The trip from Ballard to Bauhaus Books and Coffee in Capitol Hill in Seattle (at least without a car) involves taking Bus 17 from the southeast corner of Market Street and 28th Avenue to 3rd Avenue and Pine downtown, then walking 3/4 of a mile up Pine to Bauhaus. At some point on Bus 17 a man got on that made the entire bus smell like urine. I was amused to watch the reactions of all of the Seattlelites in the bus around me. Some covered their noses, some scowled, some got up and moved. One lady stood up and began opening all of the windows on the bus to vent it out.

I thought of my fellow Los Angelinos. Apparently these northwesterners don’t want their public transportation to smell like bodily fluids and/or human waste. In LA, the stench is just kind of a given. And maybe as a result, those of us that take public transportation, don’t have very good senses of smell.

The experience just reminded me of how filthy LA really is. Don’t get me wrong, I love Los Angeles. It’s the epitome of a post-apocalyptic city, rising from the filth and ashes of some non-existent catastrophe and still managing to swarm with people and function (for the most part) as a governing society. There is a beauty and complexity and a paradox in the dirtiness of Los Angeles that is colorful and real and endearing. At least for me. I think people who live in New York (though they are two totally different cities) can relate. Paris as well. And Bangkok. Those cities are just… plain… DIRTY. But they’re beautiful and… well, lived-in.

When I got off of bus 17 to head up the hill, a homeless man stopped me and asked me if he could finish my coffee. I thought, “I guess if you want the last half an inch of cold, mostly backwash coffee, then go ahead.” It wasn’t until I walked away from him that I realized he was just trying to sell me drugs. Instead he got the residue of my cold crappy spit coffee.