“I din’ know you drive up this far,” said a woman who usually rides my 7 only when deep within the bowels of the Valley. We were downtown.
“Yup. It’s my route.”
“He likes the 7,” a passenger nearby explained. “You go to the hood, then go downtown! Go to the hood, go downtown! Go to the hood–”
“Ha!”
“He loves it!”
“You know what though?” I asked.
“Uh.”
“Some of the friendliest people are on this route. Yeah.”
“Even though it’s tha hood?”
“This route has some of the friendliest people on it.”
It was just a statement of truth on my part, but he heard that and more. It was music. In a singsong voice he began improvising, rhythm sneaking in unawares.
“It’s the baddest hood, but it got the friendliest people. It’s the baddest hood, but the friendliest people. The baddest,”
“Some of my favorite people are on this!” I exclaimed.
He was the backing vocal to our spoken-word poem. An older gentleman with a beret. I imagined him on a stoop on Sunday afternoon, tapping his knee to keep time as he did now, making music on the porch with friends.
“The baddest hood, the friendliest,”
“I don’t know how it works!”
“Friendliest people. The baddest,”
“But I keep comin’ back!”
“Friendliest,”
“I can’t help myself!”
“The baddest hood, the friendliest,”
“It’s a crazy world we live in!”
“Nice,” a nearby resident passenger grinned. I just hope they knew I meant every word.
Nathan Vass is an artist, filmmaker, photographer, and author by day, and a Metro bus driver by night, where his community-building work has been showcased on TED, NPR, The Seattle Times, KING 5 and landed him a spot on Seattle Magazine’s 2018 list of the 35 Most Influential People in Seattle. He has shown in over forty photography shows is also the director of nine films, six of which have shown at festivals, and one of which premiered at Henry Art Gallery. His book, The Lines That Make Us, is a Seattle bestseller and 2019 WA State Book Awards finalist.