Commuting to the Promised Land

I work in Mill Valley and I live in Berkeley. So I have a similar live/work trajectory as many of those who work in the houses of Mill Valley (as gardeners, maids and nannies) and live in Richmond, or even San Rafael. I had been commuting by car for almost a year when the call of An Inconvenient Truth got to me and I began to explore ways to get to my job by public transportation. The solution seemed easy- there was a Richmond stop on the BART system that was just a hop skip and a jump from the Richmond Bridge and Marin. But when I tried to navigate this, I found the following: In the first place, I noticed, as I got on my Richmond-bound train from the Berkeley station, that NO ONE was going toward Richmond at 8:00 in the morning. Hordes were going to San Francisco. Clearly I did not have a typical morning commute.

Then, when I arrived at the end of the Richmond line, I found that the bus to San Rafael only came every half hour. I waited for the bus with my fellow immigrants, and when it finally came, I paid $3.60 (steep for a bus ride) and got on. It was now an hour since I had left home. We traveled for 45 minutes across the Richmond Bridge in comfortable seats. I was one of three Caucasians on the crowded bus. As I sat on the bus I began to type this entry and got so absorbed that my purse fell out into the aisle without my noticing it. Three good Samaritans quickly picked it up and asked if it was mine. Once we were over the San Rafael Bridge, we drove along a sort of limbo-like freeway by the freeway, so that we could stop at every stop- A BART line, if one existed, would have been much faster. We wound around industrial areas and huge piles of gravel, industrial park wastelands. There were Hispanic immigrants, hundreds of them, sitting on the street, leaning on lampposts and trees, and even lying in the sun all along the main road, hoping to be picked up as day laborers. We arrived in San Rafael, at 9:25- 40 minutes from the time I boarded in Richmond. Mercifully, the number 19 bus, which goes (indirectly) to Mill Valley, was standing at the station. After a five-minute wait I boarded with a flood of immigrants. The bus was filled with the lively sounds of Spanish conversation- punctuated by English: “No way!” or “You gotta be kidding!” Reminding me of the superiority of the speakers- bi-lingual, unlike me.

The man getting on the bus immediately in from of me carried a bucket and squeegees for cleaning windows. Most of the rest of the passengers were small Hispanic women. Domestic workers, dressed for non-clerical work with sensible shoes and lunchboxes. A young woman got on the bus and sat next to me. She said she worked in a clothing store in Mill Valley and only took the bus because her car was in the shop. This bus, she said, only comes once every hour and it stops running at 8:00 PM. No Mill Valley nightlife for those residents of San Rafael who need to ride public transportation. Even the route to Mill Valley from San Rafael, which takes 10 minutes by car, was incredibly labyrinthine. Instead of turning toward Mill Valley as we passed it, the bus snakes around many stops before finally arriving at the Mill Valley station- 30 minutes later. All told my commute was 2 and a quarter hours from Berkeley to Mill Valley, and an hour and 45 minutes of that had been from Richmond to Mill Valley. You have the same situation trying to come to Mill Valley from San Francisco- BART and a two bus commute.

I know from talking to one of the parishioners at my church that if you have the opposite commute, you have a much easier time of it. If you live in Mill Valley and work in San Francisco, you can get a bus directly from the Bookstore Depot right in Mill Valley to your destination in the Financial District. But there is no direct bus for the worker wishing to get from San Francisco to Mill Valley in the morning. They have to go through Marin City and wait God knows how long for the next bus to Mill Valley. And the unlucky worker who lives in the East Bay must take BART, then a bus, then another bus and spend $10.00 a day.

As I staggered off the bus at my Mill Valley destination, I realized that I hadn’t had breakfast in my rush to get out the door and get to BART on time. So, a little guiltily, I went into the Depot Café Bookstore and waited in line for some breakfast. Behind the counter I saw several Hispanic workers- they had probably caught the bus from San Rafael that came an hour before mine.

A blond woman right before me in line was holding a huge muffin and explaining that she would have to return it because her three year old would not accept a “broken muffin.” The muffin had merely been separated from its sister muffin in the baking tin and thus had a slightly rough edge. The woman behind the counter smiled patiently and carefully picked from among the remaining muffins with a pair of tongs to see if there was one that appeared unbroken. “Not that one- that one over there looks better,” said the customer. The muffin wrangler smiled indulgently and finally managed to the get the appropriate muffin out of the case without (God forbid) actually breaking any of the surviving muffins. I saw her sonn after on her break- eating the previously handled “broken” muffin.

When it came my turn I ordered my breakfast and then said, “I came on the San Rafael bus- I can’t believe they come only once an hour!” The woman looked at me with the same patient expression on her face and got my breakfast- a poppy seed bagel- un-broken.