I’m standing in line to buy bus tickets at the Greyhound/Peter Pan kiosk at the New York City Port Authority on 42nd Street. My annoyance factor has reached that certain critical level that requires me to decompress by putting pen to paper. I have stopped here on my way home from work, hoping to save $19 by buying my tickets three days in advance. My fellow travelers (would-be and otherwise) are not exactly what you would see in the first-class section of a major airline, then again, neither am I. I am a minority here, but I work in Harlem so I am used to this, and have even come to almost enjoy the “uniqueness” that it affords me.
Bus stations are the bottom-feeders in the pond that is composed of mass-transit hubs: one does not stick to the floor at most major airports (or even minor ones). This floor is kind of like those found inside the low budget 24-hour porno-movie houses, like the ones that used to be plentiful only a block or two away from here. There has been a halfhearted attempt made at creating some sort of ambiance – travel posters line the walls showing exotic destinations, well at least those reachable by bus: Detroit, Miami, and exotic L. A. (only a five day ride). Ancient cathode ray tube monitors (most of them work) display arrivals and departures in a faded amber glow. It is a sad and childlike imitation of big-brother airports – no one pays any attention to them anyway, as the busses leave on the hour and missing one means only that you grab a Snickers and stand in line for the next.
Most of the ambiance takes the form of cracked, backlit, injection-molded, plastic signs with duct tape accents. A network of blue plasticized ropes forms the rat maze that the 60 or so travelers and myself herd through, on our glacial way to the ticket counter. Tempers are short.
“I’m speaking English!” one of the clerks snaps, “What else do you want!?!” She is shouting at a small Asian woman of indeterminate age, who looks far too well dressed to be traveling by motor coach. “You don’t even have a passport?… Any I.D. at all?!!” The clerk seems to have had it, but the woman produces some card and the clerk shoves a ticket at her and waves her away, as if shooing a mosquito, mumbling something about “those people” that even I, with a fairly solid grasp of English, find unintelligible. But it is OK – the Asian woman with the nice clothes and expensive looking luggage has secured a number, and even without knowing the language and even though this place was designed and laid out by the insane, she is determined and she will find her bus.
As with any type of travel, there is an air of excitement here, of possibility, and I can sense this in my fellow travelers. It brings out some surprisingly bad behavior. The ticket clerks show an almost super-human patience, an otherworldly detachment in the midst of the chaos. I turn away for a moment. In the main atrium of this part of the station, a few carts peddle products from China – the kind nobody will miss if they are stolen. Bagels, soda and stale sandwiches can be had for a price. A security officer armed with only the Daily News loiters nearby. At last it is my turn and a smiling “Sarah,” as her nametag reads, thanks me for choosing Greyhound. Oozing courtesy in gratitude that I do not have this job and can leave now, I complete my transaction (roundtrip to Boston for New Years, for $49) and I head back to the "A” train and the long ride to Brooklyn.
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