Things you see on your commute

lucky you

more metro cops than are necessary

I used to have to sit there and sit there and sit there either to turn left in the mornings or to turn right in the evenings.

Now with the roundabout, I just pfffthhh right through. Everyone's adapted pretty well.

The city put stop signs on our new roundabouts not long after they installed them, partly because people didn't know how to use them, but also because some of the properties on the corner had 6 ft or better hedges right up to the property line, so visibility sucked.

http://o3.aolcdn.com/dims-shared/dims3/PATCH/resize/600x450/http://hss-prod.hss.aol.com/hss/storage/patch/1e6b45aa07edf580cd73b1e3d84a95a9

http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/elmirador.jpg

ppl you often see on your commute

in the morning i am often on the same train/get off at the same stop/work in the same building as this woman with long very straight black hair halfway down her back. she is maybe early 30s, olive-y complexion but not obviously of a particular heritage, slightly taller than average but otherwise a regular well-dressed young woman. she walks faster than i do.

but it's like her hair lacks friction or something? she always looks like she just stepped out of a pantene pro-v commercial; her hair is *shimmery* with each strand seemingly separate from its fellows.

i have no particular opinion on this look, but it is notable. she is 'the woman with the hair'.

there are other repeating characters, though mainly on the way home: 'the small woman i think is french for no good reason', 'the guy with the overstuffed backpack who simply must grasp the subway bar with both hands', 'the african preacher with tremendous enunciation' etc.

who are yours

when I commuted there was a girl who got off at my stop and walked my same route to work every day. I never saw what station she got on at, I never saw exactly where she worked, honestly half the time I never saw her get off the train but just in that moment when I wasn't really thinking about anything, BOOM there she'd be every time, always about half a block ahead of me. always wore blue furry earmuffs, a long black skirt, and one of those rubber backpacks that had spikes on it. she had white blond hair. I saw her up close one time & she had white eyelashes and eyebrows too. I called her my Albino Nemesis.

wau

There's a guy I see almost every morning from the window of the bus as he walks along the same route who looks like Paul Morley (though he's a lot younger than PM). The first time I saw him in a local shop after seeing him through the bus window every weekday for a year my brain went "click! familiar person" and I was dangerously close to saying "hi Paul"

(Paul being probably not actually his name, and he had probably not noticed me inside the bus every morning)

other favourites include the Hipster Viking Games Programmer (works in the vicinity of a game dev company, wears a different-game-company-logo'ed bag and was talking game geek stuff to a friend one morning - prob not an actual viking but has shoulder-length blond hair and neatly-trimmed beard and looks more like Notch's online avatar than Notch himself does) and The Lady Who Walks A Dalmatian And Did Not Appear To Like Me Pausing Outside Her House To Stroke Her Cat

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6f/View_from_Circular_Quay_Platform_2.JPG

/braggin

There's a woman who lives two doors down from me who works in the building next to me -- I have a complicated-ish commute with one bus and two trains, and a long walk across Kings X station -- I keep feeling like I'm stalking her. Then we both turn up for the same Waitrose queue at lunch, the same brunch places. It's odd.

Strange buildings at the National Arboretum:

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u120/kingkonggodzilla/CommuteArboretum_zps061dbd92.jpg

Out-of-work Mercedes dealership and restaurant supply store.

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u120/kingkonggodzilla/CommuteAutobahn_zps63e7b970.jpg

Small park adjacent to the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue and within sight of the IBEW international office. I always feel like this is a bright spot on the commute once I get downtown, for some reason. A lot of that area in DC is just completely ugly.

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u120/kingkonggodzilla/CommunteSynagogueEBEW_zps2367531e.jpg

ppl you often see on your commute

some friends who live next door. on the way i don't see too many, it's very busy and hard to recognise people. except there's a woman who feeds pigeons in the park, she seems a bit down and out but is there every morning feeding them. it creates a frenzy of pigeons and is sort of annoying but if it makes her happy i'm okay with it.

when i travel my 40 mins or so to work, i recognise a few people just from habit on the other side. there's one guy who uses a wheelchair and he travels at extreme pace on it, kind of dangerously so and maybe hits into people a bit now and again.

i remember him because about 6/7 months ago he used to always be with a girl, i guess his gf, who was sort of helping him and carrying his bag, and he seemed a lot more tentative. i sort of imagine that maybe that was when he was first in the wheelchair, based on the atmosphere the few times i saw them.

not that i know for sure, obv.

Behind the Mercedes dealership and restaurant supply store is a field of ruin where a few dozen other vacant buildings have been demolished. I used to enjoy looking at them on my commute.

There was an old abandoned restaurant from the 50s or 60s; it was a one-story white building with dark-red shutters. A taxi repair shop whose yellow sign had big, round lightbulbs like a dressing-room mirror. Some other auto repair shop with a ramp so that people could drive up onto the roof for some reason (I think).

There was a bar (maybe a strip-bar), that I think was actually still functioning when I first started taking this route several years ago. I think it was named after some bird, but I can't remember now. After it was closed, someone ripped out a whole wall on the second floor and from the street you could see an interior door, like you were inside a back-office or something. That was weird.

Just did a google maps search of the area and I guess I was wrong about there being a ramp at the back of that shop. But the strip club was called the Skylark Lounge, which I think is a rather beautiful name for a strip club.

• Older woman who works for investment group down the street. There were about a half-dozen times that we had little conversations about work, where we parked and the blindness of downtown drivers. And then, I don't know if she did this first or if I, we just started ignoring each other. That was years ago.

• Guy with Tourettes who sweeps the sidewalk on the touristy little avenue that leads to the Clinton library. He doesn't cuss or anything, but his A-WHOOO, YUP! sure startles some of the visitors. I do say good morning to him, he's awfully hard to ignore.

• There's this older guy, looks like a mix of Johnny Cash and LBJ, who used to walk with this really bad limp. I don't think he's homeless, but I definitely get the vibe that he lives in the government housing up the street.

So anyway, the limp one day disappears. Now he's in a wheelchair, scooting himself around with the leg he has left. Sometimes I want to offer to push him since we're going in the same direction, but I don't want to be a busy body. So I just walk around him at the intersection and feel like I'm showing off.

elderly vaguely homeless-looking man who always stands in the same spot outside a walgreens on a busy sidewalk for hours every morning saying "good morning! god bless you! have a good day!" to the thousands of people that walk by in one of those voices that sounds more feminine and high-pitched than you'd expect coming from a man. he gets very satisfied and says "thaaank you!" whenever anyone says good morning back. i've witnessed a few people address him by name and engage him in conversation as i passed by. never seen him ask for any money or do anything remotely solicitous.

i like that

There is a little guy I see both in the morning and coming home, he works at the problem bar on the corner, doing odd jobs for booze money, I guess. One afternoon, he was on the corner as I was crossing the street at the light, and a woman in a brand new, beige Cadillac with gold trim pulled up to the stop light. She was blond, lots of gold jewelry, sunglasses, talking on her cell phone. He strode out into the street and hollered, "Get out of the car, baby, I want to make LOVE to you!"

The light changed, she drove away.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8329/8116222682_bc63ba0067_z.jpg

aww patos sydney pic makes me kinda sad. that used to be my commute. now its all interstate, another interstate, but HEY MY WORK HAS A PARKING LOT so...

http://cdn.abclocal.go.com/images/wabc/cms_exf_2007/news/local/5989994_600x338.jpg

pretty much just this everyday.

http://untappedcities.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/IMG_9269-1.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/FKvKJtk.jpg

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u120/kingkonggodzilla/ElectrifiedFence_zpsc94df7b4.jpg

I took this from a moving bus, so the words are probably illegible, but there are two signs on the corrugated metal fencing in the backyard down that alley. The larger one reads something like "DANGER Electrified Fence OMG U GONNA DIE" and the other one is some kind of "Guard Dog on Duty" placard.

In the morning I drive in with friends so they are people I often see on my commute. I don't really see anyone interesting on my commute home anymore really.

Years ago though there as this man on my bus who was amazing. He was maybe in his 50s with curly salt and pepper ringlets and he wore two little gold hoops earrings in one ear. In the winter he would wear a man fur and matching Russian style fur hat and sometimes he carried a guitar. One of my then co-workers rode the same bus as me and she and I were obsessed with finding out this man's story. After months of speculation she came running into my office one morning to tell me that she'd happened to spot him in a hair salon nearby called "H@ir by Denn!s". Naturally I needed to know more so within five minutes I'd booked an appointment with him. It turned out that he himself was Dennis and that he had owned the store for years. He was straight and single, sometimes played in jazz band, and had one of the thickest Boston accents I've ever heard. Dennis was actually pretty fucking cool and I had him cut my hair for a good couple months before I realized I was only going there for the company and that he was actually really shitty at cutting women's hair. I had to stop seeing Dennis. Sometimes I have to walk by the shop and I always look the other way when I do so because I'm afraid he's going to see me and then I would feel bad.

things I see on my commute

on the way to work:

http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/19021918.jpg

Beacon Hill from the Longfellow Bridge.

one the way home:

http://www.pictureninja.com/pages/united-states/massachusetts/crazy-buildint-at-mit.jpg

these crazy-ass buildings at MIT.

Ha I didn't realize I put those buildings on here last year but they're really neat!

The Stata Center!

http://i41.tinypic.com/10wnn0h.jpg

today the Hipster Viking Games Programmer was wearing a scarygoround t-shirt

I ran through a mental filmreel of all the possible outcomes of an ugly woman on a bus blurting out some or all of the words "hey cool Scarygoround shirt, I love Bad Machinery", possibly not in an order that makes even that much sense because my brain/mouth interface hates me, at a younger hipper attractive dude, and decided none of them were good. so I did not

(must find the cable to get photos off my phone so I can have a less stalkerish, more architectural/waterfowl-based answer to this thread)

in the front garden of a corner house i walk past on the way to work is a tree, and in the tree is a cuddly panda. the thing is filthy but it appears to belong to the householder because it's been there month after month, sitting high up in its tree. the garden is neat and looked-after, with a little rockery and a cute plaque saying something to the effect of "home sweet home" iirc. i keep meaning to photograph the panda but i don't want to get caught.

http://i.imgur.com/RT4CxO9.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/BvyHHWW.jpg

So the original artist who painted this rock as a teenager came back to update it and match it closer to his vision of the alien being who visited him and inspired him to paint the portrait in the first place.

http://i.imgur.com/NmEIFYo.jpg

I usually don't care for the George Lucasization of artworks, but I'll make an exception in this case.

Every day I pass by a field that looks exactly like the default Windows XP background...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7d/Bliss.png
...only without the mountain.

holy crap, there's a mountain back there.

New commute:

https://s21.postimg.org/igjtvm1w7/20160902_175414.jpg
https://s22.postimg.org/z4ochp26p/20160912_062528.jpg
https://s16.postimg.org/7m7wg1ab9/20160912_062646.jpg
https://s18.postimg.org/n1jdw56w9/Foxtrot_class_submarine_at_Strood.png
^Soviet Black Widow nuclear sub (not my photo, though)
https://s17.postimg.org/ay06mbixb/20160912_072345.jpg
https://s12.postimg.org/wxhm0k5wt/20160912_073407.jpg
https://s16.postimg.org/vf6ar39f9/20160912_073551.jpg
https://s16.postimg.org/573zl5c7p/20160912_073619.jpg
https://s17.postimg.org/45n2ji0zj/20160912_073830.jpg
https://s21.postimg.org/a3508pe5z/20160912_074135.jpg

New garda station being built opposite GMIT.
The Woods beside the hospital, still trying to think how far down inside them I went. Had been wondering how much of them there was, now know that there is a narrow strip that's about 200 foot deep that goes quite a wa. Very difficult to guage depth or anything from the bus.

The stretch of woods on the far side of the main road that I've passed for years and still never seen the extent of

https://cdn.houle.co.uk/images/Property/large/4/2015/3/3/clapton-square-hackney-e5-001101522_926535_IMG_05.jpg

http://s0.geograph.org.uk/photos/09/11/091197_3db38fd4.jpg