Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Furthur trouble

While all the real estate agents are worried if a building is “pre-war” or “post-war”, war still rages in my building. Most of the denizens are meek college girls who seem embarrassed not to live in the dorms, and who flatten themselves against the wall, eyes wide, fingers spread, when I say “Excuse me”. There is a whole floor which always smells like pot. I’m not sure if they all smoke, or if one guy just smokes a lot. There is never any sound on that floor. You’d think you’d hear Phish or somebody eating chips. Elsewhere, there are a few struggling actors and models. One girl told me she was a “supermodel”, although on closer questioning she turned out to be a “superwaitress”.

We all lived in harmony and ignorance of one another until somebody parked a bus out front.

The bus has been there for months. It is not a new bus, but it is very large, from back when to manufacture a bus meant something, and a man could be proud of a day’s toil controlling one through city streets. Apparently this relic is now an adjunct to someone’s apartment. It’s a pretty clever idea, in my opinion. If your apartment is too small, augment it with a nearby bus. True, the spaces are noncontiguous, but it’s rent-free Manhattan real estate, as long as you obey the holy writ of alternate side parking, which these savvy bus-dwellers apparently do.

But this otherwise wholesome bus has caused a rift among the normally conflict-averse population of our squalor. The anti-bus coalition feels that a permanently parked bus is, at best, gauche. They also believe that they play their bus music too loud. However, the pro-bus faction is allowed to hang out on the bus. I myself was ignorant of this war until, coming home from whiskey-shopping, I found a crowd outside the building. The crowd was confronting the proprietor of the bus, who stood in its doorway.

“Why don’t you take a road trip?” someone suggested to her.

“We’re out of gas,” she said.

“It’s a bus,” someone said, “it is meant to be driven. It doesn’t want to just sit here.”

“It’s retired,” she said,.

“Get your bus out of here,” someone else clarified.

“No,” she said, stepped back, and pulled the lever to close the door.

The crowd stood around murmuring as I tried to get by to return to my room and arrange bottles on the shelf. “It’s a crime,” someone said to me.

“What is?”

“This….” Words failed him. “This bus.”

“Is it a stolen bus?”

“Not that we know of.”

“Well,” I said, “what is the crime?”

“This is New York,” someone said, “there has to be a traffic violation in here somewhere.”

“What’s the big deal?” I asked them. There was a quiet moment.

“The street isn’t for bus parking,” someone said. “What if everyone parked their bus in front of our building?”

“This bus has taken the spot, saving us from that problem,” I pointed out.

“It’s ugly colors,” someone else said.

“So is his shirt,” I said, pointing to a member of the crowd.

“We’re building people. We’re not bus people.”

Everyone nodded, and trooped back in the building. The door to the bus accordioned open. The woman addressed me. “Pardon me, neighbor. We’ve run out…do you have any whiskey?”

So I got on the bus.

by Jack, September 14, 2004 6:49 PM | More from Drinking

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2 Comments

fredrabbit said:

Nothing like an eyesore to draw people briefly together and then push them further apart than the natural state of ignorance.

Jack said:

I think you mean "Furthur apart".

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