Those strange voices we all know

Photo by Flickr user Ric e Ette

The following was sent to us by BART rider Jean

i’m on the bart every so often when i don’t drive to work. i don’t mind riding the trains, but it’s the waiting in the stations that gets me. half the time there’s no where to sit and i know it’s silly, but i just can’t read while standing up. so i just stand around and listen to the bart announcements. “ten car train for richmond in four minutes. eight car daly city train in ten minutes.” and it’s always weird for me to hear the automated announcements because i’m thinking about the man and the woman who have recorded them.

did they record each piece separately and then some computer strings them together? for instance, the guy records, “ten car train for” and then “richmond in” and then “four,” “ten,” “one,” etc. or did they think of every possible train length/destination/time combo and have the guy recite each one?

and who are the bart man and woman? the guy has this sort of weird accent. like, when he says, “car” he puts an odd emphasis on the “a.” he is a total nerd. or at least, he sounds like the kind of guy who would download season one, two, and three of battlestar galactica and watch it non-stop for two days. the bart guy is a comic book collector for sure. and he probably plays waaay too much doom.

and who is she? what’s her deal? it’s a little harder to pinpoint, but say the bart man and woman came into the tattoo shop where i work to get tattoos. i would most definitely recognize their voices…. or would i? would they ask for matching heart tattoos on their asses the same way they announce a six car train for dublin/pleasanton in nine minutes?

these are all the things i ponder when i wait for the bart train to arrive. who are these bart announcers and what are they like? i told my husband about all my musings about the bart man and woman, and he just started laughing. “oh hon! they’re computer voices! can’t you tell?”