Police Activity

When I'm in the city, I tend to take public transportation.  It's often easier to just hop on a bus rather than deal with the hassle, and cost, of parking.  Also, the public transportation system in the city isn't half bad, so it works out fairly well.

Well, on one of these occasions, I was riding on the N Judah train.  The train had just pulled up to the Church & Duboce stop, so we were no longer underground at that point.  However, the Sunset Tunnel (also called East Portal) was coming up, so we were just about to go back "underground" for a brief moment.

Well, that was the plan, at least.  Instead, the train just sat there for a little bit.  It was a little odd, but it's been known to happen.  After about thirty seconds, the conductor of the train got on the PA system to make an announcement, "there is police activity up ahead, so we will be waiting here a few minutes."  Now, this isn't exactly a common occurrence when one rides on the buses, so it caused a few raised eyebrows.  But it's not like we could do anything about it, so we just waited.

Actually, I take that back.  Most of us waited.  A few people decided that their time was so invaluable, that they could not wait.  Remember how I said that we were about to go through a tunnel fairly shortly?  There is no easily-accessible pedestrian path that covers the same ground.  So, it was more than likely that these people were only going to walk about four or five blocks in the rough general direction of the tunnel.

So rather than wait a little bit, they were walking towards something that the train driver called "police activity."  Does that sound like something that you'd want to interrupt?  Mind you, this was something that a big honkin' light rail train was told to avoid.  Sure, it's entirely possible that the danger was past, and these people were actually saving themselves a few minutes.  Call me stupid, but I would've just waited.

Even better, the train started moving a few minutes after these people had left the train.  It's as if the universe wanted to prove a point, and it was proclaiming, "well then, now that we got rid of all the suckers, it's back to business as usual.  Sorry 'bout the wait, folks.".  Heck, I think we saw a few of them trudging up towards the tunnel as we drove on past.  I bet you there were definitely a few people mentally patting themselves on the back at that point.

Also, if you've ever wondered how I turned out the way I did, it's because I grew up on the tough streets of the Sunset.  We get police activity on our bus rides.