New Site Has Hella Photos of Muni Past
Head over to Muni Time Capsule to learn about the site that will steal the rest of your afternoon, Old SF.
Category: diaries
BART Kaleidoscope
Burrito Justice turned BART upside down and inside out in a photo series he calls KaleidoBART. I’ve been tilting my head trying to figure out where the pieces all came from. See his BART kaleidoscope for youself.
Got cool Muni/BART/Caltrain photos for us? Our Muni Flickr photo pool is waiting for you! And if you like our photo pool, don’t forget to vote for us in the SF Weekly Web Awards.
Let’s Play ‘What’s Grosser?’
Image by Flickr user muilak
Rachael posted an interesting question on the Muni Diaries Facebook Page yesterday:
Maybe I’m weird about germs but to me walking around barefoot is no more/less gross than touching everything on the bus then sitting down to eat a sandwich. Why do people eat on Muni?
Which led me to wonder which was actually grosser. I haven’t decided yet, but I’ve probably spent too much time thinking about it already.
The floor is just plain grody. I’ve let bare legs and bare hands touch seats and rails before even thinking about putting a bag on the floor. I think we can agree that the chicken and formaldehyde combo platter is an appetite-killer for all involved. But Muni riders snack on food that isn’t stuck to the window all the time, and it doesn’t always bother me. That said, we use our bare hands to eat, sometimes before washing our hands when we’re late to dinner and about to eat a limb for sustenance. OK, maybe by we, I mean me.
But, which is worse? Barefoot riding or eating while riding?
Muni, Muni, Read All About It
Photo by Heather Champ
Four cool public transit books:
- San Francisco Muni. The newest of the lot, “Hop aboard and trace Muni’s construction, expansion, operations, competitors, labor issues, and finances through two world wars to chronicle the growth of the “people’s railroad” into America’s seventh-largest public transit system.”
- San Francisco Cable Cars. “San Francisco’s cable cars are an internationally recognized symbol of the city, but they also have a long and fractious history.”
- Street Cars of San Francisco. “This delightful book showcases this historic fleet with more than 120 pages of beautiful color photos of currently restored and active streetcars.”
- Transit Maps of the World. “the first and only comprehensive collection of historic and current maps of every rapid-transit system on earth.”
Sarah B. from The Richmond Blog sent us a tip about a new book coming out about Muni. From the blog, Inside the Outside Lands:
Transit historian Grant Ute has coauthored with Walter Vielbaum, Robert Townley, and the late Philip Hoffman and Cameron Beach (the transit guys are very collaborative) to produce San Francisco’s Municipal Railway: Muni. A large-format 144-page book from Arcadia Publishing, this photo-history comes out in time for Muni’s 2012 Centennial and covers the railway’s development to date. If you can, I recommend you buy it at the one of my favorite places, the Market Street Railway Museum at 77 Steuart Street near the Ferry Building.
Click over to Inside the Outside Lands to read more about the other historical books fresh off of the presses.
Oh, and if you want more ideas about what to read on the bus, the awesome blog Between the Lines is documenting books spotted on Muni.
Got other good Muni reads? We wanna know.
Travels with Shady on the 8BX
Photo by Rubin 110
There’s this guy stationed at the North Point and Stockton stop. He has maps and acts as a slightly pushy, official tour guide. He’s exceedingly polite — and accurate — when pointing people wherever they want to go. Then, almost like it didn’t happen, you see dollars exchanged for transfers. He’ll quietly explain that they’re good until the time listed — also accurate — and they stare interestedly at this slip of paper. Some are skeptical and some just pay, no questions asked, like they knew he was there with the “discount” tickets. One guy asked tons of questions, which tipped me off to his dealings in the first place.
But one woman who bought a $1 transfer was obviously a local. She knew exactly what she was doing, and I’m surprised I don’t see it more: paying $1 for a still-active transfer instead of $2 honest fare.
And he did it again at the same time the next day.
I don’t know where he gets the transfers. I figured maybe he stole them from a parked bus in the Kirkland Yard, mere steps away from this stop. Maybe he has a buddy who just hands them to him like it ain’t no thang.
It is, though. It’s illegal to sell transfers, so Muni at least kind of agrees: buying and selling transfers only cheats the paying customers. It’s also kind of a shitty thing to do.
What to do on Muni in an earthquake
So, in light of Tuesday’s East Coast earthquake, we thought we’d go over the earthquake-preparation basics in case you’re aboard a Muni vehicle when the big one (or even a littler, but nonetheless violent one) strikes.
Somehow, when faced with the multiple choice questions, we resisted choosing, “Keep listening to your music until the train reaches its destination.”
I mean, really. And this is post-quake:
Visit the Quake Quiz SF site, take the quiz, laugh at the rat, and be prepared!