Adventures on the Portland Streetcar, 2018 edition, part 2

Sept. 21:  My working evening climaxed at the Pearl Party with the Just Friends Band playing Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind & Fire, and other funk tunes on a loading dock right next to and above/behind our table on NW 13th between Hoyt and Irving. I was part of a team that staffed an info table about streetcar and gave out various door prizes.

7:58pm -- A woman is thrilled to win a Portland Streetcar coffee mug and says “I’ll drink coffee out of it every day, and it’ll remind me of Portland ’cause I’m only here three months.” Where are you from? I asked. Amsterdam, she said. I told her my favorite place in the Netherlands was Madurodam (the miniature city). She admitted she had never been there. What about Delft, I asked (a beautiful, canaled town that’s world-famous for its porcelain). No. What is wrong with you? I thundered; you have a beautiful country and you’ve never seen some of its best parts?

8:01pm -- Me to Supervisor: “Do we get a break soon? I can’t take much more of this.”
Supervisor: “You had a break. Drink your beer.”
Me: “Slave driver.”

8:08pm -- A young woman notices me dancing to the music and comes over to dance with me for a minute or so (while her group of friends, I suspect, take video or stills of us before they leave the block party together)

8:25pm -- The Portland Streetcar team starts to pack up our table, so I ask my supervisor if I can take the bubble machine for a stroll. She says sure, so while the band is playing “Boogie On Reggae Woman,” I dance down the length of the block party and back, holding the bubble machine in front of me as it blasts a cloud of soap bubbles at the people in the crowd, who laugh, dance, and shoot photos or video with their phones of me in my branded hazard vest and baseball cap.

It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

Oct. 25:  Tales from a shift on the Portland Streetcar:

2:05pm -- I run into fellow Marshfield grad John Chandler, who takes a dual selfie of us

2:45pm -- A rider who has seen me standing around and doing rider counts through a number of stations watches me take a seat briefly and asks, “So how long you got to work for them before you get a sit-down job?” I think a moment and reply, “Never do.” After a long pause, I add, “Just ... catch it where I can.”

3:07pm -- Waiting for the light at SE Grand and Morrison, I notice a runner pausing on the sidewalk outside Portland Running Company. He’s bare to the waist of his running shorts, very lean and buff, maybe Thai or Korean background. As the train pulls forward and he disappears from my view behind the wall of the streetcar joint, I catch a woman on the train staring out at him (don’t know whether she’s merely seen his bare back or maybe he bent over facing away from her). She notices that I’ve caught her staring at him, so I grin indulgently, and she says, admiringly, “Wow. Not often seen.”

Then we're held up by an ambulance picking up a guy outside City Team Ministries at SE Stark and she starts to talk to me about how a garbage truck failed to signal, turned right in front of her electric bike, and ran her over in July. She’s got a pending lawsuit on him, and suggests the McMenamins Edgefield should go back to being a county poor farm for all the homeless. I tell her I was married there.

3:38pm -- Back in the Pearl, a rider tries to dictate to me that too many people who “shouldn’t be on the streetcar” are allowed to ride. He starts with inebriated folks, then moves to the mentally ill, but makes the mistake of saying they haven’t paid their fare . . . and when I start to explain that he can’t possibly know that for sure, he gets all huffy and says he has to get off at SW 11th and Alder.

3:42pm -- A man with a wheeled walker with a seat and a woman with a cane who get on at SW 11th and Jefferson, evident strangers until that moment, talk about their various physical issues. I’m in denial, she says; I should have one of those but I keep avoiding it. He explains how handy his walker is, and adds, “When you hit 60, ‘uphill’ is a four-letter word.” She says she’s about to turn 50, and for some reason adds, “ShitFuckShitFuckShitFuck.” I decide not to inform them I’m about to turn 60 myself.

3:47pm -- at SW 5th and Market, the operator informs us a train has broken down in front of us and he doesn’t know how long it’ll be before we can move forward. There’s a general exodus for the doors, and over the following 10 minutes I explain to several people their alternatives to get where they need to go by bus or light rail. Then I bail and catch a 35 bus home.

Oct. 22:  I was standing back from the SW Bond/Lane platform in my full Portland Streetcar regalia -- blue branded baseball cap, blue branded shirt, and bright yellow branded hazard vest with my employee ID and Hop card hanging from a lanyard around my neck -- and about to start a work shift when a tall, lean elder gentleman walked up and addressed me.

“This is a very nice trolley system,” he began . . . and that was the last positive, and -- if I may so -- relevant thing he said to me. The second half of that initial sentence was about the high taxes in Portland. They tax you for everything here, he said.

I was still trying to connect the dots in my mind when he proceeded to tell me he was moving to Washington. He had been to 35 countries, and this is the second most obese nation in the world.

I was starting to get irritated, so when he informed me that the average weight of American men is 192 pounds, I commented drily that that’s considerably heavier than I am. The average weight of American women is 165 pounds, he continued, and I responded that my wife is quite a bit lighter than that.

This city is very anti-business, he said as he started to trudge off. (I may have urged him away by strolling over to the edge of the platform and pointedly looking for an incoming train.) No, it’s not, I called after him; that’s why they're moving here. They’re leaving, he assured me from a distance.

Really? On this warm, sunny Indian Summer afternoon, that's all you had to talk about with a stranger?

Oct. 25:  She looked like a very nice white-haired old lady. But she nearly ran me over because she was looking primarily in the direction of oncoming traffic (cars and streetcars) from the south on Bond Avenue -- apparently unaware that pedestrians might approach from the other direction.

I had already seen three other cars turn off Curry before hers in front of the 025 train waiting at the stop sign at Bond, and recognized my karaoke buddy Fred Wallace in the operator’s seat. Part of the reason he was waiting was because traffic was backed up the entire block ahead of him from Whitaker back to our intersection at Curry, and he was waiting for a little room to clear, which gave those private vehicles the opportunity to slip in ahead of him.

So I stopped in the crosswalk in front of her with my bright orange Portland Streetcar cap on.

Then she tried to drive AROUND me onto Bond, and I’m afraid I lost my temper. “NO!” I roared, and stepped back to block her car with my body again; “Everybody has to wait their turn!”

Fred proceeded across the intersection, and I walked back to my observer’s position at the far corner.

Dec. 20:  Some days, I really don’t feel like going to work on the streetcar and facing the anxious looks of riders who fear I’m going to ask to see their fare, the growling monologists, and odoriferous street people.

But sometimes, if I just stand on a train for a while, a series of lovely events will transpire within a short time. . . . 

10:38am -- at the NW 10th and Johnson platform, I watch two men chatter avidly through the open doors after one has boarded, hug each other, and delay the train further as one thrusts his arm between the closing doors to retrieve the other’s business card. I feel a flash of irritation, but then the one who boarded comes over to me and remarks in delighted wonder: “That’s how Portland is!” He proceeds to relate how he had left his large gym bag at that platform shelter a half hour before, didn't realize it until NW 22nd and Northrup, five stops later, and when he finally made his panicked way back to the Johnson stop, a young man was sitting with it, having skipped his own train to guard the lost bag until its owner had returned.

10:42am -- a tall, gangly, older woman (as tall as I am) boards at NW 21st and Northrup, meets my eye, and says, “How ya doin’?” Good, I reply; how about you? “I don't know yet, honey,” she responds and heads for a seat.

10:45am -- a couple who boarded at NW 23rd and Marshall puzzle over the fare machine, so I talk them through it and they thank me and ask how to get to OMSI. Noting their unfamiliar English dialect, I ask where they’re from, and they say New Zealand! I tell them I’m heading there on a visit with my mother in March, and hope to meet several people I know, including a former Member of Parliament I met way back in college when I took her seminar on feminism and the system.

11:04am -- having switched to a different train at SW 10th and Alder, I am accosted immediately by a woman with a strong Southern accent who says the fare machine ate her $5 bill without rendering an all-day ticket. I present her with a valid date-stamped fare ticket, and confirm that she needs to get off at the very next stop to see Powell’s Books. She says she is SO EXCITED that she and her friend are about to enter Powell’s.

11:11am -- I get off at 10th and Johnson again, and walk over to 11th to catch yet another train and hear and old yet familiar metallic scraping sound. Glancing over at the building entrance in the middle of the block on Johnson, between Visage Eyewear and Sinju Sushi, I perceive a man manually RAKING LEAVES WITH A METAL RAKE. After decades of scowling in response to the ghastly roar of diesel-powered leaf blowers, I have to smile. . . .