The First Time
Back when I lived in a city state with public transportation, I amused myself (in an indulgent way) watching the tourists try to work public transportation for the first time.
I would always think back to my first time. It was downright scary, I remember, not knowing where everything goes and what the rules are and where you’re supposed to go and all the while still trying to look cool or–at the very least, for reasons of safety–to look as if this weren’t your first time.
In some ways, the sight of someone using public transportation for the first time (the second time gets easier, as most public transportation systems work roughly the same) is a sweet reminder of how innocent we all once were.
Until I read Mary Ann Akers’ description of Trent Lott’s first time.
"I took the Metro for the first time," Lott told the Sleuth Thursday afternoon in the makeup room of MSNBC, where he and his new lobbying partner, former Sen. John Breaux (D-La.), were fixin (as Lott says) to do a TV segment.
"He’s been standing in front of his house waiting for his car and driver," laughed Breaux from the makeup chair, adding with a tinge of a low-country twang, "He’s learning how to hail a cab." (Read: HAY-ul a cab.)
Life in the private sector isn’t as cushy as Lott thought it would be. No more free lunches, no more taxpayer-funded car and driver, no more overprotective press secretary guarding him from the pesky media.
Lott says he doesn’t drive. He doesn’t own a car. Usually, he walks. One day, he says, he walked the 30 or so blocks from his downtown office on 14th Street Northwest to his home in Southeast Washington on Capitol Hill.
Lott took his first Metro ride ever last weekend, when thousands of tourists were in town enjoying the annual Cherry Blossom Festival. Could there be a more perfect time for a prima donna first-time rider?
"I stood up the whole time," Lott said, smiling, as if he enjoyed it.
Lott really had no idea how to even go about taking public transportation. He didn’t know how to use the Metro fare card machines, or how much money to put on his trip ticket, or how to add money to one of the fare cards his wife gave him. Truly: clueless.
It was disturbing enough to have to think about the fact that even Trent Lott would have a first time. That wrinkled old segregationist, indulging in his first time at such an advanced age.
But mostly it’s the thought that someone can get through a long life as a public servant without, yet, having had a first time. How can a politician imagine he understands the average American without, ever, living the same commute they live? And for the matter, public transportation is such a celebration of human diversity interacting reasonably harmoniously in tight spaces. How can someone expect to legislate successfully without having every enjoyed such a celebration?
I bet it was a shock to him, too.
To get snarky, it was probably a shock to find out that minorities don’t ride in the back any more. And that being a white man doesn’t guarantee you a seat, even if you have grey hair.
(I usually wonder how people think they can run systems that they themselves never use.)
Dirty foul mouthed blogger! Telling such pseudo-sexual virgin stories like that…..
Doesn’t drive? Is that like doesn’t clean the toilets? Who is this person?
Actually there are two categories of late or non-drivers in America. I think you might have nailed Lott’s. I, of course, didn’t learn until I was past 30; see mine above. That’s the other category, and believe me, we’re different.
(As I recall, the actor Michael Imperioli, of White Plains or some such where, learned only when he needed to for scenes in his character on The Sopranos.)
Mine’s the opposite. (Southern California) I was fortunate to have my daughter with me when I went to NYC and Europe a couple of years ago. She’s great with directions and fearless! It was really fun, but without her I would have been freaked.
Actually, I suspect one of my mothers’ first times (if not THE first) was when she came to visit me in Paris. I had forgotten that you couldn’t get a ticket at the airport. So I made her–with her big bag, right off a red eye–jump the turnstile and ride illegally.
Pretty cool, my mother. Or at least game.
Ah. She acknowledged you!
(Or maybe the lack of alternatives.)
I jumped the turnstile in Paris too. Not by choice, but I was cutting it really close to get to the airport on time and I couldn’t find a machine or person to buy a ticket from. As it turned out, I was so late getting to the airport they gave away my coach seat and had to seat me in business class. Oh mon Dieu, I still have the full set of Air France stainless flatware.
Ahhh, memories of student life in Europe. In Germany, many public transit systems work on the honour system, whether bus or metro, and no turnstiles to jump as long as you bought a ticket or pass. I recall some of my poor student colleagues becoming expert at riding without paying (staying near the exit and getting off every two or three stops was best). Riding without a ticket exposed you to the dreaded charge of “Schwarzfahren”. Some cities used to have undercover inspectors without a uniform flash a badge and ask to see your ticket, and we used to try and pick out the “ticket narcs” to pass the time – but these have been replaced with transit cops in blue and green uniforms, who will issue a ticket for 40 euros – my friends in Germany tell me the first two or three can be ignored before it catches up with you, but it is considered highly embarrassing to be nicked for Schwarzfahren.
The reason I knew all about jumping turnstiles is because I took a class in one of the University of Paris locations right at the end of the line. After class, we’d all go back to the metro, and about 100 students would jump the turnstiles together. I felt very square paying, actually. That’s probably why I made my mom jump the turnstiles, eventually.
The NY subway is admittedly rather hallucinogenic at first, even to someone who grew up in Chicago and was quite used to the subway/El/bus system there. (The most overprotective of Chi mothers is apt to let her 10 or 11 year old daughter travel them alone during the day, or was back in the 60s.)
I vividly recall an odyssey through Times Square and Penn Station, where IRT, IND, BMT, Flushing, etc., etc., meet, with a classmate, Nov of our freshman year, returning full of turkey and yams from a Thanksgiving dinner out on Long Island. But it’s how to learn your way around.
My militantly urban soul will never understand how it is possible to avoid the fascinating rhythms of a subway car for so long in one’s life —doesn’t a person miss something, even not knowing what it is?— but it does explain a lot (ahem) doesn’t it?
At least before he took the plunge he walked through the city, from NW to SE no less, a route that might also shake some of that Village off a pair of old eyes, if I remember my DC geography correctly.
They should all have to ride the Metro. All these government cars and drivers only serve to reinforce the disconnect between legislators and real life. Let them have a body guard but make them pay for it out of their office budget.
He stood the whole time because no one on the Metro ever gives up their seat. Not for pregnant women, not the elderly, not even royalty like Lott. They will avoid eye contact like Mormons in a saloon, or pretend to be sleeping, so they won’t have to acknowledge there are people standing.
I would tell my story about seeing Fitz riding the El, except it’s really boring.
And by the way, if Lott moved to Illinois, seniors ride free. Thanks to Blagojevich (enjoy your freedom while it lasts, dude) throwing big bushelfuls of money at people who haven’t asked for it and don’t need it. I might even offer him my seat, after I stuck my gum on it.
Just how might Mr. Lott have responsibly legislated on public transportation funding or tax treatment? And many billions in subsidies does that involve every year?
Your post brings to mind an hilarious anecdote. A decade or so ago I was assisting one of my clients in buying and contract-managing a highly specialized computer system from a vendor located on the Florida Space Coast – the Melbourne area to be exact. Another project underway at the same vendor’s facility was for a company in South Korea. One evening the vendor had taken the Koreans out to dinner, and when they were finished, instead of riding back to their hotel with the vendor’s salesman, the Koreans said they would get back on their own. Hours later one of the vendor’s out of town personnel who was staying at the same hotel saw the tired, bedraggled Koreans finally arriving. He asked where they had been and they said “out to dinner” and they walked home because the subway wasn’t running. That perplexed him, to say the least, because he knew there was no subway service in the Melbourne area, and in fact hardly any public transportation. So he asked some more questions and finally learned that they’d seen a “Subway” sign at a fast food restaurant and mistook it for a “Subway” sign a la New York! They’d had to walk about five miles back to their hotel!
That’s a riot~!
To be fair to Ol’ Trent, Mississippi apparently has not a single rail-based transit agency in the whole state.
On the other hand, considering that Trent has been on Capitol Hill longer than the Metro has been running underneath DC [pdf], my first point seems a bit weak.
Good for your mom, EW! (When I retire, I plan to learn this system of travel once and for all.) I’m hoping we’ll be getting more than The Coaster, Amtrak and the Trolley around here soon.
Lott’s cluelessness makes me think of the stories about Bush the Elder, when he supposedly was amazed to learn about supermarket scanner machines, and about Bush the Lesser recently, when he was surprised to learn how expensive gasoline was.
The Repubs are always nattering on about reducing government spending. Let’s start by taking away their cars and drivers.
And with a car & driver, they fail to notice that gasoline is now $4+/gallon.
When we lived in the SF Bay area, Mrs Peterr used to take a ferry across the Bay, then a streetcar/train (not cable car) across the city to get to work. From an early age, my little one loved to take the ferry, the SF Muni trains, and BART to get around.
We moved to KC — back to KC for Mrs Peterr and myself, but for the first time for the little one. When he started kindergarten, he was so pleased that he was big enough to Ride The School Bus All By Himself. The rest of his kindergarten classmates, OTOH, were more scared and/or nervous. We soon realized it was because he was the only one who had ever had regular experience with public transit.
Meanwhile, we have parents sending their kids out on the NYC Subway system at nine years old:
http://www.becausemomsaidso.co…..ld-on.html
I think the only time I was thrown by a transit system was visiting Boston – paying when I got off was … weird. Every place else I’ve ridden mass transit, it was pay when (or before) you got on. *(Learned to drive at 30, in LA. Color me weird, too.)
Metrolink in SoCal has some ticket machines that can be confusing to the newbies: they also handle Amtrak, and picking the wrong button results in the computer wanting to know what tiem you want to come back. Choosing Metrolink-only doesn’t do that to you. (And the first of its new locomotives arrived last week. Sleek and shiny, hasn’t gone into service yet.)
Boston’s is the MTA, yes? Or was? I’m remembering the Kingston Trio song about Charlie, who got on but then could never afford to get off. “He’s the man who never returned.”
The older part of our subway (Toronto) is sterile and boring, but the design of the stations along the Spadina line was handed over to artists, each of whom got to do one, and some of them are quite splendid. If only the damn thing went somewhere. (I came here after a year riding the Tube in London, and I couldn’t understand why everything was designed along such straight lines. Straight lines bad; criss-crosses good.)
You guys are making me kind of shy about ever going to Washington, though. I just know I’d be a touron.
Yeah, well, I don’t know about all this here East Coast Urban bigotry y’all got goin here. Heh, I got to admit I no ridee de subway and have no clue what the going rate on a gallon of milk is (Corona on sale for $5.29 a 6pk though). But they are building the first rail passenger thingy ever here currently. All I know is the damn thing is seriously screwing up some critical roads that I have spent the entirety of my life driving on unfettered. Totally annoying…..
Check Costco.
At least you know the important stuff down there in AZ.
Now bmaz, driving in Phoenix was hardly unfettered before the light rail construction started. People said the samething about the Sacramento light rail but it has been very successful. Give it time.
The ridership on the light rail from downtown Minneapolis to the airport and thence to the Mega Mall (aka Ventura’s Folly when he first proposed it) is running way way over the initial estimates. First year it was something like 60% over.
Corona is alright … do you get Patagonia in AZ ? It’s Argentinian.
Frightening first ride was in London’s Metro … got on at Trafalgar and ended up in New Delhi (or so it seemed) …
Disclaimer: I’m Indian, despite my moniker …
I like your Corona prices; it’s closer to $8.00 around here.
Well, a six pack of Corona in my corner of the Great White North will set you back about $13 in our now roughly par currency, or more than twice what you are paying, which is how we afford health care up here! Sometimes they will give you a free lime with it though.
In fairness, it was a startlingly god sale price; normally $6.59 I think. Jeebus, isn’t worth $13.00! How much is Moosehead? Kind of always liked that too.
Oops, was a good sale price; god probably not involved.
God would never get involved in Mexican beer. U.K. beer, now that’s another story. You guys need to try Fuller’s ESB. You just can’t beat a beer from a brewery that’s been in business since they got rid of Oliver Cromwell.
My first experience with the NYC subway was while taking Amtrak from Washington to Conneticut and I had to go from Penn Station to Grand Central. I was standing and looking at all the different choices of routes on the subway not sure which one to go on and an older gentleman came up and asked if I needed help. He traveled with me on the cars to Grand Central. Turned out he was a transportation engineer who had made the study of the NYC system his passion. Had a great chat on the way to Grand Central, talked about the need for more rail service, the new light rail system in Sacramento, and other rail related stuff.
If only Lott had tried to take food onto the metro. Remember that young girl who was arrested and booked for eating a French fry on the escalator? In Chicago, of course, the floors of all the cars are littered with chicken bones and Snapple bottles.
She should have had a Freedom Fry.
With that headline, I thought EW was getting racy! I’m glad you didn’t tell us that your first time was on the subway.
Minnesotachuck — hilarious story!
It is amazing just how out of touch so many of the politicans are.
Thanks for the fun post EW — you never disappoint…
when mr. posaune enlisted in grad math school (nyc), the first assignment was to ride the all the subway lines, switching in numerical, then alphabetical order– on one fare. he passed.
Adults here ride for $1 a trip. Students for 50 cents. All free on “ozone action days”. Those rates are going up soon.
Bus only, but we’re getting light rail some time.
my first time public transit experience:
i was 4.
it was 1954 in montgomery, alabama.
mom’d got in my face:
DO NOT GO NEAR THE BUS STOPS!
but i had an unsupervised four-block roaming radius.
so i HAD to check out what was up with these bus stops.
there was no one there.
as i was inspecting the bus stop lay out,
a bus came,
and stopped
for me.
the doors opened into world i did not know.
driver could tell the barefoot pre-schooler had no fare and drove off.
what did i know?
mlk would be proud.
i had boycotted.
(as if i knew.)
wasn’t even dangerous, mom.
a different history than trent lott.
His wife should sew a dime in his
brahoodundershorts and pin a note to him – “If lost, please return to The Breaux-Lott Leadership Group, 607 14th Street NW. 202-239-4747. Or leave on K Street with his friends.”.Lott remembers the first time he and McCain took their horse and carriage to the Senate. The gas lights were just being lit.
Ah, the NYC subway – we used to tell our moms we were going to the movies (Keiths – pronounced the Keets – in Flushing, but really went straight to Greenwich Village – could have gone missing a million times over, they’d never have known); drunks puking their false teeth out; hands all over you on the Lex Ave downtown to Wall Street (the Zoo train); 120 degrees in the summer. What’s not to love?
Lott’s a big, weak baby.
OT — just a passing thought: did the stuff get leaked about the torture deliberations with high level principals specifically because they want to force the issue of executive privilege in such deliberations?
Is that why Ashcroft asked why they were having the discussion in the White House — because he understood how they were trying to shield the discussion?
For you broadbanders, check out this Google Earth/Discovery video on London’s Tube. A clean, well-lighted place!
I like the DC Metro, if for no other reason than that they strictly enforce the “no eating” rule on the train cars. That’s a big reason why, aside from Lott, vermin are noticeably absent from the Metro.
Tourists on the Metro are the bane of my existence. I’m one of those people who growl at people clogging the Metro exits. Patience is not one of my virtues.
Completely OT, but did you see this? http://tinyurl.com/5flu7z
By marked contrast, my wife and a friend went to a Paul Simon concert last night at Brooklyn Academy of Music. David Byrne was a special guest star.
After the show, Mrs Ralphbon was standing in front of the concert hall when Byrne came out, unlocked his bicycle, and pedaled off (presumably to Manhattan via one of the bridges).
Mukasey’s statement yesterday that the 4th Amendment applied “across the board,” in wartime or peacetime, means that Bush can’t Order the Military to set-up Checkpoints and Randomly Search Citizens here in the United States.
So, Bush can’t pull a Musharraf on US…
OT How is Mukasey’s declaring that Bush can’t Unreasonably – without probable cause – use the Military to Search Citizens in the US – How is that any different than declaring the ‘Suspicion-based Searches’ of The Program were Unreasonable?
Isn’t the AG saying that not only are Random Domestic Military Searches of Citizens Wrong Now, They Were Never Right To Begin With?
I had the impression in context that Mukasey’s statement about the Fourth Amendment may have been couched in terms of US military operations inside the US. I’m not sure he answered Feinstein’s question about whether it was his position that the Fourth Amendment could go to sleep during such operations. It seemed to me that his “not operative” answer could be interpreted either way. He’s far better at precision of language than AGAG ever was — let us listen carefully whenever he speaks and parse, parse away.
Side thought — One can’t help wondering whether folks should be able to send follow-up questions in to staffers during hearings, perhaps by IM or chat or IRC. The Congresscritters themselves leave the obvious issues dangling far too often.
Agree on his parsing. And the press seems to be reporting it in variable fashion,too.
When we lived in D.C. there was a “term” for tourists, touron, which is a hybrid of tourists and moron.
Just an FYI for Mr. Lott. he could have gone online, pre-purchased his pass and even printed out a trip-tic in order to “know” where he was going and when he need to switch lines.
Mr. Lott go here:
http://www.wmata.com/
And that GOP Blackberry could also work for him as a mobile trip-tic…
http://www.wmata.com/mobileblurb/default.cfm#train
Well, there’s a first time for everyone…
Riding the bus is the closest I come in my life to populism. Unfortunately Metro is putting too much money into expanding the light rail and the bus is getting more and more expensive.
Light rail to the Mega Mall! Genius!
I got to ride the Washington subway to the airport. It was very clean and everyone on it seemed to be a government employee.
In Stockholm you get a picture of yourself snapped in the station, go to Pressbyran, get the laminated plastic holder with your picture and the little holder for the monatskort, buy the monatskort, slip it into your holder, and — zoom — you are off! Down one rabbit hole, pop out half the city away, walk through a park, go down another, exit at the far end of the system, walk onto a boat, go out to the islands, have lunch, back to the boat, take a bus, hop off, walk, down into the rabbit hole again, on and on and on. Flat fee for a month covers everything that moves in the city, pretty much (except taxis, I guess, but who needs those?); even some of the trains out of the city into the countryside are covered by the card.
Gosh. That sounds like … civilization. Can we have some?
I really enjoyed reading that, btf.
If you like the engineering aspects of subways, the Stockholm subway system will make your eyes pop. Not just the murals and inlaid mosaics, the display cases of imaginary insects, but that heart-dropping sight of three levels on l-o-n-g escalators stretching down through the granite so far that they narrow from perspective in the distance. Trains every ten minutes, usually, buses every fifteen. Combining walking through old, old streets, crossing over rocky spines on staircases or underneath them through tunnels, teleporting using the subway, or lazing along on the bus, you can ricochet back and forth across Stockholm and the surrounding towns like a photon in a hall of mirrors. It’s not uncommon to beat a car point-to-point in the city by using the subway, even with a transfer or two. Heck, even lawyers use them to save time.
Stockholm sounds a lot like London that way, just a little less Steampunk and a little more Tomorrowland.
woo hoo
freepatriot is back in the innertubes
I’m cruzin a new compaq notebook (still a kamakazi pilot though)
I gotta go to work right now, but I’ll be back later to talk n stuff
oh, and about my first time on the bus: I was 10. I had to get to my judo class at the YMCA. I paid my fare (35 cents IIRC) and I got a seat. Made it to the Y okay, and never really gave it much thought
how old did you say trent lott was ???
I must be a whole lot smarter than this dolt, huh ???
Been wondering where you were; thanks again for Dan Haren!
I been gone a while …
is it still okay to say “BITE ME” around here ???
I hope Haren serves up the gopher ball that costs you guys the last playoff spot this year, and next year too …
(wink)
Welcome back!
Love your story…
I road the bus for the first time at age 3.5. Tried out my almost four year old version of Petula Clark’s Downtown during the entire ride (those poor passengers). Said hello to every single rider, introduced myself and asked them how their day was going. Told everyone I met to have a great day.In retrospect, not surprised EVERYONE waved good-bye to me as I departed the bus… Poor folks.
Lott sings. Where was his version of Downtown?
Skdadl at 53: Toronto’s train system rocks. Above ground streetcars for the local stuff, underground rail to go further out. If I remember correctly though, no train to the airport. Had to take a bus.
WO at 57: God might not have been involved in Mexican beer, but the Germans were. Corona and Sol are so-so, but the Pacifico, Victoria and Negro Modelo you get south of the border are excellent, and comparatively very cheap…
The Pacifico down there sure seems better than that I buy here in Phx. though. The drones must be zapping it with beer death rays as it crosses the border or something…
Yeah what the heck is that about? My
gffiancé had been dying to go tour the brewery in Tecate, so maybe I’ll ask them!Congratulations.
You gots to buy the farm sooner or later. This one sounds like a keeper. Get on with it before she wises up!
Thanks fellas. She is for sure, a keeper. What else can you say about a girl who is dying to go tour a brewery?
In other news, Did anyone see this interesting article on Philly street money in the PA primary?
http://www.latimes.com/news/po…..3901.story
We have saved some of our streetcars but not enough. Some of us are trying to get them back. The streetcars are groovy.
The streetcars were cool… I felt like I was in some old-school European city…
I thought you were on the west coast … our streetcars are groovy and the 3 levels of Gov’t would have completed both of our transit lines, had China not stolen the 2008 Olympics from Toronto …
Hopefully the green lobby will become stronger than the auto lobby and we can get them done.
Me? Left coast? Who can afford that? I love Vancouver and spent an, um, interesting year there a long time ago, but if there is anywhere in Canada that is riding an economic bubble right now, it’s them, and I feel sorry for them. Their house prices are almost British. It’s absurd (the British are absurd too).
Dunno that I would have been all that keen on having the Olympics here. We’re getting unpleasant news about “continental” security preparations for the Vancouver/Whistler winter games in 2010. These things just seem to bring out the bullies, I always fear.
With due respect to the English and German Beer lobbies, you haven’t had real Beer until you’ve experienced Leffe and Chimay (Belgian) … and Bmaz, I believe God (or his loyal followers) was involved in making both … *g*
Question: I’ve been called for Federal jury duty, southern district of california. When they ask, is it ok to tell them I think the DOJ is completely compromised and has no credibility?
/snark
As your lawyer, I advise you to tell the truth! If your luck is like mine, it will be a three month civil case though….
I wrote a diary about this at DKos. About 9 days ago, someone riffed on How to Ride the DC Metro, so I compared how he did with her rules, and added some pretty Creative Commons-licensed photos of the Metro (from Flickr) to boot.
Please come have a laugh there, and offer your advice to Trent Lott for his new life as a Man of the
PeopleLobbyists