Your place to share stories on and off the bus.
Photo by Kelly Nicolaisen
We’ve featured fashionable Muni riders in the past, including some terrific photos of the fashion tribes of San Francisco. Is your line the best or worst dressed? Tell us about the fashionable people on your bus, or those who might deserve wrath from Joan Rivers.
sallyw3000, who was featured in this post about the Fast Pass over at Chronicle Books, has a Flickr set to make any Muni nostalgia-minded fanatic drool. The collection ranges from September 1977 (pictured above) to April 1982.
I love how thematic the passes were. I wonder if that somehow added to their ability to be easily counterfeited. But check it out, a shamrock and a leprechaun hat for March? Books and sports equipment for September? Autumn leaves for November? It just goes on and on and on, until January 1980, when the passes started coming with magnetic strips and decidedly more boring, though still colorful, designs.
September 1979 is my favorite. That’s second-grader Nobuhiro Yamanishi’s art on the pass. “Catch Cavities,” indeed.
Not to be outdone by IsMuniSlowToday.com, mysterious local internetians have taken HowFuckedIsMuni.com online.
Sleek graphics, seamless interface, advanced functionality … qualities that would work well in a public transportation system, right?
I decided to test out my two alternative routes to work:
The 14-Mission: The 14 is not particularly fucked.
The 49-Van Ness: The 49 is not particularly fucked.
Hey, at least I’m armed with that knowledge …
Try out How Fucked Is Muni now!
Photo by moppet65535
Devin’s got the details:
Someone (or quite a few someones) had gotten open a multi-pound bag of food bank dry pinto beans on the 44, and distributed them vigorously around the bus. Several rows of seats had neat piles of beans, and the floor was liberally decorated pretty much the length of the bus.
A woman who got on several stops after us was pacing the length of the bus, taking tons of pictures with her blackberry and talking disgustedly about the scene. I was a bit nonplussed. It’s Muni. They’re dry beans. You can push them off the seat and it’ll take five minutes to sweep up at the yard. In the meantime you get to fantasize about the scenario which led to the beans getting there. Stuff happens on the bus, y’know?
We know. Strange tales of the 44-O’Shaughnessy continue …
As many of us prepare to usher in the 2011 baseball season today, @SF_Giants shows that Muni has a wicked sense of humor.
Also: Go, Giants!
It’s no secret that we at Muni Diaries love animals. So naturally it caught our eye (and heartstrings) to see @pickupabook post the photo above and tweet about the “Prettiest thing I’ve seen on the Muni… Handsome Montana man excluded.” Makes us wonder what Handsome Montana man looks like.
Here are some more of our favorite Muni tweets of the past week:
“when i look in the mirror i look like a stoner with a bad cold = solo muni seat!”
by @powerboybass
“An elementary school aged child just peered over my arm to look at my Twitter feed while on #Muni. How cute and nosy!”
by @lsh
“Muni at rush hour is like playing Twister in an earthquake, except yr hands go on metal bars instead of fun colorful dots.”
by @mikemccaffrey
“The guy next to me on muni just made the young girl kiss his iguana (named Anna). Oh, sf.”
by @sfbaily
“said to me on muni: Guy: Did your lip piercing hurt Me: No Guy: I was going to say if you give me 20 I can torture you.”
by @cantaloupebeard
“Stalled on a #Muni train. What exactly do I need to do to turn this thing into a Coors Bullet Train?”
by @zachb
“drunks in orange on #Muni. Welcome to baseball season!”
by @ckblack007
Follow Muni Diaries on Twitter for the never-ending fun that is Muni on Twitter.