Nathan Vass
Nathan Vass is an artist, filmmaker, photographer, and author by day, and a Metro bus driver by night, where his community-building work has been showcased on TED, NPR, The Seattle Times, KING 5 and landed him a spot on Seattle Magazine’s 2018 list of the 35 Most Influential People in Seattle. He has shown in over forty photography shows is also the director of nine films, six of which have shown at festivals, and one of which premiered at Henry Art Gallery. His book, The Lines That Make Us, is a Seattle bestseller and 2019 WA State Book Awards finalist.
This was going to be a footnote in an earlier post, but this is just too fascinating for a mere afterthought. It’s time for some serious tech talk.
I like long, busy trunk routes like the 7 or the E. Those usually run often. Driving out of North Base has...
As you may know, I've been taking a break from the 7/49 for art-time-school reasons detailed here, instead driving suburban routes in North King County. This whole North Base adventure (I haven't picked up there since they deleted the 358) has been nothing if not charming. The operative word...
On the 348–
I’m going to describe him, and then I’m just going to let him talk, let the scene play out, that it might resonate for you as it did with me. We’re on Aurora, just about about to turn off and go burrowing west into the quiet residential...
The sensation was that of riding on air, a wave of euphoria whose origin I could hardly trace.
I told them about the reroute. This was going to be exciting—if for no one else than at least myself, what with the pleasant diversion of driving a nine-foot wide, sixty-foot long...
"A familiar face came into focus amongst the crowd. There she was: a middle-aged Vietnamese woman I've seen only a few times in as many years. Sometimes she'd be on the route with her daughter, or we'd talk about the bakery she works at. What was her name again?...
There's a ton of you guys out there these days. Welcome. Here's what I wish they'd told me when I began:
Generally, bus drivers don’t talk about driving. They talk about people. You might think this job's greatest challenge is maneuvering those big lugs, but it's funny how easy the...
If you’ve watched this already there’s no need to rewatch, but I’d be remiss not to share a few words on the change. Diane Duthweiler, Tim Pearson and the good folks at The Seattle Channel were kind enough to update my recent interview segment with introductory language more accurate...
"I heard you're off the 7."
Somehow the secret's gotten out. I wasn't going to say anything here, because I have over a year's worth of 7/49 stories stockpiled and nobody reading the blog would've noticed I was driving anything else... but Metro's worse than your grandmother's bridge club. Rumors...