Category: diaries

About the Chicken Story (and Perils of Running a User-Generated Site)

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I was standing on the side of the stage at the Make-Out Room last Friday at Riders with Drinks when our emcee Suzanne brought up four members of the audience to tell their own Muni story. As one of the audience members began to tell a story about an Asian (Chinese?) woman bringing a live chicken on the bus, I cringed. The story sounded uncomfortably familiar.

In the story, the bus driver tells the woman that live animals are not allowed on board. NonplussedUnaffected, she snaps the chicken’s neck and boards the bus.

Minutes later another writer in the audience approached us and echoed my discomfort: This story sounded remarkably like an urban legend she had heard before.  When it was time to give away a prize to the best storyteller, the audience chanted, “Chicken! Chicken!” I felt even more uncomfortable. In the chaos of running an event, we did not have a chance to intervene on stage, but the “chicken story” stayed in my mind all weekend.

A little internet search showed that various forms of the “chicken story” has been circulating the city for a few years. But if an audience member said that she witnessed the story first-hand, isn’t that the end of story?

Not for us.

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Category: reflection Tags:

Just Another Night Riding the 22

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Knife

It was a Friday night and I was on my way home from work. I had just gotten off BART at 16th Street and walked over to the bus stop to catch the 22. At first, everything seemed normal. Lots of people were begging for change, people were talking on their cell phones, other were people standing around waiting for the bus and tons of people were walking by in the general area. It seemed like another normal night at 16th and Mission.

As I waited for the 22, I heard some rowdiness over yonder, behind me. I looked over my shoulder and I saw that there were some guys goofing around with each other. They weren’t yelling. Just bumping into each other and being loud.

A few seconds later, these guys walked around to the front of the bus shelter where I was standing. There were three of them. Three Hispanic guys who spoke only Spanish. They were all over the place. One guy was even wandering in the street. I noticed that each of them had a bottle of tequila in their hand.

Suddenly, a black guy came out of nowhere and started speaking broken Spanish to these guys. The black guy walked in the street a bit and around the bus shelter, in plain sight of me, but out of view of the cameras located at the intersection. I’m not sure what triggered it, but one of the Spanish-speaking guys must have pissed off the black guy. This black guy was a young kid with nothing to lose. He seemed to be by himself and started talking mad shit to these guys in Spanish. It almost seemed like he was trying to egg them on into a fight. As soon as the black guy walked right in front of me, he lifted up his sweatshirt to show the fact that he had a gun in his drawers. Everyone standing in the bus shelter bolted out of the area, including myself. The other guys saw the gun, but continued talking back to the black guy. It was like the threat of the black guy having a gun and using it didn’t even phase them. These guys were obviously intoxicated.

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Category: diaries, WTF: Weirdness on Muni Tags:

Canon in D Jam Out at Powell Station

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Here in the Bay Area, home to world-class symphonies, ballets, and operas, we tend to undervalue so-called street musicians. New York, Paris, and London, to name just a few “Western” examples, do not take for granted the value of a sweet, sometimes semi-spontaneous burst of aural delight to break up the monotony of their streetlife. Is it because streetlife here is so readily associated with mental illness? Is it because the music we hear at BART stations and even occasionally on Muni is actually just shitty, and we’d be better off listening to the crazy shit people say around here? What is it?

In any case, we were happy to find this gem on Twitter late last week. This is worth breaking up your day with. Come on, feel the noise!

Category: diaries, reflection Tags:

Just Hangin’ at WP Station

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Picture 250.jpg

This just in from Muni rider Skajam:

I love that this guy is staring right at me. I am however fairly certain that he did not know he was being photographed. He was just sitting like this for about 10 minutes waiting for his train. I don’t know where ‘see no evil’ and ‘speak no evil’ were. Maybe he was going to meet them.

If you encounter strange flora and/or fauna in and around Muni, send it our way, please.

Category: diaries, Funny: Muni LOLs Tags:

Brownie-town on the 49

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brownie

I ride the 49 every day to get home, and so do a lot of terrible teenagers (redundant?) who attend Balboa Galileo High School on Van Ness and Bay. At best, they’re usually just screaming about this, that and the other, possibly hoping their volume will increase their level of importance on the bus. There’s often a non-teenage screamer on the bus and a vivid assortment of rude, pleasant, happy, friendly and too-friendly people also, just to add some color to my little cross-town line.

Because the 49 does cross town, I try to understand when it’s mildly gross. A bag of smashed chips at your feet here, a little pile of sunflower seeds there. But I draw the line at what looks like real effort to get moist foodstuffs caked on the bus. For example, someone had to TRY to get this brownie on the window. Someone had to take it out of their bag, out of its wrapper, then purposefully smear it on the window in such a way that it sticks.

I take it personally also because this happened to be next to my favorite seat on the bus (along that single-seat row, on the left, in the back). Maybe tomorrow I’ll find a plate of eggs or something.

Sure that’s a brownie? Send us your tales of suspicious items found on the bus, or any other worthy tales.

Photo by Flickr user Mitsooko

The photo above was taken by the author and pertains to the incident mentioned in this post. It arrived at MDHQ a tad late. Apologies.

Category: diaries, WTF: Weirdness on Muni Tags: ,

Weekend Photo Diary: No Direction Home

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No Direction Home

Originally uploaded by tangobaby

Well, we’ve all renewed our ability to completely ignore weather forecasts, after rain was promised every freakin’ day this week, and delivered none. Nevertheless, we can’t be played off without referencing future skies, no matter how futile.

Not really sure what’s going on this weekend, other than Sunday Streets in the Mission. If you know of something fun, cool, vital, or pathetic, let us know in comments.

Otherwise, just enjoy yourselves these next coupla days.

xoxo,

Muni Diaries

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