There were so many amazing scenes at BART Basel this year – Francois and the decaying golden banana, the woman with the woven toilet paper roll mobile sculpture, the trumpeter in Glen Park station – the piñatas – the guy with the fake butt – the fashionista with the beanie baby pug and bodyguards – Penelope, the girl with the spray bottle of water spraying her grandma’s raincoat – Too many to list!
At BART Basel, the crew sets up a pedestal with a glass cover, a red carpet, a backdrop, and a small but effective PA system and microphone. People come up to present their art; after 20 minutes or so the entire set-up and crowd gets onto the train to go to another station and hold another event!
We started at Embarcadero, then moved to Civic Center, then to Glen Park, which is probably my favorite station architecture. The crowd was huge – and splendidly dressed!
I exhibited and read my short poem Take the 49, which is about the wrong transit system, so now I really need to write a poem about BART and read it on the bus.
This year I made two tiny zines – Take the 49 and Copies, both under Burn This Press. They came out super cute!
The 49 poem does a lot in a small space. Late at night, that bus tends to go very fast down a major street that in the daytime is crowded and slow. I was going for the feeling of speed and joy, a little recklessness, the feeling of bumping over streets and pavements in bus but also in my wheelchair, being like those metal rolls in old music boxes, because often I’m coming home from a musical event at night on the bus, the music is still playing in my head, and i’m in a state where every sound of the city at night is like music & it all combines beautifully. One night a driver really did tell me a story about his old job painting the bridge and how at least the bus is warm – he was waxing a bit poetic about it all – and it was – as the kids say – “a mood”. While I don’t remember why we were chatting, we had a nice connection, but I don’t really remember what he looked like. I hope he sees the poem some day!
My outfit for BART Basel was in BART colors, silver/white and blue. I had a moment where I showed a group of people my belt buckle and handmade train-track belt, and there was an audible collective gasp. Very gratifying!
You can admire more photos of BART Basel in my Flickr album or in this larger collection of BART Basel photos by many people!
And, if you love transit systems so much that you want to read a ridiculous, sweet story about BART and SFO as cozy roommates, here’s a link to Next Stop, San Francisco, which I wrote in response to the tweets from SFO and BART’s accounts during the protests against anti-immigrant/ anti-muslim ban policies in 2017.
The event was so much fun. I loved seeing everyone’s art, or (in)significant objects framed as art, and the joy of the crowd, who were in “eclectic dress” as described on the invitation.
Its organizer, Danielle Baskin, has done so many hilarious cool projects over the years. I appreciate her and the whole crew who made BART Basel a thing – not just a thing, but a tradition!