Your place to share stories on and off the bus.
BART busted out its trademark lawyers and told a local t-shirt maker that he can’t make shirts and onesies featuring a modified version of a BART ticket any more. The t-shirt maker happens to be Nate Tan, who creates Muni Diaries’ shirts.
You might remember that back in 2009, New York’s Metropolitan Transit Agency used similar reasoning to shut down a local t-shirt maker for using the letter logo of Muni’s metro trains.
That brief memory of BART being on strike over July 4 weekend could get a lot more real in just a few days. BART and its labor unions met today, and the two sides still couldn’t reach an agreement, SFGate reports. The 30-day contract extension from the strike earlier this month is coming up, which means that at midnight on Sunday, Aug. 4, BART workers could strike again, and this time perhaps for longer.
Union representatives have been criticizing BART’s lead negotiator’s vacation during the talks. From SF Appeal/Bay City News:
SEIU Local 1021 executive director Pete Castelli said negotiations have been ongoing but have been proceeding more slowly than they should because BART’s lead negotiator, Thomas Hock, has been on vacation for the past 10 days.
Castelli said that means the parties have only been able to talk about small supplemental issues during that time instead of the bigger sticking points, which he said are wages, benefits and worker safety.
But [Transit district spokesman Rick] Rice said Hock’s vacation was approved by the state mediator back on July 7 and that the parties have still been able to talk about important matters in his absence.
The two sides will be back at the table Tuesday and daily until Sunday to try to reach an agreement over the labor dispute at the center of the discussion. You all weighed in during the first strike and there didn’t seem to be any tolerable transit options at the time. If BART strikes again, will you have different transit alternatives this time around? Time to sharpen that walking stick?
Photo via BART.gov
Still reeling from seeing people getting busy on those oh-so-cozy fabric BART seats? Comfort yourself by checking out the full-scale mockup of the new BART train interiors this week. Between 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. each day from this Tuesday, July 23, to Friday, July 26, you can check out a wooden model of the new BART trains at the MacArthur station in Oakland. Read more
Photo via SFGate
Some things don’t need to be brought back from the past, like scrunchies, The A-Team (sequel?!), or denim overalls. But here’s something we definitely wouldn’t mind reliving: a pop-up Atari game kiosk at the Powell BART station, circa 1976.
SFGate’s Arcade Photos from the 1970s and 1980s story showed this amazing photo of an Atari kiosk on the BART platform.
Read more
Photo by zagraves
One more thing before you wipe the sight of two people boning on BART out of your memory: here’s the audio response (creatively borrowed from BART’s intercom) regarding banging on public transit.
Listen to the audio reply on the “BARTsex” section of Josh Ellingson’s blog.
And SFGate reports that “BART police probe porn video shot on train.”
(Is everyone in the SFGate newsroom still giggling about using the word “probe” in that headline there?)
By the way, if you want to hear more candid opinions from the BART PA system, here’s “the truth about BART.”