Hop on the Bus, Gus. Or not.
Sep. 21st, 2012 02:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogTwo other oddities from my adventures in Catholic littering earlier.
I mentioned that I briefly bivouacked at a McDonalds on the corner of Sheridan and Sweet Home. It opened a few months ago, and the location is kinda weird:
If the drive-thru seems to be pointing the wrong way, or that building looks really old-school Mickey D's, it's because it is. Sometime in the 80s, I think, they closed the location and it was turned into a photo finishing lab. One oddity of the rebuild was that they kept the drive-thru window; on more than one occasion back in the 90s when I brought film over there, I'd drop it off and try to order a double cheeseburger, onion rings and a large orange drink.
Somehow, Color Tech has survived the death of non-digital photography, while still retaining the architecture. Meanwhile, Ronald must've felt a fondness for the corner, because when they tore down a United Church of Christ building that had been on that spot for decades, they built a new one on its formerly hallowed ground.
----
While sitting in the new restaurant, I considered some facts unknown to me when I set out earlier. I'd seen a bit of rain along the way, and I was now holding a Whopper of a bag full of raffle tickets and checks (the final haul turned out to be just over $500), so running home was now out and I was even questioning the walk. I thus decided to go back to the 80s again in one more respect: I checked if there was a bus running along Sheridan Drive.
This was as bizzare an effort as finding the checks on the ground in the first place. To be kind, the NFTA website is hideous. There is absolutely no overview of the bus lines even coming close to one of the classic T or Tube or MTA system maps; to find a bus, you need to know the name of the route it travels. "Sheridan" seemed a logical guess, and, this being Buffalo, a wrong one; THAT line ends near the Amherst-Tonawanda town border, which I was on the other side of. "Williamsville" was my only other guess among the choices (which are neither alphabetical nor geographic but tied to numbers assigned, in most cases, in the 1950s), but the Williamsville route runs mostly along Main Street and thus wasn't anywhere near where I was.
I see buses running along that major highway all the time, but there was no way of finding which one was going to, much less when, short of going outside, hoping there was a stop nearby (there was), and noting the name of the bus line that stops at it. The route is cleverly named "Hopkins," after a street it turns onto from Sheridan a good four miles down the road. And, now armed with that information, I could view a .pdf of a perfectly 1970s timetable, informing me I'd damn best walk slow with my booty in hand because I'd still get home a good 20 minutes sooner than waiting 40 minutes for the next Number 49 to come by.
Which, it turned out, is what I did, never seeing a bus in either direction.
Other cities have smartphone apps to help you find, plan and even pay for mass transit. This one remains firmly entrenched in the latest hours of the Late Late Show; it's a wonder the buses aren't in black and white.
I mentioned that I briefly bivouacked at a McDonalds on the corner of Sheridan and Sweet Home. It opened a few months ago, and the location is kinda weird:
If the drive-thru seems to be pointing the wrong way, or that building looks really old-school Mickey D's, it's because it is. Sometime in the 80s, I think, they closed the location and it was turned into a photo finishing lab. One oddity of the rebuild was that they kept the drive-thru window; on more than one occasion back in the 90s when I brought film over there, I'd drop it off and try to order a double cheeseburger, onion rings and a large orange drink.
Somehow, Color Tech has survived the death of non-digital photography, while still retaining the architecture. Meanwhile, Ronald must've felt a fondness for the corner, because when they tore down a United Church of Christ building that had been on that spot for decades, they built a new one on its formerly hallowed ground.
----
While sitting in the new restaurant, I considered some facts unknown to me when I set out earlier. I'd seen a bit of rain along the way, and I was now holding a Whopper of a bag full of raffle tickets and checks (the final haul turned out to be just over $500), so running home was now out and I was even questioning the walk. I thus decided to go back to the 80s again in one more respect: I checked if there was a bus running along Sheridan Drive.
This was as bizzare an effort as finding the checks on the ground in the first place. To be kind, the NFTA website is hideous. There is absolutely no overview of the bus lines even coming close to one of the classic T or Tube or MTA system maps; to find a bus, you need to know the name of the route it travels. "Sheridan" seemed a logical guess, and, this being Buffalo, a wrong one; THAT line ends near the Amherst-Tonawanda town border, which I was on the other side of. "Williamsville" was my only other guess among the choices (which are neither alphabetical nor geographic but tied to numbers assigned, in most cases, in the 1950s), but the Williamsville route runs mostly along Main Street and thus wasn't anywhere near where I was.
I see buses running along that major highway all the time, but there was no way of finding which one was going to, much less when, short of going outside, hoping there was a stop nearby (there was), and noting the name of the bus line that stops at it. The route is cleverly named "Hopkins," after a street it turns onto from Sheridan a good four miles down the road. And, now armed with that information, I could view a .pdf of a perfectly 1970s timetable, informing me I'd damn best walk slow with my booty in hand because I'd still get home a good 20 minutes sooner than waiting 40 minutes for the next Number 49 to come by.
Which, it turned out, is what I did, never seeing a bus in either direction.
Other cities have smartphone apps to help you find, plan and even pay for mass transit. This one remains firmly entrenched in the latest hours of the Late Late Show; it's a wonder the buses aren't in black and white.