Passengers boo poor behavior off their Muni ride

A few nights ago when I was sitting at Upcider on Polk, I saw two women wearing impossibly high heels making this poor 19-Polk Muni shelter into their own strip club. They were twerking and dancing at cars that drove by, using the Muni shelter structure as temporary poles. They attracted quite a few of the Marina-overflow crowd and then abruptly left their pop up strip joint about 15 minutes later.

This brings me to a story submitted to the Muni Diaries inbox by Kevin Mitchell. Kevin saw something similar escalate on his bus, and fellow bus riders had an interesting tactic to show their disapproval.

From Kevin:

I was on the 49 in lower Mission about six years ago. It was around 3 pm.

I was sitting in the back reading and I noticed some commotion.

In the middle of the day, in broad day light, a “lady of the night” (or possibly “lady boy of the night”) was very openly giving oral sex to a grossly intoxicated 5 foot nothing man, still holding his malt liquor high with a huge grin.

Now, this could end here, and be a story of disgust or possibly a musing on Puritanical values, a story of the depravity of man. But it actually became a moment of bonding between 20 or so strangers and me.

Collectively, without prompting, we just starting boo-ing.

“BOOOOOO!!! BOOOOO!!!” the whole bus joined in.

What could have been dark and scary now became something we could laugh at and dismiss.

We took the power away from the situation. We made a collective choice.

“BOOOOO! HAHAHHA! BOOOO! HAHA!”

The two perpetuating the act stopped at starting laughing as well. They got off at the next stop.

We all clapped and cheered as they walked out.

Cheering, booing, or pointing and laughing (as storyteller Yayne Abeba describes in this week’s Muni Diaries podcast) — what’s your preferred way of communicating bus etiquette breach?