[ music ] You got to have patience with this number 1.

You don't have patience with this number 1 you're done.

**** the bus.

**** the jobs that drop you off where the 1 bus stops.

Thank God for the number 1 bus.

Wow, I'm talking about the 1 bus.

My friend told me, I need to write a book entitled it the Number 1 bus chronicles.

It's not like a "hey how you doing?"

kind of bus.

It's a more like "wassup" kind of bus.

You have to be pretty tough to ride the 1 bus.

Just a whole bus full of different cultures early in the morning.

going to work on that number 1 line.

I started taking the number 1 bus about 5 years ago, and I take the number 1 from Newark to come to Jersey City to New Jersey City University for me to go to school.

It's a mixed bag.

Some mornings you got people with attitude, they don't want to let the ladies on the bus first or the kids.

A lot of families depend on this bus.

When I first moved to Jersey City, I realized I was the only white person on the bus and frankly that scared me.

My little brother was just locked up here in the Hudson County Jail.

They sentenced him to five years in prison.

I was just here visiting him.

The people on the 1 bus are the grit.

There's security guards and janitors and people that aren't trying to break the law and trying to do the right thing.

These people are the muscle.

These people make the city move.

My name is Christopher Russell.

I work at a company called Uncommon Carrier.

It's an import-export warehouse.

Trucking warehouse.

My commute in the morning consist of waking up 3:30 in the morning.

Washing up.

I'm out the door at 4.

I get on the G train at Bedford and Nostrand.

Take the A Train to the PATH train station.

I walked around the World Trade Center to get on the PATH train to New Jersey Transportation Center.

And I'll wait for the number 1 bus at 6:47 when it get loaded and I'm on my way to work.

I carry my fishing books.

everywhere I go.

So I have something to read on.

Walk all the way in the back of building 40.

That's where I'm located.

I've been working there since 1999.

It's a lovely work environment.

My duties at work.

I'm officially a "Swingman."

Whatever they give me I do it.

I'm a forklift operator.

I can get in the containers and throw freight.

They took an estimate over a hundred billion dollars come through here every year.

I went into the military when I Was eighteen in 1978.

I served the country for ten long years to 1988.

I was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division.

That's one of my co- That's one of my truck driver.

He takes me fishing!

I'm a Country Boy!

It just to get away from all the hustle and bustle.

And I enjoy the sport.

No military flashbacks when I'm out here fishing.

This is my time.

It's my time to relax and have fun and that's what I do.

Live the passion to the bone.

Thank you made my day.

No wife, no kids.

The Army took me away from settling down.

I loved it, but my mother came down with cancer.

So I got a discharge and came back to New York to take care of my mother.

I put everything else on the backburner.

When I started school at the age of six that first summer of school, when school was out my great granddaddy took me to this old farm pond.

And with a 3-piece cane pole and some green sewing thread, he showed me how to catch fish.

I don't know gentlemen but we got to put some fish in the boat.

Believe me, bro.

I was born in a little town, called Mineral, Virginia.

I was raised by my great-grandparents.

Southern Baptist.

It was part of life.

It was a way of life.

Our ancestors were slaves in a town called Cismount, Virginia.

And we migrated down to Mineral.

Confederate flags flew at our little courthouse.

Being around the Ku Klux Klan, watching a march as a kid.

I was 13 years old when we got bussed to the all-white school.

It was called Lewison County High School... ...1973, they desegregated schools.

So what's going on now with the racial thing is what's been going on for years.

It's not going to leave this country.

From being an ex-military man and traveling around the world and seeing different people being with different cultures.

I can't have racism in my heart no more.

I'm a drug and alcohol counselor, right?

So I tell my patients, don't call me Deborah.

I said if it's Deborah is going to be difficult just call me "D".

You can't mess "D" up.

Deborah, yeah.

Don't call me Deborah.

I was telling somebody on the 1 bus yesterday, this young man I was like, you know, a lot of people they see the homeless people and they look at them and say "they're homeless", you know?

And that's how they identify them.

But that's not their identity.

That's just circumstances that's their situation.

But that's not who they are.

That's how I think, you know, I'm all about the people.

So that's why sociology is my major.

(laughs) I'm a single mom.

I raised my children on my own.

I've had family members who were messed up on drugs.

I watched them with nothing that I could do.

My father was an alcoholic and it wasn't easy.

It wasn't easy because he was very abusive.

I was younger, you know, I went through a phase.

Oh yeah I did the drugs, I did the alcohol I could drink you under the table okay, but when I got pregnant with my oldest daughter that's when all of that change for me that was like one of the main things that pushed me towards this direction.

To become a certified alcohol and drug counselor.

I had a caseload every single day of anywhere between 8 to 12 people.

I had to do every single thing those counselors who was on payroll had to do.

I had to do the groups, I had to do everything and I loved it.

You understand?

And my patients, they loved me.

You're not supposed to condemn yourself either.

That's what you do all the time.

They can destroy you through your anger.

I understand the disease.

And I understand that if you don't get to the heart of the matter, what made you go to those drugs?

If you don't address that issue, you will die a drug addict.

You understand?

So I kind of point them in the direction of addressing that issue.

Making them to look inside, to go internal and face, those difficult things, this is my passion.

This is what I want to do.

I am from East New York, Brooklyn.

I moved there when I was a little girl.

It was a lot of greenery there.

Bushes and trees.

As children, you know those little red beans that grow in the bushes.

We used to snatch those things off and have fights with each other.

I had so much fun growing up in those projects.

But my projects was rough.

You had gangs.

They coming around shooting shooting.

Bang.

Bang.

Shoot up.

Shoot up.

Shoot up.

Right?

But one thing I will say about when I grow up in the projects is that when the guys knew they would come out shooting, they will come outside and they would tell us "We're getting ready to pop off, you guys need to get these children in the house" right?

Not like that today.

The people that live there today, they have no respect for anyone.

Out of my brother and my sister I'm the only child that has ever gone to college and now about to graduate.

So, I was talking with my mom and she didn't even feel it necessary to tell me, "I'm not going to be at your graduation."

I cried.

I cried.

Because I was like, "Wow."

I'm sorry.

(crying) I haven't been working for the past four years and I'm last year my youngest daughter paid it both semesters.

She said "Mom, you're going to finish school."

So now I have no money, right?

And because of that, I lost my apartment.

If I didn't have God in my life, I wouldn't be able to handle what I'm dealing with.

I would be a wreck.

If I had the money, I would probably have like seven degrees by now.

If I had the money.

I'm not hungry.

I got clothes on my back.

I'm okay.

I'm okay.

And I know that things are going to get better.

This is not the end of my story.

Kearny is more of the industrial area and unfortunately the prison area too.

So you're either here for two things.

Work or getting out of prison.

(laughs) A lot of ladies come out here to see their peoples that's across the street from us incarcerated.

Going towards Newark, there is absolutely no shelter whatsoever.

Taking the bus to Jersey City, there is a shelter that looks like it went through some war.

The one nice thing about it is there is a view of Manhattan from here and I seem to see the Empire State Building far off in the distance.

It's like here I am home and the journey has still not finished.

We're talking 15 years ago.

I just got caught in the suburbs with weed.

With a real small amount.

I think it was like the time was like $50 worth of weed.

Well they want to give me three years since it was my first time getting in trouble with my lawyer, found me a program called work release.

I was sentenced to 364 days in the Hudson County Jail.

For work release.

I would just be a regular inmate.

And I'll wake up in the morning and go to school.

Finish school to catch the 1 bus and go right back to jail.

It's pretty weird.

Definitely was weird.

When my grandfather died, I felt like I needed to do this.

Cuz I missed him.

So I put the Cuban flag there for him.

I'm a first-generation American.

My mother or father wasn't born here.

It's not like we have a deep network of cousins and uncles and knew how to do it here.

I am the first guy here, like, I feel like me and my brothers, we had to figure everything out ourself, bro.

Growing up, it was just our mom.

We had my, my step-dad who I consider my dad.

We just grew up like a typical, minority family, with not that much money in the hood.

...on welfare.

We grew up poor, but I never realized we were poor.

My grandma, this is her I loved her so much.

I got her name tatted on me.

Every time I wake up, splash water on my face.

The first thing I see is her name.

It was four brothers, my mom.

She was just basically depending on herself.

we always had like, rough ****, like the lights was cut and we have to sleep over people's houses.

You know, we grew up tough.

[ music ] They should have more bus service, man.

People are here, man.

We work hard.

You got hard working people back here, putting in 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 hours, man.

It's not fair, ya know?

I pay my $1.60, my feets hurts.

Jump off the truck, I got to stand here for an hour, hour and a half.

For a bus.

It sucks man.

My name is Jonathan Plant.

I ride the number 1 bus 5 days a week.

I live in Jersey City and I live with three other gentlemen.

My rent is $500 which is about as cheap as I'm going to find.

I have worked at The Strand bookstore on 12th and Broadway.

I worked there for over a decade.

It is the third largest used bookstore in the world.

I loved it very much, but then there was a change in ownership there.

I'd lost my job.

I didn't realize at the time, what state our economy was in.

And that I never pictured, it would take me two years to find another job.

I had gone to the welfare center to ask him if I could be put on food stamps and in order to qualify to get food stamps, you need to be involved in a program.

I found Urban Renewal through the welfare center through the state of New Jersey and it is a program that offers advanced computer classes and so I'm learning how to repair computers and then hopefully how to program them.

And how to do security on networks.

About a month ago, I was talking about my class with a friend of mine and I realized that I was the only white person in the class and I didn't even notice it.

My eyes have changed.

When I was 12 years old, I started smoking and I have been trying to quit basically, since I was about 14 years old.

If I make it to Tuesday without buying a pack of cigarettes, which I am going to do... that would be the first week since 12 years old, that I will not have bought a pack of cigarettes.

And I am now 48.

So, when I do that, I'm going to be very happy.

[ chatter ] [ jazz music ] [ jazz music continues ] So what's your excuse for not having a wife and children?

Military took it.

So now you can get it all back.

I can't do that.

I'm 55 now.

What does that have to do with anything?

By the time they're 10 years old I'm 65.

If I live to see that long.

What does that have to do with you getting a wife?

A companion?

I've tried getting a wife.

They don't like what I do.

I'm country.

I like the outdoors.

I like to hunt and fish.

Don't be difficult.

I'm not being difficult.

I know how to cook, I know how to sew.

I do everything a woman do but have kids.

One morning.

It was a pregnant lady standing at the bus stop.

She big as a house.

And I knew it was a boy because she's carrying it low.

I knew it was a boy.

Glad to have my boy on my bus I'm going home on every day.

So she get on the bus, I go all the way to the back of the bus where I usually sit.

Soon as it pulled out and got to West Side Ave.

and made that turn to West Side Ave.

I heard a scream, "My water broke!"

So I'm peeping, and said, "Oh, my gosh, she's gonna have the baby."

This traffic, if it wasn't for this traffic we'd be home already.

I jumped into action.

I said "ma'am", she said "I think my baby is coming."

so I ripped off my shirt, ripped off my t-shirt.

I'm on the bus with no shirt on, I'm laying her on the seat.

And like within 5 or 10 minutes I saw the head coming out of the lady so I immediately went in my bag.

got my little scissors I use for work cut the umbilical cord, cleaned his airway.

Everything is good right now, everything is good.

By the time the EMS got there I was holding the baby in my arms.

And the lady, she was all right.

And the EMS guy and the bus driver said, "That guy delivered the baby.

That guy."

You know, so it was a blessing.

God bless you sir.

I want your autograph next time.

My mother had me out of wedlock.

And my mother, she came to New York to better her life.

As soon as I came out the military and I hit New York.

Me and my mom used to hang out from Friday night to Sunday morning.

It was The Cotton Club, the Baby Grand Lenox Lounge, the Apollo Theater, the Blue Note down on West 3rd Street.

Just having a ball rekindling our relationship.

One of the barmaids said, "Oh, you have a nice young one here."

She said, "Ma'am, that's my son!"

We did everything together.

If I go somewhere now and think about the good times I had with her, I'll break down in tears.

On my father's side of the family, his grandfather served in World War II.

His father was killed in the Korean War and my father was killed in the Vietnam War.

So, my father's side of te family we all military.

While I was doing time, I've done it like I did the military.

Kept myself busy, kept my mind, in tuned to going home.

7 years in the New York State penal system.

My ex had me set up to come to get my clothes and a guy tried to jump on me and hurt me.

And I defended myself.

but, Knowing what I know in the military.

I kind of hurt the guy pretty bad and I had to suffer the consequences for.

It made me more humble as a man.

That I know.

I can't put my hands on nobody.

I made a mistake.

I paid for it and you got to keep it moving it.

Don't phase me a bit.

Struggle of staying straight and not bending the rules sucks cuz it's just hard to just not want to live better, I guess.

Do I want to work 40 hours a week and make $200 or should I do something should I just work in the street and make ten times that amount.

That's a big struggle.

I mean some people aren't tempted by that.

Some are.

You got to pick your poison, I guess.

I remember being on the bus on the 1 bus.

Like, now I'm on my BMW driving the same street.

I'll be damned if I go drive the 1 bus again.

They recently started giving me some money.

Although it's not much money, I feel like a completely different person.

I can still qualify for food stamps and such but it is a little bit of money.

They started paying me about 2 months ago.

It happened right before my mother's 75th birthday so I felt good to just say, hey I got a job.

For a long time I've been wanting to be a teacher and I had no teaching certificate or anything like that.

So this is giving me some very good experience.

It was also much harder than I ever thought it was going to be.

This is a DB-25 because it has 25 pins on it.

If it was a DB-15 it would have 15 pins on it.

15 connector spots.

What I do is help people go on assimilate themselves back in society, after getting out of incarcerations.

I feel like that's a really noble thing to do.

It's a much more rewarding than what I thought it was going to be.

My name is Leslie Neve.

I started riding the #1 bus almost 10 years ago.

I was visiting undocumented folks who were being detained in the jail.

I started going every week to the Hudson County Correctional Facility.

Coming from the suburbs, I always had a car but after I moved to Jersey City, I finally gave the car up which is about the same time I started visiting through First Friends.

First Friends is an organization that works with undocumented people that are detained and also asylum seekers.

The asylum seekers are in the jails.

First friends has signs in all the detention centers and jails.

[ speaking in Spanish ] If they don't have anybody in the area, family friends or whatever to visit them, that's what the volunteers at First Friends do is they go and visit them preferably weekly for as far as the asylum seekers, if they do get asylum or they get paroled, First Friends will help find a place that they can stay at.

They help them get working papers, they helped him get the social security card, to get them on their feet.

[ Speaks in Spanish ] I'm from Syria.

I go because they're people.

They all have a story.

You sort of never know we may need each other sometimes.

I do preach sometimes and I always like the preaching when Jesus says when you visited the prisoner you visited me and that's sort of my connection.

I think one of the weirdest things about standing out here is just that it's really really loud.

It just gets to you.

I love trucks that come by, zoom!

Overshadowed, by all the loud noises coming from the highway.

You know I've been smoking cigarettes like a fiend.

I have not made any inroads to quitting smoking and in fact the last little bit I've been kind of surprised how quickly I've been going through them.

When I was a teenager I was oil painting.

I started pretty young.

When I paint, I try to be pretty much as unconscious about it as I can.

Because then that I found I'm going to do the paintings that I really want to do.

So I tried it kind of not question it and leave it alone which includes not asking why I'm blowing this $20 on art supplies.

instead of food and things like that.

Here's an old girlfriend.

It was all the way out in Queens.

I sold a couple.

I found that I just paint them.

I grew up in South Jersey in Morristown.

My parents were not well-to-do, but they were able to live on the edge of this very nice community.

We were middle class.

As narrow-minded as they are when it comes to the arts, my parents do support me in their own way.

It's very hard.

I don't think they realize quite, you know, not that I'm totally desperate but I don't think they realize how poor I am.

I've been the black sheep of my family.

My family life has been a major determining factor in me being in this situation.

We certainly don't see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, certainly not politically.

When I was 25 I was arrested for distribution of LSD.

It was at a Grateful Dead concert in Washington, D.C.

I was arrested and I was in lock-up and then the Federal Penitentiary of Washington D.C.

And so my parents bailed me out.

That was a $10,000 bail and so they were able to pay that out of pocket.

So I would have never been able to do that nor did I have any resources to do that.

[ music ] [ traffic sounds ] [ music continues ] Gang stuff started in my twenties.

And it was like... a man without a dad and the gang life just offered you a family, power but you know you like a sense you belong to something like you're part of something bigger.

And the allure of that is very enticing.

I've been shot.

I've been stabbed.

"Officials at University Hospital contacted police when two victims" I would say survivors.

"...suffering gunshot wounds were transported by private vehicle to the hospital before 10 p.m."

That was me that drove myself there.

"One of the victims suffered a gunshot wound to the stomach."

"Bullets penetrated the vehicle that the victims were occupying."

It just knocked me down from like this pedestal I thought I was on.

I don't know.

It just knocked me down back to Earth.

I need to make some major changes like people, places, things or I'm not going to have no future.

I don't know if I can.

Sometimes you in too deep.

You know, it does hurt not seeing my daughter.

Not being able to talk to her.

Getting ****** over by the courts.

Getting betrayed by your friends.

A lot of people that are very religious told me, God spared me that night that he didn't take me cause he needs me to do something here.

I believe in God.

I don't know if I believe that Moses split the sea, all that crazy stuff, but I'm definitely a spiritual man.

Every night I go to sleep I'm just grateful that I do really literally say no ******** like "God, thank you for letting me smile today."

Everyday, I get that's a good day.

And I know for a fact, you might not get another I just don't know what more God wants me to see.

Keeps on testing me and keeps putting me through so much ****.

You see me standing over there, I'm like a statue standing by myself.

Plus you're lonely out there too, you know what I'm saying?

I sit here usually talk to myself.

I usually talk about the bus service to myself.

It sucks.

I actually don't know anybody that rides the bus.

I'm usually on my phone (laughs).

There's a whole lot of factories around here, catching the bus and be a problem, cuz we really out in the wilderness.

Sometimes the bus come and sometimes it doesn't.

[ mining sounds ] Yeah, you know, what time it is.

[ music beats ] Come on, y'all.

[ music continues ] [ music continues ] I had 17 of my family members that died between September and January of this year.

17, all of them younger than me.

But you know how that is.

You born, you live your life then you got to go.

Ain't nothing we can do about that.

That's why I don't be saddened about death because it's reality.

Death is reality.

You be born, you live your life the best you can live it.

And then you got to go on to your maker.

You got to deal with that sooner or later.

I don't lay in bed thinking, hey, I made it through military I'm still going to pass on sooner or later.

You just don't know when it's going to come, but you in line believe me the reality is you in line.

Man did not create the heavens and Earth.

Something had to create this this beautiful place we are on.

[ nature sounds ] I had an an anesthesiologist when I was in nursing school tell me and a friend one time.

"Remember every person you take care of, someone loves that person, take care of them with that."

And I think if we all treated each other that way on the bus, maybe we would have a little, a better world.

Why I go visit it's because I'm visiting somebody that somebody loves.

[ music intensifies ] Since I came out of the hospital, since the drugs ran out, I've just been buying drugs illegally on the streets.

I gotta pop a Percoset, two Percosets an hour at least so I don't feel anything.

You need to go see a therapist.

You need to go sit down with a counselor and talk so you can figure out if it is psychological.

It's just like there's no solving issues.

I got shot, they tried to murder me for the second time this summer and that's just the problem.

[ exhales deeply ] Do you have somewhere else to go?

Because it makes no sense for you to get clean to go right back into the same environment.

You're going to relapse it, ain't no way you're not going to.

You are going to relapse.

Most definitely.

I got the gangs out here, you know what I'm saying.

Are they going to let me go?

No they're not.

Cause that's the gang mentality.

Once in, always in.

So I'm just gonna have to run for it.

That's what you're gonna have to do.

Make a run for it and you can't let nobody know that's what you doing because if you do they coming out to you they going to make sure they kill you before you get away.

You know how that feels?

Right now, it's about you, you got to save you, I'm scared what will happen to my family.

You're family's gonna be ok.

Your family is gonna be ok.

They might go after my brother.

Don't don't think don't think like that.

Right now.

You got to think about your daughter.

She needs her father.

You hear me?

She needs her daddy.

[ music ] I just want to just move on.

I just want to go.

I just want to live.

I just want to go to Pathmark, or wherever the **** and just buy groceries.

Last time I bought a camera.

I just found my passion.

I found something I love.

I could say, I'd wake up at 5 in the morning to do it.

Ever since then, I started getting a lot of gigs.

I definitely got some director swag to me right now.

Like I feel like I'm on the right track.

There's fish in there but they said we can't eat them for about another 50 years.

[ music ] Happy we met.

(laughs) Happy we met.

I love you even though I never met you.

Happy God made us bump into each other.

He did.

Because I do believe in God.

He sent you.

I really think things happen for a reason.

[ music continues ] [ music ] [ music continues ] [ music continues] [ music continues ] [ music continues ] [ music fades out ] [ traffic sounds ] [ music beats ] [ music continues ]