The People On The Bus....

It's good to see that the buses that service downtown are still nothing more than rolling asylums and wheeled disease canisters. It seems everyone on the buses careening into the tunnel are scurvy ridden or carrying an undiscovered strain of hepatitis or tuberculosis...or both.

Anyhoo, I decided to take the bus up to Pacific Place yesterday for lunch. Pacific Place always cracks me up because if there was ever a temple built to placate the insatiable high-end consumer needs of the last two bubble economies, Pacific Place would be it. How some of those stores stay in business is kind of beyond me...remember, I'm the guy that recently lost it over $100 jeans.

So, I hop on the first thing smokin' at the International District station, taking a seat far from the hacking, wheezing lunatic section. At the Pioneer Square stop, a semi-good lookin' gal (who ain't talkin' bout love) stepped onto the bus and took the seat across the aisle from me. She was stylishly dressed, mid-20's, and sported a hearing aid...which really has no bearing on this tale. Once the bus started moving, this gal began rummaging through her bag and dug out a Tupperware container. She popped the top off the container, whipped a fork out of her purse, and began tearing into the heap of spaghetti contained within the Tupperware. I mean, she was mowing through it like it was the last meal she was ever going to eat.

Now, I have real issues when it comes to eating in public places that are not restaurants. I don't understand how people can stroll down the street gnawing on a hot dog or pizza or a sandwich. It just seems kind of dirty and gross and wrong to me. Eating on the bus isn't that far off from eating in a Honey Bucket at The Gorge (in George!) after Phish just played a weekend there. Those fiber loving hippies can do some damage to a Honey Bucket. So, imagine my disgust...the gal next to me went from being semi-good looking to a spaghetti and germ slathered pig in seconds.

By the time we got to Westlake Center, which was like 6 minutes from Pioneer Square, the one gal spaghetti feed was over. All that remained was an empty Tupperware container, a spent fork, and a lingering feeling of disdain that followed me all the way to Pacific Place.

Pacific Place was absolutely dead. I think I was one of like 8 people in the place at noon. Maybe there is still some holiday hangover impacting consumer activity...or maybe people finally came to their senses and figured out that they don't need $300 jeans to fill that empty hole in their souls...spaghetti will do just fine.