Catching Long Beach’s latest late-night bus

PHOTO by RUSS ROCA

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority changed course last month, saving a bus that runs through the heart of Long Beach when most of us are asleep.

But who rides the No. 60 line between midnight and 4 a.m.—hours when most buses are as empty as office buildings and parking structures, when the 60 travels the entire length of Long Beach Boulevard in the dark, on its way from downtown Los Angeles to downtown Long Beach?

The answer, said MTA flacks in the weeks before their March board of directors meeting, was nobody, or so nearly nobody that they were considering canceling what the agency calls the “owl service”—as in night owl.

The No. 60 follows an odd path. It connects downtown LA to North Long Beach all day, every day—going as far south as Artesia Boulevard. But beginning around midnight every night, it continues past Artesia, going all the way to the First Street transit mall.

“There’s only like four or five bus lines in Los Angeles County that have this kind of service,” said Josh Gonzalez, a server at P.F. Chang’s China Bistro. Gonzalez relies on the No. 60 to get home from the Pike at Rainbow Harbor to Los Angeles, and he knows most other bus lines don’t run much past midnight—including Long Beach Transit, which power-naps between 1:01 and 4:25 a.m.

Maybe that’s why, when MTA directors met March 13, they decided to leave the lonely No. 60 alone. The MTA spokesman guessed that the riders had spoken, and maybe they had. People ride this bus late at night—lots of them, depending on where you catch it.

I waited for the No. 60 on a recent Tuesday shortly after midnight, at its first stop in Long Beach, south of Artesia Boulevard. The stop is a little smoked-glass kiosk at Barclay Street that MTA shares with Long Beach Transit—and it’s at least 15 years older than those white open-air benches the Long Beach agency uses now.

I climbed aboard and we rolled, past an aging strip mall with maybe half the letters from its original name, Camelot Center. It looked at least as old as the Kennedy Administration—a strange contrast with the street, which is newly paved and freshly landscaped south of Del Amo. The bus tires got quieter as the boulevard abruptly changed from cracked, seamed concrete to black tarmac.

“It’s the best bus. You can take it all the way from county jail. I’ve done it two or three times,” said a man with bloodshot eyes—the third of six people I tried interviewing. The first lady I approached said she depended on the bus—and here was her stop, goodbye. The second man didn’t speak much English, and by the time I re-introduced myself in Spanish he had to leave too.

I gave the third man my card and leaned in to talk—but then he gave the card back. “That’s some of that gay shit,” he said, aggrieved, noting proudly that he was a Crip for life. “You look like you might be gay, too.” Suddenly, everything was gay. My head buzzing with adrenalin, I walked to the front of the bus as it stopped to let the man off.

And then there were five: a man and a woman who looked homeless and dozed separately in the heated bus; a bright-eyed man with an iPod who’d enjoyed my confrontation to no end—and a third sleeper who finally woke. His name was Jua Harmon, he said, and he worked in computer animation, way out on Wilshire Boulevard.

“I usually take the train, but there was a problem with it,” Harmon said. Then he and the music listener both exited, and the homeless and I rode the rest of the way to the Long Beach Transit Mall.

The Transit mall is First Street between Long Beach Boulevard and Pine Avenue—off-limits to all non-bus or -train traffic—and it’s an eerie place after dark. We arrived at 12:25 a.m., and the MTA driver politely booted us off so she could close the doors and take her 25-minute break in plain sight. We stood blinking as the lone MTA bus sat silent and dark on the chilly street with several of its Long Beach Transit brethren.

After a few minutes, a woman in jeans and a short-sleeved T-shirt began shrieking and ran all the way down the middle of the street, screaming at the top of her lungs. A few of the dozen riders on our side of the street—mostly men in winter clothing—clucked sympathetically, but mainly we just watched her run.

Break over, our driver cranked open the doors and we all paid another $1.25 to come in from the cold. This time of night, the No. 60 is part conveyance, part destination. Gonzalez, the P.F. Chang’s server, boarded at the last minute, having closed early on a weeknight. So did 19-year-old Hadlaa Shareef of Compton, who does costuming for Disneyland—at Disneyland, a two-hour commute.

“Everybody’s like ‘How do you have the patience?’ I don’t want to drive. This is comfortable,” said Shareef. The only times it wasn’t comfortable was when she worked late. On those evenings, Shareef said she’d sometimes wait at the park until 5 a.m., when the Orange County Transportation Authority bus—her MTA connection—started running again. Tonight sounded easy by comparison. She and Gonzalez would probably be home by closing time.

The No. 60 dropped me back at Barclay Street, about 1:10 a.m. I walked halfway across Long Beach Boulevard before I saw an oncoming semi, and just froze in the middle of the street—too tired to care—but the truck driver stopped to let me cross.

By then, the No. 60 should have been at Artesia Boulevard on schedule—its last Long Beach stop on the way to Los Angeles again.

Tags: Long Beach, MTA, no. 60 bus, octa, public transit