The B63 bus is perennially, inevitably, notoriously late. Year after year. It NEVER improves.
Its understandable as to why: it has to trundle down one of the murkiest, most-ethnically-dense, most-unfamiliar-with-American-ways, jaywalking, stroller-pushing, not-paying-attention, thickly-pedestrian routes in the entire city. That's right! This bus goes through Brooklyn Chinatown---so it is easily one of the slowest buses in the entire city. Its not just 'slow' for Brooklyn. It is world-class, blue-ribbon, award-winning slow!
But there's more than just this to excuse (or condemn) this slow-as-molasses bus line. The drivers. Some of the worst in the system. Well, let's say some of the most conscience-less. They shirk their duty big-time. Like, when they get to the end of the route--they are so harried, irate, jangled--that they deliberately park their bus for a while and take a break. I've seen 'em do so!
Next. I am going to single out this bus for being one of the loudest buses in the entire city --again, because it is the most ethnically diverse and there is simply no sense of 'quiet' when riding with residents of Sunset Park down the sprawling mob-scene which is 3 Avenue. They are in their own world, they have no idea that someone sitting next to them might not dig hearing their screaming cell conversation with their relatives.
But it's more than that, and right here I am going to take time to harangue the MTA in general for their noise levels.These insane buses...why must they always drill the most-childish, most-obvious, most-commonsense, most made-for-idiots loudspeaker bulletins into our ears.... at the same rate and same frequency every 1.5 minutes!?
Regardless of the fact that New Yorkers (they actually live in New York) have already heard these recordings ten million times over.. we know them by heart. We hear them in our dreams and nightmares. We have them spilling out of our skulls. Yet every few hundred feet, a loudspeaker blares some stupidity over our heads. Why?
I'll tell you why. Because country bumpkins, hicks, rubes...clueless loincloth-clad villagers from Botswana or Bangalore are always entering New York for the first time, and maybe some of them have never set foot on a bus before, so 'safety announcements' must be dispensed to them so as to prevent the city's liability should they commit some bozo blunder and get themselves killed.
Example: you're on a crowded B-63 bus --people seated, people standing in the aisle--and the bus stops every few blocks to let people off. Stop, start...stop, start. Wait for light. Stop, start. Stop, start. Wait for light. Horns honking. Inching across town at a snail's pace. Totally frustrating, uncomfortable, lurching and swaying. Kids won't stay seated, babbling, shrieking, racing up and down the aisle.
So there's this button or cord on a bus which you press or pull when your block is coming up --it lets the driver know you want to exit--but the thing is, every time--and I mean every single time--this cord is pulled, there's an automated announcement it triggers.
"Please exit from the ...REAR OF THE BUS!!!"
The same flat, evenly-modulated tone-of-voice, 1000 x per day. Every few minutes as the cord is pulled, 'she' crackles into action. Its enough to drive men mad. Why are there berserk shooting sprees all over the nation? This kind of thing, is why.
Could this message ever be done away with? No, because sure enough--against all incredulity--there's always a few nitwits who inevitably rise from their seat and try to make their way to the front of the vehicle to exit!!! Regardless of the warning they have just heard fifty times, to NOT do this very thing!! Oh, my god. How is this even possible? No one knows.
This simply is: New Yorkers. This simply is: human nature. And you will see it on the B-63..in spades! read more
