I can keep quiet no longer. Too many times I’ve suffered alone. I’m making everyone join me… I can keep quiet no longer. Too many times I’ve suffered alone. I’m making everyone join me in experiencing the horror that is the 84B.

Living in South Oakland, one cannot help but notice the decay of the neighborhood. Children throw bricks at each other for fun, parents ignore health and fashion risks with marijuana and spandex, yet they wash their cars’ hubcaps every day. And that’s just Frazier Street.

My housemates and I keep our door closed and try to park our cars close to our front steps to avoid any contact with the neighbors or any view of the brick-throwing game. But there comes a time when we just don’t want to put $10 worth of quarters into a meter on campus and we are forced to take the 84B.

The bus stop is conveniently located directly outside my house and it’s actually a very reliable source of transportation – it’s one of only a few Port Authority buses that stick to their schedules. The problem is I am usually the only student that takes advantage of this bus and I am all alone to fend off the leper colony.

Author’s note: Descriptions and anecdotes have in no way been altered to protect the innocent. No one is innocent here.

If I get on the bus in the morning, the driver is a grumpy old man who chews on a little plastic straw like he’s driving a tractor but couldn’t find any hay. If I get on at night, I have to make sure I get to the stop 10 minutes early, because the driver will assure me that although I hold a bus schedule in my hand, there’s no way I could know her timetable better than she does and I better pick up a schedule for next time. Then after I sit down and stop panting from my sprint to the bus stop, she gossips with her girlfriend on a cell phone about how I challenged her vast knowledge of bus schedules and time telling.

At least if I get on the bus at night, I am by myself. The flip side of the convenience of the Oakland loop is the eclectic mix of grotesque people that ride it. Think of anything about a person you find repulsive and it’s on that bus. There’s a bearded lady. There’s an elderly woman who never wears a bra but always wears a shirt with holes in it. The same lady is the one who coughs up so much phlegm during the trip, I start dry heaving before we pull up to her stop. There is a man who has a full head of hair coming out of each ear and every time he gets off the bus, he will stare you down with this nasty evil eye. The last time this happened, a new bus rider got angry and I had to assure her this is his trademark move and she shouldn’t mess with it.

There is a mother who verbally abuses her small child with lines such as, “Shut the hell up!” – when the girl hasn’t made a sound – as she shoves her toward the back of the bus. There are two men who seem to ride the bus all day and never get off. They always sit at the front and fight like seventh grade boys over the attractive afternoon bus driver. Both men are old and unshowered and say things like, “I’m going to ride your bus all night long.” There is also a middle-aged man who wears an all-black ensemble complete with see-through mesh shirt, steel-toed boots, gold-trimmed sunglasses, a long braided ponytail and his own handkerchief to wipe the insane amount of sweat off his head.

If you are still reading, I’m impressed. You now know what I go through twice a day on a mere 10-minute bus ride. I cram in a tiny bus with the smelly, the sick, the sweaty, the morbidly obese, the nasty, the perverted, the abusive and the downright unbearable. I’ll admit that I should be happy I make it to my destination alive, being that it is South Oakland. But it just doesn’t seem fair that I have to ride the same bus that transports the performers in the local freak show.

Erin Brachlow does not advise anyone to take the 84B to see if what she wrote is true – it’s just not worth it. She can be reached at [email protected].