No. 4 Is No. 1 in Hearts of Riders : Courtesy Reigns on Multi-Ethnic Line--a Movable Feast in the Melting Pot

As public transport, the No. 4 bus bears little relation to A Streetcar Named Desire. More like A Bus Named Banal. That’s on the surface. Underneath, there’s a network of niceties.

No. 4 is the bus that bisects Los Angeles as neatly as a demographer’s ruler.

There are no classes in America, or so the Founding Fathers decreed, but there are differences, mainly economic. By and large, the No. 4 line, rumbling east to west and vice versa, divides L.A.’s Haves, to the north, from its Have Nots, to the south. In a similar dichotomy, those who live along the western reaches of the RTD line (Santa Monica, Brentwood) are relatively well off, while the easterners (Echo Park, Downtown) are less privileged. Parenthetically, the east seems to have more fun, at least after hours, but that’s strictly a judgment call.

Working Its Way West

The No. 4 bus starts Downtown at Venice and Broadway, works its way north along Broadway to the fringes of Chinatown, then turns west on Sunset through Echo Park. At Manzanita, the route bends left onto Santa Monica Boulevard, which it follows all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Riders of the No. 4, then, are about as representative a band of Angelenos as one can find in this meandering metropolis. With inevitable exceptions, they are neither the Wretched Refuse nor the creme de la creme. They are the chili peppers, the soy sauce, the catsup and the mayo of the city, the spice of the polyglot stew. The real people of Los Angeles.

The non-news--by extension, the news--about the No. 4 riders is their apparent consideration of each other, their instinctive courtesy. The RTD Commandments posted on each bus (Thou Shalt Not Smoke, Thou Shalt Not Play Loud Radios, Thou Shalt Not Nosh, Thou Shalt Not Smite Thy Neighbor Upside the Head) seem redundant.

Over a weeklong period, an observer of the mores of No. 4--an observer conditioned by a daily news diet of rape, robbery and riot; an observer expecting at least a modicum of mayhem--is chastened.

Two men help an old woman off the bus on 1st Street. A young man not only offers his seat to a blind man boarding at Vermont, he unobtrusively puts the man’s hand on a bus rail so he could keep his balance.

No, not every man offers his place to a standing woman, not by a long shot, but more than one offers to relieve a standee of heavy packages until she can find her own seat.

A Korean man (Pak, he says his name is), one of the few bus riders in a suit, gives his breast-pocket handkerchief to a teen-ager who’d cut his finger.

And very late at night, somewhere in West Hollywood, a man, slightly tipsy, with an angelic smile comes up short of his 85-cent fare. A couple of leather jackets come up with the missing 25 cents, between them.

Later that night--in the chill of the morning, really--a fat man in a T-shirt can’t find his pocket, let alone his change. “Aah,” says the driver, heading for home on his last shift, “find a seat and sleep it off.”

The drivers set the beat, and their temporary wards generally fall into step.

Marcia Walker is a marvel. Walker dispenses advice, cheer, orders disguised as requests, all the while deftly maneuvering her big bus through traffic with an assurance that erases any lingering apocrypha over “woman drivers.” If Walker were a sea captain, her ship would be called taut but happy.

A born diplomat, Walker knows that “It’s not easy dealing with the public, but you try to keep in mind how you feel when you’re on the other side of the fence. Everybody can have a bad day. You just ride it out.”

Crooning the rules of the road over the bus’s loudspeaker, Walker’s pitch occasionally rises, though she never loses her cool.

“If you flat-out tell them ‘Exit through the back door,’ ” she says, “their attitude usually is: ‘ She can’t tell me what to do!’ But if you say, ‘Would you please be so kind,’ they’ll respond every time.

“They’re nice people on the No. 4,” Walker continues, “not necessarily poor. Senior citizens who don’t like to drive; the people who take the bus to work Downtown to avoid the traffic and the parking fees; the shoppers; the people who aren’t in a hurry; the kids who don’t like to take the school bus.

“Sure, the kids are noisy, and some of them give you a hard time: They get on with a clique and the leader’s got to show his point. You get down to their level, try to understand where they’re coming from, give them a chance to save face. No problem.

“My only problem is I wish I could speak, you know, Lebanese and Spanish so I could relate better. . . . “

Night shifts are as different from day shifts as day and night, but Walker takes it all in stride:

“It’s a very different scene. The freaks come out at night. But I enjoy it; it’s fun. They all talk to you. You get guys who ask you, ‘Where’d you get your mascara?’

“A guy gets on with a puppy, a little bit of a thing, claiming it’s a guide dog. ‘No way,’ I say. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘he’s going to guide-dog school.’ ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Bring him back when he’s got his diploma.’

“The first time somebody got on dressed like a whore, I guess I just stared. She had to ask me three times for a transfer. But I’m used to them now. I’m used to everybody. They’re all people. They’re entitled.”

If courtesy is endemic to the No. 4, it is virtually the only common ground shared by the riders. To eye and ear, the passengers comprise that glorious gallimaufry of hue and tongue that puts an exclamation point to Los Angeles’ claim to be the nation’s new melting pot.

So are the neighborhoods through which the bus passes: sky-scraping wntown, bawdy Broadway, ethnic Echo Park, meretricious Hollywood, meticulously manicured Beverly Hills, avant-garde West Los Angeles, staid Santa Monica.

It is people and places that define a city--its past, its future, its vitality. Rather than Disneyland and the Homes of the Stars, then, the No. 4 bus route should be required riding for tourists in search of Los Angeles.

The only thing missing is the chic (though a night-time parody thereof is both poignant and picaresque: top hats, gold-lame bottoms, even a zoot suit or two). Chic is something your average No. 4 rider eschews, even if he/she can afford it. These are people with a purpose, the people who make Los Angeles work. They are the city’s mechanics, short-order cooks, security guards, nurses, young professionals just setting up.

Sartorially, they favor denim and baseball-type caps, blouses and slacks, along with a spangled sprinkling of individualism. At Century City East, a Delta Dawn dowager boards, probably in her 70s, wearing the hat, gown and makeup of a former belle unwilling to let go. On Normandie, a Hasidic Jew gets on; he speaks no English, only Hebrew, but takes in the scene with the wide eyes of a first-time visitor to Babylon. On Sunset and Alvarado, an Anglo in spotless whites carries on three tennis racquets and a ball bag labeled “Club Med.”

An informal count indicates that only one in 10 riders reads on the bus--mainly La Opinion and The Los Angeles Times, with the odd paperback and at least one impressive tome: “The Enlightenment: A Comprehensive Anthology.” (Manuel, the reader, is employed, “for now,” at a car wash.)

One head in seven bobs and weaves to the private polyphony of a Walkman. Many doze. Most look out of the window or straight ahead, captives of their own thoughts.

“I like the 4-to-8 a.m. run best,” driver Pete Willis says. “Those are the best people because they all have somewhere to go. The bus is real crowded with people on their way to work--and with the fishermen.

“The fishermen get on at Echo Park with their poles and buckets, stay till 3 or 4 in the afternoon and head home with fish in the bucket and a top over it. No, nobody complains.”

As a 29-year veteran, Willis gets to choose his routes. He prefers No. 4, “the best line we’ve got. The people are polite, well-behaved, helpful. I treat them the way I’d like to be treated, and they reciprocate.

“Nighttimes are different. What gets me are the people with no place to go, the homeless. They ride the buses from one end to the other--which is a new fare, and most of the time they don’t have any money.”

How does Willis handle them? “I’ll tell you, but if somebody else asks, I’ll deny it. I let ‘em ride. We’re not supposed to. We have a card to fill out, all that. But what can you do if it’s 3:30 in the morning and it’s cold and the fella’s standing there. . . .”

Over 29 years, Willis has seen it all. “Had a passenger expire on me once,” he recalls. “Somebody I picked up every day, a lawyer for some oil company. He was riding the bus because he had a bad heart and couldn’t drive. Had an attack on the bus. I got someone to call ahead--people respond real well--but he’d expired.”

On the brighter side, Willis recalls “this man, I guess he thought he was home. He was sound asleep, and when he woke up he started taking his clothes off. Piece by piece. Folded everything neatly on the seat beside him. Just sat there--completely naked.

“Another fella, I picked him up at 1st Street, Downtown. Fell asleep. At the end of the line, the ocean, he’s still asleep. I didn’t have the heart to wake him, so I rode him back Downtown, then to the ocean, Downtown, ocean. . . .

“He finally wakes up. ‘What time is it?’ I tell him. He asks where he got on. I say, ‘The last stop.’ He gets off and looks at the sky and shakes his head. He’s probably still wondering where those eight hours went.”

Kidding--and cadavers--aside, Willis confesses, “I love this job. I like driving and I like the public. Good people on No. 4.”

Indeed they are. A sociologist, a political scientist, could do worse than study the No. 4: its riders, its politesse, its trajectory.

Outside the windows of No. 4, the Promise of America still seems to be promising. Mom-and-pop endeavors still coexist, even compete, with the likes of Sears and Safeway.

Outside the windows are the dreams, informal but enduring, that are written on the signs: Amelia’s Flowers, Georgig’s Bakery, Aristedes the Tailor, Mai’s Pizza, Tibor’s Meat, Duarte’s Produce. There are Guido’s Fat City, Marx Sheet Metal, Schatzi’s German Deli, Dolores’ Shoe Shine. There is the Phnom Penh Restaurant, Marouche Armenia Cuisine, Lutong Bahan Filipino Food, the Formosa Cafe and a place labeled simply “Open All Night.”

There are churches--Lutheran, Catholic, Mormon, Orthodox--and there are schools and libraries and theaters and motels.

Finally--perhaps definitively--there is the surpassingly eclectic “Wah Wing Sang, Gutierrez and Weber Mortuary.”

At night, late at night, only the bars are visible from inside the sanctum of No. 4. The bars and the empty places.

At 3 o’clock one morning, an observer finds himself alone on a bus bench at the end of Downtown, on Venice and Broadway, waiting for the end of No. 4’s 13-minute turnaround rest stop. It is a desolate spot at best, in grim contrast to the exuberance of the daytime route.

Across the street, a tall figure in a wool cap materializes. He stares at the observer, lights a cigarette, crosses the street to the bus bench.

Neither man speaks. Finally, the stranger breaks the silence. “It’s a bummer, ain’t it?” he says, apropos of nothing, or maybe everything. At that moment, old No. 4 chugs out of the gloom.

Up Broadway--possibly the only L.A. thoroughfare whose lights never go out and whose people never go in. Around Sunset and down Santa Monica Boulevard.

Gradually, even at 3:30 a.m., the bus fills. A couple hold hands. A night watchman, still in uniform, naps.

At Western Avenue, a dozen young men and women board, still full of the evening. They divide into facing seats at the back of the bus. It gets a little noisy. “Hey,” shouts the driver, “you mind holding it down back there?”

“Sorry, sir,” one of the band says.

The young people smile. So does the driver.