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.
People often ask me what "the most craziest thing" I've ever experienced on the bus is. Naturally there are far too many such incidents to single out as an answer. Also, frankly speaking, such incidents are not as interesting to me as the moments of positivity and human interaction...
Jim is waiting at Walker Street, the first stop on the route 4. Normally he prefers to walk off his workday by strolling over to the light rail station, but today's been a day of days. He's exhausted. The last ten minutes of his day as a Seattle Housing...
"Thank you. I hope it's a pleasant rest of the evening for you," I say to someone at Third and Union, on a late-night inbound 13.
"I hope so for you too," she replies. It's been a quiet evening.
Then, from the sidewalk, out in the darkness, a face approaches with...
I was riding the 7 one night, going out to Orcas to meet a friend. Rain peeled down from all corners of the globe and splashed against the laminated glass windows. Outside, cars of all stripes and nations roared by in the dimming evening light, streaks of illuminated red...
"You're a foonie bus-drivin' horse master, y' know thaht?"
"Oh yeah?"
I'm strolling back to my bus one morning at Aurora Village Transit Center, after using the restroom. My job is to take people who call me foonie bus-driving horsemaster seriously. This fellow, a passenger on my most recent trip, has...
John (a different John, not the fellow from the 358 posts) seems to come from another age. Multicolored crumbs pepper his dry lips and beard. His eyes are glassy, sometimes present, sometimes far away. A gentle cloud of paraphernalia seems to drift ever around him- garbage bags on their last legs, the red...
The actual words spoken were not so much the meat of the exchange. It was the noises in between. You have to imagine the bubbling, incandescent laughter- perhaps giggling is a more accurate term- which emanated from both of us, for the duration of the conversation.
He came forward at...
"I got my transfer in here somewhere." We're at 185th inbound, and her face is lined with age and humor, that kind of spirit you don't find enough, equal parts confident and humble. She's over fifty, blue-gray eyes, wearing a couple older sweatshirts and nursing some bulging paper bags,...