BART Imaginary Hero Worship: The Bearded Argentine
Photo by Flickr user KayVee.INC
I have a habit of making up little identities and life stories for people I see in public, based on nothing but their appearance, behavior and some imagination. It helps pass the time.
There’s a guy I see pretty regularly on my commute — I’ve become sort of fascinated with him despite, and indeed probably because of, knowing nothing at all about him. I think he rides the same route I do, from Glen Park to Embarcadero and back, so I see him fairly often, though I’ve never run into him outside a commute context.
I like to think that he’s Argentinian — not that I have any reason for thinking that, other than a roughly Latin look about him. Strong features, handsome beard. Slacks and colorful dress shirts, but seldom any coat. A rotation of hats, mostly short-brimmed fedoras. The whole package hangs together well. I imagine him stepping out of a milonga looking much the same, only with feathers in the hat or something. He’s got a look of ample dignity and calm about him, and he takes stairs energetically.
I’ve had trouble coming up with a life story for him, but my current speculation calls for him to have come to the States as a teenager, fleeing complex and grisly Latin American civil strife surrounding the Perón regime. He shepherded his younger sister, seeing to it that she got properly fed and educated and defending her from persecution for her accent and unusual birthmark, while building his own career up from doing odd jobs for the local butcher to devising subtle schemes for niche businesses to exploit localized market inefficiencies. On the side he took up ballroom dancing, a favorite pastime of his parents, whom he spent the next two decades trying to exfiltrate (successfully for one, tragically too late for the other) from the aforementioned war-torn and now brutally repressive Latin American regime.
By age 30, he was renowned as a dancer, and only kept his day job running a microeconomics consulting firm to keep the passion from going out of his dancing. He’s resisted carrying the silver-knobbed cane which would otherwise so complete his image, but does succumb to a weakness for it at costumed events where he can wear a top hat and ornate mask.
That little fantasy aside, I’d never actually heard him speak and built up a sort of fascination with his imagined voice (deep, rumbly and sharp-edged, with a slight German tint to his Castilian accent he can turn on or off at will).
The day after the Bay Bridge closures began, we wound up waiting through the same worrisomely long gap between trains headed downtown — the sort of delay that tells you that (a) BART’s schedules have been blown, and (b) whatever train does arrive is going to be crowded beyond the meager social coping skills of your typical BART rider. It did arrive, and it wasn’t quite that crowded, but with both Mission stations to get through, we both headed down towards the end of the car to get away from the crush in front of the doors.
24th St wasn’t too bad, but 16th was packed, and by this point classical BART Rider Crowd Coping Mode had set in, wherein everyone finds a spot that personally suits them, generally close to the door or blocking an aisle, and stands fixedly there rather than moving away from the doors and obstructing the path of anyone trying to make room for others. The Argentine Hero had moved all the way to the end of the car, in the corner, while I’d headed that way before getting blocked midway by someone’s suitcase blocking half the aisle and a middle-aged Asian woman blocking the other half. Seeing the situation at 16th, the Argentinian called out “there’s plenty of extra room down here at the end of the car, if you move down you’ll all be more comfortable.”
The accent, unfortunately, didn’t live up my expectations. And even though people were crammed around the doors having to reach past one another’s iPhones and briefcases to reach the rails, absolutely no one moved. I wasn’t at all uncomfortable where I was standing. But I waited about five seconds, and when no one moved, I did, climbing over the suitcase and slightly knocking the Asian lady to go stand behind him in the doorway to the next car. I couldn’t bear to see his dignity diminished by being ignored, even by the herd of isolated, sheepish BART commuter types.
The train made its stops, things emptied out a bit, and we both got off at Embarcadero, as usual. The last I saw of him he had lit his pipe for his walk down Spear St., the sun glinting off the sheen of his hat, off to another day of quietly supervising his minions amidst an air of calm dignified grandeur.
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