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A shouting match involving Charlie Brown.
An unseasonable snowstorm blowing through a shattered rear window.
A horde of strangely dressed people, each shoving through the crowd in hopes of grabbing a seat on what may be the last ride to salvation.
Welcome to Halloween weekend aboard the Rage Bus.
Last year, The Maine Campus covered the holiday hijinks by accompanying a University of Maine police officer on his rounds, which turned up little more than a minor parking lot face-off. So, in search of a more vivid experience, this year’s celebratory chariot was Old Town’s rager-on-wheels.
Of course, to properly cover a story like this required active participation, and it was with this journalistic responsibility weighing heavily on my shoulders that I dressed up as the Bride of Frankenstein and took my seat — front and center.
Conceived by Tim Taylor, owner of Kingman’s in Old Town, the Rage Bus bridges the divide separating UMaine’s two major student populations in Orono and Old Town. The distance between downtowns, while only a few miles, acts as a barrier for the intoxicated, who once relied on the services of area taxi companies to shuttle them between the two bar districts.
The man who runs the show is one Steve Marchessault, a nontraditional student finishing up his studies in biology at UMaine this year. Three nights a week, Marchessault navigates the rolling light-show until sometime near 2 a.m., doing what bus drivers do best — and then some
“Mostly, it’s really kind of boring,” Marchessault said, adding that every once in a while “it gets really intense and crazy.”
“The first week, it was like a dance party going down the street,” he said.
Friday night proved to be one of the tamer nights, with the bus making more than a few lonely, empty runs up and down Route 2. Despite slack numbers and slim crowds at the stops in front of Kingman’s and in Orono’s Pine Street parking lot, Marchessault was not deterred from his mission.
“I’m going to turn on the music,” he said as we cruised across the bridge over the Stillwater River heading to downtown Orono. “It’s kind of a beacon for the bus.”
Within seconds, it seemed as though the thumping bass had at least partially worked its magic.
“That girl just flashed me!” Marchessault yelled as the bus reached the other side of the bridge.
Several other times during the weekend, I witnessed the power of the Rage Bus’ blasting music to extend the vehicle’s neon-tinted aura into the area around the vehicle. The predominantly dubstep-themed soundtrack filtering through the thin metal walls and large windows turned mundane, everyday tasks like flagging down a ride into a mini dance party on the sidewalk, with a vigorous pelvic thrust substituting for a wave.
Even with Halloween just around the corner, Friday night remained rather calm apart from the aforementioned fan of public nudity and some good tunes.
Saturday night, however, turned out to be a different beast altogether.
The transformation was apparent before I set foot on the short staircase leading into the newly decorated space, strewn with caution tape, and saw Marchessault sporting the comically large shoulders of Lurch, the Addams family’s faithful butler.
From the window of my apartment that overlooks the Pine Street parking lot, I watched the first of many crowds that night race toward the bus, clamoring for one of the coveted 12 seats available.
When I was finally able to beat the crowd and find a seat, the changes from Friday were immediately apparent, both on Marchessault’s face and throughout the bus itself.
“It’s been chaotic tonight,” he said, wearing the semi-crazed look of someone who knows he is about to be hit by a train but can do nothing but wait, tied to the tracks.
Noticing a distinctly draftier and chillier climate, I looked around for a window that I thought must have been left open by a previous rider. Of course, nothing aboard the Rage Bus is tame.
“Some dude fell into it,” Marchessault said, motioning to the coffee table-sized hole in the rear wall that used to hold a window, now covered by a poster.
Keep in mind that this took place before 11 p.m., not even an hour into the night’s route. Marchessault also revealed that he was forced to yell at someone for the first time out of all the runs he has driven, a rare event that became commonplace by the end of the evening.
One of those spats occurred when Marchessault pulled up to the Orchard Trails entrance next to Curva Ultra Lounge. A few minutes earlier, he agreed to drop a busload off at the entrance to the housing complex but would not offer door-to-door service as he was already behind schedule and knew a crowd was waiting for him outside Kingman’s.
When he slung the door open for the group to disembark, it was clear the message had not filtered through the alcohol-rich air to the passengers, who became agitated when Marchessault insisted he could take them no farther.
Taking command for the passengers, a man dressed as Charlie Brown told the rest of his friends to stay on the bus, staging something akin to a sit-in protest. Words were exchanged, generally revolving around Charlie Brown and friends feeling as though they had not received their $5 worth of service.
“I would describe drunk people as having a one-track mind,” Marchessault said earlier in the evening, a premonition playing out before my eyes.
Eventually, with the help of a cell phone supposedly calling Orono’s finest to remove the rowdy passengers, Marchessault was able to convince the crowd to leave, a departure that ended with a juvenilely aggressive snatch of candy from the bucket sitting next to the door and someone yelling, “You’ve just lost the business of this entire complex!”
“I’m just so on edge right now,” Marchessault said as we rode past the cornfield, the process of abandoning his usually calm, amiable demeanor visibly hanging on his exaggerated shoulders.
It should be noted that Marchessault bent over backwards several times that night to help his passengers get home safely, even if it meant leaving his route for a moment. One of these moments actually occurred at Orchard Trails, when an exceptionally drunk girl nearly tumbled down the stairs and into the gutter — a performance that won her a ride to her front door.
Even through chaotic moments like those, Marchessault was somehow able to collect the payment he was due. Only once did I see him get stiffed, a truly amazing feat given the way people crowd through the doors and push past him without so much as a glance.
Only a few minutes after the Charlie Brown incident, however, as we drove past Old Town’s VFW hall, the air had calmed, and Marchessault was back to his usual happy, seat-dancing self.
The sound of the synthesized harpsichord of The Doors’ “Love Me Two Times” connected nicely with the wiggling, large-shouldered image of Lurch driving a party bus and helped to ease the tension and put the past into perspective — I did, after all, just witness an argument between two fictional characters.
As Halloween would have it, that ease all but completely dissolved when we rounded the corner to arrive at Kingman’s for another load of passengers. Now well past last call, the bar had shut its doors for the staff to begin cleaning, and it seemed as though everyone had decided to stand in the snow instead of going home.
The scene was straight out of a zombie movie, in which masses of people crowd around the last safe ride out of the contamination zone. Old Town police officers were on hand, attempting to corral people back onto the sidewalk, and we finally were able to slowly creep up to the front door without running anyone over.
Something in me wanted to shout to keep the doors closed against the pounding fists, but I kept my cool, trusting Marchessault’s experience.
Once the seats had been filled and the unlucky few who made it inside the doors but could not find a seat were ejected, I looked around to find more than a few riders wearing looks of recently relieved worry.
Apparently no taxi cabs had been by Kingman’s since it closed, leaving nearly every bar-goer standing in the snowstorm waiting for the Rage Bus, now the only ride home.
This last leg of my journey was rather calm, with most everyone aboard too chilled from the sidewalk gathering and stressed from the uncertainty of a ride home to enjoy the lights and music.
Judging from the number still left outside Kingman’s after the last pickup, I decided to give up my seat to a more needy soul and watched the Rage Bus pull away, speakers blaring against the pounding snow.
