An Urban Ethnography
photos: (top left) The Silica graffitti eludes Gray's best removal techniques; (top right) The cave of the open-air transit center; (middle ) The transit center sits, ashamed and half-hidden beneathe the city, photo by eidoan; (bottom left) The city and the center sit in contrast; (bottom right) People move with purpose through the transit center, there is no where to linger in comfort
Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies 4.1 (2008)
ISSN 1557-2935
Renee Human
University of Kentucky
Field notes and photos
the transit center
The transit center sits at the edge of downtown Lexington. The narrow loading area is more of an open air cave, crouching, ashamed, half-hidden below the city. Two small glassed in rooms provide little comfort in the chill winter. Gary, a halfway house resident on his way to retribution, wears a blue dickies jumpsuit and takes pride in keeping the cigarette butts swept up and the graffiti clean off the walls. "I've tried ev'ry thing I kin think of, but I just can't get Silica off the window," he tells me. "What is Silica?" I ask. "Dunno," he answers.
I've spent hours at the Transit Center, observing and interviewing; but it is not a place to linger. Cold hard surfaces in black and brown depress and deny even momentary comfort. "Sometimes the bathrooms smell sickly sweet. That's crack or meth," Gary explains. "Sometimes it's pot and I kin get a little high wipin' toilets."
