BUS STORY # 237 (Portrait # 11: Vintage)

Hip-Hop On The Bus, Gus, originally uploaded by busboy4.

An oversized white baseball cap sits over his ears. It has an embroidered dollar sign, white on white, on the front, and smaller dollar signs, also white, printed randomly over the rest of the cap. The bill points exactly sideways to his right, but he adjusts it several times, reorienting the bill in different directions, using the window as a mirror. I can see cornrows when he adjusts his cap. 

He’s wearing Flavor Flav-size sunglasses even though it is still dark outside. 

He has a large cube of glass in his right ear. I’m thinking it’s a good thing these are so ubiquitous, because otherwise, someone would have cut that ear off and run with it by now. 

He’s wearing a black sweatshirt with a blue and yellow and white sports logo on the front. I spend a lot of time failing to decipher just what team it belongs to. I strike out on the sport, too. Finally, I conclude it’s a generic sports design, nothing more. That’s different, I think. It should have been a jersey, with a real team logo. But what do I know? 

I check to see if he's sagging. He isn't. 

He’s got some fancy sneakers that you can’t tell where the shoe ends and the sole begins. 

In my day, he would have been nationwide. But this morning, he has the curious feel of a relic. When he exits, I watch him take possession of the sidewalk going north. Most of him disappears into the dark, but I can still see the white cap bobbing in the darkness when we pull away.