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Moving Violations by Alexandra Ringe | Issue #16 These days I still choose the bus whenever I leave New York. I still
look out the window whenever that queasiness comes on, and I still prefer
travelling this way. However, as a full-grown adult without a bus partner
as entertaining and familiar as my brother, I understand the potential
problems with going Greyhound, namely sitting next to strangers whose
bodies cross the boundary between our two seat cushions (due to physics,
not rudeness), and the extremely small subset of this group that falls
asleep all over me no matter how much I try to wiggle out of the way.
This feature, coupled with unattractive upholstery and the slightly noxious
smell of disinfectant, compels me to admit that the best part of the bus
ride is looking out, not looking in. If I had sat close to the driver instead of eight seats back, I might have been able to see litter, bumper stickers, and sibling interactionsthe windshield was completely dot-free. As it was, I spent the two-and-a-half hour ride hoping that this bus was part of an ill-fated experiment to which I would never be subjected again. I have since learned from Richard Howser, director of advertising and promotional sales at Greyhound, that this window-smirching technique is known as a "bus wrap" and that Greyhound is very excited about it. He declined to say how many buses are now wrapped for fear of giving away trade secrets, but he assured me that there are "quite a few, and well have more." Why? The bus that is all ad "can be in a lot of places that some of the billboards are not today." And it is "really impactful""youve seen the billboard fifty times and you dont see it anymore. . . . You dont see it [the bus wrap] every day and therefore you see it." Of course, Howsers "you" here is the commuter inside a car, not the commuter inside the bus. As for vision obstruction, Howser volunteered that with the bus wrap, "You can see out but you cant see in." When I pressed him on whether the plastic has any effect on the view from inside the bus, he answered, "Novery very minuscule. In fact with summer coming everybodys going to love it because its slightly tinted." Is it like a screen? "Its got little bitty tiny holes in it so if youre real close [his emphasis] to it you can see it, but if youre not it just looks like theres nothing there." (Incidentally, I dont know how you can avoid being "real close" to the window on a Greyhound.) Howsers corporate clients pay Greyhound $10,000$12,000 to wrap a bus, then a monthly rental fee of $4,000. These companies are also wrapping local buses. Recently, Ive noticed two private New York City bus companies with wraps: Queens Surface Company and Liberty Lines, which goes between Manhattan and the Bronx. I talked to a few Liberty Lines regulars to find out if Howser is right that the ads impact on the passenger experience is negligibleperhaps my eyes are abnormally sensitive to distortion. One commuter declared that "you can see everything" through the wrapped windows and went on to say that she likes the admobiles because they are "kind of artsy." Another agreed that "you can see out" but described the window as having "womens hose stretched over it." He thinks the wraps are "awfulits the corporatization of everything." Unfortunately, both of these commuters had to catch
their bus before I could get their names. I spoke with Ellen Lavino a
little longer. She understands why the ads are catching on. When she rides
a wrapped bus, "I can see people outside on the sidewalks staring.
They [the ads] really attract attention." Lavino despises them, though.
"I hate trying to look out. In broad daylight its only fuzzy,
but at night and when its raining its like they blacked out
the windows. Theres a reason why they dont put them on the
windshields." |