L7's "Stuck Here Again"

I listened to L7's "Stuck Here Again," a track off Hungry for Stink (1994), as I road the International Boulevard A-Line bus to the airport train station. I sat next to a slender woman fully encased in a burka. All you could see of her besides the feet were her eyes visible through the open slot in the head covering. A little red-haired girl sat next to her young working-class parents at the front of the bus and stared back at us gape-mouthed. Little red never moved her head or blinked her eyes. She was enraptured with the burka-clad woman. I transferred myself back to being a child and seeing something culturally unfamiliar. I can't remember exactly what. Maybe a skinny guy in a fedora getting a shoe shine from an old black man at a stand inside a doughnut shop. It is hypnotic for a small child to see something unfamiliar.

Across from  me and the burka lady was a white woman who had just put in a day at the office and a small Latino man -- a worker of some type, restaurant or garden, I know not which. At the rear of the bus where two more Latinos -- bigger -- both workers as well. At the front of the bus across from the young white family was a Native American woman and her teenage son. (He might not have been her son.)

I listen more to L7 now than I did back in the day. Back then I listened to them on the radio but didn't own any of their albums. When I had a subscription to Spin magazine in the early '90s I loved to read about L7's many escapades touring the burgeoning Grunge festivals. They had the reputation of being the band to party with.