Rene Moffatt launched his “Route 42” video and the42bus.com Web site last month.
(John McDonnell - THE WASHINGTON POST)
Metro inspires myriad emotions among its tens of thousands of daily riders: relief, joy, frustration. It turns out Metro also brings out many of their inner artists.
Metro riders are picking up their guitars, their pens and their video cameras and writing songs and poems about their experiences riding the transit system.
Rene Moffatt, a freelance web designer from Mount Pleasant, last month, launched “Route 42” complete with video and Web site — the42bus.com— to immortalize the everyday frustration of bus riders on .the route that runs from Mount Pleasant through Adams Morgan and Dupont Circle to McPherson Square, Metro Center and Gallery Place
Some sample lyrics:
How long do I wait before it’s been too long
And when do I start walkin’
And all alone, my baby calls she’s waited for too long
But at the moment I start talkin’
Here comes that 42
The one that brings me back to you
“Everyone’s got a love-hate relationship” with Metro, Moffatt told The Post’s Dana Hedgpeth. But “it is part of our lives, so we might as well make the best of it in any way we can.”
Musician Jason Mendelson at the Clarendon Metro station.
(Evy Mages - For The Washington Post)
Alexandria musician Jason Mendelson recently released his first CD of songs — “Mostly Blue” — inspired by his trips on Metro. Mendelson, a tax analyst by day, is hoping to write a song about all 86 Metro stations — starting of course, with the Blue Line.
It’s not just singers and songwriters who have been inspired. D.C. native Alexa Mergen. After reading Moffatt’s story, Mergen sent along a poem inspired by a ride on a Metrobus.
The L1
Ride Metrobus around
Washington Circle around K Street to McPherson
Square where men feed ducks and doves from benches and
shirtless homeless browned by Piedmont sun loiter.
Rush hour. Workers sprung from desks
kibitz and stride, stroll and jog, pull up to white-clothed side-
walk tables for olives and wine.
There’s a free ride in every life.
We turn on 20th. Window ledges’ chilled
edges prickle the skin.
Dogs keep heads low while walkers text.
Maple trees catch diesel exhaust; skinny bikes
whip lanes.
The driver leans on the big wheel. Past Dupont
we are tossed on ruts in Adams Morgan where folks
freed of ties and heels shoot baskets on open courts.
Crossing Ellington Bridge we level
with treetops. Rock Creek winds below.
Up Connecticut Avenue climbing, signals chiming.
Have you been similarly inspired by Metro? E-mail us at transportation@washpost.com and let us know.
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