Courtesy Union Station Redevelopment Corporation.
Two pavilions located on the bus deck at Union Station are covered in Death Cab for Cutie lyrics — etched in Morse code!
As Racked DC reports, the pavilions — one of which will stock “drinks, snacks, magazines, and newspapers,” the other will have info for tourists — will open this spring. And now for the kooky part:
See those lines and dots imprinted on the bright yellow front facade of the pavilions? It’s actually Morse code, spelling out the the lyrics from the song “Soul Meets Body” by Death Cab for Cutie, which references a Greyhound station.
Here’s that lyric: “Cause in my head there’s a Greyhound station/ Where I send my thoughts to far off destinations/ So they may have a chance of finding a place/ Where they’re far more suited than here.”
Studio Twenty Seven Architecture’s Todd Ray previously told Composites Technology the song “[conveys] the sense of impermanence and transience that is a bus depot.”
If that was the criteria, why not, oh I don’t know, “America” by Simon & Garfunkel? Or, let’s say, Harry Chapin’s “Greyhound”? Or Jonathan Richman’s “You’re Crazy For Taking The Bus”? If you really want to go the Ben Gibbard route, how about “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight”? Suggest your own bus song in the comments.