Muni SF Marathon FAIL
Jessie sent us this justifiably confused email:
Um….wasn’t the 53 discontinued a few months ago? Way to go, Muni!
Maybe SFMTA is recycling from past years? No, the date is right. Unless this sign is from … ah, screw it.
Category: diaries
52-Excelsior: Center of the Universe?
Photo by dannyman
I live in the Excelsior, at the top of the hill near McLaren Park. On days when I commute on BART, I sometimes take the 52 Excelsior for my uphill homeward trip, although the recent service cuts can mean a wait that’s longer than my total walk home.
Monday night, I saw by the Next Muni sign that I would have a very long wait for the bus, so I decided to start walking. I was carrying several heavy bags, my knee hurt, and it was foggy and windy – not a great evening for the 9-block schlep up the steep hill to my house. I was moving slower than usual, so when I got to Silver and Mission, I checked the sign at the bus shelter – 9 minutes for a 52. I decided to sit down and wait for it.
As soon as I did, I realized that I didn’t want to spend the next 9 minutes inhaling second-hand smoke from the kid standing directly upwind – and I didn’t want to move my tired, sore self from the bus shelter seat, either, so I asked him to move downwind. He turned around, and the last thing I was expecting to see was a sunny smile, but that’s what he gave me as he said “I’m sorry, I don’t speak English” (in quite passable English).
I made myself understood, he moved downwind, and I was settling back in to wait when he popped back, saying “excuse me, can you help me?” and brandishing a map. Now, I was not in the best mood, but he seemed very harmless, I had time to kill, and I never mind giving directions. I had a hard time understanding him at first – his accent was odd, though he spoke well – but figured out that he wanted to go to Prague Street. He didn’t know the cross, but Prague is only 5 blocks long, and he said he’d be able to find his way once he got there. As I was wondering why this clearly foreign visitor wanted to go to a random residential block in the Excelsior, he explained that he was an Argentinian on day 1 of a 3-month English language course, and was staying with a family in the neighborhood.
As it happened, the best way for him to get where he was going was the 52, so I told him to get on the bus with me, and showed him the sign that said the next bus was coming in 3 minutes. Read more
Three Travelers
Julie at Caliber took this photo on the 71 Noriega. I can never tire of new ways to look at the same transit system that we depend on every day. If you’ve got photos or art taken on the bus, don’t forget our Flickr pool or simply send it to us so we can share it here.
What does Muni say about San Francisco?
Photo by Flickr user Omer Simkha
The next morning as I was walking under the 90 degrees heat to the Coloseum, who do I see but the same woman from the bus, leading a group of Chinese tourists, speaking in fluent Chinese to explain the history of the Coloseum! I pretended not to recognize her.
The experience on the bus really soured me for a moment on Rome. This leads me to wonder: what kind of impression on our city do visitors get from riding Muni?
Muni thefts can happen anywhere, anytime
Yes, you’ve heard it all the time. Be careful with your fancy electronics such as phones while on the Muni, especially while you’re riding through a sketchy part of town or on a sketchy line. But that caveat is becoming less and less the case.
I was on the 1 heading westbound coming home from Western Railway Museum today (7/16). The bus (5616) stopped at Sproule Street. Then, out of nowhere, a lady screams, “Help! That guy took my phone!”
I turned my head toward the window and saw a man who looked like he was in his 20s, with a hairstyle of Gavin Newsom (without the gel) and looked like Yvan Attai (the taxi driver in Rush Hour 3). Other than that, he was wearing a black sweater turtleneck and black jeans.
After he ran off, the lady ran after him only to stop short of the alley. A couple of people from the bus went to her, and deliberated on what just happened. The rest of the bus, however, was talking about how young he looked.
What about the driver? Oh, he didn’t do anything except he answered a passenger’s question of what happened. No call to Central Control. Nothing.
After a minute, we pulled off, and as I looked into the alley, I thought to myself, “Why didn’t I run after him?” The answer was not common sense, but it was because I felt an anger, an unexplainable, intolerable anger.
So, a word of caution: NEVER EVER EVER USE YOUR PHONE ON PUBLIC TRANSIT. NOT EVEN ON COMMUNITY SERVICE ROUTES. The lowlifes who roam Muni all day looking for someone to prey on make me sick. And I’m sure they make you sick too. That is, unless you’re one of those lowlifes.
Learning West Portal the Hard Way
Photo by skew-t
My sister and I had gone into Noe Valley one fine February Sunday. We were checking out bookstores in the area since it was her last day in the city.
After we were finished looking around, I didn’t feel like going back onto the J-Church inbound and transferring to the N-Judah. The 48-Quintara bus stop was just across the street, so I insisted we take that bus line back to Outer Sunset.
We boarded the bus and went up and down the hills. When we got to West Portal, the bus stopped and all the other passengers got off. I was befuddled. Surely the 48-Quintara went out further than West Portal? Why else would it be called the Quintara bus?
My sister and I got off the bus and tried to figure out the situation. Then I decided that maybe the bus in front was going to continue on to the Outer Sunset, so we hopped on. That bus started driving back the same direction we had just came from, so we got off at Portola Drive.
We were somewhat stranded in West Portal, but then we found comfort in another bookstore there. After the Quintara bus shocker, I looked around at the street signs and decided that we could actually find our way out to 19th Avenue by following Wawona or Ulloa. We walked down one of those streets and I felt great relief from seeing the busy traffic go by on 19th Avenue. We boarded the 28 and transferred to the N-Judah to get back home safely.
Later on, I checked Muni’s website and discovered that the 48-Quintara only continued out to Quintara on weekdays. Oops. But luckily, this was just another tale of getting lost on Muni with a happy ending.