The underground is a portal that zaps you from one location to another with little perspective as to how you got there. The underground is the sub terrainian bypass network. The bus network follows the main veins of the city. You travel down the arteries that connect each small or large organ of the city.  

The 2012 Summer Olympics as an excuse to militarize London while forcing the poorest citizens out of their homes.

The commodification of 'heritage zones' in less affluent areas of the city.

https://www.ft.com/content/8acf8dde-837b-4444-9c99-6f4c836e7e1a

The underground is a portal that zaps you from one location to another with little perspective as to how you got there. The underground is the sub terranean bypass network. I have much spent time realising a way to understand travel and the psycho-geographical effect of google maps our understanding of the city, and the extension of this that comes with driverless cars. In a nutshell, what I mean is - because of our dwindling understanding of where we are - our physical location - and how we got there (because of technology) our lives are being lived online, even in the real world. We are driven around by computers, following a blue line on a small screen with no perspective as to what there is around us, intent only on destination, with a distain for the time spent to get there, valuing it as time lost when we could be being productive. I want to say traveling by bus is a against this grain or perpetuate of the time before it. The bus network follows the main veins of the city. You travel down the arteries that connect each small or large organ of the city (whether you like it or not that city infrastructure is all motor first). No doubt you still follow your phone but you step on and off what is already moving, joining and leaving the dance going on the rhythm of the street, looking out for street signs and landmarks, you put names to faces so to speak. Lifted above, you are positioned tall above and separate from the street, extracted from it but floating on top. You are not alone on the bus, you are with mutual travelers on the same path, exposed to each other, which is no doubt good in remedy of modern social decline. This is the bus, and it is why some people say silly things like "I like taking the bus". 


ON the bus - because you would climb up onto a horse drawn carriage. I read this in a downstairs loo book about TFL but it failed to address that we day the same for trains. On the train. The first buses were big carriages that would bus the working class from East london in to the centre, the top deck was cheaper than the bottom which had nicer seats and cover from rain. Make of this what you will, you could say silly shit like it gave the working class community perspective while posh people counted their purses or something? Obviously not the same anymore. The bus is, if anything, considered the bottom class form of transport, bottom or top deck.


"because of our dwindling understanding of where we are - our physical location - and how we got there (because of technology) our lives are being lived online, even in the real world. We are driven around by computers, following a blue line on a small screen with no perspective as to what there is around us, intent only on destination, with a distain for the time spent to get there, valuing it as time lost when we could be being productive." 


I hope I've made myself clear and coherent here. I think in my previous work, maybe, my tutors thought this point beyond what I can say myself, since I am 'of this time', and not before this time, when people might use maps and calculate journeys themselves rather than ask their phone do do so for them. But I've done my fair share of OS map reading, and my parents are luddites, choosing to read road maps even now, because my dad distrusts anything that might misuse his data or track him, being an authority in such matters having worked in fintech for 30 years.

Its partly a romantic point - because I think we no longer get lost like we once did, wandering aimlessly and asking strangers for help. 

It is also a warning about how we use convenient technology before understanding its social impact - because we know now that when we let technology do social interactions on our behalf, it diminishes our ability to communicate with each other. Use of roads, pavements vehicles and signs is a common language and set of rules we all know, a physical societal structure we still use and maintain - and which Google maps, driverless cars and Uber subverts. 

Finally, Google maps recommends businesses. Most of the world is free but you need to go outside and find it first.


I can't read on the bus, I can't sleep on the bus, I do listen to music on the bus but even then I find it such a chore to find anything worth listening to. I look at my phone to follow the dot along the line to my destination. Impatient maybe? Despite my best efforts - which just tend to materialise as cynicism and self-hatred - I  am a child of the modern world, always in a hurry for no real reason. Not this though, I will argue with you that it is not this even though it probably is. I want to say I like knowing where I am, and how far I am from other places I know. Writing this on the 75 on my way to Croydon, I don't recognise any of the places around me, this is TOO far south. The friends who have just moved there want to go to spoons or box park 

The underground is a portal that zaps you from one location to another with little perspective as to how you got there. The underground is the sub terranean bypass network. I have spent time realising a way to understand travel and the psycho-geographical effect of google maps our understanding of the city, and the extension of this that comes with driverless cars. In a nutshell, what I mean is - because of our dwindling understanding of where we are and how we got there (because of technology) our lives are being lived online, even in the real world. We are driven around by computers, following a blue line on a small screen with no perspective as to what there is around us, intent only on destination, with a distain for the time spent to get there, valuing it as time lost when we could be being productive. I want to say traveling by bus is a remedy to this. The bus network follows the main veins of the city. You travel down the arteries that connect each small or large organ of the city (whether you like it or not that city infrastructure is all motor first). No doubt you still follow your phone but you step on and off what is already moving, joining the dance and leaving on the rhythm of the street, looking out for street signs and landmarks, you put names to faces so to speak. You are also lifted above, positioned tall above and separate from the street, extracted from it but floating on top. You are not alone on the bus, you are with mutual travelers on the same path, exposed to each other. This is the bus, and it is why some people say silly things like "I like taking the bus". On the bus because you would climb on the horse carriage



Heatherwick is a slur where I'm from. 


Who the f*ck is Thomas Heatherwick? He's the f*cker who did the new bus and sh*t. He's famous... kind of... What else has he done? Urrrrm, the Olympic cauldron, you know, the one that had all the petals that go up, yeah that one. 


You get taught he's a genius in school alongside Philippe Stark and Marc Neuman or Newson or whatever, and is continually set as a figure head to 'design' in its multidisciplinary sense, in the veins of design magazines and architectural trends. The reason my lecturers openly revolted at Heatherwick is because of his bullsh*t... or lack thereof. He had no philosophy and no compulsion to explain his work beyond what it actually was. This is infuriating. It's the equivalent of someone receiving praise and investment from 'painting a pretty picture'. 


Those three men we were taught in product design because they were 'divisive' or 'experimental' or something. They were design equivalent of Hirst(probably), because their designs were sh*t. It made for a good exam question because they were famous designs that functioned terribly. Philippe Stark's kettle, Marc Newson's chair, they don't work and that fascinated my design teachers for some f*cked up reason.


The new route master is the same. It's cool but it's cool cr*p. It is a route monster, a red ball of metal that swings about London streets scraping pavements and clipping bollards. After 4 years of living here It's not my favourite, but at the beginning I came seeking them, I thought they were the sh*t. Then I got into using buses to actually get places, and regularly, and I noticed that these ones just weren't good. 


They're dark, the red plastic boxed shelling and the beige top, the dim lights and the slim windows make it actually a bit depressing and feel like a gliding fortress with slit viewers. This is the truth behind what first appears when the bus pulls up. It looks like one big window, but actually it's got huge panes of glass with framing up the inside halving the size. Sit at the front top of one of the Volvos or stagecoaches and you can SEE London, sit at the front of this and you see what it's like driving an armoured Humvee. 


I can't imagine they're easy to drive. There's a reason they took the back stairs out of the design for most of the new ones, because no one uses them, especially now they've taken away the 'faith in society' layout of oyster points when you could get on at any door and tap in. Now we all file in from the front like all the bus layouts ever and leave from the middle. I suspect there are people who don't even know the back stairs exist. The bus is huge because of it. I think they don't put them on a lot of bus routes because they're too long.





One thing I like - the seat at the back of the bottom level, where you are sit backwards looking out the biggest bit of window there is, able to look at cars and cyclist following the bus. 


Tinted windows, don't think any have had two stairs and now they got someone to design the new 'inspired by the heatgerwick' routemaster going back to one stair.

Yoker, one of those places you only know from the name on the front of the bus.

Birds eye view.