Monday, January 30, 2012

Oh, Camon

Ezra Klein's joint HERE has a piece about why people are flocking to Chinatown Buses: the danger.
Their study in Urban Geography, “Everything but the Chicken: Cultural Authenticity Onboard the Chinatown Bus” finds that it’s not just the cheap fares that draw customers. “Participants routinely framed the Chinatown bus as an authentic urban experience,” they found, “a thrilling and danger-enhanced departure from daily life, and as an engagement with the multicultural city.”
This is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard in my life.  This is total fucking "sorority girl braving the bridge to go to a 'dive bar on Bedford Avenue, hipster trust fund kid moving to a block with only one Starbucks" bullshit. Nobody chooses a fucking bus based on the odds of it being dangerous - can I start a bus company wherein I immediately set the thing on fire and you can only hold on to your seat and hope you get to your destination before being blown to fucking bits?

Hey, a quick "Chinatown Bus" search on this blog will show you I've had many, MANY experiences on the Fung Wah, but all of them laughable - not once did I think "oooh yeah, the driver is nodding off! This is awesome!"  I take the Chinatown Bus for the exact same reason everybody else does: it's half the price of Greyhound and, by the time Greyhound makes it's precious fucking stop at Baltimore Plaza (adding another 25 minutes thanks to these motherfuckers), quicker.  I got on a Chinatown bus in DC at 10am this morning and set foot in Midtown Manhattan at 1:50, with no less service and no more danger than Greyhound provides on a regular basis.  Fucking hell.

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