Heated Enclosed Bus Shelters To Promote North Side (Just An Idea)

My adventure at 3016 N. 6th Street continued a bit at the bus stop.

So cold. Why doesn’t Minneapolis heat and enclose every damn bus stop in the city, and then build more bus stops?

Are they afraid homeless people will linger in the bus stops? Guess what: The homeless people ride the infamous No. 16 all night long in a big circle. Don’t worry about the homeless hanging out at the bus stop. They’re on the bus, baby, and it’s a whole lot more comfortable.

One night I rode the No. 16 all the way to its mysterious St. Paul end point (because I thought the eyes of some wannabe gangsters on the bus were “sizing me up” and I didn’t want to get off at my usual stop) and the bus driver told me the No. 16 was known, among Metro Transit Drivers, as The Homeless Express.

“More To Life,” indeed. Some slogan. Some Twin Cities branding effort. More waiting in the bitter cold, exposed to the wind, eyes eagerly seeking the sight of a warm Metro Transit bus. (I feel a Minnesota Daily opinion column coming on)

I’ve seen people stand on benches to get their faces closer to the rare and coveted heat lamps in some shelters, but it is not warmth. It is the illusion of warmth. One cheek might feel warmth, but the rest of the body feels the wind, because nothing encloses the shelter. Nothing keeps in the heat.

Be hardy, I tell myself. Be Norse. Be a Minnesotan. But at the core of my being, I am still 6 years old and stuck in the Douglas County Hospital for a month with pneumonia. At the end of each autumn, winter’s cold weather brings me the dread of death itself.

Wouldn’t this be a great way to bring new residents to the North Side? If the North Side were the only part of town with—bugles and drums, here—HEATED AND ENCLOSED BUS SHELTERS.

So I stood waiting for the bus, and I remembered the food I purchased at the Bangkok Market. I took out the plum-colored sticky rice cake, peeled back the plastic, and bit into it, full of anticipation.

Huh. There must have been a cultural misunderstanding about the word “cake.” I was thinking of wedding cake, birthday cake, angel’s food cake. I was thinking of dessert and sweetness.

But this was like the “cake” in the phrase “yellow cake,” uranium ore that Saddam DID NOT HAVE from Niger. This was “cake” from the phrase “caked-on dirt and grime.”

But…hmmm…it wasn’t sweet, but the texture was nice. It was filling. I thought how it was plain, humble but nutritious, clearly intended as a starchy staple which might be gussied up by flavors from some meaty or saucy entrée. I thought of the dried squid, and I tried combining the two. That was delicious. That worked.

So I stood there in the shelter, swigging from my 2 liter bottle of Coke Zero, eating my Hmong sticky rice cake and dried squid. I noticed how portable the sticky rice was, how it stayed together. I could wrap this in a leaf and walk with it for miles. This meal of sticky rice cake and dried squid was like something a Hmong warrior would eat.

I chewed slowly to fill up the time waiting for the bus, and sought to find my inner Hmong warrior, if the flavors and textures of food might summon such a thing.

Along came a young woman to wait in the shelter, already talking on her cell phone. The conversation was with a female friend of hers, and it concerned the complex financial and sexual arrangements between the young woman's FIRST baby daddy, and the baby daddy of the child she was NOW carrying.

Baby Daddy Number Two reportedly didn’t care if she continued to sleep around while she was pregnant. This would not prevent him from supporting his child, OR SO HE CLAIMED. (She harbored serious doubts) But, all the same, her feelings were hurt. She WISHED he would care deeply. She WISHED he would be less casual about such a thing, even if he himself could not be prevented from sleeping around.

Indeed, she would go so far as to say she wished, in retrospect, the father of her second baby had been the same as the father of her first baby. Or Andre. His name kept coming up. Andre would make a fine baby daddy.

The conversation continued, oblivious to my presence. Though I have spent the majority of my life in metropolitan areas, at the core of my being I’m still a bumpkin from the outskirts of Forada, Minnesota, population 197.

And, let me tell you, my bumpkin ears were burning.