The BARTmobile is the adorable mascot of San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit, shaped like a miniature BART car with a smiling cartoon face. It’s also absolutely terrifying in the right lighting, as evidenced by this actual tweet from @SFBART.
Sleep tight, dear Metro
The BARTmobile is afoot
It sees into souls#transithaiku @metrolosangeles pic.twitter.com/qRHzLBDNG3— SFBART (@SFBART) June 24, 2016
Last year, friend of MuckRock Parker Higgin - no stranger to requests regarding dubious mascots - requested the development docs related to the BARTMobile. And, well, if you thought it was vaguely unnerving in its finished version, brace yourself for the embryonic early phases of the moon-faced monster.
Behold, the lumpy, bug-eyed maggot phase …
made even creepier as a lumpy, bug-eyed maggot baby WITH TEETH.
Also competing for creepiest iteration was the stone-cold skeptical clown face …
and BART’s take on an Alien extra.
But maybe its scariest form came after it was released onto the streets, when it was caught in the most nerve-racking thing to encounter during the Halloween holiday: the culturally-appropriated costume.
Read the full docs embedded below (IF YOU DARE) or on the request page:
Image via @SFBART
