Third Avenue: the same scene every morning for the past three months. I disembark from the 15 at Washington, hike one block west, and stand around for a bus that will deliver me to campus.
And it’s the same thing every morning. The day-glow green uniform is always posed there, scanning the scene, just as I do. Over the past weeks I’ve counted three distinct faces in the Wackenhut duds. Every day, I try to figure out what has changed.
It wasn’t too long ago that Tri-Met employed its own security officers, tan slacks, tan shirt, silver badge, tan brimmed hat. It was like having a forest ranger checking to see that you had paid your MAX fare.
The forest rangers are long gone. These days we are constantly under the watchful eyes of silverback gorillas with “Transit Mall Security” embroidered on their backs in reflective silver lettering. So that day, channeling the spirit of Jane Goodall, I decided to have a chat with one of these new creatures inhabiting our urban forest.
I approach, smile, ask if he can help with a quick question. Contrasting the complete lack of “officers” on the Fifth and Sixth avenue mall with the constant presence of security on the temporary mall, I ask if there has been a dramatic increase in crime that has resulted from the bus mall transition. “No,” he smiles and shakes his head. “There is just more money coming in now.” Clearly.
I ask where this money comes from, knowing fully that this is the last thing on his mind. “And it was deemed that this money is best allocated to increased security, rather then putting more buses on the road during rush hour or halting the now biannual fare increase?”
“It’s a homeland security thing, that’s about all I can tell you.”
It has been six years since those tree houses came tumbling down under the weight of the world. Is the homeland security bureaucracy just incompliantly slow in their response to a real crisis? Have new threats to the buses emerged since changing their routes for the construction? Or is terror simply a curtain to be thrown over a shift to a fascist police state?
On the bus, I’m realizing he’s just like me. He stands at the bus stop eight hours a day to pay the rent; I stand there 15 minutes a day so I can turn in absurd papers that I’m told will one day pay my rent, just as long as I keep paying for textbooks. He’s in black leather boots, utility belt, radio, cuffs, canister loaded with pepper spray. I’m in black canvas high-tops, backpack, mobile phone, pens, camera loaded with film. Just a couple of scared monkeys, checking each other out. Monkeys pretending to be models, walking the concrete runways of the forest floor.
