actually, adults don’t drive, mostly they take public transportation (like the Bus, go figure!). Out of the people I observed, only one adult even talked on his phone while waiting for the bus. Most of them were just being T2S2-ers, pacing, stressing, and mostly had no facial hair actually, so these kids really have nothing to look forward to in becoming an adult.
“…The Taco Bell lid is still there, three days later, only the wind blew it to the other side of my tree…”
From a personal standpoint, I liked doing my observations – not because the subjects were terribly interesting, actually they were quite the contrary, but because it set aside a point of time for me when I could relax and ponder about why the pace of life is so quick that most people passing by were staring blankly ahead, eating their food while walking because they were too busy to waste time chewing. No one just takes the time to look around while they walk around, without any sort of technological device to impede their audio-senses, and to enjoy their surroundings. Not saying that I’m any sort of exception, but it seems like everyone’s just so busy and caught up in not “wasting time” while they could be doing something productive. We lose sight of the fact that we’re not happy when we’re always stressing out, and if the point of life is to be happy (at least it is according to me), why not just take some time to relax. Why not stop trying to grow up and think about how much better your life will be in four years when you graduate, or when you get the raise or promotion you have been working so hard for, because what happens when you don’t get it? All those times you were stressing out about wasting time at the bus stop exhibiting T2S2 personality traits, pacing back and forth, talking on the phone to take up time so that a moment spent not doing something active does not seem like a moment lost, would have been wasted. So why don’t we stop yearning to grow up, stop looking to the future for when the next bus will come, but rather be proactive, maybe take a step back and walk to the previous bus stop ourselves, but take that time and really look around, see the trash on the ground that doesn’t get cleaned up or the impeccable greenness and symmetry of the frat house, or even reflect upon our lives and see that time spent alone is not time wasted, but rather can drive us to the next stop.
“…The grass outside the frat house is really well groomed..."
Works Cited
Contributor. “Hot to Do the Bus Stop.” eHow. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Nov. 2009. <http://www.ehow.com/how_2095886_do-bus-stop.html?ref=fuel&utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=ssp&utm_campaign=yssp_art>.
Woolard, Valerie. “UCPD Looking Into Newest Case of Hate-Related Graffiti.” The Daily Californian 26 Sept. 2008: n. pag. Web. 7 Nov. 2009. <http://www.dailycal.org/article/102797/ucpd_looking_into_newest_case_of_hate-related_graf>.
The first image is straightforward enough: a map of the bus system surrounding the University of California, Berkeley, where this particular narrator's research was conducted. As Erica Furer points out later, however, the bus system isn't quite so straightforward for those who haven't done their research on the bus schedule. "The bus is, in fact, not telepathic," she illuminates sarcastically in the second paragraph of her article. This site is a curious one. She describes the separate types of people who use the bus stop. First, there are the researchers, the T1s, who usually only wait a short amount of time because they have checked the schedule in advance. The second type contains two subtypes; the first of these was fine with waiting on the bus because he or she was equipped with some sort of reading material or music device, and the second of these paced while waiting for the bus, impatient, looking up and down the road to see it in the distance.
ReplyDeleteShe notes that the majority of people were Type 2, Subtype 1 personalities, open to the realization that they hadn't checked the schedule in advance and would have to wait a little bit for their designated driver to turn up and accommodate them. The representation of this site is seen through the personalities that pass through. There is no one type of person, and indeed, even these three types have the odd misbehaviors within them; there are the ones that pace continuously and the ones that occasionally text to pass the time, or the ones who use their phones and seem moderately less impatient than the rest. This particular site would not be a site without the people that pass through it, and the flavor they bring to an otherwise colorless station: a bus stop in Berkeley, which could be rather bland without the continuous arrivals and departures and the study of the humanity passing through. This representation of the site, I believe, is key. A site is nothing without someone to make something of it, or without someone to extract meaning from it. This peculiar space would be meaningless, odorless, colorless without the people who come along to give it potential, diversity, and flavor. It's not just true to the bus stop. This representation follows to other sites. A dead city full of buildings and broken-down vehicles would be unnoticeable without a single human to walk through and pass judgment on the area.