I know it’s dirty but…

If you follow this category on T6F, it’s called Standing Room Only and deals with the happenings on BART here in the bay area. I have been riding BART prior to moving in and marrying, my now wife, since 2003.

I had never really used public transportation prior to this. Not even a city bus. You see some weird stuff on the trains. Today was a ‘SRO’ (Standing Room Only) moment. I was in the lead car of a 5-car train going from Bay Point to SFO, I boarded up at North Concord.

At Pleasant Hill, a larger, black woman boards, she is wearing a light blue shirt and hat, which had BART on it, but I could not tell from what department she came from. The doors slid closed and he train departed, as this woman is still standing, unfolding newspapers and placing them on an ADA seat, next to the doors.

Once unfolded she lowered her girth (read fat ass) onto the newspapers. No sooner did she do that, the woman in front of me took a napkin and placed it on the back of the seat for her head. I know public transportation is not the cleanest. Sure, BART does try to keep their trains clean on a daily basis, but as the day wears on the trains do become quite dirty.

Yet this act of unfolding and sitting on newspapers made absolutely no sense. Last time I checked, newsprint is not the cleanest of mediums. Maybe it no longer leaves a a black residue over your fingers when you read a paper. I don’t quite understand what she was trying to say or accomplish by sitting on them.

As the train pulled into 19th Street she got up, closed her book and off boarded the train, leaving the newspapers behind on the seat and the gentleman next to her staring in amazement. At least the woman in front of me had the courtesy to take her napkin with her when she got off at 12th Street.

The seats in BART are no cleaner than seats in airplanes. Who knows what nasties lurk in the weave of the cloth material. I do recall individuals at SFO and LAX handing out kits to passengers to collect a sample from airline seats. Not sure I have seen that yet, but today was just another reason to scratch your head and wonder, “WTF?”