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"The Bay is my siren. It pulls me in towards murky waters of Lake Merritt and tells me I am a spring."

Discover more BART Connects stories at bart.gov/bartconnects.

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.   

 

 

 

 

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About BART Connects

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! 

Owen Flaherty pictured at Glen Park Station.

Do you have a favorite BART memory or story to share? Email a short summary to BART Storyteller Michelle Robertson at [email protected], and she may follow up to schedule an interview. 

Most people see BART as a means to an end, a space you pass through to get where you need to go. Owen Flaherty sees BART as a portal to creativity.  

Flaherty, a local high school student, is an avid photographer. A few years ago, when he was in eighth grade, he got his first camera – a Panasonic Lumix. Initially, he didn’t have the time or motivation to get out in the world and start photographing. But in the summer after eighth grade, he found himself suddenly drawn to the art form. He credits BART for giving him a jolt of creative inspiration. In a sense, BART was his first muse -- the Beatrice to his Dante.  

Flaherty doesn’t remember the first time he set out to photograph the BART system – he's undertaken so many BART photo safaris now, they’ve started to blend together. But he does remember that initial moment when BART first “spoke” to him, like the daemon whispering in Dickinson’s ear.  

“BART was exactly what I needed to get started with my photography,” he said. “The people, the movement, the lighting, the station design...BART has everything you need to create a great photograph.”  

In the first two months of his photography journey, Flaherty estimated he took more than 2,000 photographs in the system, “and I’m a kid, of course, so I was only able to go out four days a week or so, after school and on weekends.”  

Both of Flaherty’s parents are creatives; his mom works at California College of the Arts and his dad is a graphic designer. Before photography, he had trouble finding his medium. Things like painting and drawing were inaccessible to him due to certain personal restraints, but when he discovered photography on a trip with a family friend, the art form unleashed something in him.  

“When he was photographing, I could see the expressions on his face, the thoughts in his head,” Flaherty said of the family friend, a professional photographer. "On that trip, I discovered a medium to express myself.”  

Above: A selection of Flaherty's BART photos. You can view more photos on his website. 

Before high school, Flaherty rarely took BART alone. He grew up in the Bay Area, but he used BART mostly for trips to San Francisco – to see the Nutcracker or go to the symphony, for example. Now he takes it pretty much every day, whether it’s going to school or hanging out with friends or, most frequently, to discover a new spot for taking photos. 

“There’s a transition point in your life when you’re a kid and you don’t have a car, but you’re old enough to do your own thing,” Flaherty said. “BART opened things up to me. It’s provided me the opportunity to access the entire Bay Area. It gave me freedom without having to pester my parents for a ride.” 

Flaherty estimates he’s visited 90 percent of BART stations and has traveled every line from end to end, except the Blue Line (though he’s ridden most of it).  

Often, Flaherty takes BART for “joyrides.” He doesn’t have a specific destination, but he hops aboard looking for zaps of inspiration and insight. “It’s the architecture, the people watching, all the nooks and crannies in the stations” that open  his mind and unleash his imagination, he said.

A lot of the time, Flaherty finds himself disembarking at Glen Park (his favorite station), Montgomery Street, or 24th Street Mission stations. He uses BART as a subject for his photographs, but also “to access undiscovered locations and different communities of people around the Bay Area.”   

“BART is what makes the Bay Area the Bay Area,” Flaherty said. “People know BART. Because of BART, when I’m traveling outside the state, I don’t say I’m from Albany, California, I say I’m from the Bay.”  

Flaherty is working toward obtaining his driver’s license now, but he says he will always prioritize traveling by BART.  

“I don’t want to be cooped up in a tin can on my own,” he said. “I want to be with other people, in a bigger tin can.”  

About the BART Connects Storytelling Series

The BART Connects storytelling series was launched in 2023 to showcase the real people who ride and rely on BART and illustrate the manifold ways the system affects their lives. You can follow the ongoing series at bart.gov/news. 

The series grew out of BART's Role in the Region Study, which demonstrates BART’s importance to the Bay Area’s mobility, cultural diversity, environmental and economic sustainability. We conducted a call for stories to hear from our riders and understand what BART means to them. The call was publicized on our website, social media, email blasts, and flyering at stations. More than 300 riders responded, and a selection of respondents who opted-in were interviewed for the BART Connects series.