transit/cinema minutiae
Yesterday I walked home from work, able to read most of the way because the rain actually let up, until just the last few blocks when it began to sprinkle and I had to put my book away and put Madonna back into my years. I left work about ten minutes early to give myself just enough time to heat up a dinner to go, do my push-ups, and feed the cats before heading out again.
I guess you could say I ran a sort of "transit race" with myself. It was either take the #49 bus from Broadway and Pine in a single trip up to 45th and Brooklyn in the U District, or take Light Rail to Stadium Station in the U District and then transfer to the #44 to 45th and Roosevelt. I actually found myself with more time than anticipated, and left what I thought might be early enough to catch the #49 on Broadway and Pine at 5:24 instead of 5:36, especially since One Bus Away said the former was running several minutes late. Trouble with that app indicating buses running late is, it often lags behind when buses actually make up time, which was exactly what happened here: I was half a block away from Broadway when I saw the #49 turn up Pine. Shit.
So, I turned about and walked the couple of blocks up to the Light Rail station. I theorized this would be faster even with a transfer since Light Rail only takes like three minutes to get to Stadium Station from there. What I did not factor in there was the extra time it took to walk to the station; the time spent waiting for the train to arrive (about three minutes); walking from Stadium Station to the bus stop where I could transfer; waiting for a bus there; and then walking from the stop at the end of that bus to the theatre. Bear in mind that there was all of ten minutes or so between #49 buses, and all that shit adds up to a lot.
Although the difference in arrival amounted to only a couple of minutes, in the end I still learned that, all things being equal -- if both modes of transit are leaving at the same time -- it's definitely better to take the #49 as a single transit ride than to hop on the deceptively "faster" Light Rail and then transfer to a bus in the U District. I literally would have been better off just waiting the ten minutes for that next #49, coming at 5:36, as that very bus passed me on 45th in the U District after I de-boarded the other bus I'd caught with a stop a couple blocks further away from the theatre.
Not only that? Even when I had waited to transfer to a bus outside Stadium Station, I hopped on the first usable bus that came by, the #45, even though its closest stop was four blocks from the theatre, and the #44 goes literally to the very block the thatre building is on (the #49, by the way, gets to within a block and a half). So, I got off the #45 at 45th and University Way (which locals call "The Ave" and the reason for that has always been a mystery, given it's actually a "Way" and not an "Avenue"), had four blocks to walk west on 45th, and not only did that very 5:36 #49 I had not bothered to wait for pass me by, but so did the #44 I did not bother to wait for by the stadium. Jesus, I need to learn some patience! You see how eagerness to hurry winds up just slowing you down in the end? God damn, there's a lesson my husband could learn.
As I said, though, the difference was negligible -- those buses passed my by when I was maybe one and two blocks away from the theatre. And I had already selected my seat on the AMC app, so, whatever. My only point is I had no reason whatsoever to attempt all these alternatives in a pointless eagerness to get there faster. Also: the straight shot is always better, even if it means giving up Light Rail in favor of a bus.
But! What that "straight shot" is will change in just a couple of years, when the Light Rail's Northgate Link Extension opens three new stations, including "U District Station" at Brooklyn (one block west of the Ave) between 43rd and 45th. That will be all of four blocks from the AMC Seattle 10 theatre in the U District, and for once I'll be able to take stunningly quick Light Rail rides to movies in the U District -- we're talking about six minutes stop-to-stop on Light Rail versus 24 minutes stop-to-stop on the #49.
Now, granted, the Light Rail stop will be a couple of blocks further away from the theatre in the District than the current #49 stop. But that hardly makes a huge difference; it merely narrows the trip time comparison slightly. It takes roughly the same amount of time to walk to the Light Rail stop from home on Capitol Hill as it does to the #49 I can catch at Broadway and Pine -- about ten minutes. So, add that to the start of the trip. It'll take, say, roughly 7 minutes to walk from U District Station off Light Rail to the AMC at the other end. Counting the walking, that's 10 minutes walk + 6 minutes on Light Rail + 7 minutes walk = 23 minutes total. Taking the #49 instead would be 10 minutes walk + 24 minutes bus ride + about 4 minutes walk from that stop = 38 minutes total. The new Light Rail station will shave a whopping 15 minutes off the time it takes me to get there. That's a 39% reduction, which seems pretty fucking worthwhile to me! (And that's just for me, living half a mile from the nearest Light Rail station; the difference will be far greater for people who live even closer.)
In other words, the next Light Rail extension will be a dream. It'll even go all the way to Northgate! And although Northgate Mall will be mostly demolished and undergoing massive reconstruction at the time, the Regal Cinema up there will almost certainly still be intact, and the once-in-a-blue-moon movie I want to see that's only playing there will be far more accessible to me than it ever was. But mostly the biggest difference will be seeing movies in the U District, where I can use my AMC A-List Plus membership. I mean, assuming that monthly subscription is still working the same way two years from now. I sure as hell hope it is!
(It only took MoviePass two years to go tits up, after all -- just as I long predicted. I knew I was just lucky having a so-called "annual pass" that basically amounted to free movies for four months even though it stopped working right well before that supposed year was up. AMC, by contrast, seems to have a far more sensible business model. Surely their monthly cost will rise by 2021, but so will that of regular movie tickets, and I'll still be saving by using the subscription service because I see so many movies.)
Oh, should I actually mention the movie I saw last night? It was the documentary Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, and I very much enjoyed it. Totally recommended! B+. I even considered an A-, but in the end decided B+ was still the most fair. It makes little difference in the way of how eager I am to recommend others see it.
So, I bused back home, and spent nearly an hour writing the review, which I rather enjoyed writing.
And because of the movie and the time spent on the review, I did not spend a whole lot of time with Shobhit last night, even though he was home by probably 7:30, about an hour before I got home. As soon as I walked in the door there was fresh cat puke on the carpet right by the entrance. All right, whatever. I cleaned it up.
If anyone wonders why I did not post a DLU yesterday, be assured that I did write one. But, I wrote in probably far too much detail about a fight Shobhit and I got into on Monday evening, and upon further reflection I decided it was actually not the right thing to air our dirty laundry online in such detail, which is a stupid, sensationalistic trap people -- and I -- fall into far too often. Still, it's probably safe to say we are not in the best place right now, and my not posting that was serious enough, I think, that it made an impression. Good or bad, it's hard to say, and is maybe an oversimplified way to look at it anyway. Suffice it to say it was an unprecedented move on my part, and although it kind of blatantly obscured the heaviness of where my mind was at, I actually chose not to publish that post specifically for Shobhit's benefit, and the benefit of our relationship. For now.
But then, Shobhit also did something unprecedented. I woke up at 4:40 this morning, and he was not in bed. He was not watching TV in the living room, either, although that's where he was. He literally slept on the couch. I had been thinking maybe I could wonder if it was an accident, that he was just tired and happened to fall asleep out there, except the lights were all off. This means he turned the lights off, and made the conscious decision to sleep on the couch. This has also never happened before. I got up to use the bathroom, then went out to tell him to come to bed. And he did. I took his phone, which he also had charging and on the back of the couch, into the bedroom with us. He snuggled with me in bed for a couple of minutes and then fell asleep. It was barely half an hour later that my alarm went off and I had to get up again to get ready for work.
I had been starting to suspect I would have to put the bike away for the year soon, but maybe not. So often the rain in the forecast extends several days in a row, only for one day of rain to come and go and then the forecast changes to dry for all the rest of those days. That seems to have happened for the remainder of this week, at least until the weekend, so I was able to ride my bike to work again today. I was far more ahead of usual schedule than usual this morning so I actually rode in semi-dark as the sun came up under mostly cloudy skies, and arrived at the office at 7:08. These days both Scott and Noah are coming in kind of sporadically, often not here when I arrive in the morning, as they are spending a lot of time at the new West Seattle store, now set to open October 2, only two years after the previous store at the same location closed. I remain kind of astonished they managed demolition, excavation and construction all complete within two years. Why does everyone else take so long then? I don't get it!
Anyway we have another store coming, in Ballard, likely to open roughly a month later -- no hard opening date set yet. But, no matter when it is, it will be by far the closest we have ever had two store openings to each other. The previous record was only about a year apart, with Columbia City opening 2015 and Bothell opening 2016. But this one will be a matter of weeks. We've got a lot going on -- and two more stores, at least, set to open next year, at downtown Seattle's Rainier Square Tower (the one I am most excited about, for obvious reasons) and in Bellevue.
I've kind of lost hope that the Madison Valley store will ever open. When that one was first announced, in something like 2015, I was beyond thrilled there was to be a new PCC all of one mile from my home. Well, now there's another one only a mile away coming even sooner, at Rainier Square Tower, in the opposite direction and therefore all of two blocks off my regular commute to and from work. So, fuck Madison Valley! All those "Save Madison Valley" dipshits have accomplished is postponing the inevitable, and I'll be glad when they're finally forced to deal with the finished building. Which I'll never shop at. I don't know, or maybe I will -- Rainier Square Tower will be catering to the downtown crowd and so the "Center Store" Grocery shelves (the department whose items I work on, actually) will be much smaller there than other stores. I suppose if Madison Valley proves to have the better Grocery section, we could end up making that our new primary shopping store in the end after all. I only just thought of that.
[posted 12:33 pm]