FasTracks, Schwimmer, and some gangsta shit
The first time I ever rode the bus I was 13 years old. It was a half-day at my school, so a buddy and I decided to catch a movie at AMC 6 at Colorado Boulevard and Alameda. After the movie ended, I promptly called my mother and told her to get off her ass and come pick up mine.
“I’m busy,” she said. “Take the bus.”
I was stunned. My whole life I had been dutifully toted around like some flesh-and-blood Stanley Cup. And now, fresh off of seeing David Schwimmer absolutely kill it in The Pallbearer, I was about to take the public bus—the R to the T to the motherfucking D! Alone!
The ride was to be a straight shot north on Colorado, from Alameda to Montview Boulevard. I cannot recall exactly what the fare was back then—50 cents and a cigarette, 35 cents and a tug-job?—but I paid it, and took my seat among the weary and wary bus folk. And what folk they were! Every size, shape, and color! Some resembled puddles, others tubes of meat, but all of them, as though they agreed upon it in advance, smelled of mothballs.
My senses were so overwhelmed that I almost missed my stop, but at the sight of City Park, I realized I was close to home. Only problem was that I was in the back of a packed bus, and had no idea how to let the driver know. I had seen the illuminated “Stop Requested” sign, but didn’t know how to make that happen again. I smashed my hands against the screen that flashed street names, I even tried to force the doors open at a red light. Nothing. And no helpful strangers swooped in either, so Montview came and went; then 23rd; next 26th as I frantically felt up the bus walls until someone finally requested a stop at 40th Avenue, 20 blocks past my stop, a place, as the kids say, that was full of hood shit. Hood shit that I had to walk through as a white 13-year-old who goes to David Schwimmer flicks and can barely ride a bus.
And that’s how I got beat into the Crips.
I never rode the bus much after that. Friends got cars, my mom got her shit together, so for me RTD was always something that other people used, something for the bus folk. But that doesn’t mean I became anti-public transportation. In fact, quite the opposite. Which is why in 2004, when boy-mayor John Hickenlooper urged us to vote yes on an increase in sales tax to support FasTracks—six new RTD Light Rail lines—I said boo-yah, which was an urban term I had picked up from the Crips that emphatically meant yes. And do you know how many of those rail lines that I voted for are currently being built? One. From Denver to Golden. Fucking Golden! Why the shit would I want to go to Golden? I’m not dating any School Of Mines students and Coors is for date-rapists impressed by cans that change color.
You know where I want that fast track to go? The airport. From the airport to Union Station and back again, like a real damn city. This, of course, is called for in the original FasTracks plan, but guess what? Those plans are delayed because they don’t know how to pay for it! Turns out that sales tax increase, what with this bad economy and all, isn’t enough. So RTD be mad scurred—which is Crip-speak for scrambling to drum up more cash—including, possibly, another vote to increase sales tax.
Here’s the point in the column where you would expect me to ditch the Crip-speak and ejaculate Republican-speak for 30 sentences about ineffectual government, no new taxes, overseeing RTD, and so on—but I’m not going to do that. I’m too liberal and too gangsta. But what I will say is this: Once you do collect that money, Denver Regional Council of Governments that oversee RTD, however you manage to get it, just build us the line to the fucking airport already. We don’t want to go Golden, we don’t want to go Lone Tree; we want to go to the airport and leave. Of course we want to come back, we love it here. It’s just that we have plans. What type plans? I don't know. One guy needs to, like, see his daughter at college or something. Somebody else’s mom is sick. One guy was talking about maybe going to Malibu for a few days to hang out by Schwimmer’s beach house—what the fuck business is it of yours why we’re going to the airport? We’re just going. That’s all. So build us a damn track to get there faster, a track that someone actually cares about and uses. And be sure to post clear instructions on how to make the train stop, too.
Otherwise motherfuckers is gonna be mad confused and shit.
