Tens of millions of people ride BART every year -- to work, dates, practice, friends, and fun. BART Connects tells their stories.
In June, BART Communications launched the second edition of BART Connects, a storytelling series that features real BART riders who span generations, neighborhoods, and walks of life. You can read their stories below.
In the coming months, the stars of BART Connects will take us for a ride in a series of video featurettes that will be regularly posted on BART social media.
You will also see the faces of BART Connects riders in advertising spaces in the BART System and across the region.
BART Connects grew out of a call for rider stories BART Communications launched in 2023 to learn how our transit system impacts people’s lives. The initial response made clear that BART means something to those who ride it.
Have a cool BART story to share? Submit a short summary at bart.gov/story. You may be the next BART Connects feature!
FANTASTIC NEGRITO
"BART connects me to the first audience I ever had.”
Before the Grammys, there was BART.
Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz, known by his stage name Fantastic Negrito, went from busking in BART stations to collecting his first, second, and third Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album.
He hasn't forgotten where it started -- and he keeps coming back.
In 2014, Fantastic Negrito was busking outside the Lake Merritt and Mission BART stations. He wasn’t getting gigs and felt like the industry had written him off, so he brought his songs to the people.
"When clubs didn't want to book me, when people just didn't think the music I was doing had any future, I came out to the BART station," he said. "That's how I connected with people getting off the train — everyday, ordinary people. It connected me to songwriting. It connected me to stories."
When his first Grammy arrived in the mail, he didn't open it at home. He took it to the corner where he always played -- Lake Merritt Station -- and opened it there, on the street, Grammy on the ground, guitar in hand.
He still comes back to BART sometimes to work out new songs. Some people walk past with AirPods in. He plays anyway.
"BART connects me to the first audience I ever had,” he said. "If I don't come back here, something's wrong with me.”
NATASHA OON - BART GOLFER
“BART connected me to my dream.”
When Natasha Oon practices at the Lake Merced Golf Club, it’s a treat to see her old pal the BART train glide by the course.
“It’s like a nice little friend or companion at my practices. I always like seeing it pass by,” said Oon, who made her highly anticipated debut on the LPGA Tour this past March.
BART has played an integral part in her journey to the LPGA, so much so that Oon’s earned the nickname “BART Girl” among friends and colleagues.
Oon moved from Malaysia to the Bay Area after earning an athletic scholarship at San Jose State University (SJSU). Far from home and living in the U.S. for the first time, Oon sought an elite coach that could train her to compete at the highest level. She settled on Erik Stone, who coached Yealimi Noh, an LPGA standout from Concord.
The issue was Stone coached out of Alameda, and Oon was in San Jose.
“I didn't really know what to do. I didn't know how to get anywhere,” she said. “I found out that to get to him, I had to take BART or it would be super expensive, and I wouldn't be able to see him as much. So BART helped me lower my costs and made it accessible for me to get top tour-level instruction. And now I'm a tour golfer on the LPGA Tour!”
Oon went on to become one of the most accomplished and decorated golfers in SJSU history.
Today, Oon’s homebase is still the Bay Area, and when she’s not touring, she still takes BART all over the place.
“I don’t like parking in the city. I don’t like driving in the city,” she said. “For me as a city girl, I take BART.”
BART, she added, is “such a celebrated thing because it helps people get so many places. And I think that’s beautiful. I have a special place in my heart for BART.”
SEHINNE YOHANNES - BART POET
"The Bay is my siren. It pulls me in towards murky waters of Lake Merritt and tells me I am a spring."
By the time the train hums into 16th St. Station, recent high school grad Sehinne Yohannes has scribbled some solid one-liners. Nothing's concrete, but she’s got the first rumblings of a concept or idea or phrase that could blossom from a wisp on the page into a poem.
Sehinne wrote these lines on BART. The poem that grew from them was the first to “break the nine barrier” at the 2025 Brave New Voices slam poetry festival, meaning every judge scored Sehinne's piece a nine or above. Sehinne’s group, Team Bay Area, took home first place.
BART takes Sehinne from San Leandro to 16th St. Mission every week for her internship at Youth Speaks, a nonprofit in the Mission that gives young people space to unearth, develop, and amplify their voices. It’s not the destination, it’s the journey, and for Sehinne, the journey is where much of the work happens.
“Transit became something I started writing about when I realized I was always writing on it," she said. "BART has always given me a safe space to write and be inspired and be creative."
In her “BART poem,” Sehinne personifies BART as her “second uncle, twice removed on my city’s side.” He’s reliable, a little eccentric, and always there for her.
“BART was made for people like me who were raised by their city,” she writes. “He shows up late and he shows up loud, but he shows up for me always. And that just might be the most Bay thing about him.”
Now in her last year of high school, Sehinne’s starting to think about life beyond the Bay.
“It being my senior year and all and not really knowing where I’ll end up, whenever I ride BART now it’s really just trying to capture a memory of everything see so I can take it with me everywhere I go,” she said.
NAOMI "NONA" HULME - LIFELONG RIDER
“Seniors like me who have given up driving need BART.”
91-year-old Naomi Hulme doesn’t drive anymore. But that doesn’t mean she’s not out and about.
Naomi, AKA Nona, would never live in a city without public transportation.
“That’s how seniors like me can get around,” she said. Nona knows the scope of her life would narrow if she didn’t have the option to take transit. Many seniors experience social isolation, loss of independence, and declining mental and physical health when they give up driving.
But transit provides seniors with another option.
For decades, Nona's taken BART from Glen Park to Pleasant Hill/Contra Costa Centre to see the same person. That would be her best friend of 72 years, Dee. The old pals from college will shop, dine, and once a month, play Bridge.
Nona said riding transit makes her feel happy and grateful to be active. She likes striking up conversations with people on the train: “Where’re you going? Where’d you come from? How’d you meet?”
It’s not hard to get people to chat.
“Nobody’s gonna turn down talking with an old lady."
TOMMY JUNG - BART FISHERMAN
"BART is the cornerstone of what makes my life in the Bay Area unique."
He stands on the platform watching trains come and go, the way sailors once watched the tides, and waits for the shining vessel that will deliver him to sea.
His voyage does not take place on open water, but the Red Line. In place of a skiff, he has a Clipper BayPass card and a seat near the door.
Tommy Jung takes BART fishing.
Crappies, jacksmelt, surfperch – Tommy's caught them ‘all and taken them home on the train. If he doesn't eat them, Tommy uses the vertebrates for gyotaku, the traditional Japanese art of fish printing.
The UC Berkeley law student wouldn’t fish if it weren’t for BART. He doesn’t own a car, and he doesn’t want to own one.
“BART is the cornerstone of what makes my life in the Bay Area unique,” said Tommy, who takes the train to everything – internships, Valkyrie games, museums. He estimates he’s ridden BART to see the San Francisco Symphony more than twenty times.
So if you spot a man with a yellow-lidded bait bucket on BART, ask him to open it up to show you the day’s catch. Or follow him to Torpedo Wharf or the Embarcadero and watch him angle.
ENZO WU & APARDEEP SINGH - TEEN TRANSIT CHAMPIONS
“Knowing how to ride public transit is a big step in growing up.”
Tri-Valley teenagers Enzo Wu and Apardeep Singh have a message to parents: Get your kids on transit!
The high school senior and sophomore want people their age to understand that public transportation is an important tool. You don’t have to have a license, and you don’t have to beg your parents for rides. Seeking independence? Transit is the answer.
"Taking transit builds social confidence, which so many kids lack these days,” said Enzo. “Knowing how to ride public transit is a big step in growing up.”
To give his peers a leg up, Enzo founded the Dougherty Valley High School Public Transit and Infrastructure Club. He serves as president and Apardeep is the head of PR and social media. More than thirty students regularly show up to meetings, and it’s been an effective venue for educating their peers about urbanism and the role public infrastructure plays in their lives.
“Some of my friends won’t necessarily take transit everywhere like I do, but just getting the idea in their heads is a big step,” Enzo said. “Building transit skills now will come in handy many years down the line when you need to get to college, to work. That’s why I ride transit, and that’s why I’m advocating for kids my age to do the same."
MARIAH - BART INFLUENCER
“BART girl math: I can maximize sleep by doing my makeup on the train and still sneak in a nap each way.”
Being a “BART princess” requires girl math sometimes.
Mariah commutes a long distance from North Concord/Martinez to San Francisco. But she makes the most of that time, often filming “get ready with me” videos during her rides that document her makeup routine and daily ‘fits.
“I do my makeup in less than three stops – lashes and all – before the heavier flow of riders,” she said. “This is my BART girl math: I can maximize sleep by doing my makeup on the train and still sneak in a nap each way.”
People often make a face when they hear the amount of time Mariah spends commuting. She gets it, but that’s exactly why the self-proclaimed BART princess makes the most of it.
“My BART ride is my soft launch into the day – my own version of main character energy before the city wakes up,” she said. “I don’t want to sit in traffic. I just want to vibe. BART lets me do exactly that.”
ISAAC ABID - DOWNTOWN DEVELOPER
“BART is integral to the long-term success of Bay Area downtowns.”
BART stations are conduits of social, cultural, and economic energy, says real estate investor and lifelong BART rider Isaac Abid.
Isaac is the founder and managing partner of Lakeside Group, an Oakland-based commercial real estate firm working to activate the city’s public spaces and improve urban infrastructure.
BART is critical to this work, bringing people to and from Oakland to work, shop, eat, and explore art and culture.
“Downtown Oakland’s unique connectivity to BART is what’s going to help it succeed in the future,” he said.
Downtowns shape and define culture, Isaac continued. When they flourish, so too do the people who live in the region.
“BART enables people across the community to access these hubs of culture, and that is integral to the ongoing prosperity of the Bay Area,” he said. “BART democratizes access.”