Our downtown offices at Mother Jones sit just a few miles from Golden Gate Park, the site of the Outside Lands fest, so to make sure we had a good spot for Manu Chao’s set at 6, Brittney and I hopped on an outbound streetcar just after 4 yesterday afternoon.
After the train pulled away from Montgomery Street, we began talking about the bands we were excited to see: The Black Keys, Radiohead, Beck, Cold War Kids. It had been a long week at MoJo; our Military Bases project finally went live. We were looking forward to a relaxing night in the park.
And then approximately 12,639 tourists, hipsters, hippies, festival-goers, and unlucky commuters crammed themselves into to the train at the next stop. I guessed 12,634 of them were also on their way to Outside Lands. Suddenly, I became acutely acquainted with the aromatic heft of Old Spice deodorant under the arm of the guy who wedged in next to me to grab the pole over my head. Two women, probably on their way home, sitting in the seats just in front of me looked up at the crowd that had made the train a can of sardines; their faces wore Kurtz’s horror.
So many people had squeezed in to the train the door wouldn’t close, so the conductor politely informed the crowd not to lean on the bars that, when pressed, open the doors when the cars stop at street level. Ten stops and ten similar announcements later, he’d lost his patience: “DON’T LEAN ON THE BARS! THE BARS KEEP THE DOORS OPEN! GET OFF THE CAR! CAR TWO! I KNOW IT’S YOU, CAR TWO!” A girl at the back of the car put it even more bluntly: “Get off the f*cking bars! Get off the f*cking car!”
We were half way there.
—Steve Aquino
