I have a new local nemesis — it’s a gentleman who sometimes drives the No. 9 bus. He is an albino whippet in knee-high socks.
He drives like he wants to behead each of us. Passengers smash into the windows; people slip and slide. Turns are made so aggressively that it feels like the bus will flip over. I once heard a black girl yell something like “Damn! Are you trying to kill us, motherfucker?”
When he nears my stop, instead of flooring it pedal-to-the-metal (his “shtick”), he slows to a crawl. The bus barely moves. And he doesn’t even pull up to my stop — he parks parallel to the bike lane, leaving me several feet from the actual stop.
Oh — and an old man coughed on me today. I gave him a dirty look.
More pieces of Portland poetry:
- Andrew Sullivan and Conor Friedersdorf on NYC vs. Portland
- The Vacuum Cleaner Museum gets an Atlas Obscura page
- Lots of shit flows into the Willamette River again
- Los Angeles is more bike-friendly than Portland
- Posse of spindly dill-holes in canary-yellow adventure suits
- Fisticuffs follow gustatory extravaganza (heritage pork cook-off)
- Portland Mercury writer bemoans the lack of diversity in Portland while describing one of the only diverse places in Portland
- Washington, Wisconsin, Maine and Minnesota all kick Oregon’s ass in a bike-friendliness clash
- Look at my congressman putting on a bike helmet
- Jack and I both voted no on Measures 68 and 69
- Deadly Fungus is in town
