Fleeing Fleet Week
Okay, okay, yes, we went to Fleet Week. And by “go to Fleet Week,” I mean we grabbed some sandwiches at the pretty people’s Safeway and plopped our asses on Marina Green for free to watch a bunch of screaming planes do tricks. A friend had never experienced the glory, and being the nice people that we are, we chose to humor her.
Getting over to the north side of town from the Mission was actually a pleasant exercise. The 49-Van Ness zipped us right down to where we needed to be. The bus was neither crowded nor slow. We got there in about 20 minutes, I’d guess.
Getting back home was a different story altogether.
We waited things out a while at a friend’s house on Chestnut, then boarded a nearly capacity 49, only to stand there for what seemed like a eternity (seriously, something tells me, hours later, that that bus is still there). We got off at the next stop, after peering up Van Ness (to the south) and seeing nothing but stopped cars with their brake lights on.
So we walked. We walked from Greenwich to Market, passing at least three 49s and three 47s. We walked all the way to the heart of the Mission. God knows whatever became of any of those Van Ness buses.
Anyone else experience meltdown over the weekend with all the hullabaloo? Please share.
I find 19-Polk, which departs from a stop just east of the Maritime Museum building, is a fine alternative to the 49 for getting to Market to BART/Metro or a block down for the 14, from events at the Wharf. It was somewhat crowded yesterday but I’ve seen worse during weekday rush hour.
This was just ridiculous. It’s exactly why SF is horribly equipped to handle big-name events. And this is just Fleet Week, that’s not even counting the Olympics someone thought would be a good idea.
For the record, we walked 3.3 miles. It was actually a nice walk with nice weather, which is usually the case in SF – silver lining for us locals who rely on their own feet half the time?
It was easy getting there. We hopped the 43 on Haight street, which dropped off at the marina green. Luckily, a friend drove us home. Traffic was a nightmare getting out of there. I remember thinking to myself, “man, i’m glad i’m not on the bus right now.”
The 49 got me going, and the 30 got me coming. And the N got me going and coming.
Well, Tara, the ancient texts tell us we used to have infrastructure to deal with all that traffic but we decided after the ’89 quake that it was ugly and shouldn’t be rebuilt. These are the tradeoffs for making parts of the city pretty, I suppose.
It’s been a few years since anyone suggested putting a Big Dig-style tunnel under Van Ness, though. That might be fun!
Ha! While I’m holding out for the Big Dig-style tunnel under Van Ness, I’ll go ahead and try the 19 from time to time, that’s a good idea. I actually work up in Fisherman’s Wharf and could stand to have as many alternate routes on hand (if the 9x, the 10 or the F all fail me, which has happened).