"There is no better DD than SEPTA."
I thought a lot about the act of drinking on SEPTA buses and subways and trains today, and truthfully, a lot of what I thought about had to do with feelings of "getting away with something" that we already covered a couple days ago. Since you are not technically allowed to drink in SEPTA vehicles, any time you wish to do so you must do it in secret. These two drinking scenarios go hand-in-hand.
But there's an added emotional benefit to drinking on SEPTA, one that I've never really considered until today. Drinking is traditionally a stationary activity; we post up at a barstool, we hunker down in the den, we take a sip and feel a world at rest. But when you take drinking to the buses and trains, you strip away any sense of idleness. You stop to drink but you are still on the move. Ma said that all my drinking will get me nowhere, but look ma, I've traveled miles in the space of one paper-bag-wrapped forty!
This is possibly a bunch of stupid retroactive justification for all the brazen drinking in various dirty subway cars we did in our youth. I mean, you gotta be a complete asshole to get off at Pattison Ave. leaving this bullshit behind:
That picture is from an early September Phillies trip, 2008, from Olney Station to the stadiums on the BSL, about twenty friends in tow in the same subway car, backpack full of forties, being passed around like champagne, poured into obvious red solo cups; September 2008, that magical month when the Phillies were untouchable and we were too, the youth, in the twilight teenage years, feeling like we could do no wrong, and maybe we couldn't, having gotten away with drinking Hurricane forty bottles out in the open on public transportation, and getting away with a lot more as the night went on.
But that was a while ago, back in college, when these types of drinking scenarios were important to us. For good reason—I've been on a lot of subway rides in my life, but there are precious few I can remember as well as these. Special because we weren't supposed to be doing it, sure, but special too because our days were numbered. I didn't express it out loud, but I had to have known that we couldn't do that shit forever.
True enough, I haven't done much SEPTA drinking the closer I get to full-bore adulthood. I mentioned a solo journey I took in 2017 already in the "Drinking in Secret" post. There was another time in January 2016, when we were on the Fox Chase line Regional Rail, already toasty, audaciously carrying a half-empty 30-bird of cheap beer like it was buck we had bagged. Off the top of my head, I can't think of too many other opportunities to drink on public transportation in the past half-decade.
I mean, I've been on SEPTA buses and subways cumulatively for hours and hours and hours and hours over the past six years, since I've been taking it to work in Center City, but those don't count as "opportunities," per se. Do I want to crack a beer on the El on the way home? Of course. But I can't. I'm headed home to two kids and a wife and fucking mortgage. I don't drink beers on the El.
And, on top of all the normal boring adult shit, there's something else obvious to consider—we are in the middle of an international pandemic, involving a virus that spreads easily among parties when those parties are in confined spaces. A bus and a subway, I can tell you from extensive experience, can feel quite confined during rush hour. So I haven't stepped foot on any type of SEPTA vehicle since March. Not when PPA stopped the free Center City parking, not when rain has threatened to make my bike ride to work a wet one, and certainly (and unfortunately) not when a self-imposed drinking blog structure implores me to get on a bus and drink a beer.
I thought about spending my lunch hour in the back of a random SEPTA bus with a cold one in hand, but Pam was right—my health and the health of those I come in contact with subsequently are not worth risking for some stupid bit.
So I did not drink on SEPTA today, just like I haven't drank on SEPTA for years. If today was special, it was special only because it was another guidepost in that long slog toward adulthood—you cannot drink on a bus anymore, what, are you fucking out of your mind?
There will be a day in the future, when the world is safe to explore, when the kids don't have to be overlooked every goddamn second of the day, when we are free to follow the muse again. On that day, I will find myself on a train, sitting on bright orange plastic seats, surrounded by friends and acquaintances, and one of us (let's be honest: me) will have a backpack full of beers. We'll be in an empty subway car, no one except us, headed south, red solo cups in hand, and every muscle in our shoulders and abdomens will relax at the sight of a cheap red cup topped with foam, sipped at 70 MPH, stationary, but moving far, far away from here.
BEER: Murphy's Irish Stout (I'll write more about this beer in a couple days as sort of a beer style round-up, promise)
STYLE: Irish Dry Stout
ABV: 4.0%
BREWED BY: Murphy Brewery Ireland Limited
LOCATION: Cork, Ireland
PURCHASED AT: IGA
PAIRED WITH: a conversation about a movie on Zoom
GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5
BEER COUNT: 260.5
No comments:
Post a Comment