Dewayne Deams: A Life in Transit

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Left: Dewayne Deams on the Muni Diaries Live stage in April 2025. Photo by Connor Cimowsky.
Right: Dewayne and his great-grandfather Curtis Green at the dedication of the Curtis E. Green Light Rail Center in May 1987. Photo courtesy of Dewayne Deams.

Dewayne Deams was born and raised in San Francisco and caught the transit bug early. You might say it’s in his blood: his great-grandfather Curtis E. Green was the General Manager of Muni—the first Black GM of a major U.S. transit agency—and both of his parents worked for Muni, too. But despite his own deep knowledge and love of Muni, Dewayne was determined to take the track less traveled.

In this first installment from our Wayfinding Show in April, Dewayne shares how he learned to embrace his longtime status among friends and coworkers as chief navigator and resident transit expert and how it serves him today in his role as a BART operator. Listen to Dewayne’s story here:

Have a Muni story you’d like to share? Email us your pitch at muni.diaries.sf@gmail.com.

Category: Muni Diaries Live

Night of Ideas Part 3—A Bus of Whimsy

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Today we’re bringing you the final installment from our pop-up story booth at the San Francisco Public Libary’s 2024 Night of Ideas! In this episode, we share a selection of bite-sized stories from everyday Muni riders of all ages about whimsical transit rides they’ve taken in our beloved San Francisco. 

You can listen to it here:

Check out Part 1—Everyday Heroes on the Bus (ep. 152) and Part 2—The Friends We Made along the Way (ep. 155) for more short stories from that evening. And if you have your own whimsical bus story to share, be sure to follow us on Instagram at @munidiaries to hear about future podcast pop-ups around the city!

Have a Muni story you’d like to share? Email us your pitch at muni.diaries.sf@gmail.com.

Photo by Kat Siegal

Category: Funny: Muni LOLs

Meaghan and Ronald Mitchell on the people’s railway (and its people)

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Meaghan Mitchell returned to the Muni Diaries stage at our “Thank You, Driver” show with a loving tribute to her dad, 35-year Muni veteran Ronald Mitchell. She shares what it was like being raised by a Muni driver in ’90s San Francisco, and what makes Muni more than a transit agency—and then invites Ronald to join her on stage.

Meaghan and Ronald remind us that our Muni operators are human, that they have families, and that they’re on the front lines of our city’s biggest challenges every day. And they ask us to keep on loving and riding Muni: as Ronald says, “There’s nothing like the Municipal Railway.”

Listen to Meaghan and Ronald here:

Muni Diaries Live is back on April 10th! Join us at The Wayfinding Show for more true stories about the ups and downs of life on Muni. Snag your tickets today!

Photos by Emily Huston

Category: Funny: Muni LOLs

Rory O’Neill to the Rescue

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Getting stuck on a dark, stalled Muni train is every rider’s worst nightmare. But what’s it like being one of the mechanics with the daunting task of getting that train and its frustrated riders moving again? 

Rory O’Neill understands both sides of that coin. He spent many years working as a mechanic on the mobile response unit and the emergency response unit for Muni’s light rail fleet—and he’s also an every-day Muni rider.

Now the supervisor of the Maintenance Training Department, Rory joined us at Muni Diaries Live and gave us a glimpse into the oft-overlooked world of Muni’s vehicle mechanics and maintenance workers. Rory reminds us just how many people get us where we need to go every day, whether we see them or not. “In the end, that’s what we do, right? We move people.”

Listen to Rory’s story here:

Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any of our true stories from everyday bus riders! Have a Muni story you’d like to share? Email us your pitch at muni.diaries.sf@gmail.com.

Photo by Emily Huston

Category: Funny: Muni LOLs

Ep. 155: Night of Ideas Part 2—The friends we made along the way

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In March 2024, Muni Diaries had the pleasure of attending the Night of Ideas, a program organized by the San Francisco Public Library, KQED, Circuit Network, and Villa Albertine. This installment paid homage to our favorite transit system, and we’d be remiss if we didn’t tap into the wealth of Muni-riffic experiences (good, bad, great, somewhere in between) for our popup story booth. 

Not surprisingly, we got a lot of bites from people eager to share their stories. We curated some of those here for your listening enjoyment around the theme of: friends we made along the way. This is the second in our series from that evening; hit up the first, Ep. 152, Everyday Heroes on the Bus.

Bonus, gentle reminder to Vote Yes on L in November. Fund the bus or there won’t be stories like these about your fellow humans on public transit!

You can listen to it here:

Have a Muni story you’d like to share? Email us your pitch at muni.diaries.sf@gmail.com.

Category: diaries, reflection Tags:

Where the 6 takes you: How Kristee Ono met her hero

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Kristee Ono loves the 6 Haight-Parnassus and, like many of us who frequent a particular Muni line, she knows her fellow riders well — even though they’re technically strangers. One fellow passenger always stood out: a mysterious artist, impeccably dressed, conspicuously kind.

She had no idea he was local transit icon and fellow Muni Diaries storyteller Kurt Schwartzmann. But when she shared a Haiku about him at our November 2023 show, we knew immediately:

Who are you
Man with an easel and an eye patch?
Where does the 6 take you?

Kristee returned to the Muni Diaries Live stage in April to share the heartwarming story of what followed, and how she and Kurt went from strangers on the bus to cherished friends. You can listen to it here:

Have a Muni story you’d like to share? Email us your pitch at muni.diaries.sf@gmail.com.

Photo by Emily Huston

Category: Muni Diaries Live
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