Holiday Sweater
Started: 2023-12-12 20:57:19
Submitted: 2023-12-12 22:19:48
Visibility: World-readable
The 2023 BART holiday sweater, and the festival celebrating it
Two years ago my favorite local transit agency accidentally stumbled into the holiday sweater business when they had a couple of sweaters made to share around the office, and then posted a picture on social media that blew up. The couple sweaters they were able to buy on the office credit card sold out quickly. They came back the following year with another sweater, which also sold out quickly. This year they added lights (representing a train traveling up and down the East Bay trunk line) and a that's supposed to be a recording of the horn of the legacy fleet. They started pre-orders in the summer, to manage demand, but this did not seem like the right time to be thinking about holiday sweaters so I didn't order one then.
BART started shipping the pre-orders before Thanksgiving, and after Thanksgiving, they released sweaters in a couple of batches, selling a total of 3500 sweaters this year. They announced each batch on social media, and each batch sold out within a couple of hours. I happened to check social media at the right time one afternoon to catch one of the batches. I ordered my own BART holiday sweater, and it arrived early the next week.
The first thing I realized, when I put the sweater on, was that it was difficult to take a selfie and get a full image of the sweater. To get the full effect you need to see the lights running down the East Bay trunk line (blinking in sequence, as if they represented a train traveling down the tracks) and the headlights of the BART train car around the waist of the sweater. (I eventually got Kiesa to take a picture of me so I could post it on social media to share my impeccable transit-oriented fashion sense.) The battery pack sat in a pocket on the inner lining of the sweater, connected to the wire harness behind the LEDs visible from the front. The sweater also came with a button-activated sound device that sat in its own inside pocket, mounted right behind the middle of the BART train car.
Like every good holiday sweater, this one is completely ridiculous, but also perfect.
On Sunday, the 10th of December, BART held a sweater gathering at Rockridge Station. This is not exactly close to my house but it seemed like an amusing outing for a Sunday afternoon, even though I had to drive across the mountain to Fremont and catch a train north towards Rockridge from there. Fremont and Rockridge are on different arms of BART (and the whole system is still oriented as a commuter-rail system bringing workers from the East Bay suburbs into their office jobs in San Francisco's Financial District), but the system is built to set up cross-platform transfers in the underground stations in downtown Oakland. (The two stations are built with north-bound trains on the upper level, serving different branches from different platforms, while all south- and west-bound trains operate from a single platform on the lower level.)
BART has been tweaking its schedule to try to get the best service it can out of limited trains, and they've built timed transfers into their schedule. (Google Maps didn't offer me the option of the timed transfer; they thought I would need to wait at 12th Street/Oakland for twenty minutes. BART's trip planner showed the timed transfer.) When my train pulled into 19th Street/Oakland the other train was just ahead of us on the opposite platform, and both trains stayed in the station until all of the passengers who needed to could make the cross-platform interchange.
By the time I transferred onto the train heading to Rockridge, I could see three other BART sweaters in my carriage, and I was sitting in the middle of the carriage so I could only see half of the people.
Most of the passengers on my train, and everyone wearing a BART sweater, alighted at Rockridge and headed down the stairs into the plaza, which was packed with people lined up to visit the merch table. I got there just in time to hear the announcement of the group sweater photo in five minutes. I didn't have anything else to do so I found a spot to stand on the stairs while everyone else wearing any of the three different vintages of BART holiday sweaters assembled on the stairs around me.
It took the photographer standing on a ladder in front of the stairs a minute to set up the picture; he kept moving the ladder back to try to get everyone in the picture.
(This picture came from BART's social media post about the sweater event; they also posted a news article about it. I am in this picture, but you kind of have to play "Where's Waldo?" to find me.)
I already had my sweater and I didn't feel like standing in the line wrapping around the plaza for other BART merch, so I poked around the plaza and took a picture with the BART train car cut-out before heading across the street for coffee.
While I was waiting for my coffee at Highwire Coffee Roasters, right across the street from the BART station, multiple people noticed my sweater and commented on it, giving me the opportunity to show off its horn, and try to answer their questions about the sweater. (No, I don't really know how I'm supposed to wash it, I guess I hope it never gets dirty.) At least one person seemed bemused by all of the people wearing matching BART sweaters who had all descended on the neighborhood at once.
I don't think I've been to Rockridge before, and though I didn't have a lot of time to explore the neighborhood, I nipped across the street to Pegasus Books and picked up a book on Oakland's history, then headed back to South Fremont to drive the rest of the way home across the mountain.
