“What’s your name, beautiful?”

If this is how Greyhound bus drivers greet passengers as they check tickets, I’m giving up my frequent flyer miles.

How to get from A to B when you have no car: my new eternal question. Back in March I bought tickets to see “A John Waters Christmas” at the Calvin Theater in Northampton, MA. Since then I had moved to NY, and when the time came to get up to see the show, I was faced with a travel dilemma. I could fly, but it would require renting a car—more hassle that it was worth. I could rent a car, but the cost for a 2-day rental from the City was so pricey, it was funny. The train was a possibility, but had few options to get out to Western Mass.

That left the bus.

I still secretly love taking the bus. When I was an exchange student in Italy, it was my first introduction to getting around on the cheap. When I got back to the States to finish my senior year of college I brought that ethos back with me and took the bus from Amherst to NYC to visit my boyfriend on the weekends he didn’t take it to come see me. One of the happiest days of my life was back around 2001 when I paid $10 for a round trip ticket on a Chinatown bus from Philly to NYC. And in late 2013, in an unexpected gift from a digital Santa, I scored a $1 fare on Boltbus from Philly to NYC.

When the Internet came along and made air travel more accessible to the masses, buses got a bad rap. I went through a phase of shunning buses for other means of transport, but since I’ve become a frequent flyer courtesy of my job, I’m changing my tune. After flying Lord knows how many miles last year, I say planes are the new buses. I’ve had enough of their vicious, cut-throat boarding process, crowded seats, shitty food, and the never-ending complaint stream from every flyer about every thing.

So yeah, when it came time to see the Pope of Trash to ring in the holiday season, the bus, in all its cheap democratic fabulousness, would be my chariot. And since I was traveling my old Pioneer Valley boyfriend route, I’d get a memory lane trip along the way.

I can’t remember the last time I was in Port Authority, but to my eyes on a not-so-crowded Friday morning, it’s gotten a damn good facelift in recent years. I could see some of its former seedinesss, but for the most part it was clean and orderly (!), with average-looking people waiting to get to where they were going to. I had plenty of time to get provisions for the trip, and had a happy nostalgia to see that the boarding gate for western MA was still where it used to be. I kept my shoes on, got a window seat, and we left (and later arrived) right on time, hitting no traffic as we made our way up 41^st Street to the Bay State.

To get to Northampton I changed buses in Springfield. If you also think that the Port Authority has lost its old New York scariness, just take a bus to Springfield. You’ll be transported back to the pre-Giuliani, who-gives-a-shit era of mass transit, where the bathrooms are gross, food selection not that great, and the immediate surroundings are bleak, sketchy, and more than a little tense—even in the middle of the afternoon. But the layover was short and in no time, I was wandering around Northampton, waiting for the show to start.

A part of me will always love my old college stomping grounds. While I was a student at UMass, my friends and I used to ride the bus for free (part of the 5 college tuition) to Northampton for a change of pace (and better ice cream) from Amherst’s equally cute downtown. The Happy Valley was a great place to go to school. Its kooky locals combined with an incredibly diverse mix of students of all races and sexual orientation gave it a more progressive, outsider feel than the rest of the state. But it doesn’t take itself deadly seriously, and that’s one of the reasons why Northampton was the perfect place to see and hear the Pope of Trash’s twisted, filthy take on the holiday season.

“You look like the ‘Poseideon Adventure’!” John Waters said as the lights came up and he saw the crowd gathered to see him at the Calvin. He nailed us. It’s good to know that the Happy Valley, with its students, drifters, and other assorted screwballs, is still just a bus ride away.