San Francisco is probably the public transit capital of the West Coast. It is possible to take public transit elsewhere, but the other cities are just too spread out and the transit systems too unreliable to really count on doing so. San Francisco's public transit system also sucks, but there are so many buses and underground trains that the failure of one doesn't screw up the system quite as much; there is probably another bus or train coming in 5 or 10 minutes, whereas in LA or San Diego you're looking at a 30-minute wait at a minimum if something goes wrong. And something usually goes wrong.
I used to be a bus commuter in San Francisco, and I expect I will be again soon. Seeing as how I lived near the beginning of the bus line, I generally got a seat on the bus, and usually a window seat. In those days, I was generally wearing a suit and tie and reading the SF Chronicle, which was a rag of a paper but it only cost $0.25. It was well worth the money for the sports page on the way in and the crossword and jumble on the way home. This is especially important for me, as I don't talk on cell phones in public. Don't get me wrong, I would love to talk on my cell phone in a public place if only someone would call me.
In my years of riding the bus (generally the 41, which was a great bus if you were looking for hot chicks in business suits with still-damp hair) I noticed that about 90% of the time, the available seat next to me was the last available seat that was taken before people had to stand. And I kept the newspaper in my lap, rather than try the old "lay it on the seat next to me so no one will sit down" trick. Further, when someone did sit down it was generally a guy, although the bus was usually pretty evenly split between males and females. I never did figure out why this was, but I do have a theory. Four theories, actually, if you count the Baldwin Dick Theory, which has no application here.
Theory One (The Southwest Airlines Theory): If people are given a choice of seats, the last seat to be taken will be the middle seat between two fat guys. As applied
here, I am kind of a big dude. Not gigantic, but larger than average and fairly broad. Call it 6'2" and 210lbs, and (at the moment) not at all chubby. The point being that I am broad enough to protrude sideways into the seat next to me a bit. Even when wearing pants. So, when someone is walking down the aisle looking for a seat, unless they are a small person chances are if they sit next to me they'll either have to sit partially in the aisle, or they will have to sit and be touching me. I'm pretty against being leaned against or touched in public by strangers (unless by a hot stranger, or by The Stranger), and I assume others feel the same way. This theory might not entirely hold water though, because I am by no means way larger than all other guys on the 41. That is, unless I happen to be heading back to the Marina in the evening and the bus is also carrying R2D2 and a bunch of Ewoks for a late meeting at LucasArts. I am probably in the Top 3 or so on any given trip, but it still doesn't explain why my seat fills up last. Could it be something about me, specifically? Well, that brings us to...Theory Two (The Evil Eye Theory): Some people have told me I should smile more. In this context, "some people" means everyone I know, plus a fair number of strangers on the street. Granted, I do smile more now that I have started bleaching my teeth (and I highly recommend you do this - the Whitestrips in the store work fine, but be prepared to have to keep using them), but I am also apparently a bit of a scowler. I know I do it when I am
concentrating on something, like when a problem is being explained to me and I am trying to follow it (I am a visual person - I can't look at the person while they are explaining the problem to me or I will stop listening and start concentrating on things on their face). So it is possible that I am scowling while reading about how crappy the A's, Giants, Niners or Raiders are, or when I am trying to come up with a four-letter word for "Internet Collection of Useless Posts About Trivial Subjects." Maybe this scowl communicates "American Psycho" to those around me, which would explain why it is usually a dude who bites the bullet and sits next to me.Theory Three (The Intimidation Factor): Let's just face it - I am so damned good looking that people are afraid to sit next to me. The hottest girl in the room is
the loneliest girl in the room - other chicks think she's a bitch and don't like being her friend because they don't want to compete with her, and dudes think she is out of their league. Similarly, I am the loneliest dude on the bus. Men want to be me, and women want to be with me. Now, I am approached by women fairly frequently, but it is usually at a bar after they have had a few cups of the Liquid Courage (or if you prefer, the Loudmouth Soup or Social Lubricant), and are not in such an enclosed space where their neighbors, co-workers and co-commuters will be able to hear everything as I reject them, and will go on to discuss that at the water cooler all day instead of the latest episode of The Hills or Dancing with the D-List Pseudo-Celebrities.I've given the above theories considerable thought, created a spreadsheet and analyzed the raw data, and I don't see how the answer could be anything but Theory Three. Some would say that my score of 4.7 on "Hot or Not" argues against Theory Three being correct, but everyone knows that only ugly, petty and jealous people visit that website. So, in a bit of Schadenfreude those ugly, jealous, petty bitches gave me a low score that doesn't at all reflect reality. I'm going with Theory Three and I think its perfectly reasonable to do so. I know what you're thinking, and no, the "Maybe It's Because You Stink" Postulate doesn't apply here - this happens to me on the morning "just showered and brushed my teeth" ride as well as the evening "maybe the caesar salad for lunch and raw onion for a 3pm snack weren't such a hot idea" ride home.
Wow, that was quite a sidetrack, as none of the above was even the point of this post. Here is the point: Suppose you are riding the bus, all the seats are full, and you are sitting in the aisle seat. You have no relationship with the person you are sitting next to; following Standard Operating Procedure you both ignored each other when you sat down and just read whatever you had with you, continued sending text messages to someone else, or kept on listening to your iPod, much as you would on an airplane. Now, you live at the end of the bus line, so gradually the bus empties out as you go along. When a seat comes completely empty and you are still doubled up, are you supposed to get up and move to that seat? Are you being rude in doing so, tacitly making some sort of unspoken but disapproving statement about the person you were sitting next to? Or are you actually being courteous in doing so by giving the other person more space?
It seems like moving is the thing to do; strangers don't really talk to each other in public any more. Everyone is busy doing something else that doesn't involve the person next to them - it is either "leave me alone" (iPod or book) or "someone who isn't here is more important than you are" (cell phone or Blackberry). Both cases would seem to favor moving. Maybe this doesn't apply when people are faced with a common enemy and weren't expecting to have to wait - maybe their friends are there with them and they didn't bring a book or iPod - like when waiting in line to get in somewhere, or when attending a sporting event. I think people pretty much talk to those around them in these situations, but in general they do not engage other people.
I guess this leads to a bigger question - if a stranger says hello on the street, are we as a society generally happy for the sentiment, or are we suspicious of the
person? I would think people would generally be suspicious, and especially so if a guy is saying hello to a girl (but if it is a girl saying hello to a guy, the guy will assume, correctly, that the girl wants to have sex with him). Is the media to blame? "Seven Bodies Found in Neighbor's Freezer" tends to make the news a heck of a lot more often than "Stranger Smiles, Says Hello and Goes On His Way." Used to be children could go door-to-door on Halloween and collect candy, and then actually eat that candy. Now we've got sanctioned trick-or-treat events at malls, and even these now occur in daylight. People just don't trust people any more. It's too bad, but it seems to be the way of the world. And now I have more apples and razor blades than I know what to do with.Lately, I've been throwing a small wrench into this idea; I've been intentionally making small talk in semi-social situations, such as elevators and supermarket lines. I've also been intentionally farting in those situations, but that is a whole other social experiment and we've already run long here. In any event, I've found that people are generally OK with interacting, if only because it is a change from everyone ignoring everyone else. I even know a few married people whose relationships started this way: A guy starting chatting up his seat-mate after a few drinks on a Southwest flight and went on to marry her, and a girl married a guy who asked her directions on the BART train (turns out the guy knew where he was going and just wanted to chat her up, but that is another issue altogether). So these instances can have a happy result. That is, if you consider marriage to be a happy result, a conclusion about which I am still undecided.
So what does all this mean? Heck if I know. Maybe it means nothing. Maybe it means that only good-looking single people should talk to strangers in public. For me, it means that if I end up sitting next to a hot chick on the bus and she's not wearing an engagement ring, I'm going to chat her up. When the extra seat opens up, she's not going to want me to leave because she'll be engrossed in stimulating conversation about which Batman actor was the hottest, or whether Michael Phelps is attractive. If we aren't deep in conversation then I'll get up and move to the empty seat. Because that clearly means that she is a lipstick Lesbian, or that she doesn't speak English, or my version of Spanish. Or that she stinks.
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