First Night on the Site

After sitting down and taking in everything that Kennedy Plaza had to offer during the day, I decided to make my second adventure at night.  I thought that it might be drastically different at different times, so why not use the two extremes?  From what I learned, it turns out that I was right, and I was surprised to see such a vast chasm between the two just because of the time of day.

The first thing that struck me as I sat down and started to observe was that there were actual conversations, between strangers waiting for the bus!  I thought that maybe I had fallen into a different dimension as I blatantly eavesdropped on all of the people around me, albeit not as many as there were during the day, but they were actually interacting this time.  I wondered if it was because of the time or just because it was a different group, but when I'm waiting for the bus in the morning there's never conversation.  So my hypothesis was that since it was a smaller group, people felt more comfortable talking, and I loved it!

I also found myself wondering why so many people were waiting for a night bus to a school with not many night classes, so I tried to come up with reasons.  My first, and I believe most plausible, is that they were returning to their dorms after doing something off campus for the day.  But I also thought things like what if they were visiting to spend the night, or even were one of the few unfortunate souls to have a late night class.

But, it seemed that the night wasn't a completely better version of Kennedy Plaza, since it was a very mild version of what people imagined, I saw one homeless man asking for money, and even I felt a little more in uncomfortable while I sat there staring at people and writing about them.  But one person absolutely disgusted me with their behavior, but at first it seemed fine, almost good: he approached somebody waiting for the bus and asked if they could spare two dollars so that he could go visit his daughter with her mother.  At first it was a little heart warming, and if the person he asked hadn't given him money then I would have.  But I looked around while there were no students since the bus had just left, and there was the same man asking more people for money, with what I was assuming was the same fake story, but I couldn't hear this time, and my stomach turned as I saw another person give him "bus fare to see his daughter".

But that's mainly all of the difference between day and night, I still didn't get stabbed or robbed, so it isn't half as bad as people believe it to be.  So I hope that half way through this fieldstudy I am started to change some people's minds about Kennedy Plaza and public transportation in general!