Bus Report #891

Last night I hurried up the street to catch the 19 Polk.
I had to be somewhere in forty minutes and the bus was already running late.
It arrived a few minutes later and I got on, slid in to an empty seat beside an older man in a floppy hat, who was on the phone.
When he finished his call, he fiddled with the phone and put on some music.
I braced myself for the usual tinny sound of bad top 40 tunes.
But no. Instead, a deep, rich voice boomed out from the tiny phone, singing a mournful song about love.
I asked the man what he was listening to. He turned the phone so I could see the name on the screen.
"It's Gerald Levert," he said. "You know him? You remember the old times?"
I didn't, and I didn't. "It sounds really lovely," I told my seatmate.
"Yeah well you know, I don't go in for all that rap stuff," he said. He shook his head. "Gerald Levert, you remember that."
"I will," I said.
We sat in silence and listened to the music.
The bus was crowded and people were yelling. A woman with a double stroller and two other kids clutched a large Mylar balloon in the shape of a big purple shark. She tried to keep the balloon away from the babies, away from the other passengers.
It was all very... 19 Polk.
But the music was pretty and for a moment the rest of the rush hour commute drifted away, out the window and out to sea.