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- A white man with a brown ponytail, clean, with white Beats headphones, staring ahead, phone held, but off.
- An asian woman dressed somewhere between business casual and relaxed has a Lenovo Thinkpad on her laptop, open to the default Windows desktop complete with large icons and the default wallpaper. She is on her phone instead.
- A young white man rushed off the train after South San Francisco was called
- A white teenage boy with sunglasses, Apple headphones and a wide-striped green and white long-sleeve polo has finally moved out of the disabled priority seating
- In Daly City, a black man with a large black backpack has brought a guitar and blaring rock music onto the train. He sits in the disabled priority seating.
- An Indian man with a round face and Apple earbuds watches a video horizontally on his phone
07:27 - BART southbound past 16th Street Mission
- A large woman of hispanic descent stands holding a hanging strap, a large Adidas backpack over her shoulder. As the train lurches forward following a false stop, she storms to the front of the train
- A large man with a fade and short hair tied back in a low ponytail has stood up and awaits near the exit. He has a maroon-colored bbackpack, a black sweater and baggy grey slacks
- A man in a tailored suit, with a leather designer briefcase and medium length hair covered in product sits in the front single-seat. He makes slow, effeminate motions with his left-hand through his hair. He has a ring. He has grey earphones.
- Behind the man in the suit is a sleeping white man in excercise apparel-- grey nikes, running pants, and a black hoodie. He has a true fade haircut, stylized with a line near the temple and a mullet in the back. He has scraggly hair along a wide patch of the side of his face.
- A figure in a flannel hoodie and thick coat is slumped in a seat facing my own.
2059 BART northbound from Millbrae
- The train is dramatically different at this time of night. Upon entering the train, there was only one figure draped in hoodies huddled in the back corner.
- A woman is sitting in the front facing seat now with grey pajama pants containing geometric shapes atop them. She is smiling with her fingers curled in an om. She browses her phone--social media of some form. She has a pair of white headphones one
- A middle-aged white man has entered the train in a hurry. He is in rather academic formal-wear and is clearly anxious about something. He has sat down with his phone between his legs, head down. He has glasses and has been making movements with his jaw. His coat is grey, his shirt a pinstriped blue, his focus totally straight. I feel as though he has done something very bad or someone has done something very bad to him
- An overweight, balding white man in a red jacket entered the train. THe man has speckled grey, black hair--looking to be about 40 years old. His head is bowed, piety to the smartphone.
16th Street Mission, the atmosphere is so incredibly different.
- People slump down violently in the seats now as they sit down. A (presumably) female human sat down ahead of me.
- The mouse-y man who had previously boarded the train in a hurry, disembarked in an equally rapid manner. He stood up abruptly and stood impatiently before the door, between arguing lovers, waiting for the opening bell. After which he bolted-- Powell Station
- Before me sits flannel, before me stands flannel. Conversations both drunkenly and soberly impolite take place. Phones still drawn-- bikes held loosely
- A large middle aged woman with died hair worn in an alternative style exits after adjusting her hair in the reflection of the door. She has a metal-square stylized belt.She sucks each of her fingers to get the grease of chips she was eating.
- As this woman exited, a younger woman exited, also wearing a short haircut, but darker. She has multiple earrings on both ear and an all-black outfit.
- At this station, a rotund man, with a getup reminiscent of the Blue Meanies of the Yellow Submarine entered. He is wearing a white cabby hat and is staring at his phone.
- The train is rather empty. There is a bike leaning against the rail and a Filipino woman holding an album of some kind against her chest as she looks at her phone. She has a puffy black jacket and heavy makeup that does not hide the look of exhaustion on her face. She has blond highlighted hair
- A large man, 20-or-so, in a thick black hoodie, ripped up exits. He has curly black hair and a thick beard and carries a backpack
- There is an advertisement for 96.5 KOIT the easy-listening channel with a photo of Bruno Mars. #FeelGood at work. The advertisement on the reverse side of the car is an ad for FarmerBrown SFO, a restaurant at the airport.
- The Filipino woman has exited the train, now this side of the train is only occupied by myself and a man with a messenger bag in his lap, a raincoat, sunglasses, and Apple earbuds. His head is bowed in engagement with his his phone. He wears a type of pants common with engineers seeking hipness. Despite this, his shoes are more formal than the rest of his attire.
- A well-dressed man with a red tie, bushy hair and a long-trimmed beard props himself up with his arm on the window sill. He is rotund, dark skinned an having taken up both seats, eats out of a lunchbox for the first half of the ride.
- A young asian man in a ballcap and fashionable orange jacket entered at 24th and Mission. He is carrying a phone and wearing an authentic smirk.
- A white man in his 30, beard and a semi-casual button down slipped an in-flight-size bottle of vodka from his backpack out and sent it down the hatch.
- This is the worst the BART has ever smelled in my experience. A very smelly dog and master has joined the nightride
- A man wearing a leather top hat and carrying several plastic bags and a huge backpack entered at San Bruno. On his shoulder is a tiny black kitten with a pirate hat tied to its head. The kitten looks horrified and keeps trying to run away. the man is reading a comic book.
- A dance crew made up of two 20-something black men and a middle-aged Asian man entered the BART at Embarcadero. The two black dancers did some elaborate gymnastics with the handles. The Asian guy did some footwork to Michael Jackson's "Annie." He was visibly upset when they turned off the music to exit at West Oakland.
- A blond woman has two iPhones out. One is playing a Netflix drama in her left hand, the right one is on iMessage where she is furiously thumb-tapping. She exits with both phones intact at Oakland City Center
- An Asian woman with a dyed-grey ponytail and tortoise-shell glasses is typing and retyping an apology to one Antonio who she seems to have flaked on over the weekend.
A young Asian woman with dyed hair, glasses, and enamel pins on her Facebook backpack jumped through the closing doors of the train just in time. She has earned a Bay Area gold star
Bay Area Gold Star:
- Jump into the BART as the doors are closing
- Consume an edible at Dolores Park
- Install a cistern
- Own wine from a burned-down winery
- Purchase a smart security camera
- Have owned a car with a Santa Cruz Mystery Spot sticker
- Die in an earthquake
Cincinnati Gold Star
- Throw up in the bath room of the Skyline on Ludlow
- Get your bike stuck in the street car tracks
- Fall on black ice once a year
- Make a homemade goetta
- Die in a Reds parade
- The BART is pretty full, passing by Civic Center. About 40% of the riders have on masks of varying quality. The wildfires that have engulfed the area with smoke have certainly made mask sellers some cash.
- A beautiful blond woman entered the train with a fashionable black coat and scarf and the cliche French knit hats. She took several shy looks around the car before sitting next to a woman with purple-dyed hair.
- The woman has short purple-died hair and she is looking at her phone with her right had while her left hand, containing a ring on the middle finger, grabs and pulls through her hair. Her neck is thick, her coat is navy.
- A lighter-skinned young black man wears an all-black suit and a fashionable black overcoat and a black-plaid scarf. He has wired earbuds that connect to the iPhone he has in hand. He has a simple North Face backpack. The man's hip facialhair-- a modern mutton chop popularized by athletes is accentuated by his tongue which moves a toothpick around the inside of his mouth, occasionally pooping it out as he focuses on the iPhone.
- West Oakland station has passed by. The white man with a greasy ponytail, slicky pants and a white t-shirt has gotten off, carrying a large bag full of big boxes of Legos. Pre-Black Friday?
- The motions of the day are surprisingly unaffected by the smoke, very visible and clearly toxic.
- A woman in purple has picked up her phone, talking in Tagalog. She has a stocky figure, her light voice is droned out easily by the black female conductor's voice announcing 12th Street City Center.
- The facemask scene is pretty fun. On the first few days it was mostly hospital masks. However by today the air quality dipped into hazardous so a lot more people bought serious masks. There's smooth black velvet masks and masks with actual circular plastic filters. I saw someone with a full on, double-tank painting mask coming down the steps at the BART station. I haven't seen any fashion masks and I wish I knew where my cheetah-and-Apple-logo-print facemask from Vietnam went
- It's only dripping rain in the Castro District. After I made my way, hungry, past Mission Dolores streets of night vending, I admired the strung lights on buildings and illuminated interiors of apartment homes whose rent must be higher than my net worth.
- The Castro is one neighborhood that seems to truly evoke the style of the ever-fashionable homosexual male. I feel substantially underdressed and my facial hair is almost sacrilegiously unstyled.
- The Castro Theatre, the destination of my after-work trip, is breathtaking. Low-lit, gilt walls of decadant and Hellenistic architecture supporting what could be an enormous up-turned flower, with the with a white geometric pistil as the chandelier. The theatre is half-full of talkative, middle-aged couples and groups. A rare cell-phone can be seen in the center aisles. And then, only among those who are alone.
- A substantial line obstructing the entrance to the theatre. A popcorn popper of comical proportions-- size enough for one of the money-wind-tunnels.
- A woman is watching anime on her laptop in the front row of seats. She has over-the-ear wireless headphones, but I can still make out the elements of the OST from across the aisle.
- An older black man walks back through the train. He is carrying his backpack and a small Beats loudspeaker in his hand and the song "The Beautiful People" by Marilyn Manson emanates. He has sat down in the back of the train and the music has shuffled onto a similar goth rock/metal artist.
- A young man of an Indian complexion looks skeptically back at the ad-hoc DJ and puts biking gloves on. He scrolls through a newsfeed of some kind. He has high, curly black hair and a thin puffy jacket. He puts on a glossy purple motorcycle helmet. He has skinny black jeans and well-worn white sneakers. His backpack has a reflective red stripe.
- A white man with baggy grey khaki pants and black Nike shoes and a black hoodie. Balding, with a mid-2010s Windows 7 laptop. He keeps his SD cards in a Tic-Tac case. I think this deserves another Bay Area gold star.
- It's a new BART today
- A man with green spiked hair, a septum piercing and a bit of hefty fat has boarded wearing a pink Mac Plus hoodie. He now stands next to a rather plain and overweight girl and is discussing something with great emotion, often slipping when he waves his hand and quickly grabs the strap again.