I grew to hate Greyhound when I travelled around the US in 2002. It only takes me 15 minutes at Los Angeles Greyhound bus station in 2010 before I begin to dislike them again.
A greyhound employee in an orange jacket tells me I need to speak to someone in a yellow jacket when I ask for some simple directions. The employee in the yellow jacket I subsequently speak to points right when he actually means for me to go left.
Greyhound want to charge me $24 to leave my rucksack in storage with them until I leave San Francisco this evening. Their internet access point costs 25 cents a minute, or at $14 dollars an hour, a more expensive world wide web experience than the extortionaly priced, but third-world, Cuba.
I suddenly notice that there is always a Western Union office in or nearby to every Greyhound bus station, and I realise this is probably so Greyhound staff can quickly wire all monies received to a locked down corporate bank account before passengers on their buses realise just how badly the've been ripped off and started demanding a redunf.
The people that travel by Greyhound are even worse, making the bus stations a hotbed of the worse down-and-outs and out-and-out degenerates that US society has to offer. Everywhere I turn ius a reminder that somewhere down the line the American Dream turned sour for a whole bunch of people.
There is the stony-faced Latino sitting nearby that is somehow defying all laws of gravity by wearing the waist of his jeans just above his knees, but without his jeans falling around his ankles. There is the 50+ years old afroamerican woman that keeps walking past in high heels, that is somehow defying all laws of gravity to keep her cleavage inside a low cut top more suited to someone half her age. There is the drugged up redneck that is asking everyone in the station if they have a cell phone that he can borrow to call an emergency aid travel agency company that will help him get home for free as he is stranded in LA with no money, but extremely dilated pupils.
Everybody in the bus station seems to have a story. Everybody seems to have a tattoo or walk with a limp. One fat American that walks past me has neither, bvut he does have a mullet haircut and a mobile phone hands freee kit that would seem to be more suited to the chief of communications at NASA, Cape Canaveral.
A few hours later, the redneck walks past again, this time talking to himself as his face twitches as if he's on crack. An afroamerican walks the other way shortly afterwards, a large comb sticking out his afro hair. GOD BLESS AMERICA I think to myself quietly as another afroamerican, ths one sucking on a piece of greasy barbecued chicken, walks past me in a bandana and shiny trainers. He's got tattoos on both arms, and walking with a limp.
