It is a blessing and a curse. Greyhound, that is. It is a bus service that will allow you to travel from San Francisco to Tampa for 208 bucks. It also allows you to feel like the scum of the earth when it comes to customer service, especially at the corporate level. Is it a fair trade? I guess it depends on your point of view.
While I can understand the logic of placing the bus stations in depressed neighborhoods, because wealthier ones wouldn’t allow it, the fact is that some of the neighborhoods are so scary and so full of the dregs of society that you don’t want to step outside with your luggage for fear of a mugging. Take the Greyhound station in Atlanta. When you pull up to drop off a passenger, there are often groups of hustlers and crack dealers , or more likely crack users, waiting to bum rush you and get a few dollars for the wonderful job of guarding your car for that they will do for you. Atlanta is as bad ias it gets, and I would rather spend more dough and fly out of the airport than ever set foot in that hellhole again.
Reno, Nevada, isn’t as bad as that. While there are a few distractions as you step outside, mostly hookers heading past on their way to the busier areas, and a few homeless,
I didn’t feel quite as threatened as I did in Atlanta, despite the fact the Reno police don’t seem to do much in the way of policing the area around the place. I slept on a park last night a block and a half from the buses and had to step over sleeping homeless men.
Salt Lake City, on the other hand, was crowded, full of shady looking people of both genders, and is in a locale that makes Flint, Michigan look like a thriving Metropolis. Several blocks away though the prosperity kicks in.
I spoke to a fellow passenger yesterday about this situation. He agreed with me, concluding that he hoped to high Heaven that someone, some day, starts a bus company to compete with Greyhound, and that they keep their stations clean and safe. He just prays to God for that to happen.
Amen, brother. Amen.
The other bus company was Trailways but the riders were so few that they merged because they couldn't make enough money to pay for the diesel.
ReplyDeleteI don't know, but you may have had to push the bus the last two miles just to get to the bus station to get your luggage.
Some are so poor, they just leave their plastic super market bag in the storage area of the bus and catch the city bus to the nearest bar. Some just walk because they want some cash to get a Black Russian cocktail. MMM, good.
If U believe that, let me sell U a bridge that goes across the Bering Straight to Russia.