A bus/bike combo morality tale. Los Angeles.
Noe, rock star fashion stylist, hairdresser, party girl and entrepreneur.
My friend Noe and I look like sisters and we both work for ourselves, but we differ in lots of ways.
1. She lives the glamorous life of a jet-setting stylist.
2. I do not.
3. She had never taken the bus.
4. I take public transportation exclusively.
This weekend owing to reasons related to the content in that glass she’s holding I had to give Noe a crash course on public transportation and help her find a bicycle.
She was a good sport, in the extreme way of good sport. Waiting for the Montebello 40 she called me.
“Browne the bus isn’t coming at the time it said it was coming, is that normal?”
I was a little worried. Not so much about her, but about the fact she thought the bus would arrive on time. Noe is a good sport though, with the ability to turn lemons into lemon drop martinis. She struck up a conversation with her bus stop companion Jose. He found out the bus had been rerouted and showed her where a different Montebello 40 bus stop was and one hour after our scheduled time she popped off the bus at 5th and Grand.
She introduced me to Jose.
“This is Jose. He helped me. Isn’t he sweet?” Noe.
He was sweet. He reminded me of a photo my father had of himself as a young man when he first moved to the big city when he used to smile 50 years ago. Jose was 20 and had just moved to LA from El Salvador. Apparently on the bus they had become good friends and he had told her how he wanted to learn better English so that he could go to college. Noe promised to give him English language lessons and gave him a big hug and her cell phone number.
“The bus is fun Browne. You get to meet so many nice people,” Noe.
On our trip on the MTA 81 bus she said, “Do you know the bus feels like a massage?” I had never thought about it, but I guess it could be a massage if you had a very sunny way of looking at things. I have to say the reason Noe is my friend is because she is like a California sunshine.
Our first destination was Pigeon Bicycles and it ended up being our final destination. The bikes were cute and we wanted to get cocktails.
On the way back we took the Gold Line one of the MTA’s four trains.
“LA has a train?!!! Wow Browne this is so cool, no one knows about this,” Noe.
I didn’t know what to say. I thought maybe I should start a public transportation virgin service.
We then went to Traxx in Union Station where the above photo was taken. We ordered cocktails and french fries. As we were drinking and taking turns taking pictures of each other posing by her new bicyle we saw an older woman. The older woman had what I thought was alot of luggage. She was just waiting and waiting and waiting. I told Noe that it was cruel of the older woman’s family to be late picking her up.
"I would never be late picking up my nana from the train station," me.
Noe looked at me in the same way I looked at her when she told me she didn’t know of the existence of the Gold Line and she said, “Browne, she doesn’t have a family. She’s poor. That is not luggage. That’s everything she has. She hasn’t been anywhere and she‘s not going anywhere.”
“Are you sure?” I said.
And she said, “Yes.” She then proceeded to get the woman some food, she went over to her, kneeled to the floor, rubbed the woman’s shoulder and told her to please eat. I was surprised to see the thankful look on the older woman’s face. I took a second look at the older woman. I noticed that though she was doing a great job keeping her clothes nice they were still very worn, her luggage was a mix of new and old bags, and her face was hollow from not being able to afford false teeth and I realized Noe was right, the older woman wasn’t waiting for anyone.
We then went home. Noe gave me a big hug and told me how thankful she was of all of the neat things I had shown her and I thought in my head how little I actually know in comparison to Noe.
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