[Editor's note: Everyone please welcome Rita, the newest author for BK Southie! Rita will be writing predominately about Bay Ridge.]

The x37 express bus from Bay Ridge to midtown Manhattan represents your typical morning slog to the office – you pay dearly ($5.50!) for cushioned but cramped express bus seats, annoying cell phone users, and the daily ritual of seeing the same faces boarding the bus at the same stops every day. It gets so that you know the stops by the passengers who board there: here comes the lady with all the bags who takes up two seats, here’s the guy who never has enough on his metro card, here’s the old geezer who scowls at everyone, and look there’s Elvis.  I must be early today, I haven’t seen him in ages. Yes Elvis. Not my downstairs neighbor who happens to be named Elvis, but the King himself, or at least his look-alike.  He doesn’t wear a white body suit, or drawl “thank you very much” to the bus driver, but he’s got the high pompadour and the long, bushy side burns and looks like he should be in Vegas, not Brooklyn.  I wonder if being Elvis is his actual job, or if it’s just a hobby?  Surely he must have a regular job if he’s up this early.  Did he go to his job interview like that?  But my thoughts at that hour are fleeting and I slide back into my usual morning stupor until we reach the crowded 69^th & Colonial stop where Mick Jagger climbs aboard. The chords to Start Me Up play in my head as he lurches down the aisle, bleary eyed and tired. From his shaggy hair to his skinny legs to his well-worn features that suggest good times gone on too long, this guy is a Jagger clone. I wonder if he ever sits next to Elvis and compares notes.  Or could it be that he doesn’t know that he looks like Mick Jagger?  Am I the only one who notices?  Nobody else on the bus gives him a second look, but that’s New Yorkers for you.

I wonder if there is something about Bay Ridge that attracts celebrity impersonators. Are they home grown or do they move here of their own accord? Is there a local chamber of commerce group? Not surprisingly, I’ve heard that there’s a local John Travolta impersonator who proudly proclaims he’s a Bay Ridge native on his web site, but I haven’t met him yet. I’m sure that one day our carts will crash at Foodtown. And then there’s the cast of the Soprano’s hanging out at the cigar shop on 92^nd and Third Avenue, but they’re not really celebrity impersonators – it’s more likely that central casting copied them, not the other way around.

But before I could chalk it all up to coincidence, it happened again.  I walked into a local hair salon looking to book an appointment and found myself face to face with the Material Girl! From the gap-toothed smile to the blond hair parted down the middle, the receptionist was a dead ringer for Madonna.  It took my brain a few addled moments to realize that I was staring. “You really look like Madonna” was all I managed.  She shrugged “Yeah I get that all the time.”  I guess there’s just something about Bay Ridge….