To have and have not: on the road to Las Vegas and San Francisco

Millions of middle-class--not wealthy--Americans can go all their lives without ever riding or even registering the existence of public transportation. It is part of the American way to own one’s own car and drive it wherever possible. Should the distance be too great, middle America prefers to fly.

This points to two things. One is the failure to maintain passenger train service in most long-distance corridors; the other is the desire to travel by oneself, on no one else’s schedule. For many Americans, even me some of the time, driving down the road represents freedom.

It will not surprise my readers that I’m a contrarian. I’m forty-five years old and technically have never owned a car (from time to time I have depended on someone else’s). Most of my adult life I’ve spent in cities where I could either walk or take transit wherever I wanted to go. Being able to get places without a car and all the driving, parking, taxes, is freedom for me.

When we announced our intention to travel to the northwest, as far as possible, by cheap bus, even my veteran traveler aunt expressed reservations. Or rather, lack of them: “Greyhound isn’t what it used to be.” As far as I remember, Greyhound was always first come, first served. But when I mentioned this to my brother, he said he’d never traveled by bus himself.

Predictably, there were people on TripAdvisor worried about Greyhound too. One pithy response:

Greyhound isn't luxurious so it would be a different crowd than your fellow cruisers. But this is not a third world country, the people are just regular folks wanting to get across country to visit family or start a new job. No crates of chickens on the roof or mysterious bad things happening in my experience. 

We’ve traveled in developing countries and never had a chicken on a bus there either. Though there was that pig in Vietnam…Anyway, we figured, if public transit in cheap countries was fine, surely we could manage in the most expensive part of America. Besides, we wanted to travel with regular folks. T. started booking tickets online.

My sister-in-law dropped us at the bus station in Phoenix and we were on our way. The Phoenix Greyhound station looks new; it’s built right next to the rental car center at the airport, rather than in the type of old downtown neighborhood usual with bus stations. In other words, it’s right in the heart of a transit hub we’ve been to many times, yet I’d never noticed it.

I did notice that most of our fellow passengers were Latino or black. Having lived outside of the U.S. for so long, I find the frequency with which Americans talk about race jarring. But it makes sense when you think of how they never talk about class (except “middle”). However imperfectly, race is a proxy for class in America. People on Greyhound buses either don’t have or don’t want to pay for other, presumably faster forms of transportation. (Incidentally, I haven’t flown much domestically in recent years, but if Lawsons on the Loose is anything to go by, the problem of massive flight delays, cancellations, and unscheduled nights in airports has only gotten worse. Compared with this, buses are much more comfortable.)

The thing that makes transportation public is that you share with other passengers. And the other passengers are different. For me, that’s the point of travel. In the time before our bus boarded I observed a man wearing a Nashville Predators T-shirt and dreadlocks; another trying to bum his fare from T.; a man who was evidently homeless getting something from the cafe, and a cheerful Mexican woman serving him. On the bus itself we met a black woman whose white companion was wearing a Bob Marley T-shirt. The woman noticed “London 2012” on our clothing and asked if we’d volunteered for the Olympics. It turned out she’d been a volunteer at Beijing 2008!

The bus was bound for Las Vegas. Greyhound doesn’t stop at as many little places as it used to, I guess, but you still have to go the long way. One place it did stop was in Kingman, Arizona, at Crazy Fred’s on old Route 66. I imagine Crazy Fred’s was hopping back when this was the Mother Road. Because the passengers were chatty, we knew to look behind the truck stop for Crazy Fred’s Dollhouse, a strip joint that was closed till October. The guy on the bus also told us to watch out for a rock formation that looks just like someone giving you the finger. “It’s not in any tourist guides,” he assured us. We’d certainly never been the Bullhead City route before. 

Our driver told us he’d lived in Las Vegas for 61 years. He’d seen the old post office turned into the Mob Museum and many more changes downtown. The Strip, where we were staying, is only a couple of miles south of downtown on Las Vegas Boulevard; but it cost as much to take a taxi there as we’d paid for two bus tickets all the way from Phoenix. That, my friend, is value for money.

I’ve written before that I never expected to like Las Vegas, or even go there. But here we were again. People who’ve tried heroin say that the first high is so unbelievable, you spend the rest of your addiction chasing it. Vegas is a little bit like that for me. Not addictive; I’ve tried a couple of games and just don’t get it, and I don’t think gambling is a taste one should strive to acquire. But that first pool party at Bally’s reminded me that I’d spent my twenties sober and responsible—never single, never going on a crazy spring break. This realization led to where we are now: backpacking around the world and even staying in the occasional youth hostel…but more on that later.

I was glad to be back at a time of year when the pool was open. But Vegas was not really about my brief spell on a one-armed bandit (I have no idea how to play any of these slot machines really; I just like pulling the lever). As ever, it was about people-watching. For example, we passed a woman in a headscarf and a man walking down the Strip like everybody else. I said something to T. about never seeing people in Muslim dress in Las Vegas. Immediately thereafter, we saw a whole group of women including one wearing the full covering—everything but her eyes. She was excitedly snapping pictures of the lights on the Strip. Only in America!

Vegas is also about monetary disparity, as already noted. We stumbled into a Chinese restaurant which, although very delicious (pork dumplings you pour balsamic vinegar into—highly recommended), turned out to cost as much as a weekend night in Bally’s! Our weeknight price, by contrast, was one-third of the Chinese dinner. Traditionally, cheap eating in Las Vegas meant the all-you-can-eat buffets, but I found they are wasted on me now. I just can’t eat like an American. 

Buca di Beppo was also a good place to people watch, though. We shared our hotel with the convention of the American Federation of Government Employees, and they were ready to fight. Every day the union members were wearing a new set of T-shirts with variations on the theme, “If they [members of the federal government] aren’t on our side, send them packing!” They were as diverse a group as the rest of the visitors in town, and looked like they were having fun. 

One of the things I enjoy about Las Vegas is its strange kind of innocence. People go to Vegas in order to have fun. But since our last visit, Las Vegas suffered what has been called the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history. (Depending on your definition of a mass shooting, many earlier massacres of American Indians and black Americans were deadlier.) Because the man who carried out this attack was a white American, it wasn’t the kind of terrorism the U.S. government thinks is worth protecting us from. 

Monetary disparity, unfortunately, also extends to the haves and the have-nots. We were to see much more distressing poverty in other U.S. cities, but we saw it in Vegas too. Downtown, where modern Las Vegas began, is of course grittier than the Strip (it’s where the bus station is). But we joined in the Fremont Street Experience and had some dinner at Binion’s Gambling Hall, one of the old-time casinos.

Three nights in Vegas was enough, as usual. We’d figured out the local buses to downtown, so we headed back to Greyhound and from there, overnight to San Francisco. As we left the Strip behind, I turned towards the window and, with the delicacy of gesture for which I am known, raised my middle finger until the eponymous tower was out of sight.

The bus took us the long way, via Los Angeles. Near the LA station around midnight, I saw a mural: SUPPORT STANDING ROCK. Another moment when the cause of Indigenous nations touched the consciousness, not to say conscience, of other Americans.

The first leg of our bus journey, I got to talking with a young man wearing a Canada T-shirt and Toronto Blue Jays cap. He would have been happy to talk even longer about Toronto, Tennessee, and any number of other subjects, but as I was standing in the aisle blocking the bathroom, I decided to go sit down. Did I mention American buses all have bathrooms? And much nicer than any bus bathroom I remember, too. Considering we were traveling overnight, the reclining seats made a big difference; I actually slept.

The only brief interruption of our peace was shortly before LA, when a young woman who told her phone friend (and everyone on the bus) that she was drunk shouted the following: “Hey, my cousin’s in Pittsburgh and she don’t know sh*t about Ohio. Can you pick her up?” Not that I wish to be accused of not knowing sh*t; but isn't Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania?

We made it to San Francisco relatively refreshed. My cousin, Jim, had introduced us to Peet’s Coffee, the local favorite, so we quickly found some of that to keep us going until we could check into our Airbnb. It was like a rooming house, an old building, but very nicely done up and with spotless shared bathrooms. It was very reasonably priced for San Francisco, but still three times as much as we are used to paying.

This was in the Tenderloin, a relatively flat area of a very hilly city. It was a great central location, so what follows is not by any means a complaint. Rather, a lament. San Francisco is a very expensive city and had a greater concentration of homeless people than I’ve seen in any city in the developed world. None of these people bothered us at all; the point is such a degree of poverty, in the midst of so much wealth and wealth creation, truly disturbed us.

On my Kilimanjaro trek, one of the guys was a techie who lives in San Francisco. I remember him telling us about the extent of the problem and remarking, “Homeless don’t live on hills.” It sounded dehumanizing, but I suppose you think about things like that if you live here. The topography of the city concentrates people who live on the streets in certain areas, as does the moderate climate, I imagine. In a city with extremes like Phoenix or Toronto, many homeless people cannot physically survive. 

But San Francisco is so expensive, even for a visitor, that to be struggling here must be especially hard. We saw Vietnam veterans, people with obvious mental problems, and everyone in between. I know the causes of homelessness are many and so the solutions must be complicated. I also know every person on the street has his or her own story. Yet I couldn’t help but feel that we collectively, and I as an individual, could be doing more to help.

Perhaps the issue most associated with homelessness is alcohol and drug addiction. This, to me, is a classic example of how when one thing goes wrong for a vulnerable person, it is so easy for another thing to slip. Many people in every class of society have abusive relationships with alcohol or drugs (legal or illegal). But well-off people, in general, have more supports to fall back on. 

I’ve never been close to this type of vulnerability myself, but I remember as a new immigrant being shocked by how each limiting factor had a further limiting effect. I had no credit history in Canada, making me practically an economic nonentity; having no job meant landlords wouldn’t rent us an apartment; and how do you apply for jobs without a permanent address? Of course, that’s why Canada required immigrants to arrive with plenty of resources, and the government also offered us a wonderful job centre with computers, fax machines, a phone number, and much more for our free use. 

Many trends would seem to be contributing to the extent of poverty in rich countries. Marriage/commitment being optional and buying on credit affect every level of society but, as usual, poor people are hurt most. And then there are global economic trends which, from a U.S. point of view, look like “China robbing us blind.” A story one almost never hears is that extreme poverty worldwide has been halved since 1990. That is an incredible human accomplishment, and the number one reason is that as recently as the 1990s, China was a poor country, and now it has a middle class. There are all kinds of things wrong with China's political system, but the fact is that millions of people in the world are better off. They are just in countries other than ours. 

At any rate, if we dwell too much on global trends it disempowers people. It implies that no matter whom we elect, we are helpless to make our own people better off. I don’t believe that Americans are any less capable of helping their own people than Chinese are. Harvey Milk, the pioneering openly gay elected official in San Francisco, used to say: “Gotta give ’em hope.” 

More on Harvey Milk, and everything I loved about San Francisco, in my next post.