Your place to share stories on and off the bus.
This portrait of a dog waiting for the 48-Quintara by local artist Grant Gilliland is super sweet. The dog’s name is Cooper, and his owners live in Noe Valley.
Gilliland also has a handful of other pet portraits that we love, like Timony and Kira below. You can find his work on his portfolio website, TheGrossUncle.com.
Sure, we’ve seen Muni worm tattoos, F-Market streetcar tattoos, Fast Passes, Muni transfers …
But it wasn’t until this morning that we’d seen or heard of anyone honoring the San Francisco institution of cable cars with permanent ink on their skin. Muni rider and cable car lover Luna sent us her new skinwork: “Got my #cablecar #tattoo!” Yes you did, Luna. Yes you did. Red and gold FTW.
Update (June 29, 2015): Word comes from Henry that this here magic blue bus has sold for a whopping $9,750. For the math-challenged among you, that’s a mere 3,250 precious cups of Blue Bottle single-serve coffee. Jealous? GET IN LINE.
Original post (June 12, 2015): In a Super-Duper-Size helping of schadenfreude, looks like the failed startup Leap, which dared to challenge our beloved/behated Muni, is auctioning off its wares. Or, at least one of their spiffy blue buses.
Muni/SFMTA should soooooooo buy this and let a group of us riders paint a big ol’ hand flippin’ the bird on the sides. Just an idea.
Currently the Leap bus is being listed on First Capitol Auction, Inc. Thanks to Sarah for finding this. She says, “Anyone want to buy a used start-up bus?”
Previously:
Private bus service Leap Transit shut down by state
Leap bus needs a tow on Day 2: Is there an app for that?
Gizmodo writer finds the ultimate competitor for Leap buses
Getting an MRI, which scans the body to help detect medical problems or diseases, can be a claustrophobic experience. Or as friend of Muni Diaries Erich puts it “it’s like getting stuffed inside a toilet paper tube”—with thumps.
To make the experience more pleasant—for kids in particular—the new UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay has created MRI suites with different Bay Area themes that feature murals, music, sound effects, and even images projected on the inside of the machine. Our favorite, for obvious reasons, simulates a cable car ride, letting kids imagine they are zipping down a big hill.
Making kids feel more comfortable can eliminate the need for sedation or anesthesia, according to a UCSF article that explains more about the MRI suites.
Pretty cool, we think, but it does beg the question: Who’d have ever thought public transit could calm somebody down?
If you’re a transplant, do you remember what defined your San Francisco experience? Muni rider Jesse James moved to San Francisco from smalltown Thousand Oaks to attend SF State, sight unseen. And the Powell Street Muni Station and the M-Ocean View line were the settings of his defining urban moment.
“I had a family connection to a little Italian restaurant downtown called Buca di Beppo. I quickly obtained a host job and my life consisted of me going to school during the day, boarding the M train, taking the M to the Powell Street station. There was nothing more beautiful to me at that point than coming up the escalator at the Powell Street Station, and the Virgin Records megastore was glimmering in the summer sun. It was just such a symbol of darling urban life in the most suburban lens of urban life.
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I thought I’d seen all there was to see at a @SFBART station. Then I saw this guy play tennis at Powell. #OnBoardSF pic.twitter.com/yw83pTvvA4
— Nick Josefowitz (@josefow) June 18, 2015
I think of Muni as our public living room, but public gym? This dude is taking the concept to the next level in a little indoor tennis action here. We found this video via Nick Josefowitz, who happens to also be on the BART board of directors. He says, “I thought I’d seen all there was to see at a @SFBART station. Then I saw this guy play tennis at Powell.”