Metro Transit’s slow but popular Route 21 bus route is coming to an end after 70 years, though not without a final toast goodbye.

As a frequent passenger in the 1980s, playwright and essayist Kevin Kling was moved, bemused and perhaps sometimes somewhat intimidated by the colorful characters he encountered on his lengthy bus commute, which connected Minneapolis and St. Paul along Lake Street, Marshall and Selby avenues. Eight of those characters feature in his one-man show, “21A,” which premiered in 1984 at the Quicksilver Stage in Minneapolis.

Kling, a humorist known for his contributions to National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” would go on to perform his show off-Broadway, leading a New York Times reviewer to dub the piece “an urban Lake Wobegon, only a lot crazier.” Audiences are introduced to an edgy bus driver who claims he has a relative who trains chickens to compete at tic-tac-toe, a woman in pink curlers who announces she has a deeper relationship with her cat than with her husband, and a loud drunk who keeps his head encased in a cardboard box from a 12-pack of Schmidt beer.

There’s also a character who insists, repeatedly, that he is “not Dave,” raising some suspicion that his name may, in fact, be Dave.

With the Route 21 bus scheduled to sunset Friday after 70 years in operation, Kling was scheduled to appear at a 3 p.m. Friday send-off at Metro Transit’s Nicollet Garage in Minneapolis, where the public was invited to join him. Fellow humorist Tane Danger was hosting the event. The garage is at 10 W. 32nd St. in Minneapolis, about two blocks from the Route 21’s Lake Street and Nicollet Avenue bus stop.

Passengers were invited to share memories of riding the Route 21 online at tinyurl.com/Bus21Memories2025. Both cities were expected to issue proclamations naming Friday “Route 21” Day in St. Paul and Minneapolis, in advance of the debut of the B Line bus rapid transit corridor, which follows a roughly similar path between Uptown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul but makes 34 stops instead of 90.