Category: reflection

Streetcar Avengers Fighting Crime and Missed Runs

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Art by San Francisco-based artist Julian Lozos. Check out his Kickstartr page (goal met!) for more on his calendar project.

Delightfully historic and equipped with standout palettes and style, F-Market/Wharves streetcars rock in many ways. Local artist Julian Lozos took the cars’ unique qualities a step further: into the realm of superheroes. Bernalwood and Market Street Railway recently featured these anthropomorphic superheroes (see Market Street Railway’s detailed description of the superhero streetcars).

Pretty cool. It’s like choosing which of the X-Men you’d want on your side in a fight (JEAN GREY).

I pick #130 for its deadly combo of style and substance. MSR says it was part of a commission to expand service for the Pan-Pacific International Exposition: the event that brought us the Palace of Fine Arts and showed off a rebuilt — on landfill, but still — post-1906-earthquake San Francisco. Plus, it’s done a tour of duty on almost every streetcar line.

My favorite-favorite F coaches, though, have to be the PCC cars. Smoothest, cushiest ride in town if you time it right (PSST not around 9 a.m. or 5 p.m.).

Meander over to Bernalwood to see more local-landmark superheroes.

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If and When You Like-Like a Muni Driver

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Image: Flickr user jchinn84.

We’ve spotlighted our share of hug-worthy drivers here on Muni Diaries. Tammy, one of our favorites, threw a party for her passengers once. One F-Market/Wharves operator went beyond the call of duty, while another Muni driver handed out Lemon Heads one day! But what if you, you know…like them-like them?

@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.

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Cameron Beach, in his daughter’s own words

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The View from Carole's Window
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.

before-ceremony0188
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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Category: diaries, reflection

Video: Grand Slam Champion Joyce Lee at Muni Diaries Live

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Poet and Oakland Grand Slam champion Joyce Lee is one hell of a storyteller. At Muni Diaries Live in April, she quieted down the rowdy crowd with a sobering story of watching a life go by on Muni. Sometimes when we tell people about Muni Diaries Live, people ask me: “Is it just a bunch of people complaining about Muni?” Not in the least, and this video is just one more reason why Muni stories are so much more than that.

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.

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Pillow Talk on the 49-Van Ness

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On the F Market with a pillow..
Photo by juicyrai

Sometimes Muni seems like San Francisco’s living room.

One night last week I walked up to the 49 bus shelter on Van Ness and saw that there was a young couple waiting for the bus, each carrying a huge cardboard box that said, Tempurpedic Pillow (with pictures of a high-tech-looking foam pillow). The bus arrived and we got on. It was crowded so the couple stood near the front.

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.

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Around the World: Transit Props

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Images: Tara Ramroop. Vive le Metro!

We’ve seen scores of cool transit-related things from other countries, be it cool stuff or just cool behavior. The platform punching bags in Shanghai. The freakin’ slide at Overvecht Station in Holland. Those dreamlike Croatian funiculars and, per SF visitor Melita, the ability to buy tickets via cell phone. Transit in Taipei, on which people will stand before even thinking about sitting in the reserved seats. 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.)

Category: diaries, reflection
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