Sheecago

The 36 is a Broadway bus. It runs through Lincoln Park, starting downtown, and goes north up to Harrison. It’s a nice line, I suppose, that does the things city buses are intentionally (get you places) and unintentionally (allow you to harmlessly observe a little mobile ecosystem of strangers as you travel) supposed to do. The other day though, when friends and I were helplessly lost trying to find the Windy City Rib Festival, a driver of the 36 north said something interesting to me. He said:

You never know how long a ride on this bus is going to take. This is the bus for wackos. This is where the crazy people ride. You never know what to expect on this bus, only that you should watch for yourself.

He said these things from behind a thick plastic shield, a wraparound, sturdy force field against projectiles, assaults, spit and other things passengers feel compelled to toss around. He wasn’t particularly happy, this man. He didn’t give off that proud bus driver vibe that many often do.

The idea of a route being characterized by the class of people that frequent it seems hard to do. So many people — different, similar, sane, insane, rich, poor — ride the bus. What makes a good one, a bad one? But when you do think about it, it’s hard to deny certain personalities of particular bus routes. The time of day and direction matter a great deal, but there are ostensible attitudes within different buses. The 151 Express southbound on weekday mornings is a quiet, efficient bus full of pencil skirt wearing women, suit and skinny tie wearing men, newspapers and Time and Newsweek and Starbucks cups. The 146 southbound towards the Museum Campus all times of the day is a bus of families, strollers, bus backlog, crying and screaming, big clans, wiggly kids, child leashes and sippy cups and big maps. The 152 Addison is a Cubs bus and it’d be seemingly unwise to wear Sox gear aboard this one. These are all pretty positive attributes though, right? There’s not a real aversion to riding any of these routes. It makes sense why they are what they are – the 152 goes around the field, the 146 goes to all the museums, the 151 takes people who live up north down to work in the mornings. But why is it that the 36 – the wacky – bus is the way it is? How can a bus that runs parallel to the 22 from downtown, up through a nice part of Lincoln Park, through Boystown and up north, how can this bus be the crazy bus?

I’m trying to figure out why. Why is this bus so distinct? And why does it get such a negative review by its own driver?

The 36, northbound, southbound – any direction you ride it, is a wild trip. It’s a smelly 7-mile sitcom on wheels, revealing at each stop a new plot twist. There is, most noticeably, a scent. Rolling up and down the aisle, there is a ubiquitous tumbleweed of body odor so pungent that it assaults your olfactory senses. It draws from the farrago of personal smells of the passengers, many who appear homeless, many more of who appear to not wear deodorant. It’s a sensational thing really, the individual odors from everyone tangled together and permeating the fabrics of the seats. If the smell doesn’t get to you, the social stimulation will. The peculiarities of the riders are amplified by their utterances, their myriad baggage, bags of cat litter, piles of goods, dramatic clothing. The seldom moments of total silence on the 36 are punctuated by outbursts and bodily expulsions. People snap, grab, roll around. Eventually, as a rider of this route, even with headphones on, you become oblivious to the aversion of screaming and shouting. People aboard the 36 like to make noises, make things uncomfortable, say things that in most other settings would be rendered entirely inappropriate. But somehow, in this closed little capsule of CTA invincibility, it’s all okay. Rider Randomness is just something you accept. And too, spacing is a peculiar thing here. Usually on buses, seats are filled, bodies consume spaces, and emptiness is rarely a thing. There’s bus etiquette that dictates leaving seats empty for handicapped people and moving towards the back to vacate the front area. But aboard the 36, even during rush hour, something interesting happens. Seats are left unfilled. People avoid each other. For fear, perhaps, of osmosis by closeness, the “wackos” have a wide berth of space around them. I feel almost radical when I ride the 36, wearing deodorant, keeping to myself, not carrying a ton of baggage – literally and figuratively.

Why are we scared of these things? Why did the bus driver, in a jaded and depressive tone, have to say he was like a guinea pig driving the 36?

The people on the 36 are different, right? But when you ride the 152 as a Sox fan, do you cower to yourself in a seat in the very back and try to stay clear of passengers who radiate Cubs pride? Do you make a lavish production of holding your purse and trying to inhale through your nose when you ride the 146 because, as a single rider, you are most certainly unlike the other people riding? No you do not. Because you think to yourself that they have enough in common with you where you can still feel safe. They’re different, but they’re not that different. They’re not wacky.

I think we have an inborn reticence to admit to differences between ourselves and people who look, smell, act, dress like us. We avoid people who are so blatantly unlike us, and seek the comfort and security of our demographic because it’s easy to assume that everyone riding our bus, living in our building, shopping at our stores is enough like us where we can trust them. But who is to say that the man in the business suit sitting next to you on a commuter train isn’t a pedophile, a new dad, a porn star, a baseball agent, a man addicted to gambling? The woman dressed in rags and smelling of stale urine who is huddled in the back of the bus isn’t a new mom, a huge fan of Twilight, a liar, a thief, a vegetarian?

Safety is one thing, and one that cannot be understated. Buses can be (are sometimes) dangerous, so is the city itself and so is being alone. This isn’t an issue of trying to inject yourself into positions where you’re the obvious minority and celebrating diversity by laughing and drinking a beer with the homeless man on the bus beside you.  It’s not a call to arms to ride the bus late at night, to avoid what’s comforting and seek out what’s dangerously uncomfortable.

But what buses make evident is that diversity is everywhere. It’s easy to say that you have the 36 and the 151, the wacky bus and the professional bus. But I think that with enough time, enough rides, enough points of engagement and interaction, you realize that you have me and you and them and us and we. And you have that everywhere, on every route, in every neighborhood.