Catching the No. 66 bus could be a fare to remember
Published: April 13, 2006
A young property lease coordinator wants to start a conversation with a man seated next to her on a Chicago Transit Authority bus one morning.
“Nice day out,” Sara Hall says, turning to the stranger. “It might be one of the nicest days of the year, don’t you think?”
He peeks over his newspaper, flashes a smile and so begins another friendly conversation.
As the No. 66 Chicago bus inches along this morning, it is different things to different people: a noisy reading room, a place to catch a quick nap, a mass transit jalopy that rattles between home and work.
But for at least some students and young professionals, it has become a kind of rolling velvet room, albeit with plastic and crushed polyester decor. It’s a place for people-watching, friendly conversation and maybe, just maybe, a place to find love.
In the 1980s and 1990s, when lakefront high-rises were the pinnacle of fashion and the buses that rolled up Michigan Avenue toward the Outer Drive were packed with young singles, the No. 151 was tagged by some as Chicago’s “Love Bus.”
Now the population in those neighborhoods has aged, ridership on the No. 151 has declined, and the new hot neighborhoods for young professionals lie to the west, in Ukrainian Village, West Town and Wicker Park.
Undoubtedly there are many contenders for the “Love Bus” title among the city’s crisscrossing grid of bus routes. Some would argue that the Brown Line “L” is every bit as romantic, and others even make a claim for Metra’s Union Pacific Northwest Line to Crystal Lake.
Yet the No. 66 Chicago Avenue line seems as good a candidate as any for the new Love Bus.
“I met my husband on this bus” three years ago, said Angela McKnight, 31, while riding along Chicago Avenue. “We bumped into each other on the way to Michigan Avenue, started talking and then fell in love. This is our `Love Bus’ and it will always be that to us.”
As the bus rolled past Love’s Restaurant at Halsted Street, passenger Brenda Johnson said, “I don’t know what you call it, but I’ve been asked out a lot of times on this bus. Maybe it’s something in the air. What’s happened on those dates is my business. But I’m still single.”
Longtime public transportation rider Gloriastine Hines, 57, said the Chicago Avenue bus ranks up there as “one of the chattiest bus lines I’ve ever been on.”
The line has gone through a major transformation since Hines began riding it 15 years ago. Back then, very few professionals or college students were on board, she said. The changes began about the time the crumbling Cabrini-Green housing development along Chicago Avenue began to empty out.
Those changes intensified, she said, after the former Montgomery Ward Co. warehouse on the Chicago River was transformed into pricey condominiums, and new development continues now that gentrification has hit neighborhoods near Milwaukee and Chicago Avenues.
“You started to see the bus become more integrated,” said Hines, who lives in Austin and rides the bus for more than an hour to and from work each day. “For years this line was mostly older African-Americans and Hispanics.
“Today, you see a lot of white girls in their 20s, and you see lots of men in suits,” Hines said.
Some riders say the people-watching on the bus is as good as in any trendy nightclub. Others say it’s just a fun place to hang out and be seen.
“I used to ride the 151 bus a few years ago,” said Troy Petty, 34. “It’s not like it used to be. The No. 66 bus has a lot of those qualities right now.”
Ridership numbers suggest that the days of the No. 151 Love Bus, which runs through tony neighborhoods like Lincoln Park, may be coming to a close.
In the six years between 1999 and 2005, the number of rides on the 151 has declined by about 1.5 million. Meanwhile, the number of passengers on the No. 66 has been going up during those years, a sign of continued gentrification to the west.
Ridership on the No. 66, which draws passengers from Wicker Park, Goose Island, Ukrainian Village and Humboldt Park, reached 6.7 million rides in 2005, up 649,000 from 1995. Today, the line–which runs from Austin Avenue to Navy Pier–provides more rides than the No. 151 and is among the city’s busiest.
As the bus rumbles toward the Brown Line, a Northwestern University medical student is watching people. “I’ve got a boyfriend,” says Amanda Marma, 23, her eyes scanning passengers aboard the bus as it crawled over the Chicago River.
“But there’s no harm in looking around this bus. I mean, I don’t know if I could ever take the next step.”
Sometimes you don’t have to. It just happens.
That’s what Rachel Yas, 24, related while riding the No. 66 bus to work.
“The people-watching is the best thing about the Chicago Avenue bus,” Yas said. “I’ve met some really nice people here,” she said. “You sit down and someone will start talking to you. Has it been the person? No. But there’s always tomorrow,” said Yas, who is single and moved to West Town recently.
Kevin O’Neil, who writes the CTA tattler blog, said there’s nothing unusual about love on the CTA. It’s bound to happen when every day the same people meet at the same time and on the same bus or train.
In fact, he said, in the early 1990s a conductor used to call out his stops by playfully telling passengers, “You’re on the Love Train. The next stop is Chicago Avenue, where you can make your love connection.”
Meeting people on the bus offers a big advantage over the growing phenomenon of Internet dating, riders said. On the bus, there’s no hiding behind a computer screen.
Though many riders enjoy the people connections on the No. 66, other passengers would rather not think of the CTA line as anything more than cheap transportation to work.
“You get some people who want to make eye contact with you,” said Vesna Carasquillo, 30, who likes to find a seat and keep to herself.
“I tell them, `Hey, I’m married,’” she said as the bus stopped. So far, she said, that seems to have worked.
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