sometimes i wish i could be like the other "professional" men on the train

sometimes i wish i had a private car to drive me to work so i could listen to bukka white and rock out and not sit on the train with some perved out business man staring at my thighs.
 
I used to experience sociology by getting on the train in Waukegan IL with all the black and hispanic "help", and then heading south through the posh suburbs of Chicago's north shore...the maids and such would get off at each stop and gradually be replaced by businessmen who were so homogenous they all looked like penguins, in dark suits, trenchcoats, briefcases...

when we got downtown I would be the only economically disadvantaged person still on the train. on the way home the whole process would go in reverse; I would arrive home with working class people and the occasional drunk who didn't know where the fuck he was going.
 
two stops before mine is called the 'white flight' stop by everyone. alllll the white people get off. and then everyone looks at me like 'why are you still here?'. and i get off two stops later. it used to be worse.

i wish people like greg were on my train instead of stinky-mouthed wall street dudes and drug dealers.
 
i don't take a real honest-to-goodness commuter train anymore. nowadays on the T all i see are BC workers and students and occasionally this strange middle-aged Latino with a giant Three Amigos sombrero on.
 
the thing is that my train is the commuter train and not the regular subway, so its all the people who can afford to live in the posh suburbs and commute everyday, which in turn means all business men and women all the time.
 
i did both kinds of trains in chicago:
on the L, i used to go from around wrigley field south to the north edge of downtown for work and it was basically a total mix at that point: lots of 20- and 30-something business ppl and then some homeless people too.

the Metra train is more like Greg's train- all business people going from the far suburbs into the heart of downtown. lots of them talk about chicago sports teams and buy tall cans of Miller beer for the ride home. Lizard's example sounds like a Metra train too.

in st. louis, everyone has cars. period. even bars downtown have street parking or parking lots. it's crazy.
 
i know. crazy! and you can actually find street parking. the only time it's ever crazy is baseball games or maybe football games (haven't been to one). hockey games only draw like 15k ppl, and if you get there about 20 minutes before start time you can easily find street parking. there's this cool bar where good bands play and it has a whole parking lot like 1 block away that is FREE. i yell about the insanity every time one of my friends says "Why don't you park there? It's free." Any time you find a place to park in Chicago, you have to ask yourself 'why isn't this spot already taken? is it legal?'