bus tag

although i have been doing it for some time, i have just put a name to it.

bus tag.

buy a day pass.
find a route that looks interesting - i.e. seems to be more concerned with connecting people than getting from a to b efficiently.
take it until there is a transfer point of a route that holds potential. switch.
repeat.

great rides of the past the number 5 - actually the old number 5 glyndon to cedonia, the number 77, number 51.

to-day it was the number 33. the number 33 for i knew the route of the 44 by heart. the 33 because it reached deep into places beyond east baltimore - middle river, dundalk. headed out in the late afternoon when the clean up was done for the day. i reckoned there would be about three hours of light but it wasn’t a photo wander but a reconnaissance, a wander of curiosity and half remembrance. took joãozão and a leiquinha.

here again comes the love hate relationship with charm city, the bus system here is great some aren’t the most logical routes but it is a rare place within baltimore that cannot be reached by bus. the metro and light rail are simply affectations of a city trying to be a metropolis buses allow me to travel into less savoury neighbourhoods hop down, make snaps and then get a bus out. usually the important bit happen at transfer points.

but one would think that baltimore only has one bus to run on all its routes. i waited 20 minutes for the 54, then another 30 minutes for the 33. people were insensed. one person who had waited longer than me would be late to work, another wished that he had stay on the 54 and transfered some place further along. i didn’t mind as i could watch the drug deals on the corner of park heights and cold spring.

when the 33 finally arrived we knew why the mta had all day passes, it took all day to get anyplace. the outing alternated between poor and rich with a great deal of blue collar. it was interesting to see how different areas with similar housing initially changed. pimlico, the area north of hampden, the royal farms and the mini village with its tasteful shoppes in the valley between roland park boulevard and charles street, the corner taverns, and food shops at york road, the attempt of a mix along harford below moravia.

finally made it to armistead gardens and was in the middle of it before i realised where i was. like wilbur and orville streets cross wright street. realised that was there when the streets narrowed housing was more dense but without the typical brick row house. i knew i was there with the hampden like individual decorations of the front gardens.

i brushed areas that i had been on earlier outings, linking them, i again was reminded how small area wise baltimore is.

wished that i could get down along pulaski highway with baltimore painted across a railway bridge, wondered what i could do with the modified big box stores and the now almost decimated malls built around them.

and then it was time to change - ended up at the essex park and ride after crossing back river no little stream this no puny tamed chicago creek, a real river with real width walking back over it, below the bridge an encampment of people fishing and hanging out, not too far to south the bay, i was pretty pleased that the bus terminal was across from a closed bingo hall.

then the hate again, the 30 minute wait for the 23, the person waiting was more upset than i was.

-it is too long too long.

when it came the community of the bus, smelling of crabs, a couple at the front were about to celebrate their anniversary - hence the crabs - and were comparing ailments with another couple heading to hopkins bayview. leaving they offered the riders their day passes.

duckish, i pass neighbourhoods with their flashing blue lights a corners telling outsiders where drugs can be bought - nice of the baltimore city police to be so accommodating when the metro heads above ground at cold springs they look like constellations in reverse.