I was living in Portland, Oregon when I won the FGES contest, but I had moved to Seattle, Washington by the time they arrived (not complaining, Janie!).
I retired in August, and left Seattle on Halloween 2024. My intention is to travel the country in my VW EuroVan camper. I plan to try to take pictures of me wearing the Shorts at interesting and famous places I visit in my journey.
I was hoping to get a picture of me and the Shorts in front of the Seattle skyline, but didn't get good enough weather. So here's a bad fake:
The only way I can take a selfie that shows me wearing the FGES is by putting them on my head. The first time I did, the smell made me pass out, and I bumped my head.
I began to build up my resistance to the FGES by subjecting myself to increasingly longer exposures to the fumes, much like Wesley and the iocaine powder. After a few weeks I was able to tolerate them for up to 10 minutes, long enough to take a selfie.
Keep your dial glued to this blog for more entries in the FGES U.S.A. Tour.
Hey everyone! I have finally updated the Continuing History of the Freakin' Green Elf Shorts to bring it up to the time of this post. I had not updated it since Scarlet last had them. The next two winners of the caption competition (Mistress Borghese and Janie Junebug) are now included, as well as the current winner... me. There is also a bonus photo of past winner Hegre (Angry Chimp) with the Shorts that was discovered by Mr. Inexplicable DeVice while doing research for his outstanding world map of the travels of the FGES (also updated). There is news of the status of our long-lost friend Princess (as of December 2022), who revealed what happened to the original FGES. Enjoy!
As some of you may already know, yours truly has won the Freakin' Green Elf Shorts Caption Contest! I thank Janie Junebug for a hilarious contest, and selecting me the winner. Now I really must get to work updating the Continuing History of the Freakin' Green Elf Shorts! Happy Holidays to all.
My Australian bestie Warny found the above video on YouTube, and
posted it on his Facebook page, with a comment saying that I, his Yank bestie,
live in this city, and he worries about me. It's about 18 minutes long, and
well worth a look. If clicking on the image above doesn't open the link, here is the URL.
It elicited a lot of feelings in me, and I wanted to respond with my
thoughts, but it would have been too long for a Facebook comment or post, so
I'm bringing it here, to my sadly neglected Blogger blog.
I suggest you watch the video first, or the following won't make a lot of
sense. I've included the (approximate) times in the video to correspond to my
comments.
The YouTuber who posted the video, Tyler Oliveira, is not a professional
journalist, but I thought he did a good job with this video. I don't think
there are many professional journalists who would interview homeless drug
addicts right on the streets. And I don't think there are very many homeless
junkies who would talk to a mainstream media journalist. He was respectful with
the people he spoke with and did a decent job of explaining the reasons why
things have gotten so bad in Portland. Tyler was aided in his investigation by
a local life-long Portlander named Kevin Dahlgren, who is a licensed drug and
alcohol counselor and homeless advocate with nearly 30 years of experience (I
checked). More on Kevin later.
For now, let’s get to my comments on the video itself.
0:04 – The first line of
narration from Tyler, and indeed the title of the video, says Portland is the
city where “every drug is legal”. At points throughout the video he seems to
use the terms “decriminalization” and “legalization” and their variants
interchangeably. They are not synonymous. Here’s my take on it. Under
decriminalization, a substance is still illegal, but the penalties for personal
possession of it are reduced, thus not punishing people who have substance
abuse issues with fines and jail time beyond a reasonable amount, if at all.
Usually the worst that will happen is the police will confiscate your drugs.
Legalization means that a formerly illegal substance is made legal. A good example
is marijuana. It is legal in Oregon. Its sale is carefully regulated by the
Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission. It is also taxed.
0:06 – While Tyler lists some
of the ills of the city (“homelessness, drug addiction, crime”) accompanied by
a scary klaxon sound, there are some quick cuts showing a purportedly homeless
man sitting on a sidewalk handrail, a probable fentanyl addict doing “the nod” (when
users become unresponsive and seemingly asleep on their feet while bent forward
at the waist), and what appears to be a bonfire at night in the dry pool
surrounding a statue, while some people move about in the foreground. I’m
pretty sure that the fire scene took place during the protests after the murder
of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, but I can’t be positive. As noted later,
there are a few instances of Tyler using footage found elsewhere, no doubt to
add some dramatic visuals to his video.
0:16 – There is a quick shot
of a man with a monk’s tonsure sleeping sitting on the sidewalk with his back
against a building. I see that guy all the time. I don’t know if he has a
substance abuse problem, but he’s almost certainly homeless. A quick aside
about this man. That forward angle of his head isn’t just because he’s
sleeping. It’s always like that. He seems to have some sort of deformity or
injury to his spine. He is always looking at the ground. If you see him walking
away from you, you might think he was an actual headless man, because his
entire head is out of sight. The front view isn’t much better. Seeing that big
bald circle of flesh ringed with hair coming at you can be a little unsettling.
0:55 – The first mention of
Measure 110, which is discussed at length. I didn’t remember what Measure 110
was, so I looked it up. It was passed in November 2020, and went into effect
January 2021. I voted for it. It seemed like a good idea at the time. In short,
it decriminalized pretty much all narcotics and hallucinogens. It was supposed
to use tax revenue generated by the legal sale of marijuana to fund addiction
treatment programs. And indeed, many addiction treatment programs began getting
much more money. But soon other state agencies, complaining that their budgets
were decreasing, got a bill passed which clawed away some of that money from
Measure 110.
At the same time as Measure
110, there was also Measure 109, which legalized the therapeutic use of psylocibin.
I also voted for it. It was supposed to be available on a limited basis
in centers where trained technicians would administer it and observe you while
you got high. This was a state measure, but in the next election cycle, 27 of
Oregon’s 36 counties voted to opt out of Measure 109, which the text of Measure
109 allowed them to do. My county, Multnomah, of which Portland is the seat,
was one of the nine that upheld the measure. So far, I have not heard of any
psylocibin centers opening in the county. There was a mushroom store which
opened a block from my house. It wasn’t based upon the proposed model of
on-site use only, which surprised me, but I figured they wouldn’t be allowed to
sell it if it wasn’t legal. You could just walk in and buy magic mushrooms and
take them home. How do I know this? I ain’t saying. However, a couple of months
later the police raided it and shut it down. Seems they weren’t operating in
accordance with the new law.
But back to Measure 110. So suddenly people were free to use illegal drugs
without fear of consequences. Oh, there are still consequences. The wording of
the measure reduced fines and sentences, but there was no limit on how much of
a substance could be considered as being more than for “personal use”. For
example, possession of less than one gram of heroin was reduced from a Class A
misdemeanor to the newly created Class E “violation”. Possession of more than a
gram of heroin was reduced from a Class B felony to a Class A misdemeanor. The
penalties for conviction of these various charges range from a 250 dollar fine
to up to a year in jail and a 2,500 dollar fine. It’s curious to me that the
law didn’t establish a minimum amount that could be considered “not for
personal use”. Seems like most decriminalization or laws I’ve heard of usually
do. The law did establish higher penalties for the manufacture or “delivery”
(read: “selling”) of various substances.
Interestingly, fentanyl was not included in Measure 110. That’s because it
wasn’t really a “thing” yet. Now it’s all the rage. It’s cheap and powerful.
The Oregon Legislature addressed the new problem with the passage of Senate
Bill 988, which made possession of a gram or more of Fenty a Class A
misdemeanor, with higher penalties for manufacture and delivery.
1:03 – There are couple of
scenes of people breaking car windows. I don’t think Tyler had the good luck to
be able to film either of those incidents. The first one looks like it was
captured on a security camera. I can see an Oregon license plate in the first
shot. I don’t recognize the location of the second one, so I’ll just have to
trust that Tyler found footage of Portland-based “smash and grabs”.
1:14 – Okay. I knew things
were bad here in Portland. I live here, after all – right downtown – plus my
job is to drive around picking up people like we see in the video. However, I
didn’t know things were quite S0 bad before I saw this video. For one thing, I
didn’t know homeless camps had “mayors”. That’s not necessarily a bad thing,
but it still blew my mind.
2:22 – It creeped me out to
hear Kevin say that there was a homeless camp somewhere in the city that’s
rigged up with tripwires attached to shotguns.
I don’t know if a single tent
on a sidewalk can be considered a “camp”. I tend to think of camps as several
tents in one area. Larger camps are usually tucked under bridges and in other
out-of-way places. It’s impossible to avoid the random tents on sidewalks, but
you’d have to be crazy (like Kevin) to walk into a major camp. In my experience,
the people living on the sidewalks tend to keep to themselves. Maybe they don’t
feel safe in the camps. They also may be aware that if they frighten the taxpayers
and tourists, they’re more likely to get rousted by the cops. Several weeks ago
I went on a ghost tour that visited some of the reportedly most haunted
locations in downtown Portland. Our guide, Victoria, does the tours every
night, and was talking about how she’s on good terms with local homeless folks.
She and her husband did take precautions, however. They had a big dog, and I
noticed that Victoria had pepper spray in her fanny pack. Even so, as we passed
one tent, Victoria said, “How you doing, Larry?”, and from inside the tent a
male voice replied, “Good, Victoria, how are you?”
But the camps still worry me.
I recently bought a bicycle, but now I’m afraid to ride on some of the many
bike paths in the area, because they’re often lined with homeless tents. Same
with hiking trails. Who knows what’s lurking in those woods?
2:37 – When Kevin was listing
his many and varied assaults, I thought that if I were him, after the third one
I would have gotten a different job. Like, “Fuck all you all homeless
motherfuckers. I’m done with you!”
2:43 – Kevin’s brush with
near decapitation by machete. Holy crap! I have had a crazy man pointing a
machete at me as I walked the mean streets of downtown Portland in the wee
hours of the morning on my way to work. It wasn’t fun. You may wonder why I
walk around here. Answer: I don’t own a car. I always carry pepper spray and a
quick-opening knife, but I’m thinking of adding a taser and a spring-loaded
baton to my arsenal.
4:19 – This video answered a
question which has been bothering me for some time. That is, why is the open
use of drugs so rampant in Portland? It wasn’t like that when I moved here. Of
course, used syringes were and still are everywhere. As I mentioned earlier, I
had forgotten about Measure 110, which went into effect about the same time Fenty
became all the rage. Before 110, I only saw one heroin addict openly shooting
up, but he looked so out of it he probably had no idea where he was. Now
everywhere you look you see people huddled over their squares of aluminum foil
and lighters, with their smoke catching straws or tubes in their mouths. Often I
see two people smoking together, since it’s a three-handed job: one to hold the
aluminum, one for the lighter, and another to hold the straw. They like to do
it on public transportation, especially on the light rail. There are usually no
authorities on the train other than the operator locked away safely in his cab.
There is no breeze on the train, so it’s an ideal place to control the smoke,
especially if you put your coat or blanket over your head. This can be a real
problem for the trains’ schedules (not to mention the risk of someone having an
open flame onboard), because if it is discovered that someone is smoking fenty
on a train, the driver must stop at the next station, open all the doors, usher
all the passengers outside, and let the car air out for 15 minutes. I think
it’s a bit of an overreaction. I’ve been reading about the possible dangers of
second-hand exposure to fenty, and there basically are none. It’s the sort of ignorant
hysteria that accompanies every new drug “threat”. People used to think that marijuana turned users
into murderers and rapists.
I used to wonder if the
sudden increase in people openly using Fenty had something to do with the drug
itself, and its effects upon users. No, it was because of Measure 110, which
hit the scene at about the same time fenty did.
6:51 – A homeless man
mentions “Rapid Response”. I thought this might need a little explanation. Its
full name is Rapid Response Bio-Clean. They specialize in things like pathogen
abatement, cleaning up hoarding and drug residue, post-mortem and crime scenes.
They are contracted with law enforcement to clean up homeless camps when those
camps are “swept”. I guess when someone complains enough about a particular
camp, the police move everyone out, and Rapid Response cleans up the mess. The
whole process can be hard on the homeless people. They are given 72 hours to
clear out, and if they haven’t, their stuff is disposed of. It’s not exactly
Rapid Response’s fault, although they probably could have chosen not to bid for
the contract. There are plenty of such companies around. If it weren’t RR,
somebody else would be doing it, and attracting the ire of the homeless and
some leftists. More on that later as well.
8:09 – Kevin mentions that
the homeless get stolen from more in the shelters than on the streets. I don’t
know if that’s true, although it happened to me. I arrived in Portland in
August 2019 with only a duffel bag of clothing and a backpack of assorted
toiletries and important papers. I was fleeing an unsafe living situation. I
didn’t have a job, and no place to stay other than a shelter. I got one of
those 91 bunks that Kevin mentioned. We were allowed to keep our belongings in
a single crate which was kept locked up in the office of the dormitory area.
When we needed to shower or change our clothes, we could get stuff out of our
crate. It wasn’t a bad system, but I had too many clothes to fit in the crate,
so I had to try to hide the excess in my bunk. It wasn’t long before all those
clothes were stolen. Oh, well.
8:59 – When Kevin and Tyler
are talking to the young man at the train platform, and Kevin directs him to
the shelter right behind him, that shelter is the Portland Rescue Mission,
which is where I stayed. It’s a great program, despite the loss of some of my
wardrobe. You are expected to be clean and sober to stay there (except in the
dormitory area). I didn’t have any substance abuse problems. After about a week
in the den of thieves in the basement, when I had passed my background check
and drug test, I got a bed in a room upstairs. I still had roommates, but not 90
of them. Soon I got my current job and was able to start saving money to get a
place of my own, which I did 5 months later.
10:22 – When Tyler asks Kevin
about the chances of accidentally getting dosed with fenty, and Kevin says
there’s a “60 percent chance that won’t happen”. I think that’s bullshit, as I alluded
to earlier. Kevin is scaremongering. He has a video on his YouTube in which he
filmed a woman smoking fenty, and he accidentally inhaled some of the smoke,
and all he did was cough and say, “Wow. That’s strong.”
10:30 – When Tyler asks Kevin
to tell him about decriminalization of drugs in Portland, for some weird reason
this is accompanied by footage of a fire in a street surrounded by police
vehicles and people in riot gear holding cameras. I know for a fact that this
is from the literal 100 nights of protests in Portland after George Floyd’s
murder by the police. I have seen that footage before. What it’s doing here is
a mystery. It has nothing to do with the decriminalization of drugs. I think
Tyler was looking for juicy footage of mayhem in Portland to punch up his
video. This was a poor choice. Not cool, Tyler.
11:00 – Kevin mentions the
missing components of Oregon’s drug decriminalization policy: “recovery, detox,
treatment”. I think he’s right about this. I’ve already discussed how Measure
110 was supposed to provide for those things, but it hasn’t happened. As the
video says, Oregon based its decriminalization on the models of countries like
Portugal and the Netherlands, but without already having enough programs in
place to offer help to people with substance abuse issues.
11:25 – When they visit what
they called “Fentanyl Fountain”, its real name is “Skidmore Fountain”, which is
tragically funny, because it sounds so much like “Skid Row”, which is what it
is. I call it “Skidmark Fountain”. It’s about a block from the Portland Rescue
Mission. In fact, except for the part where they visit the incredible driftwood
dwelling on the Willamette River north of downtown, most of the locations in
the video are in an area of about 3 blocks wide by 6 blocks long. And just to
clarify what Kevin was saying, on weekdays Skidmore Fountain, in Ankeny Square,
has probably the highest concentration of homelessness and drug use, but on
Friday nights the police and other city workers clear out the unwanted denizens
so that vendors can set up their stalls for the Portland Saturday/Sunday Market,
which is popular with tourists and yuppies from ritzier neighborhoods. That is where
Tyler talked to the merchants in food carts and booths.
11:53 – A man talks about how
the drug dealers are “cutting the meth with fentanyl”. This confused me. I am
aware that drug dealers will “cut” a drug with a filler to stretch the amount
in a unit to increase their profit, but I didn’t understand why they would want
to mix two drugs that they could sell separately, and which have very different
effects. So I did a little searching and found that it’s the other way around.
They cut the fentanyl with meth. It helps to get the meth users more addicted,
so they must keep buying more. Horrible. It’s too bad that Measure 110 didn’t
also include a plan to have the government regulate the sale of these drugs, like
with marijuana, and as was proposed for psylocibin. Regulation would control
quality, dosage, and price, while also cutting out an addict’s need to go to
unlicensed dealers. It would also help fund the badly needed treatment
programs. But then that would be true legalization, and I guess we can’t have
that.
12:25 – When Tyler asks the
plump dumpling monger about her views on decriminalization’s impact on
downtown, she just pauses and then says, “I hope you guys have an awesome day.”
What a strange response. Did she vote for 110 and now regrets it but is
unwilling to admit she might have made a mistake? Is she afraid of offending
someone? If so, who? Odd.
12:34 – Right after his
brusque dismissal by the dumpling woman, Tyler says to Kevin that there seems
to be some “general resilience". At least that’s what it sounded like to
me. If he did say “resilience”, I can’t help but think that he must have meant
“resistance”, or maybe “reluctance”.
12:49 – One interviewee says
that he thinks decriminalization is a good thing, because the jails aren’t
filling up with junkies, and I think that’s a valid point. The people who
should be in jail for controlled substances are the manufacturers and dealers,
not the people who use them. Obviously, not everyone shares this view. There
appears to be a recall effort being mounted against the Multnomah County
District Attorney Mike Schmidt. There is a large billboard downtown showing
Schmidt’s smiling face, with the words “Portland is a Schmidt Show”. It then
lists some of the perceived problems in the city that whoever paid for the
billboard is blaming on Schmidt, which include “low prosecution of crimes”, and
“empty jail beds”. The “empty jail beds” got to me. Just because you have a
jail, you don’t have to fill it up. And
you don’t need to fill it up with people who have only committed self-harming
crimes, like drug use.
13:30 – The woman, Katherine,
who says her parent’s threw her out because she’s queer. I feel bad for her,
but she also seems like a bit of whiner. She talks about it being impossible to
get identification when you’re homeless. When I was in the rescue mission, there
were agencies – both governmental and private – which helped people get
identification. This usually started with accessing your birth certificate. I
hope those programs are still in place, and if so, that someone tells Katherine
about them. As an aside, I think birth certificates are sort of a silly basis
for identifying anyone. They may be “official”, but there’s really no way to
prove that the person requesting the birth certificate is the person on the
certificate. It's not like they have your picture or fingerprints on them.
14:38 – The explosion in the
tent fire. Homeless tents and camps burn frequently. I can’t blame folks for
wanting fire for heat or cooking, but they often do it right inside their nylon
tents or shelters made of pallets and plastic tarp, or maybe they’re started by
smoking fenty. Bad idea. One day I was driving a bus route which serviced a
stop on an overpass above a light rail line. As I approached, there was black
smoke billowing out from both sides of the bridge abutment. I radioed it in,
and then stuck around for a bit to see if anyone needed help. The fire was in a
homeless encampment under the overpass. Stuff was exploding, probably propane
tanks.
I didn’t think it was likely
that Tyler just happened to catch an exploding tent fire, and I wondered if it
was faked, or footage found somewhere else. As it turns out, the footage of the
explosion is real. It’s from Kevin’s YouTube channel, and he did indeed happen
to be there with a camera when it happened. It scared the bejesus out of him
and his crew.
15:00 – When they’re talking
to the woman sitting outside a tent, she mentions a drug she called “blues”. I
had to look that up. Blues refers to fentanyl pills, which are usually blue. I
wondered if that is why her hands and forearms were stained blue. From handling
this substance?
15:44 – “The Viper”. This was
a horrible section of the video. The thought that there is a serial rapist and
possible murderer freely stalking the homeless camps filled me with despair and
disgust. It made me think that Portland needs a Batman. However, I have heard
that not all the fires in homeless camps are started by the denizens
themselves, but by vigilantes. If someone takes it into their head(s) to do
something about the unhoused population and the drug addicts, where will it
end? With a “kill ‘em all…let god sort ‘em out” mentality?
15:59 – The scene of the
“hundred RV’s” is no exaggeration. I know exactly where that spot is. I’ve
driven through it frequently on one of the bus routes. It’s located in an area
sandwiched between the western end of the Portland International Airport, a
golf course, a National Guard depot, and the Columbia River Correctional
Facility – a state prison. It’s not a happy place, and for that reason it’s one
of my least favorite routes to drive.
Sometimes the residents of
this street have extension cords crossing the road, from someone with a
generator to those less fortunate. In the video you can catch a glimpse of a
person walking or standing in the useless left-turn lane down the middle of the
street. This is a frequent occurrence. Sometimes visitors (probably people
buying or selling drugs) park in that middle lane. The speed limit there is 45
MPH (72 km/h for my foreign friends) but I’m reluctant to drive that fast for
fear of a pedestrian stumbling into my path.
17:37 – Small nitpick. When
Kevin and Tyler are viewing the homeless structures on the river, Tyler says
“ocean view”. As I mentioned earlier, it’s the Willamette River.
That’s it for the color
commentary. Now, a bit about Kevin, and “the left”.
I was having a hard time
getting a fix on Kevin. In this video, I thought a lot of what he said made
sense. I did, however, think it was a little strange that he kept exhorting the
addicts he spoke with to try to get into a shelter, but then he also said
disparaging things about the shelters, like the theft and lack of
air-conditioning. I don’t know about the other shelters, but PRM was
air-conditioned. Perhaps he was just being pragmatic because he knows there
aren’t any better options currently.
I also watched some videos of
Kevin being interviewed on television news programs, and again most of what he
said seemed rational and logical. In addition to his views on Measure 110,
which we’ve already heard, he also thinks that Portland’s “housing first” model
of dealing with homelessness is not going to work. They touched on this a bit
in Tyler’s video. I don’t think Kevin is opposed to housing the homeless, but
he says that if you just put someone with behavioral health and substance abuse
issues into housing, but don’t provide for addressing their issues, it won’t
work. Some people are so sick and unable to care for themselves that they are
probably likely to trash or destroy the housing. A person who is used to having
a fire inside their tent might burn down an entire building, risking lives and
making people homeless again.
The reason I was initially
confused by Kevin’s conflicting actions and words is because I made the mistake
of thinking that because he wants to help the homeless, he must be liberal. It
is now apparent to me that he is not.
It was when I visited Kevin’s
own website and his YouTube channel that I felt like I was entering a rabbit
hole. He has about 34 videos, 5 of which have “Antifa” in the titles. I
wondered what his beef with Antifa was. The videos themselves don’t offer much
explanation, and the descriptions only a little more.
When the George Floyd
protests started, it was at heart a Black Lives Matter movement, as it should
be. Then anarchists and Antifa got involved, which made sense because they
share similar goals, like defunding/reforming/abolishing the police. Many people
feel that the predominantly white leftists co-opted the movement, and I think
that may be true. 100 nights of protests changed nothing and left the city a
mess from which it hasn’t fully recovered. In-fighting amongst the many
factions of the leftists’, and conflicting goals and tactics with BLM caused
the movement to fizzle out. Of course, the pandemic, fenty, and Measure 110 also
played their parts in the current sad state of the city.
The left wants to help the
homeless, but it tends to be a “hands off” type of help, in the form of hand-outs
and “harm reduction”, such as needle exchanges and clean crack pipes. The more
extreme leftists seem to feel that anyone telling someone what they should do
is bad, such as Kevin encouraging people to seek out a shelter. Kevin isn’t
entirely blameless, either. He was president of a homeless advocacy group
called We Heart Seattle, which also opened a We Heart Portland branch. They
would clean up garbage at homeless camps, but not the way Rapid Response does.
They were, however, accused of being rather heavy-handed at times. One
volunteer was seen entering a tent without permission. The founder of the
organization, Andrea Suarez, was overheard comparing the homeless to “rats and
dogs”. In another interview she likened herself to Mother Theresa. This may be
why “Antifa” hates her, Kevin, and We Heart Seattle/Portland. His videos never
present any clear evidence that the people who confront him or do things he
doesn’t like are Antifa. We just must take his word for it.
I’ve watched his videos, his
interviews, and read the articles he’s written about homelessness and
addiction, two for The Spectator, and one for the New York Post. According to the
Media Bias/Fact Check website, those are both “center-right” publications. He criticizes
what he calls liberal and Democratic ideas such as Measure 110 and Housing
First for the current state of emergency. He has the conservative mindset of
thinking that anyone left of center (or who disagrees with him) is “Antifa”.
The thing that struck me most
about his videos is that he allowed the homeless and addicts he interviewed to
do his speaking for him. One woman even says that she has been denied housing
because she’s white. Kevin doesn’t challenge that in any way. He even made it
the title of the video. And he doesn’t have any disclaimer on his videos saying
something like “the views of the interviewees do not necessarily represent…”. I
can’t help but think that he chose to post those interviews because he agreed
with them, without having to come out and say it himself.
I can only conclude that
Kevin’s advocacy for the homeless and addicts are popular with conservatives because
he challenges the current approach to the problems in liberal cities like
Portland and Seattle. I admit the left isn’t always correct, even though I’m a
well-educated godless liberal. Decriminalization and Housing First are good
starts, but they must be coupled with treatment, support, and some expectation
of responsibility from those being helped to succeed. I agree with Kevin on
those points, but my overall impression of him is that I don’t trust him.
I drive a city bus. Often in the course of my work day, I have to "deadhead" between the bus yard and either the beginning or end of my routes. Deadheading means driving an empty bus which is not in service. The header signs on the front, side and back of the bus indicate this with various phrases like "Not In Service", or "Garage", and certainly no route number showing.
Some of our deadhead routes follow established bus routes, so it often happens that you pass people waiting at bus stops. Most people see the header sign and accept their fate that my bus is not for them. However, there are always a few people who, for various reasons, don't get that information from the signs, and become visibly distressed. This is usually demonstrated with upraised arms and a gob-smacked expression on their faces.
Now, I understand that some people have barriers to being able to read the header signs. It might be poor vision, not knowing English, or possibly illiteracy. I'm not trying to sound ableist or ethno-centric here. It's also possible they simply didn't bother to read the header sign. That's on them.
However, even allowing for those possible barriers, why does it seem that the first assumption by the people being passed up is that the driver (me) is either an idiot, or an asshole, or both? Have they never encountered an out of service bus before? Possibly, but you would think they could conceptualize it. Should I stop and try to explain the butt-hurt away? No.
When I pass someone while deadheading, I usually try to make eye contact. Like I said, most people get it, but I like to give them a friendly little wave, if for no other reason than to let them know I see them and acknowledge them. If they still look concerned, I try to make the wave look sympathetic. I don't know how successful I am at that.
But when the person gets too assertive about it, and begins uplifting their arms in incredulity and adopting that slack-jawed expression, I find it difficult not to mock them by raising my own arms (if safe to do so) and staring open-mouthed back at them. Sorry. They made it personal. I could probably get in trouble if this got back to my superiors, but I'm going on the assumption that if my victim can't figure out that a bus is out of service, they're probably not going to be able to figure out how to report the incident, or if they do call, they probably won't be able to successfully identify what bus, what bearded, Caucasian driver (out of several hundred), and so forth.
