This is my arm, not yours. On it is an official Maggie Sharpie tattoo. All thanks to having to take the Drunk Train home.
#6, Things I’ll miss about the Spartan Daily
Every form of public transport that involves rails has a thing called the Drunk Train.
Oh, sure, it’s not an official title, but train riders know. It is basically a clown car for drunk people. That’s right, several of an area’s people, temporarily in the best mood of their lives and complete with new leases on life, with nary a care in the world, may be found on certain train cars at certain times.
As consistent as the Drunk Train is among rail systems, what’s not consistent is the frequency or timing of the Drunk Train. Logically, Drunk Trains would occur mostly at night, somewhere near closing time. And logically, they do. But for every rule, we have exceptions.
The Caltrain, for instance, is party to the occasional surprise Drunk Train, while just about every Bart that passes by is a Drunk Train.
The VTA light rail, though, reserves its drunks specifically for the last train, which comes by, depending upon random, minute, senseless, debilitating, and seemingly weekly schedule changes, somewhere between 1:40 and 1:50 am.
Life on the Drunk Train is a regular circus. Complete strangers congregate as if they’d known each other for years, with all the friendliness, cigarette-loaning, and sometimes name-calling and exchanging of blows that go with familiarity that really isn’t.
On the Drunk Train, for your amusement, we have acrobatics, volunteer singers and rappers to provide entertainment, and a dress code that includes the mandatory wearing of a hood. The atmosphere is so friendly that some people fall right asleep, and don’t come to until the end of the line, when the engineer pokes them awake with a cattle prod.
So sad that all this fun is usually tough to observe, due to the inebriation of, oh, everyone on board.
So interesting was it for me, then, for about two years, to observe firsthand, while being a portrait of sobriety, all the antics of said Drunk Train.
How, you ask? Why, you ask?
As a Spartan Daily editor, I was forced to take the Drunk Train home consistently.
So interesting to view it through un-sloshed eyes.
My skateboard, for one, attracted a lot of attention. I had a heartfelt conversation with a hammered 40-year-old guy about the joys of going to a skatepark and carving it up, after he leaned unsteadily over and spun one of my front wheels, mentioning, “gOod beaRingSh.”
He warned me to let kids skate while I’m at parks. Seems experienced skaters, such as his self and (ahem) myself, are always being rude to up-and-coming kid skaters. ”AsshHoleshz likE UsH cOMe iN aNd PusH tHe KidSH oudDada WaY. Let ThE kIdS P lay, man.”
Another guy, a giant, went on and on about skating Love Park in Philly, where he’s from. He konked out, missed his stop, and decided his new hobby was window punching when he came to. For the debriefing, I nodded and smiled, standing as still as possible, because it worked with the T-Rex in “Jurassic Park.”
My favorite experience, though, was finding another non-drunk on the drunk train.
It was Mardi Gras, and as such, I was feeling particularly sober and ridiculous, sitting in the back. A little person sat next to me and asked whether I’d like a Sharpie tattoo.
The only correct answer to a question such as this is yes, and so the girl, who I learned was named Maggie, began work on my left forearm.
Maggie said she had been going around downtown, handing out Sharpie tattoos and accepting tips, although mine was on the house.
Turns out she’s going to school for nursing at EVC. Taking her time, making some money. Her mom is very patient with her. She’s going to transfer to a University. Maybe not SJSU, maybe so.
She’d like to be a real tattoo artist some day.
My arm soon bore the abstract semblance of some orange dragony thing, as seen at the top of the post. Beautiful. As we de-boarded, she warned me to sleep in a long-sleeved shirt, lest my tattoo share itself with my bed sheets.
And that’s the last I ever saw of little Maggie, Sharpie tattooist extraordinaire.
And so, number 6 on my list of things I’ll miss about being on the Daily is the fly-on-the-wall, sober perspective while being aboard the Drunk Train.
I’m pretty sure that all the other times I’ll be on it, from here on out, I’ll be just one of the crowd.
Tags: Angelo Lanham, drunk train, light rail, longboard, SJSU, skateboard, Spartan Daily, VTA
