The Haight 71

The hipsters, skinny legs wrapped in black denim, bounced off at Fillmore. A skinny guy, like a scarecrow, cradled his skateboard and stared at his feet. Checkered Chucks, black and white.

A big guy lumbered down the aisle. He squeezed past a bald Chinese lady squawking into her phone.

Scarecrow got off at Gough, the last street before the wide Market thoroughfare. A few more passengers lumbered on. A mass of gray hair curled through a purple beanie caked with brown grime. A man limped past the coin box with a cane, his low monologue a series of epithets. A Mexican clutched a bunch of roses, his body pressed against a woman and her chocolate-dusted girl. Mud streaked the floors. Boots and sneakers and loafers jostled for position, a dance of move on back, 'cuseme, nononothere and make room now, make room.

The bus alternated between the clean Pacific air and the fetidity of cracked souls. The mist fuzzed the windows. The bright neon of peekaboo nude shows blurred against the orange glow of wine bars and taquerias.

The bus curtsied for the man in black. His black face scrunched under a wide brimmed black hat; his shoulders poked through the black bomber jacket and his legs were covered by a black blanket draped across his black wheelchair.

7th street: the bus emptied of the unwanted, the forgotten, the lost souls. The Tenderloin was a few blocks north, with its soup kitchens and welfare offices. SOMA was a few steps south, the city's no man's land, where cops won't bother to shake people off from their sidewalk beds. And of course, this part of Market St. was safe haven. The shiny arcades of the middle class won't start for another three blocks. Here, storefronts with shuttered curtains offered no surfaces to reflect what many passengers had pushed out of their minds, just as they had been pushed towards their destinations today.

I got off at 1st. The bus heaved and exhaled and rolled on, a cocoon of arrivals and departures.