I was riding home on BART on a Thursday night when the station operator came on the intercom to warn us about potential terror attacks on BART. He reminded us that we were all bomb detectors, so if we saw anything suspicious, we should move away and report it.
12:45 on a Thursday night is the time when the BART system is most vulnerable to Al Qaeda, in my opinion, so this was a well-timed advisory. If you blow up the last train of the night, that means BART only has six hours to clean up the track before the trains begin running again. You could take out nearly forty passengers. I searched our car pretty thoroughly, but luckily, there were no bombs.
The train operator said something rather odd in reference to our impending arrival at MacArthur. He told us that we needed to switch trains if we wanted to go to Pittsburgh/Bay Point or San Francisco, because MacArthur was the "grandmaster transfer point". Not just the master transfer point, but the grandmaster. MacArthur must have regularly defeated Bay Fair and 12th Street Oakland Civic Center, transfer points of "master" status, but lesser abilities.
I still can't get over that name. "Grandmaster". So old school! MacArthur has a lot more street cred than many passengers realize. It reminds me of all those jams MacArthur Station released back in the day:
Plexiglas, everywhere
If you exit where you enter you pay excursion fare
Don't push me 'cause I'm close to the third rail
If you trespass you'll go to jail
Ha ha ha ha ha
So, props to MacArthur. I fully expect P. Diddy to sample the Fremont line's timetable for his next big single.
