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Kassandra Santillan pictured at Daly City Station, where she disembarks to get to her classes at SFSU.

Do you have a favorite BART memory or story to share? Email a short summary to BART Storyteller Michelle Robertson at [email protected], and she may follow up to schedule an interview.    

In August, Kassandra Santillan started her second year at San Francisco State University, her dream college where she studies microbiology, her dream major. If she couldn’t take BART to school, she wouldn’t be able to attend. 

“BART made it happen for me,” she said. “I can’t afford to live near campus, so I’d probably be at a community college instead.”  

Santillan is the first person in her immediate family to attend college. She’s always aspired to study at SFSU because that's where her aunt went, and her aunt was one of the only people she knew who graduated from college.  

Santillan lives in East Oakland, where she grew up. She doesn’t currently have access to a car, so she takes BART twice a day, five days a week to school. Before starting at SFSU, she’d never really used the system. 

“We didn’t travel far away when I was young,” she said. “The only other time I’d use BART was for field trips to San Francisco." 

Growing up, Santillan often “felt really suffocated.” She’d hear stories of people going to Union Square at Christmastime or the mall at Powell Street, but “it wasn’t accessible to me.” 

“I never really got out much before,” she said. “BART opened the Bay to me. I had no idea it was so easy to get to all these great places.” Now, she takes BART pretty much everywhere. In addition to school, she’ll ride the train to the mall in Milpitas or the Embarcadero, where she walks the waterfront to Pier 39 and back.  

Santillan treasures her time on the train. She’ll do some drawing, finish up assignments, and sometimes just chill out.  

“Every day is so hectic as a college student,” she said. “Commuting is my time to unwind.”  

When she graduates, Santillan wants to be a clinical lab scientist. She’s wanted to be a scientist since meeting one in elementary school during career day.  

“I remember at the end of the day they asked everyone what they wanted to be when they grew up. Most of them said teacher or a doctor,” she said. “I was one of the few who wanted to be a scientist.”  

“It’s pretty crazy to be studying in the field now,” she said. “It feels unreal sometimes. I know a lot of people who don’t get this opportunity.”  

Sometimes, she has to remind herself: “I’m really here, and I’m really doing this thing I’ve been trying to do all my life.”  

About the BART Connects Storytelling Series

The BART Connects storytelling series was launched in 2023 to showcase the real people who ride and rely on BART and illustrate the manifold ways the system affects their lives. You can follow the ongoing series at bart.gov/news. 

The series grew out of BART's Role in the Region Study, which demonstrates BART’s importance to the Bay Area’s mobility, cultural diversity, environmental and economic sustainability. We conducted a call for stories to hear from our riders and understand what BART means to them. The call was publicized on our website, social media, email blasts, and flyering at stations. More than 300 riders responded, and a selection of respondents who opted-in were interviewed for the BART Connects series. 

Do you have a favorite BART memory or story to share? Email a short summary to BART Storyteller Michelle Robertson at [email protected], and she may follow up to schedule an interview.  

Elvis Presley loved his bubblegum pink Cadillac. Elvis Herselvis prefers a blue-and-white ride. Her vehicle is roomier than that Fleetwood Sixty Special, boasts twice as many wheels, and unlike that old gas guzzler, it runs on electricity.  

We’ll toss her the mic so she can say it herselvis: “My life would suck without BART.”  

For thirty years, Elvis Herselvis, the drag king persona of legendary drag performer, artist, and musician Leigh Crow, has taken BART to rehearsals, performances, bars, brunches, and her brother’s house in Richmond.  

Unlike Mr. Presley, Crow doesn’t drive, so without BART she’s not totally sure what she’d do. Spend a lot on rideshares, probably, but that’s a cruddy option when you’re regularly traveling back and forth between San Francisco, where she typically performs, and Oakland, where she lives. About a decade ago, Crow moved to Oakland after being priced out of San Francisco. She came to the Bay Area from suburban Phoenix as a young lesbian looking for performing opportunities.  

“Public transportation was one of the very attractive things about moving to San Francisco,” Crow said. “Where I grew up, you had to have a car. In the Bay, you can get where you need to go almost entirely on transit.” 

Crow got her start in drag in the late 80s at the lesbian club Female Trouble in the Haight. The club’s producer needed a small act to fill a hole in the schedule between Christmas and New Years. The girls said, “Let’s do a drag show!”  

“Some were doing Bowie, Guns and Roses, that type of thing,” Crow said. “But when it came time for the performance, I was the only one left on the billing.” She performed as Elvis Herselvis, and the crowd loved her.  

“They got to play the part of being screaming teeny boppers, which many of them had never gotten a chance to do,” she said.  

Women were highly involved in the Bay Area drag scene back then, but there weren’t as many drag kings performing, and when they were, you didn’t hear about them as often as the queens.  

Crow had a hand in changing that when she started performing as Elvis Herselvis. She’s considered the world’s first female Elvis impersonator, and she was one of the first out lesbian performers to tour the southern U.S., said Ruby Vixen, Crow’s partner in life and performance. The two regularly perform together with their country western band Velvetta. 

Ruby Vixen (left) and Leigh Crow (right) perform at the Hubba Hubba Revue. Photo: Sylvie Barak

“She toured the South in the late 80s and 90s, long before ‘Drag Race’ and the visibility that came with it,” Vixen said. One of Crow’s tours brought her to the Second International Elvis Presley Conference held at the University of Mississippi in 1996. Crow gained national notoriety when the organization running Graceland pulled their support for the conference due to Crow’s participation.  

In San Francisco, things were different. The drag circuit was a punk-rock scene, “very riot grrrl,” Crow said.  

“Drag was a lot weirder and less homogenized then,” she continued. “People played all sorts of characters. They were scrappy." 

Public transportation enabled Crow and many of her friends and fellow performers to get to and from their performances, including at historic venues like the legendary lesbian bar White Horse Inn. 

“I am just so grateful to have an alternative option to driving,” Crow said. “I also feel good that I’m not having an impact on the environment like I would if I were driving. There are little things you can do, and that’s one of them." 

Crow can regularly be scene on BART in “various states of drag.” People aren’t fazed by it much – it's the Bay Area after all – and most reactions are positive.  

Crow said she's proud to wear her gender-bending costumes onboard. “It’s a signal boost that encourages everyone of every gender that drag is viable, and that you should feel safe and welcome to do it.”  

Ruby Vixen (left) and Leigh Crow (right) at MacArthur Station.

Added Vixen: “Public transit serves young and lower-income communities, which often contribute to the most outrageous, diverse, and innovative drag in the Bay. And it’s always been that way.” 

Without BART, the underground performance scenes of San Francisco past and present would look different, including venues like OASIS, where Crow performs in the ‘Star Trek’ show as Captain Kirk. She’ll revive the role in August.  

During her photoshoot with BART, Elvis Herselvis turned heads every which way she went. Some passersby took pics on their phones as she strutted about MacArthur Station in her custom silver suit, sparkling cowboy hat, and hefty belt buckle. The suit was custom made by Vixen, a costume and clothing designer who owns Dandy and Vixen with Crow. 

“We chose the fabric because it looks great under stage lights,” Crow said. We also discovered the fabric looks sumptuous in front of the silver steel of a passing BART train. In the sun, the two materials bounced off one another like they were dancing.  

Crow will have an equally eye-catching outfit for San Francisco Pride celebrations this weekend. Pride Month is naturally her and Vixen’s busiest season of the year. The couple plan to take BART into the city for Pride, including the San Francisco Dyke March on Saturday in the Mission District.  

Crow especially looks forward to the ride home on BART after Pride, when “everyone’s tired and sunburned and happy and feeling the freedom and the love.”  

BART, she pointed out, is also the safest option if you’re planning to imbibe. 

“You can go out and get wasted in San Francisco then take BART home and be safe,” she said. Just remember to be safe, respectful of your fellow passengers, and follow BART’s Code of Conduct.  

This weekend, look for Elvis Herselvis and Ruby Vixen on BART and enjoy what will certainly be a festive and celebratory ride.

About BART Connects

The BART Connects storytelling series was launched in 2023 to showcase the real people who ride and rely on BART and illustrate the manifold ways the system affects their lives. The subjects of BART Connects will be featured in videos as well as a forthcoming marketing campaign that is slated to run across the Bay Area. Find all the stories at bart.gov/bartconnects. 

The series grew out of BART's Role in the Region Study, which demonstrates BART’s importance to the Bay Area’s mobility, cultural diversity, environmental and economic sustainability. We conducted a call for stories to hear from our riders and understand what BART means to them. More than 300 riders responded, and a selection of respondents were interviewed for the BART Connects series. 

Follow our rider guide below and learn more about our special Pride service here.

Leigh Crow and Ruby Vixen’s upcoming BARTable events:  

• Saturday and Sunday, July 1 and 2: Leigh and Ruby will be vending their Dandy and Vixen wearables at Mosswood Meltdown in Mossword Park. To get to Mosswood, take BART to MacArthur Station and walk about 13 minutes to 3612 Webster St., Oakland.  

• August 8 through 31: D’arcy Drollinger presents Star Trek LIVE!, featuring Leigh as Captain Kirk, at Oasis. Take BART to Civic Center Station or 16th St Mission Station and walk about 16 minutes to 298 11th St., San Francisco.  

Editor’s note: This love story is written in five parts, in reverse chronological order. The tale begins with a wedding and winds back in time to the couple’s childhoods. Trains – whether of the BART, Pittsburgh Light Rail, or Fairyland Jolly Trolly variety – are essential to each section. Photos courtesy of Katie Weinholt Photography.

I. The BART Wedding  

On May 27, 2023 – seven years and one day after Armin Samii and Marylee Williams met on an East Bay-bound BART train traveling from San Francisco – the couple tied the knot in front of 140 family members and friends at Oakland’s Fairyland. The theme of the wedding was BART.  

As guests streamed into Fairyland on the idyllic spring day, they were greeted by a sign that read, “Welcome aboard!” The sign included a timetable for the evening’s events as well as a photo of Marylee and Armin in BART holiday sweaters, holding their two cats.  

During the ceremony, held in Aesop’s Playhouse, the officiant routinely referenced BART – a central component in the couple’s seven-year-long relationship. The transit system also cropped up in both of their vows.  

“I don’t believe in soulmates, but I do believe in the right people at the right time,” Marylee said when it was her turn to speak. “And Armin, you were exactly the right person on BART to talk to. Accosting someone on a train shouldn’t feel natural, but it did.” 

Armin and Marylee enter the happy hour on the Jolly Trolly. Photos courtesy of Katie Weinholt Photography. 

Following the tying of the knot, Marylee and Armin rode into their happy hour aboard the famed Jolly Trolly.  A hush came over the crowd as the mint green cars chugged into the town square. (If BART is a mass rail system, then the Jolly Trolly is a teensy rail system. The trolly is, however, 18 years BART’s senior). 

At the reception that followed, unique BART touches included escort cards imprinted on BART tickets with guests’ names and assigned “stations,” err tables. A handmade “BART System Map” led guests to the proper stations, which were carefully assigned “based off our guests’ BART vibes,” said Armin.  

The BART ticket escort cards. Photos courtesy of Katie Weinholt Photography. 

Friends they met in Berkeley, for example, sat at the Downtown Berkeley and North Berkeley tables. Visitors from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where the couple currently resides, were seated at the Pittsburg/Bay Point table. The SFO and OAK tables hosted family members who traveled from afar.  

“It felt more fun than just a table number,” Marylee said. 

The reception tables each represented a station that was assigned based on the guest’s “BART vibes.” Photos courtesy of Katie Weinholt Photography. 

On the tables, multicolor flowers and pom-poms puffed out of Technicolor vases, which popped against stark white tablecloths. The Fairyland Emerald City Stage, long home to puppet shows and story times, served as the deejay’s platform. To match the vibrant setting of the reception, Marylee quick-changed into a fluffy pink mini dress, paired with black tights and chunky white heels.  

At the afterparty, hosted in the lobby of the wedding hotel (The Moxy in downtown Oakland), the bartender slung cocktails in a blue-and-white bowtie, an homage to BART’s blue-and-white legacy trains.  

Not insignificantly, Armin and Marylee, who are vegan, made the decision to serve solely vegan food at the wedding. The couple said the choice was highly intentional; they wanted to give their friends and family a taste of their day-to-day lives. 

“We wanted to hammer home that our wedding was nontraditional, that we were expressing the values we have as people,” Marylee said.  

Armin added: “It was about having people experience our lives for one night.” (Only a nine-year-old and his younger sister complained. “I learned today I don’t like vegan food,” said the former.) 

To truly give guests a glimpse into their day-to-day lives and core values as a couple, it was essential to Marylee and Armin to frame their wedding around public transportation, especially the system that first introduced them to the joys of transit – BART.  

“We wanted a venue that was easily accessible to our guests, and accessibility to us looks like BART,” Marylee said. “BART was where we had our first taste of not being bound by a car.”  

Armin also noted that they didn’t want guests to have to rent cars; they especially didn’t want anyone driving home drunk.  

“We went back and forth on where to host it,” he said. “Then it was like, why don’t we choose a place near public transit? We didn’t care what city; we just wanted a venue where people could get to easily on transit.”  

Scenes from the Fairyland wedding. Photos courtesy of Katie Weinholt Photography. 

Fittingly, Fairyland is just under a mile from BART’s 19th St/Oakland Station, and if you hop on AC Transit’s NL bus by the station, you can get to the amusement park in about ten minutes. The couple also booked a hotel for their guests that was a ten-minute walk to the venue. 

“We wanted people to experience what our lives are like as people who bike and use transit,” Armin said. “We wanted to give people a taste.”  

That taste included hosting the wedding eve wine night at Press Club near Montgomery St Station in downtown San Francisco. Of the 100 people who showed up, 90 took BART.  

Armin said he and Marylee showed their families at 19th St/Oakland Station how to buy Clipper cards, how to tap in at the fare gates, and how to figure out which train to take and in which direction.  

“A lot of our family had never ridden public transit,” Armin said. “We were really grateful to introduce them to it.”  

II. The T Train Proposal  

In January 2022, after five and a half years of dating and many moves around the U.S., Armin proposed on an aboveground T train in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (their current hometown).  

“We’ve hit a lot of milestones on trains,” Marylee said. 

III. The BART Meet Cute

Armin and Marylee’s paths converged one fateful Thursday evening in 2016. (BART wrote about their meeting in 2021.) 

Armin was heading home from a poker game in the city, and Marylee was leaving an Icelandic film festival. They stumbled upon each other on a Richmond-bound Red Line train heading to the East Bay from San Francisco. Marylee had just barely made the train, and Armin had missed the previous one.  

As the train veered through downtown San Francisco, Marylee decided to ask Armin about the colorful tape on his bike: “Why does it look like that? Do you go to Burning Man?” Accustomed to this question on BART, Armin replied briefly -- “Not yet, maybe next year” -- then put his headphones back in, planning to ignore her the rest of the trip. Marylee was, Armin admitted some seven years after the chance encounter, extremely persistent.  

When the train pulled into Embarcadero Station, Armin watched Marylee get on all fours to pet a “tiny dog” face to face. He became intrigued by the strange woman’s unusual behavior, and, somewhere under the Bay between Embarcadero and West Oakland, the two struck up a proper conversation.  

After a few minutes, they began to discuss radio – Marylee is a radio/audio journalist and producer – including a podcast they both enjoyed, 99% Invisible. The podcast had released a special challenge coin (not unlike the challenge coins used by military personnel) for members, allowing coin bearers to “coin check” others. If the coin-checked did not have the coin on her person, she owed the coin-checker a drink.  

Left: The challenge coins. Right: Armin and Marylee pose with Armin’s colorful bicycle. 

Armin proceeded to coin-check Marylee, who fatefully had left her coin at home. She owed him a beer.  

Just as the coin-checking scenario unfolded, the BART train carrying the two conversationalists pulled into Downtown Berkeley Station – Armin’s stop.  

As he hastily disembarked before the doors closed, Marylee yelled, “How am I supposed to buy you a beer? You don’t even know my name!”  

Armin turned around.  

“What’s your name?” he asked. 

“Marylee Williams!” she shouted as the doors squeezed shut. 

As the train carried onward, Marylee was distressed and regretful -- “Why didn’t I get off the train?” she lamented to herself. As her stop came around – North Berkeley Station – she got off the train and called her grandmother. “I met this guy, I don’t know where he is, and I’ll never see him again,” she groaned. Grandma replied, “Well that’s too bad, but maybe you’ll see him again.”  

Meanwhile, still at Downtown Berkeley Station, Armin began internet-sleuthing for the mysterious Marylee. Nothing came up, so he then decided to race the train to North Berkeley Station – a trip he knew took five minutes on bike, three minutes by train.  

“It’s possible that if she hangs around for three minutes, I might catch her,” he thought. “But it turns out, the trains go faster than I can bike.”  

Alas, when Marylee got home, she checked her Facebook. There was a message waiting from a man named Armin. The two had found each other in cyberspace.  

After three dates in three days – Armin had a trip booked to Sweden, hence the condensed timeline – the two were smitten.  

IV. BART Enters the Picture

When Marylee moved to the Bay Area from Baton Rouge in 2015, she discovered a newfound love in having access to a mass rail transit system.  

“I’ve been a fan of BART for a long time. It’s functional, affordable, and gets me where I need to go,” she said. “When I was getting my master's degree at Berkeley, I think I had my best thoughts and most relaxing times on the train.”  

Marylee admitted the trains could be crowded and frustrating, “but it was easy,” and she liked the communal experience.  

“I’ve always enjoyed the soft swaying of the train as it takes me home,” she added.  

Armin had sold his car not long after moving to Berkeley in 2011. Sold might not be quite the correct term. 

“I actually lent it to a friend because I wasn’t using it – I was biking and taking transit everywhere. It wasn’t until a year later that I realized she still had it,” he said.  

Around that time, Armin was commuting by Amtrak to San Jose from Berkeley. He loved that he could work for the duration of the 90-minute ride.  

“That was probably when I started to realize BART and trains weren’t just a way to get around, but something I had an emotional connection to,” he said.  

Armin also admitted that Marylee wasn’t the first date he met on BART: “Before Marylee, I had met a ton of people on BART, including dates.”  

He continued: “When going on dates in general, I’d always take BART. The date would start and stop at the BART station.” 

V. BBE: Before BART Era  

Armin and Marylee grew up in places lacking substantial public transportation – if the places had it at all. 

Marylee spent her childhood in Mississippi and Louisiana. “I’ve been driving since I was 14-and-a-half,” she said, while Armin grew up in the suburbs of San Diego.  

“Back then, public transit was an adventure for me,” Armin said. “My grandpa would say, ‘Let’s take the bus today!’ And we’d ride it for a loop or two. That was about the extent of my transit use.”  

 The End