Retrospective Reminiscing And Prospective Plans. Part Two

You Made Me Late… The Origin Story.

Gotta Catch That Train

The Promise of Spring

The beginning of 2022 had been cold and wet, particularly for the Bay Area, a usually timid, predictable climate. A winter of drenching, flooding rains, bone-chilling winds that ripped through even the most well-layered, and an omnipresent gloom accentuated by the characteristic overcast skies and titanic grey clouds rolling in over San Francisco’s iconic skyline. These unwelcoming winter days brought on a pervasive sense of recluse and melancholy. The sort of days that were best spent inside the loving embrace of a felted blanket on the couch. The days best spent idling around tiny space heaters that tried their very best to spread their warmth throughout early-darkening rooms of the winter evenings. The days best spent waiting to hear the pipping squeal of a mighty kettle and its accompanying warm cup of aromatic tea that brought life and sense back into freezing bodies. The only respite from a continuous siege of bitter, draining cold.

So, the first light and warmth of the incoming spring was well received. With the change of the season— from a freezing chill to a radiant warmth— the shackles of laziness and malaise were shaken loose, replaced by a liberating sense of purpose and intention. Ideas shelved for the winter were taken down and dusted off. Projects—long paused— restarted with a renewed sense of vigor and passion. As gloom dispersed without fanfare and bloom was met with unbridled adoration, a galvanizing shock coursed through an awakening populous, inciting a rippling wave of inspiration and long overdue productivity. Such is the promise of spring, a season of beginning, growth, and ideation. Along with this stirring collective, I too was thoroughly swept up in the promise of spring.

You’d Never See It Coming

This day is forever etched into my memory. March 10, 2022. Noon— on the dot. It was a brilliantly beautiful day. The kind of day where as soon as you exit your front door, you are met by a comfortable warmth kissing your skin. The kind of day where you can inhale a deep, deep breath with the sunlight on your face and feel truly at peace for a isolated moment in time. Certainly this almost spring day is full of promise.

As I left my tiny corridor of a duplex home in Lower Bottoms, West Oakland— a neighborhood of rich history and activism— on that memorable late morning I had only one thing on my mind, what the hell am I going to write about for my thesis?

The start of 2022 signaled the beginning of my capstone seminar and my final undergraduate semester at Berkeley. As sociology majors, each graduating student is require to undertake a capstone seminar to satisfy their graduation requirements and with each seminar students must complete an undergraduate research thesis on a specified topic (don’t quote me on this). Each thesis is fairly open ended and as long as the research relates to the subject of the course, you get the green light to begin researching and writing.

When registering for classes the prior semester, I was hoping to take the Society and Economy capstone taught by one of my favorite Sociology professors at Cal, a professor who truly broadened my understanding of the ubiquitous nature of sociology and how there exist sociological undercurrents in all facets of life. I had the intention of using this experience to advance the economic outcomes of disadvantaged communities of color, specifically focusing on African-Americans in California. Before the semester even began and I was trapped inside on those winter days during the holiday break, avoiding both the cold and COVID from my roommates, I was ideating how I can help increase the economic output of African-Americans, like those in my neighborhood, in preparation for this course. While I did not know what practical applications I would apply to better understand the intersection of race and economic inequality, one can say that this was the beginning of my interest in equity focused research.

Unfortunately, this seminar conflicted with another graduation requirement of mine, forcing me to go with my second choice sociology seminar, Carceral Repercussions. When choosing a sociology capstone seminar, students are to rank five of the seven or eight options in order of preference. Now, I don’t remember all the seminars available at the time, but I can say with the utmost certainty that only two courses piqued my interest, Society and Economy and Carceral Repercussions. So I wasn’t particularly devastated that I was forced into the former, I merely had to reframe my goal to fit within these new constraints. But there lay the next roadblock, how could I link punitive institutions and America’s tragic carceral landscape to the intersection of economic disenfranchisement for African-Americans. (A brief aside: Writing this now, I know exactly how I would approach this intersection and its almost painful how obvious this fact is to me now, but thankfully I was not yet ready to make this connection which is responsible for moving me in the transit-oriented direction I am now heading toward). For the first three months of the capstone seminar, as my peers where moving at a blurring pace, seemingly on top of all of their assignments, I was rooted in place, stagnant, and unable to move forward as I could not resonate with any one research topic. Flip-flopping between angles, research material, and topics, I was truly stuck until that fateful day on March 10, 2022 , Noon— on the dot.

Prelude To Disaster

My 8 a.m. class had been cancelled the night before, so I had the rare pleasure of sleeping in late. I typically went to bed around 9 p.m. to the raucous exaltation of my increasingly inconsiderate, yet jovial, brother and best friends (The roommates in question. And I can shit-talk them as much as possible here because, thankfully, they couldn’t even collectively read The Cat In The Hat if their lives depended on it!) to wake up at 6 in the morning to prepare and collect myself for the balancing act of academics and social life that is common at Berkeley. On this particular March morning, I woke up at 10 a.m. with plenty of time to shower, prepare breakfast and lunch, and, most importantly, spend time to carefully curate my outfit to ensure I would look as good as I was feeling on that particular morning. I vividly recall the aromas of fresh waffles and turkey bacon wafting throughout the unusually solitary quiet of the living room, with what little light filtering in through the windows that our corridor of home provided, illuminating the kitchen as I slowly prepared my breakfast. I remember listening to music, Jars Of It by Steve Lacy lightly emanating from my speaker, as I delicately moved about my daily routine without a worry, an increasingly uncommon feeling in my fast-paced life.

At a quarter to noon, I saddled up: backpack on, laptop and iPad stored, Afro picked, and shoes laced. Unlike the delicate slowness of my morning, I burst out of the front door with a purpose, ready to work, and ready to learn. As I strolled past the skate park, past the abandoned lot, past the beat-up Honda Civic that was always blocking the sidewalk, and past the derelict park that had more vandalism that cheer, I found myself walking directly underneath the West Oakland BART line that shadowed the long expanse of 7th Street. In that moment, as I walked by the USPS shipping center, I thought nothing of the BART trains that rattled overhead, disquieting the neighborhood with their infamous steel-on-steel screeching as the wheels ran along the track. This was my daily routine, my daily commute to school and nothing more. As I left the shadows of the support columns, stepping into the warmth of the sun I could see my first stop of the day; West Oakland BART station.

Walking to the station, I would always cut through the parking lot, gliding over the treaded-upon grass— now dirt— of the island surrounding the lot that marked a well-walked path. Dodging distracted drivers and the glares of corner hustlers, I strode up to the fare gate and tapped my Clipper card to the reader. $2.85 later and was on way up the escalator to the out-bound platform. Standing on the platform I looked at my phone to check the time; Noon— on the dot, ten minutes until my trained arrived and about half an hour until I was in Berkeley. As the sun reflected off the skyscrapers of Downtown Oakland creating a dazzling brilliance, I thought to myself, “This is going to be a really nice day”. Oh, how wrong I was.

The Direction From Disaster

Only when playing FIFA Ultimate Team against the sweatiest of players have I cursed out an AI voice and had my mood take such a devastatingly sharp turn (as I write, a faint, prepubescent shrill shouting about something, something Mandzukic, something, something Aubameyang penetrates into the deepest cavities of my memories). George— which I found out in my rage research— the name of the male automated voice at all BART stations, kindly broke the news that the train I had arrived a whole ten minutes early for was cancelled. And so was the next, and the next. In fact, I had to wait an entire hour for the next Red Line Richmond train, meaning that I was going to be an hour and twenty minutes late to my most important class. Every expletive under the sun ran through my head and the only thing that kept them in my head and not painting the mind and ears of everyone in a 500 ft radius was the young couple and their child standing adjacent to me across the platform, probably heading to the City to get away from angry people like me.

Leaving the BART station immediately after you tap in charges you an incredulous fee, so leaving was not an option for me. Gotta save pennies where you can. And even if I did leave, I would have no way to get to school on time anyway (What’s Uber?). I had no choice but to stay put and wait it out. Despite my growing annoyance, I found myself outdoors, on a warm, sunny day with nothing but time. So I set out to thinking, something I’ve found I am quite accomplished at. AirPods locked in, arms folded firmly across my chest, legs sprawled out in front of me impeding the walkway, and backpack propped up as a headrest, I began to mull over the most pressing issues that were dominating my daily life: football, social life, and thesis.

Thinking about football is, and always will be, straightforward. Win, win, win, tackle somebody hard, yell at people, and lament how I probably threw away a serviceable chance at making it far, if not pro. My social life was… less straightforward. If being a transfer student wasn’t hard enough, transferring into a massive school in the middle of a once in a generation (hopefully) pandemic made my ability to socialize outside of class and sports nearly impossible. While not the most important issue in my life, having access to a constant source of socialization was an aspect of my personality that was sufficiently malnourished (just ask my brother, or anyone who knows me really, how much I talk!). While I did ultimately find an excellent, caring, and loving group of friends to spend time with who I still speak with today, in this particular moment of desperation and annoyance I had developed a poignant urge to lose myself in a few Moscow Mules with strangers at Tap Haus. (An aside: Perhaps one day I’ll dive in-depth to the intersection of social capital generation, the pandemic, the expectations of the life course, and my path to a public transportation career).

However, the topic of my thesis elicited a pervasive sense of academic existential dread. A mental quagmire. Every time I tried to think about writing my thesis— this dark void in my mind— my thoughts only whirred and hummed to the symphony of derelict musings of dismantling a decrepit, aging BART system, and public transportation as a collective, and reimagining this public tool, piece by piece, as a utopic, seamlessly integrated connector of people to places. No matter how hard I tried, I could not— with any amount of effort— shift gears to think about the carceral state, punitive sanctions, or despot, racist institutions. My brain was working of its own machinations, machinations of the transit variety.

My thought process went a little like this: “Why the fuck was it my train that got cancelled.”, “This would happen to me!”, “Imagine if I was going to work or something, I would miss like an hour and probably get fired.”, “This shit must suck for people who have to rely on BART to get to work everyday.”, “If that is the only way they have to get around they must be living life on the edge.”, “Shit must suck if this is the only way you have to get around. For food, work, whatever the reason it must suck.”, “I bet this affects poor people since they have less access to private vehicles.”, “Damn, I bet black people have a much harder time with transportation than most people, life is already hard for us!”, … “hmmmmm….”. At this pause in thought, I looked up into the sun streaked skyscrapers of Downtown Oakland, radiant among of the melange of poverty and inequality sprawled at the soiled foot of West Oakland BART. Suddenly, an epiphany.

“I wonder what navigating public transportation is like for black people coming out of”, a pause, “…prison?”

And then it clicked. All the inner machinations, ideations, and thoughts coalesced in a single moment of sociological madness and annoyance. This topic, this void, had finally had a light shone upon it, the cobwebs wiped away, the dust blown off to reveal a treasured artifact (can you tell I’m going as Indiana Jones for Halloween). While I was searching in the deepest recesses of my mind for a mere inkling of an apt thesis topic, my idea was, quite literally, in front of my face for months. Always roaring by, heard from my windowless, dark room at all hours of the day, steel-on-steel screeching for me to take notice. And all I need to see it was an underfunded transportation network and a rage induced thought session.

As 1 p.m. rolled around, the infamous screeching wheels of a BART train could be heard. A moment later a 10-car Redline train heading for Richmond thundered into West Oakland Station. As the train came to a complete stop, and the doors slowly rolled open, I walked onto the train and thought to myself, “This is going to be a really nice day”.

Until Next Time.

That sunny, late winter day— telling of the beautiful spring to come— brought much promise of smooth sailing. Stepping onto the train on that fateful day signaled the births my thesis. And on that train my ideas began to grow into what would become my final topic: Increased Access To And Development Of Public Transportation As A Mechanism To Ease Re-entry Struggles and Lower Recidivism For Young African-American Men In The Bay Area. An Empirical Look Into the Social Benefits of Public Transport Systems For Public Benefit.

And with that I am finally done! This took longer than I thought, but I got it done in the end. I am still trying to figure out my writing schedule, so if you care please bare with me! Look out for Part. 3 and the end to this amazing saga of how I got into transportation. Before you know it I will be really writing about the most pressing transportation issues!

Until next time,

Gyasi