With system changes on the way, CW takes a look at bus culture.

From our passing cars, we see them at the bus stops: the poor, the young, the disabled, the elderly. The bus culture waits while we zip on by.

Some grumble about an overhaul of schedules and routes now being adopted in the name of productivity by Monterey-Salinas Transit (the board is set to approve the plan July 13 during a 6pm meeting at Salinas City Hall), but they lack any real power over the car-driving people who make the decisions.

To Monterey-Salinas Transit (MST), "productivity" means getting more people to ride the bus--people like the current smattering of bus culture idealists who actually choose this life. But it is the people who have no other options who are filling the buses.

I, like most people, am not a bus rider. I support public transportation and even cast my political lot with the downtrodden. But I''m not one of them. I spent a day riding with the bus culture, watching them and listening to their stories, but this I did by choice.

Darell Hunt doesn''t have that choice. Confined to a wheelchair and limited by income, Hunt is an MST regular, and one of the most vociferous advocates of the bus culture.

I start my day meeting Hunt at his regular bus stop in Marina and traveling with him to Monterey before taking the bus to a meeting in Salinas, out to lunch in East Salinas, back into Monterey via Marina and Seaside, out to Pacific Grove to visit my girlfriend, back to the Del Monte Shopping Center to shop, and finally back to the Coast Weekly office in Seaside.

Or, in bus culture vernacular, I catch the Streaker, the 21, the 34, back on the 20, the 14, the 1, the 4, and finally, the 6.

"The bus system for locals is more like a community. You see the same people ride," Hunt says, illustrating his point by greeting the bus driver and the three other passengers on the bus all by name.

Mike Cook, who works at the Naval Postgraduate School, shares a car with his wife, so he takes the bus to work and rides his bike home. Tina Walsh is one of those bus culture idealists.

"I feel guilty driving my gas-guzzler to work, only for it to take up space in a downtown parking lot all day," Walsh says. "I like to feel that I am contributing my share toward keeping the streets less congested and the air less polluted."

MST planner Alan Forrest hopes the Service Improvement Plan (SIP) changes and a marketing effort to go with it will get more people like Walsh out of their cars. His goal is to expand the current daily ridership of 12,000-13,000 people by up to 10 percent: "We want to grab those people over the next couple years."

It is that philosophical focus that rankles people like Hunt, who say the resources would be better used making improvements for people who rely on the bus, or better maintaining wheelchair lifts that sometimes don''t work and leave Hunt waiting for the next bus several times a month.

"I''m getting used to being treated as a second-class citizen," says Hunt. "This is an entirely different culture."

Hunt rattles off bus line numbers and schedules like a poet recites Whitman, maybe better. But approaching the bus system can seem daunting for the layman: "If you are not experienced in doing this, you will get lost, you''ll get frustrated, you''ll get angry. You''ll miss your appointments."

As if the Bus Gods were defying Hunt''s insolence, I easily make a closely timed connection at the Monterey Transit Plaza, and the Line 21 bus arrives in Salinas a minute early. I walk three blocks to attend the Monterey County Board of Supervisors'' hearing on health coverage.

By the time our local politicians stop talking, I have a powerful hunger for some real Mexican food, so I hop on the 34 and head out Alisal Street into East Salinas in search of a good taqueria.

Despite concerns by East Salinas residents about the danger of walking to and waiting at bus stops in this high-crime area, Route 34 is the only one that runs every 15 minutes. Most routes are hourly. Four run every half-hour, and that''s expanding to six when the new plan goes into effect next year.

Despite its frequency, the 34 is usually nearly full. Many members of the bus culture call low-rent East Salinas "home."

Bus rider Mary Kirman describes her bus culture brethren as "common folk. Probably not many doctors and lawyers." And one of the great things about common folk in East Salinas is they know all the best taquerias. She directs me to La Princesa Market, a Spanish-speaking grocery store that serves cheap and tasty tacos and tostadas at a counter in the back.

After lunch, I''m presented with a dilemma. It''s just after noon, and I need to make it to Pacific Grove by 2:30pm, which sounds like plenty of time to most people, but not to bus riders. Waiting for my bus, I search the 82-page MST Rider''s Guide for answers.

Line 21, which takes Highway 68 into Monterey, isn''t leaving Salinas until 1:15, putting me at the Monterey Transit Plaza at 2:07. Then, let''s see, to get to Pacific Grove, hmm...(I scan routes and land on the 14 through the Presidio) The last one I can take to arrive by 2:30 is at 1:45. Damn! But if I take the 20 into Monterey via Marina, that leaves at, let''s see, 12:42, and arrives... at...1:39. Perfect. A longer trip, way out of my way, but I have an appointment to keep. The 34 arrives just as I fold my schedule, putting my plan in motion.

The driver gives me a nod of recognition from my pre-lunch trip, knowing I hold a $6 Super DayPass that allows me to go anywhere today. Again, the bus is crowded with almost 30 riders, and I sit near a grizzled old guy, perhaps homeless, with a deep, raspy and unsettlingly persistent cough.

At the Salinas Transit Center, I meet 17-year-old Daniel, an East Salinas resident riding the bus to Hartnell College, where he just started taking extra credit classes. He says riding the bus "can be a pain in the ass," but his dad says he might buy him a car if he does well in school.

The biggest hassle is avoiding trouble while catching a bus, especially in territories claimed by the Norte¤o gangs, or "red raggers." Although not a gang member, "I identify more with the ''blue raggers,''" he says. "A lot of people can''t respect that you don''t want no trouble. You just wanna get the bus."

Sometimes the trouble spills onto the buses, and many riders can relate stories of fights, drunks or crazies on the buses. "I''ve seen cops come in and take people off the bus," says Deanna Jimenez, who is on her way to a small claims court hearing in Marina, trying to recover money for a used car she bought that burst into flames, forcing her into the bus culture.

Jimenez says doing shopping and errands by bus with her three children in tow can be exasperating, but 6-year-old Jacob just grins. "I like the bus," he beams.

By Marina, every seat on the bus is filled--a few people even have to stand--creating a shuffle of seats at every stop as people vie for better positions. It is when the buses are crowded that you experience the bus culture in all its multi-sensory glory.

A teenaged boy uses the shuffle at one stop to dislodge himself from between the black metal divider at his seat''s edge and the large woman next to him, a woman wearing a Walkman, dark glasses and a white visor under a mass of frizzy hair, floral pants and a windbreaker, with two plastic bags of groceries at her feet.

The boy takes advantage of an open seat across the aisle, and a middle-aged man getting on the bus moves toward the vacated seat--the last one on the bus--with a look of triumph that contorts into a grimace as he wedges himself into the narrow space next to the lady with the floral pants.

The Del Monte Avenue bus stop in Marina represents a change in fare zones, so everyone without a multi-zone pass has to pony up another buck-and-a-half (or 75 cents for kids and seniors). A few people get off the bus, so the middle-aged guy extracts himself and moves a few seats back, visibly relieved.

As a frail elderly black woman in a large purple coat eases her way onto the bus using the handrail and a metal cane, the bus driver asks the large woman, "Can I steal this seat for this lady here?"

She complies, picking up her groceries and plopping her considerable self down in the last seat available, right next to her previous seat-mate, the middle-aged guy, who can only silently laugh at his fate.

Two more older women get on at the next stop, and the teenager stands and yields his seat, prompting a compliment/admonishment from the driver: "For those of you kind enough to give up your seats for the ladies, thank you."

Elizabeth Watts, 75, says it''s pretty hit-and-miss whether youngsters will follow protocol and yield their seats: "Some of the young people don''t have any manners. They don''t get up to let the older people sit down."

The bus is running about five minutes late, so the driver takes a quick poll of connections people need to make at the Monterey Transfer Station, and radios ahead to hold the 1, the 9, and, for me, the 14.

My mind is starting to wander and make random connections by now. I discover that while the outsides of the buses advertise various restaurants and other pricey consumer activities, the advertisements on the insides of buses are all MST house ads: ride the bus, attend the SIP public hearings, mechanics wanted. "After all," I imagine an advertiser saying, "bus riders don''t have any money anyway."

By the time I arrive at Bookworks in Pacific Grove, I must have adopted the languid countenance worn by many bus riders, because my girlfriend seems concerned for my well-being. She offers to drive me to my next stop, but I have chosen my fate, and step onto the 1 after one cup of coffee.

By the end, I am weary, no longer interested in talking to people or gathering information. I sit in my seat and stare blankly out the tinted window, appreciating the personal bubble riders seem to create for themselves, a bubble that has caused as many people to refuse to speak with me as those who agree to chat.

Although the freedom of my car has since replaced the feeling, at the end of that day, I am part of the great unwashed bus culture, stripped of the privileges of instant mobility, a slave to the schedule and the wait and the sounds and smells of the masses.

Then, waiting at the Del Monte Center bus stop for the final trip back to Coast Weekly on Line 6, I meet Richard Thorpe, a 78-year-old Carmel Valley resident, wearing a suit and hat and speaking with a gentlemanly British accent.

He shows me his new monthly pass that he just bought for $22. Thorpe doesn''t drive anymore, and says he likes riding the bus, although he sympathizes with the poor young families who ride the bus out of economic necessity.

"They need it more than I do, and they have to pay $45," he notes.

I listen to his soothing voice tell me stories about riding the bus, about a bakery in Carmel with the best rolls around, about his love for jazz and about a recent adventure he had in Europe. Then, his expression changes as he looks out the window at Fremont Street.

"I''m on the wrong bus," Thorpe realizes suddenly, panicking. He quickly but methodically finishes his story and bids me goodbye before frantically yelling to the bus driver, "Stop the bus!"

I think of Hunt''s warning to new riders--"you will get lost, you''ll get frustrated, you''ll get angry"--and smile. I guess it doesn''t necessarily get any easier. cw