Carl Jordan Castro Photo
Willie Mims on the D.
As I walked toward the bus stop,near the corner of Dixwell Avenue and Skiff Street, memories from walking through the streets of New York filled my head: Broken shopping carts with trash inside, cigarette butts and old lottery tickets scattered around the bus stop shelter, much like the ones I’ve seen in New York.
It was my first time using Connecticut’s public bus system and I feared that the usual bus riders would scowl at me, seeing a foreigner invading their territory. What I saw was a lively group of people that were much more welcoming than I imagined. It turned out to be an experience unlike my travels in New York City.
It was a hot and humid day. Sweat trickled down my sideburns.
I planned to take the D bus to the CitySeed farmers market in downtown New Haven and I hoped to catch the Caseus Cheese Truck while I was downtown. (The cheese truck allows you to order custom grilled cheese sandwiches with your choice of add-ons, which include pulled pork, bacon, mac and cheese, and hot cherry peppers.)
The D line bus stop on Dixwell Avenue and Skiff Street.
I sat down waiting for the bus, hoping that Google Maps was right about the bus schedule. Soon after I arrived two women showed up and sat in the shelter next to me. One was an older women with brownish hair and the other, a younger woman bopping her head to the music blaring out of her earbuds.
I walked over and asked if this bus was going to New Haven. The younger woman had to take her earbuds out to hear my question the second time.
“Yeah it does,” she said. “It use to be a $1 when I was younger, but you better have $1.50 now.”
I looked up and saw the bus coming towards us. It was 12:15 p.m. — right on time. I walked up to the bus and inserted $2 into the machine and said hello to the bus driver. He nodded, said hello, gave me a two-hour transfer ticket and turned his head back on the road.
I didn’t get back any change.
My experiences on New York public buses made me expect stains on the seats and lewd writing on the walls, but instead I found the bus interior clean and neat.
And it was cool. The day was hot, and I was grateful for the working air-conditioner inside.
It didn’t take long for the bus to fill up with talkative passengers. Sometimes passengers would recognize someone else on the bus, come up to them and shake their hand or fist bump or give a quick hug.
Willie Mims was one of the lively passengers on board. Just a few stops away from the New Haven Green, she came on the bus with her friend following behind her. She wore a business suit with cheetah patterned shoes, tortoise patterned sunglasses, and a gold chain nearly an inch wide. She sat down next to me while her friend sat in the seat behind her.
Mims, who lives in New Haven, said she has taken the bus for more than 20 years.
She commutes to and from work on the bus and has been taking her siblings to the doctors on the bus since they were 11 and 14.
“I’m the bus queen honey,” Mims said. “Make sure you write that down.”
Two Strollers, No Baby
The young woman at the bus stop sat close to the middle doorways and scrubbed her nails with a file. I told her I was writing for the New Haven Independent about people using public transportation to go in and out of New Haven. Then I asked if I could take her picture. After a short laugh, she said, “Yeah go ahead.”
As she turned to her own world — picking up her cell phone — I took in my surroundings.
A heavier-set woman took a seat towards the front. She was wiping her sweat off her forehead with a washcloth and gave a loud “Whew” as she sat down inside the air-conditioned bus.
We came to another stop where a woman was shouting on her phone with an angry tone of voice. Her long, braided, black and blonde hair was tightly wrapped in a beehive. She had a red, low-cut shirt, black pants, a red fishnet glove on her right hand and a black and red stroller that matched her outfit.
There was no baby inside the stroller, although she did mention a baby she was about to pick up during her angry rant on the phone. As she took her seat other passengers stared and shook their heads.
A man with another stroller came onto the bus shortly after, but this time there was a dog inside.
Mims noticed I was trying to to get a picture of the dog.
“Get out of the way,” she said, moving her hands left and right, shooing people aside.
They moved out of the way, and I finally got a clear shot of the dog. I took a few shots with my camera while thinking to myself, “It’s so hot, not even dogs want to walk outside.”
I turned to Mims and thanked her for the assist. As she was looking at the photos, I took the opportunity to talk more about the CT Bus Diaries project, where students in a Southern Connecticut State University class are writing about experiences on the New Haven bus system.
We were approaching my stop and I asked Mims if I could take her picture. She fluffed up her hair, straightened out her blazer and smiled.
The CT Bus Diaries project is a collaboration between the New Haven Independent, the Valley Independent Sentinel and ten students from the multimedia journalism class at Southern Connecticut State University. The students are blogging about experiences on CT Transit’s bus lines in order to give a glimpse into the commutes of the people using the bus system.
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* Malloy Vows To “Build a Better Bus System”
* State Bus Boss: What Broken System?
Most of the bus drivers are cruel to handicapped riders in motorized chairs they won't stop for them if your at Stop&Shop; and ask if the are going downtown (they don't change the sign right away) they will lie and say next bus cause they don't like strapping the chairs in if the bus is full of people they won't tell them to move to the back they just won't pick the handicapped rider up saying "oh the bus is full" all because they don't want to strap the chairs in. They run old buses with broken lift on major lines(9622) when it's cold the old bus lift don't work but yet they raise prices and run these old pieces of junk buses the Independent should get a under cover handicapped rider you'll see what I'm saying.