BUS STORY # 329 ("Is It A Cultural Thing?")

Crowded Busride, a photo by Simply Boaz on Flickr.

Recently, I read a post in the Portland bus blog, Sardines Are Only Packed Once, which made me realize I’d had a similar experience earlier in the week. This is the second time something I’ve seen or read made me realize something had happened on my bus that hadn’t registered as a bus story. (You can read the first time here.) You can read Nickareeno’s Portland bus story here. You can read my similar experience below.


When I boarded the 11 this particular morning, it already had more riders than I was used to seeing. By the time we got to Wyoming, the aisles were filled to the back door.

There were several people at the next stop, and the driver called out to please move back and make room in the front.

The guy at the end of the line looked back at the empty platform aisle, then looked forward, then stayed where he was. Others looked back, too, but no one tried to get around the guy.

The new riders were bunched up in the front past the yellow line where riders are not supposed to stand -- a precaution to prevent the driver from being distracted.

There were more folks waiting at the next stop. The driver again asked people to move back. Again, there was no movement.

He pulled into the stop, opened the front and back doors, then exited.

Next thing we knew, he’d entered the back door. He addressed the guy at the back of the line specifically, asking him to please move back.

The guy moved all the way to the back.

The driver asked the person in front of him to please move back, and that rider moved up on the platform as well.

By this time, the rest of the line didn’t need individual prompting. The line backed up, and I could see room had opened up in the front.

The driver waited until the line had completely moved, then said thank you.

He returned to the front of the bus, took the driver’s seat, and motioned to the waiting riders to come aboard.

Nickareeno wonders why his end-of-the-line guy didn’t move back when asked, and why no one else moved back around him or repeated the request to move back. And then he asks, “Why aren’t there more righteous passengers demanding civilized behavior from their fellow citizens?”

He concludes, “Is it a cultural thing?”

If Nickareeno is on to something, he’s talking about Portland culture -- in contrast to San Francisco and Los Angeles where he tells us he’s also been a rider and insists this incident would not have happened.

But apparently not in contrast with Albuquerque, whose culture is decidedly not-Portlandia, but where the incident very nearly replicated identically. The difference was our driver.

I would prefer to think ours was an early-in-the-morning not-enough-coffee thing. The driver didn’t get any pushback; people moved. But it took a special effort on the driver’s part to make it happen. Like our counterparts in Portland, the rest of us were silent even though we could see what was going on.

If we opened this up to “American culture,” I might hazard a theory of societal transition from respectful-of-others to self-absorbed, something like that. But I can’t quite pull off making two cities the size of San Francisco and Los Angeles the exception that proves the rule.

I am at a loss here.

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You can read a bus story about the contrasts between Albuquerque and Portland here. Oh, and if you do, Poetry On The Bus is now history.

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The photo at the top of this story is titled “Crowded Busride,” and is posted with the permission of Simply Boaz. You can see all Simply Boaz’s photos on Flickr at: www.flickr.com/photos/simplyboaz/.