Your place to share stories on and off the bus.
Image: Flickr user jchinn84.
@marisalevinson on Twitter poses a perfectly valid and hypothetical query:
What do you do if you have a crush on a muni driver…Hypothetical situation…
Rider “Mike” left a missed connection for Muni driver Jackie. But how would you (or did you) go about it? Send us your solutions and shouts out to your uniformed objects of affection.
Photo by Todd Lappin
Tomorrow, the Geneva Yard (where the historic streetcars reside) will be officially renamed in honor of Cameron Beach, who served on the MTA governing board until he died in March at age 62. We got in touch with his daughter, Lynn Beach O’Neill, to get to know more about the well-loved man who was a streetcar aficionado and city historian. The dedication ceremony is set for 10 a.m. on Tuesday.
Cameron Beach on Lynn’s wedding day
You really could ask my dad anything about San Francisco and he’d know the answer, particularly when it came to public transportation. He could recite the street names from north to south and east to west. He knew every bus and Muni streetcar line—and the timetables—by heart!
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Later that evening, Joyce picked up the crowd by a story about riding the bus with her mom, who told the kids on the bus how it’s done.
Joyce is a frequent performer at Tourettes Without Regrets, the amazing monthly show at the Oakland Metro that is part spoken word slam, part variety show, and the rest — you just have to see for yourself. The next show is tonight, so don’t miss it!
We hate to lose such a local talent, but Joyce has big ambitions — she is going to Kenya later this month to hold free creative writing and poetry workshops for Kenyan women. If you are interested in her project, check out Joyce’s blog.
Photo by juicyrai
Sometimes Muni seems like San Francisco’s living room.
I settled into a seat and the man next to me, a large scruffy older guy carrying a box of Chinese leftovers, pointed to the couple and said, “Hey, what are those?” “Pillows,” the girl said. “How much are they?” the big guy asked. The girl, a little uncomfortable already, said, “Oh we got them on sale.”
Where? The big guy wanted to know. The boyfriend tried to fend off all the questions about these shiny new pillows, but the big guy really wanted to know everything about them. “Well I hope they are comfortable. You guys look like newlyweds and you’ll probably be testing them out a lot! It’s like buying a new car, you gotta test the ride, you know what I mean?!” The people around him laughed and the big guy launched into a different conversation with another guy about cars as we passed by the car dealerships on Van Ness.
The young couple seemed relieved that the attention was off of them. By this time a new crop of passengers got onto the bus and I heard one of them say, “Hey, what’s in those boxes? Pillows? Where’d you buy those?”
A whole new thread of conversation about foam pillows was being started among the new strangers in the front of the bus. The big guy was still deep in his car conversation and I thought, Hey, this is San Francisco’s living room.
Images: Tara Ramroop. Vive le Metro!
My personal favorite is this Victorian Art Nouveau Metro entrance in Montmartre, Paris:
Most recently, we found this from our spotless, polite neighbors to the north: transit-rider etiquette in Vancouver. We have to wonder: does this work up there? Because it’s suspiciously akin to our own unspoken rules, broken day in and day out.
What are your international transit favorites? Wouldn’t it be nice to make it on the transit radar for something undeniably cool, like, oh, free puppies at all odd-numbered line stops?
Update (2:34 p.m.): A reader noted on le Facebook Wall that SF cable cars perhaps count toward our international fame, because those are obviously on plenty of people’s transit radars. Indeedily they are, and we love the Victorian relics of old San Francisco. For this post, I suppose we’re looking for something more today, such as, OH, puppies at every stop or ticket-purchasing via cell phone. (I’m selling it too hard now, right? Now we will never get puppies.)
Photo by Jessie Johnson
Mike’s story was originally published on his website, MikeLee.org. Here’s an excerpt:
Girl #1 looked at Girl #2. She smiled. The other girl looked away. Then back. Then away. Then back.
Girl #1 said, “Hi.”
Girl #2 looked at her for a moment. Then, “Hi.”
Girl #1 said a few more things. I didn’t catch them, but it looked like quite an animated message. Her little hands flailed about excitedly.
Girl #2 smiled. Her arms stayed at her sides while she answered. She gripped her mother as the bus rocked and lurched.
…
Then came Girl #2′s stop. Her mother got up and took her arm. The little girl frowned. “I don’t want to go,” she told her mother.
“But this is our stop.”
“I don’t want to go,” Girl #2 repeated as she dutifully stood up.
The two girls exchanged sad glances. The mothers smiled. “How cute,” said Mother #1. “In just thirty minutes, they’ve become the best of friends.”
Read the whole story on Mike’s website.