Chinatown Buses

Is anyone else going to LA for MLK weekend? I could have bought a Southwest ticket last night for $120, but stupidly waited until this morning and now they cost almost $200. I’ve put up an ad on craigslist. My other options are to suck it up and get the $180 ticket on United or Southwest — or try to brave the California Chinatown Bus scene (San Leandro BART to Santa Monica!) for $90 roundtrip on CABus.

Ed: These are the unofficial bus companies that I discovered while researching my thesis — outside of the seven official ones that I counted. NYT: For many restaurant workers, the number of hours by bus is a critical measure of how far they are from the American center of their universe, East Broadway in Chinatown. Almost all travel by bus, because many do not speak English or have identification, so they cannot travel by plane. A network of Chinese bus…

Seeing this NY Post article on the Chinatown buses linked on Wonkette recently made me remember that I should put back up my Master’s thesis. Here it is, now licensed under Creative Commons. A few times every weekend, a large dark blue airport shuttle-sized van pulls up in front of the Charter Oak Supermarket in Hartford, Conn. This “station” is situated a few minutes from the main station in downtown Hartford that houses both Amtrak trains and Greyhound bus lines.…

Ed: So after not having much luck with pitching my thesis as a freelance piece, I’m making my Master’s thesis on the Chinatown bus scene in New York publicly available. If any magazine/newspaper editor reads this and wants to publish it, talk to me. Until then, enjoy. Ho, 28, runs his single van and three buses on the weekend along his New York – Boston route. Boston Deluxe is the upstart on this route. His two competitors are much larger…

Boston Globe, March 19 2005 : A New York-to-Boston bus burst into flames on the Massachusetts Turnpike early yesterday, sending spectacular flames into the sky and capping what two passengers said was a harrowing trip after the driver ignored problems with the vehicle and continued to Boston. Shitong Ou — the driver of the Travel Pack bus, based in Chinatown — pulled over before the toll booths in Allston-Brighton and ordered all passengers off. Seconds later, the vehicle burst into…