Riding the Bus is... Interesting?

Picture from LBTransit.com

Have you ever relied on public transportation? It's pretty efficient for how many people need to use it to get to work, school, or wherever they need to be. Long Beach Transit covers a lot of ground, from downtown to Belmont Shore, and beyond.

Each ride is $1.25, only 20 cents more than the cost of freedom. A day pass will cost you $4.00, and you can ride all over Long Beach. The Passport busses are free to ride the downtown area. For students with a CSULB ID card, vagrants who have stumbled across one, or deadbeats who dropped out of school eight years ago but kept their card, the bus fare is scratched during the school year.



Look at these excited bus riders.



If you have some time to kill, need an idea for a story, or just want some human interaction, hop on the bus and go for a ride. Be careful of the human interaction, though. There are a lot of weird people on the bus, so it helps to have a set of headphones with you, even if you don't have a music player. This way, you look preoccupied and cut off from the rest of society.

Some of the strange things witnessed on busses include a man with four garbage bags looking like The Fisher King, a narcoleptic man with bleached hair falling asleep on people until they move, and old men striking up conversations with women who have cuts on their wrists. Weird.