Beauty and the Bus

One summer during college I decided to take a Greyhound bus to visit my sister in New York. It was a stinky and arduous process involving a filthy bus station in an unsavory corner of Baltimore, “salt of the earth” fellow passengers (translation: edgy drifters and mothers yelling disciplinary obscenities at their children), and tedious stops along the route. All this, in the days before gel hand sanitizer. So I was skeptical when friends recently recommended the Washington Deluxe bus service that picks you up at 15th and K and travels directly to midtown Manhattan, and vice versa. When they told me it costs $35 round trip I decided that skepticism was for suckers. In the years since that awful bus trip, I’d routinely been shelling out $120 for either a plane, train or gas-and-toll bill.

Still, after they made the recommendation, I actually took the time to read the Post story from a while back about the questionable safety records of some of these curbside operators. Despite using phrases like “seem to operate with virtual impunity,” and "whatever, it's your funeral," I couldn’t really detect anything for which a $35 dollar roundtrip bus fare could not compensate. That left one hurdle: would the passengers hark back to that trip where I had to sleep with one open eye trained on the scar-jawed dude next to me who looked like he’d shiv me for the peanut butter crackers in my bag?

To the contrary, I can happily report to those of you unfamiliar with the D.C.-to-New York City curbside bus system that it might as well be called The Coldplay Express. Most of the passengers were mid-to-late-20s females. Oversized sunglasses, J. Crew car coats, and tousled top-knotted hair abounded. While, it's a boon for those of us looking for a cheap and plush shuttle to the city, the real jackpot is for the gentlemen on the make. A smart guy looking for a girl would be well advised to budget enough cash to simply spend a weekend going up and back on the thing. With the exception of the occasional male hipster, pretty young women with little else to occupy them for four hours fill the seats. It’s like a Jane Austen novel on wheels.

Godspeed travelers.