Public mass transit, as convenient and amazing as it can be, is an eye-opening experience. On New Year’s Eve, some friends and I took the light rail from midtown Phoenix to the big block party on Mill. It was a free ride that night, an effort to lower the number of drunk drivers.
Walking on to the train, my buddies and I felt like we were the only “regular” people on it. “Regular” is an admittedly subjective adjective, but what can I say; it felt pretty true in this instance. Or, as my friend said to me, “Dude, it’s like we’re just visitors on this little light rail planet.”
I’ve been thinking about that observation a lot over this semester. My car broke down in January and I’ve been using the light rail on a near daily basis to commute to school and work downtown. If you read my column on outrageous parking prices, you know I’m a religious user of the U-Pass.
Every day is a new “adventure,” and every day there are new characters to add to the light-rail story.
For example, there’s a guy I met last Friday night while taking the light rail to Mill (coincidentally, with the same friend who made the earlier observation). The man identified himself only as “Green Eyes,” and was wearing dirty clothes while using a sleeping bag in what could best be described as a “cape-like fashion.”
Green Eyes began to regale me and my friend with some pretty outlandish tales. He told us how he wanted to “see those tall mountains,” which he later described as the mountains surrounding the Valley. That’s when his story on the light rail started to go off the rails a bit.
He told us how he was the person responsible for making “them mountains grow so tall.” According to him, one day he caught sight of a mountain growing out of the corner of his eyes. He just barely “saw it move,” as if the mountain knew he was watching and was trying to hide its growth from my new travel companion.
That’s not all Green Eyes has done for us, though. He also, as he put it, “spent the last two years fighting spiritual warfare” for all of us. He said it was like something out of the book of Revelation, which sounds pretty terrifying when I try to contemplate the cocktail of drugs that Green Eyes probably spends a lot of time on.
He said we could look up at the stars and see them move, and that was him fighting with angels and demons in the heavens. He briefly mentioned a stint in jail as well, but he didn’t delve too much into that. Come to think of it, I’m not even positive his eyes were green.
However, when we arrived at the 44th and Washington stop, Green Eyes stood up. As quickly and randomly as he had entered my life, he left it by exiting the train. I have no idea where he is now. I’m still trying to figure out who was visiting whose little planet.
That’s the light rail in a nutshell, especially on those late nights.
It’s a cheap AC rental service in the summer for many of the Valley’s homeless population. Four dollars a day beats heat stroke. It’s a safe place to cool off and maybe take a nap.
It’s also a carriage for those halfway through an all-night rager, too drunk to drive but not too drunk to get from place to place. Plus, the light rail won’t blacklist you like an Uber driver will if you spend the whole ride screaming “Cool for the Summer” by Demi Lovato.
You’ll just get increasingly dirty looks from people like me, the “regular” light rail riders.
At first, the light rail felt like a world that I was only a visitor in. However, the more I ride it, and the more midnight drunks I run into or the more Green Eyes that tell me stories of their spiritual warfare, the more I feel like I’m becoming a part of it, too. It starts to feel like that qualifier of “regular” before “light-rail rider” seems to widen its eligibility.
I sit there, surrounded by the hunkered homeless, dizzy drunks, the packs of college girls who, for some reason, are only wearing bras as tops, and I no longer think of it as a weird experience. It’s a part of my daily life now.
It’s just the light rail, man.
Related links:
Gems off the light rail: A hipster-dining duo
Tempe Police: Man blocks light rail tracks, flips off conductor
Reach the columnist at cjwood3@asu.edu or follow @chriswood_311 on Twitter.
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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