The Rapp brothers, the snootiest if not the most prolific of movie palace architects, defended the excesses of their spectacular creations by declaring them “social safety valves”. The idea was that for less than one dollar, Everyman could indulge in the pleasures once reserved only for Bourbons and Habsburgs, and see a picture beside.
This weekend I discovered something that works in reverse, a miraculous thing that humbles the proud and brings the world of the great unwashed to the gilded plates of the haughty.
That something, ladies and gentlemen, is Greyhound.
Thanks to colossal mounds of red tape in the Baltimore board of education, I ended up having to sit for an examination in Petersburg because everything in Maryland was already full. And, because Amtrak has decided to keep the great unwashed away from its trains by raising ticket prices, I decided to side with my pocketbook instead of with my instinct, and got a round-trip bus ticket to Virginia.
When you step into the 1912 glories of the Pennsylvania Station, with its blinding-white Doric columns, Rookwood tile and delicately-traced skylights, you feel Important. You are Going Somewhere. In Washington’s soaring Union Station, you are Travelling. As you step on the train in one of these edifices, you want to turn around, affect a Leyendecker pose and wait for the Sun’s social photographer to capture your smartness for the Metrogravure section.
When you enter the unlit, crumbling ‘60s hall of the Fayette street bus terminal, you mostly want to make sure that you don’t come away with a social disease.
No longer are you the high-toned Baltimorean on his way to gracious Richmond on a mix of business and pleasure. You are now grappling for eight-inch-wide seats with extended families, half the population of the Yucatan, and hard-bitten waitresses trying to get back to Elkins to see their families.
Because it is my lot to end up next to happy, chattery people while travelling, I ended up next to an excited steamfitter from Elizabeth, NJ, who was going down to Richmond to see the races. These are CAR races, mind you, and although it’s a pretty big industry, most Richmonders I know couldn’t even tell you very accurately where the racetrack is. He rattled on happily for two hours about races and Elizabeth and wanted to know everything I knew about Baltimore and Richmond and what should he see there and did I like the races in Richmond, and is that the Washington Monument and isn’t it the most beautiful sight? I was able to commiserate with the guy across the aisle, who was a very tired sailor on his way back to Shreveport. He was looking at another twenty-two hours on this godforsaken conveyance and had negative interest in smoke-belching Pontiacs.
The way back was rather more traumatic, because I missed the connecting bus in Washington and because the way there from Richmond was spent in the company of a child whom I shall call Poopy Pants. You’d think that the mother of a five year old, if she didn’t want to change his soiled clothes, would at least not let him walk up and down the aisle of the bus dripping fecal matter. When, in the Nation’s Capital, I finally did catch a bus back to Baltimore, it insisted upon stopping in Silver Spring. That otherwise pleasant suburb has a bus station that walked right out of a National Geographic special. It is housed in a converted Sunoco station. When the bus pulls up, it is immediately surrounded by a multiethnic swarm, all of whom hail from cultures where lining up is perceived as a tool of demons. The bus station actually employs big burly men to function as bouncers. I was fairly certain that I had somehow space-warped to Mogadiscio.
On my return I didn’t even go inside the station, which is sort of groovy in a ‘60s way despite its overwhelming filth, and beelined over to Charles street to catch an uptown car. Never was I so happy to get on a Baltimore city bus–a nice, clean, uncrowded, poop-free city bus.
I’m sure that I should feel all enlightened for having spent nine hours with the proletariat over the last few days. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect. I’m not travelling again until I can afford to do it in the lounge car of the Palmetto Express.
This weekend I discovered something that works in reverse, a miraculous thing that humbles the proud and brings the world of the great unwashed to the gilded plates of the haughty.
That something, ladies and gentlemen, is Greyhound.
Thanks to colossal mounds of red tape in the Baltimore board of education, I ended up having to sit for an examination in Petersburg because everything in Maryland was already full. And, because Amtrak has decided to keep the great unwashed away from its trains by raising ticket prices, I decided to side with my pocketbook instead of with my instinct, and got a round-trip bus ticket to Virginia.
When you step into the 1912 glories of the Pennsylvania Station, with its blinding-white Doric columns, Rookwood tile and delicately-traced skylights, you feel Important. You are Going Somewhere. In Washington’s soaring Union Station, you are Travelling. As you step on the train in one of these edifices, you want to turn around, affect a Leyendecker pose and wait for the Sun’s social photographer to capture your smartness for the Metrogravure section.
When you enter the unlit, crumbling ‘60s hall of the Fayette street bus terminal, you mostly want to make sure that you don’t come away with a social disease.
No longer are you the high-toned Baltimorean on his way to gracious Richmond on a mix of business and pleasure. You are now grappling for eight-inch-wide seats with extended families, half the population of the Yucatan, and hard-bitten waitresses trying to get back to Elkins to see their families.
Because it is my lot to end up next to happy, chattery people while travelling, I ended up next to an excited steamfitter from Elizabeth, NJ, who was going down to Richmond to see the races. These are CAR races, mind you, and although it’s a pretty big industry, most Richmonders I know couldn’t even tell you very accurately where the racetrack is. He rattled on happily for two hours about races and Elizabeth and wanted to know everything I knew about Baltimore and Richmond and what should he see there and did I like the races in Richmond, and is that the Washington Monument and isn’t it the most beautiful sight? I was able to commiserate with the guy across the aisle, who was a very tired sailor on his way back to Shreveport. He was looking at another twenty-two hours on this godforsaken conveyance and had negative interest in smoke-belching Pontiacs.
The way back was rather more traumatic, because I missed the connecting bus in Washington and because the way there from Richmond was spent in the company of a child whom I shall call Poopy Pants. You’d think that the mother of a five year old, if she didn’t want to change his soiled clothes, would at least not let him walk up and down the aisle of the bus dripping fecal matter. When, in the Nation’s Capital, I finally did catch a bus back to Baltimore, it insisted upon stopping in Silver Spring. That otherwise pleasant suburb has a bus station that walked right out of a National Geographic special. It is housed in a converted Sunoco station. When the bus pulls up, it is immediately surrounded by a multiethnic swarm, all of whom hail from cultures where lining up is perceived as a tool of demons. The bus station actually employs big burly men to function as bouncers. I was fairly certain that I had somehow space-warped to Mogadiscio.
On my return I didn’t even go inside the station, which is sort of groovy in a ‘60s way despite its overwhelming filth, and beelined over to Charles street to catch an uptown car. Never was I so happy to get on a Baltimore city bus–a nice, clean, uncrowded, poop-free city bus.
I’m sure that I should feel all enlightened for having spent nine hours with the proletariat over the last few days. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect. I’m not travelling again until I can afford to do it in the lounge car of the Palmetto Express.
posted by Daniel | 11:14 AM
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