News – Page 50 – Muni Diaries

BART Stations Reopen After Protest Closure

January 16, 2015 eugenia Leave a comment

bart protest

BART stations have reopened after intermittently closing this morning as protesters swarmed Montgomery, Embarcadero, and Powell stations. According to the BART’s official Twitter feed, all trains are operating with five to 15-minute delays as of 9:59 a.m. today. SFGate reports that protests started around 7 a.m. at Montgomery Station. Protesters banged spoons against stopped BART trains, and moved from station to station. More from SFGate:

BART police officers made at least two arrests. A woman was arrested for standing in a train doorway at Montgomery, and a man was arrested there after striking a train with a metal spoon to make noise.
Activists said they wanted to shut down the stations to call attention to what they believe is the unfair prosecution of 14 protesters who have been charged by Alameda County prosecutors for allegedly halting BART service by chaining themselves to trains and each other at the West Oakland station.

Were you on the scene and what did you think of the protest (and the spoons)? Tweet us @bartdiaries.

Photo by alexaspace

Category: BART, News

Are anti-Islam ads on Muni just asking for it?

January 14, 2015 jeff One comment

hitler

Several of you have pointed us to the latest in a series of controversial ads on Muni. This one seems to jump the provocation shark, as it were. They feature Hitler (literally Hitler!) talking with, well, does it really even matter who Hitler is talking with? Aren’t all people who talked with Hitler auto-evil?

KTVU has the story:

40 Muni buses and light rail vehicles began carrying a stark, black-and-white advertisement this past weekend that equates Islam with Nazism and featuring images of Palestinian Muslim leader Haj Amin al-Husseini and Adolf Hitler.

In all caps, the ad blares, “Islamic Jew-Hatred: It’s in the Quran.”

A New York-based blogger paid for the ads in the wake of recent terrorism in Paris.

“People need to understand that this hatred is a religious imperative,” said American Freedom Defense Initiative President Pamela Geller. “We feel that this message is critical in light of what happened in Paris, the slaughter of four Jewish people at a kosher supermarket because they were Jewish.”

So, yeah. Where do you stand on these “ads”? I mean, as ads, what exactly are they trying to sell?

Photo by KTVU

Category: News

Seattle dog waits for no one, rides bus sans her human

January 13, 2015 yarbs One comment

It’s bad enough waiting for the bus. Who wants to let the bus they’ve been waiting for pass them by? Certainly not Eclipse, a black Labrador known for taking the bus—by herself—in Seattle.

According to the Associated Press, if owner Jeff Young is busy smoking a cigarette when the bus pulls up, Eclipse will climb aboard and ride without him to the dog park, sitting next to strangers and looking out the window before getting off at her designated stop. Young then catches up with her at the park, three or four stops away.

Who’s a good girl? We only wish some humans could be so well-behaved on Muni.

Category: News

Do you know the origin story of Forest Hill Station?

January 13, 2015 eugenia One comment

You might have zoomed by this station a hundred thousand times and not realized that it is actually the oldest subway station west of Chicago. We found the website OriginSF, whose authors chose Forest Hill Station as their latest case study of San Francisco history. According to OriginSF, Forest Hill Station was built with a dose of foresight:

Forest Hill Station was opened in 1918. It began thanks to the former mayor of San Francisco, Aldoph Sutro, who owned real estate all over the city. Twelve years after his death, A.S. Baldwin, a real estate agent from Baldwin & Howell, was hired to allocate Sutro’s real estate assets. At the time, the Forest Hill area of San Francisco was underutilized, with space composed of sand dunes and grassy land; it was not a desired lot to purchase. But Baldwin, showing foresight, developed a corporation to buy the forest and then sell the land. Newell-Murdoch bought that land and then deeded 21 lots to the City of San Francisco for free, in order for the Forest Hill station to be built. Why? Because Newell-Murdoch was banking on Laguna Honda to be the next big development once a train was built to bring people there. And they were right.

Interesting tidbit: scenes from Dirty Harry and Milk were shot in this station. If you like history as much as we do (see: Muni Time Capsule), you’ll enjoy browsing through OriginSF.

Photo by OriginSF

Category: News Tags: Forest Hill Station, muni time capsule

Transit News: Muni attack plea, BART/Amtrak transfer, BART escalators, Muni-nymphomaniac musical (yes, really)

January 9, 2015 jeff Leave a comment

news3

Man charged in attack on transgendered woman on Muni pleads not guilty (SF Examiner)
Former BART director sees Oakland BART/Amtrak transfer opportunity (CoCo Times)
Out of Order: BART Admits its Escalators Are Crappy — But Not Full of Crap (SF Weekly)
Richmond BART station to get $2.7 million in safety and other improvements (Bart.gov)
Story Of Woman Who Developed Nymphomania After Muni Accident Becomes Local Musical (KRON)
How the lack of late-night BART service affects Bay Area real estate (SF Business Times)