As I waited for the bus the other day, I tapped my foot to the non-existent beat from my Discman, which had just died. The sun refused to back down, there was no breeze and the bus stop provided no shade for me and my three fellow bus riders: all waiting, squinting, sunburned and eager to get home.
For a moment, I thought I was hallucinating. A showy sea-green vessel had just pulled up to the stop. It resembled a bus, but in place of the traditional green and purple logo, lines of poetry were scrawled on its sides. In huge type, the words "Poetry is..." were written, and around it were scattered various vague, quasi-poetic phrases such as "I am..." and "My thoughts are my world."
The first thing I thought of as I boarded the bus was a poster I've seen on the walls of several college homes. The image is funny: A scruffy-looking man has opened his trench coat and is flashing himself at a sculpture of a nude woman in a provocative stance. The caption reads: Expose yourself to art. The poster mocks both art and irreverence for art, and that's exactly what the ridiculous "poetry bus" seems to do.
According to the Tempe Municipal Arts Commission, a great city is defined by its arts. But the Art in Transit project, which produced the poetry bus, doesn't provoke thought or even entertain. And the Words Over Water project, responsible for those granite tiles on which teenagers stub out cigarettes at Tempe Town Lake, has provided some nice decor for that overgrown pond; but calling it art is a real stretch.
Both these projects, while very polished, are sterile. They lack the spontaneity and vitality of art, and yet their prominence here suggests that they are the best Tempe can produce. The products of our public arts program are at once both expensive and worthless.
Furthermore, there isn't anything romantic about public transportation. Why pretend?
At best, our current system is functional. The buses are often late and sometimes don't come at all. There are personable bus drivers, certainly, but there seem to be just as many surly, impatient ones who don't answer questions and scowl as people fumble for change. You step on, you enjoy the air conditioning and you step off.
According to the city of Tempe's website, the sales tax supported Art in Transit project provides "artist-designed bus shelters" and "buses wrapped in artists' images," among other things.
These things don't speak to me. They don't, as the Web site declares, "reach into my everyday life." A bus I could count on, more shaded public areas and water fountains that don't spout undrinkably hot water, now that would reach into my everyday life, rather than water fountains engraved with some flowery phrase about how "water connects us all."
Perhaps a city should function well first and decorate later.
Sitting on another bus, I stared at the poem about cats that was affixed to the bus' interior wall, and I asked a woman sitting next to me what she thought about the poem.
"Um," she said, skimming it, "it doesn't really mean anything, does it?"
Emily Lyons is a journalism senior. Reach her at emily.lyons@asu.edu.
