Weird stuff in a BART station
For my son's 2nd birthday, we took the kids on BART out to San Francisco. You can get off at Powell St. station, head upstairs and jump right on the cable car that will take you up to Ghiradelli Square. As you can imagine, going for a train ride, then a cable car ride to someplace where you can have an ice cream sundae and watch chocolate being made is pretty exciting when you're two :-)
But that's not what brought on the blog post.
When we were back in the Powell St. BART station heading home with two very tired kids (we also walked over to Pier 39 to check out the seals, who actually have their own webcam) we saw some guy in his mid-to-late 20's looking vaguely REI-ish (backpack, sandals, etc.) stumbling down the escalator and then slumping up against one the pillars in the station. Pretty drunk.
Then a BART train rolls up heading out towards Pleasanton. It's only a 4 car train (they vary the number of cars used on each train depending on expected demand) so the train rolls past us and stops about 150 feet down (at commute time there would typically be 10 car trains in service so there is a lot of extra space when a small number of cars are being used).
The drunk guy doesn't move until the train is about to leave and the announcement is made over the loud speakers. Suddenly he realizes that this is the train he wants and gets up and starts running/stumbling towards the train. As he zigzags away my wife gasps because he came so close to the edge so I start paying closer attention. Then BOOM, over the edge he goes.
Luckily for him (and all of us that still wanted to ride BART that evening), he didn't actually hit the 3rd rail. I ran over and helped pull him up out and he staggered away.
What was really strange was that he had a rolled up copy of the Economist in his pocket that fell out when I was helping him up. It was the copy with the person looking over the edge of the cliff. Maybe that's a metaphor for our current economic situation; stumbling around drunk, falling onto train tracks, but being lucky enough to get pulled out before something really serious happened.
But that's not what brought on the blog post.
When we were back in the Powell St. BART station heading home with two very tired kids (we also walked over to Pier 39 to check out the seals, who actually have their own webcam) we saw some guy in his mid-to-late 20's looking vaguely REI-ish (backpack, sandals, etc.) stumbling down the escalator and then slumping up against one the pillars in the station. Pretty drunk.
Then a BART train rolls up heading out towards Pleasanton. It's only a 4 car train (they vary the number of cars used on each train depending on expected demand) so the train rolls past us and stops about 150 feet down (at commute time there would typically be 10 car trains in service so there is a lot of extra space when a small number of cars are being used).
The drunk guy doesn't move until the train is about to leave and the announcement is made over the loud speakers. Suddenly he realizes that this is the train he wants and gets up and starts running/stumbling towards the train. As he zigzags away my wife gasps because he came so close to the edge so I start paying closer attention. Then BOOM, over the edge he goes.
Luckily for him (and all of us that still wanted to ride BART that evening), he didn't actually hit the 3rd rail. I ran over and helped pull him up out and he staggered away.
What was really strange was that he had a rolled up copy of the Economist in his pocket that fell out when I was helping him up. It was the copy with the person looking over the edge of the cliff. Maybe that's a metaphor for our current economic situation; stumbling around drunk, falling onto train tracks, but being lucky enough to get pulled out before something really serious happened.
posted by Chris Heller | 10:17 PM
1 Comments:
stretching the analogy, it's a great example of how the capitalist (whoever they are) are being helped by the true economy engines. Now that the risk leverage went ashtray they need the money of the hardworking people to put all back on track...
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