Hello, World!: The Magic “City Bus” Part I
So what exactly does happen to the kids after the “Magic School Bus”? After their grand adventures in their youth, how do they get around? I guess they commute! And they have regular lives like us all. While in my own world, I feel like I have just joined Ms. Fizzle and her class as I travel my own “magic” bus. The magic bus of my heart, ordinarily known as the Metro — neon tangerine, exhaling breaths of smog, plastered in advertisement — is the farthest thing from magical to most. However, in times of self-exploration (actually . . . more as in times- of-not-being-to-afford-anything-but-the-bus), I’ve collected my own stories and adventures to tell. I’ve met all walks and talks of life, from those as young as a bean sprout to those with time tattooed in the form of wrinkles. I’ve stared out of the same window in eras of incredible heartbreak, love, joy, and confusion. And most importantly, I’ve grown from being an timid child to an adult, still figuring her way through society and itching out of her comfort zone with each fifty cent transfer.
What public transportation does for people is something unique, and if anything, underrated. There is something to be said about the unification of people in such a short amount of time. Most don’t speak the same language and most aren’t traveling the same destination; most aren’t similar at all. And yet there is still a warming perfume that travels through the air, as the bus driver nods me inside, and as smiles exchange from one experienced commuter to another.
Public transportation is more than an individual economic decision.
It is more than the “analog” way of traveling. It is more than its stereotype of clustering only minorities and lower-class citizens. It is more than that annoying orange rectangle that blocks your right turn in the bike lane (for an excruciating two second stop).
Although very young and naive, fragile and unprotected, lost and optimistic, I have seen my own magic within my Los Angeles city travels. Through a series of bus tales and conversations, Jane the Virgin references, and clever attempts of attacking what I call the “Uber Generation”, this blog will serve as not only an educational platform but as an expose on an undermined culture. The Transit-Traveling Culture.
I always wanted to travel the Magic School Bus and stretch out my arms and legs to the sky of imagination. Where would I go? Who would I see? And yet, never did I think that my Magic School Bus would come at twenty years old, in the heart of a transfixing city. As Jonathan Gold best puts it, it is a city of
“multiple cultures . . . that come together in this beautiful and haphazard fashion. And the fault lines between them are sometimes where you can find the most beautiful things.”
I could not think a greater element of Los Angeles that embodies this statement more than The Transit-Traveling culture. The “system” has its great flaws, like the rest of this damaged but healing city, however we are the generation of magic. Right? We grew up on these hopes and dreams and imagination, and I believe that together we will bring society a bit closer and a bit smaller . . . the future is just a dollar and seventy five cents away!
