West Oakland BART Station:

As we set up, we noticed that people had a sense of reservation. People walked by the kiosk giving us a wide berth. We tried approaching some people without much luck. We talked to the hot-dog vendor who told us, "I don't know maps. I know I'm in West Oakland but I don't know where that is." When we asked him some more questions, he gruffly told us, "Hey, I'm busy-there're customers I need to help." No one else was around and before too long he emerged from his booth and sat down across from us, drinking a soda. Still no more comments. When we asked a BART janitor about where West Oakland might be, she said, "People don't know! That's crazy because its nice here."

The last person we spoke with, a very cautious guy, wanted to know how to tell the directions without a compass. Luckily it was just past noon, so we could use the sun's shadow to help us find north.

We realized that we probably would not have anymore interactions with folks here; the few commuters that were around were busy with getting to and from and did not want to engage with us. We distributed some City bike info. We concluded that we might have a better chance at talking to people at a different time of day.