Chicken Bus

The 49-Mission is San Francisco's chicken bus. Everybody in Latin America knows about chicken buses - the cheap ones that poor people ride, bringing along their shopping bags full of fruit, onions and live chickens. 

On Mission St. the chickens are crutches, walkers, oxygen tanks, wheel chairs, service dogs and hobo dogs. It's only 10am but everyone looks worn out. They work hard to manage themselves up the obstacle of the stairs from Mission Street onto the bus.They plop themselves down, painfully, in the front seats, that are reserved for the elderly and handicapped. Everyone is elderly or handicapped.

One man, gray-bearded, weathered-faced, blank-eyed, dressed in many layers of mismatched shirts and windbreakers, walks down the aisle of the bus behind his ancient black Lab. The man finds a seat and tugs on the dog's leash. She sits down on the floor at his feet. When he exits the bus, only two stops later, he pulls the dog by the chain to get her to stand up so they can get off the bus together. She leaves a puddle of pee on the floor of the bus.

"Dog peed all over your bus," says an older man to the bus driver. "Hnnn," says the bus driver, eyes straight ahead and on the road.

I read how the elderly all want Mitt Romney. Not on the 49-Mission. Voting is not in anyone's thought balloon. Their best aspiration is to get off the bus with the same amount of pieces they came aboard with.

They say that love changes everything. Mission Street needs to fall in love. The place needs a hurricane, some force of nature to wash off the pee, clean up the peeling paint, repair the cracked sidewalks, heal the sick, repackage the random detritus of modern life hanging around the street corners, and either fry that chicken until it's golden brown and tasty, or let it go, turn it loose, let it run free, or, better yet, throw open the doors of the 49-Mission and allow all the other chickens to fly away to someplace better.