Your place to share stories on and off the bus.
Reader Chris F. sent in this photo of a modified Google bus stop and said, “Seen at the 48 Muni Bus stop at Valencia And 24th. The love is gone. Apparently.”
Actually, I think the love left approximately as early as August 2012, according to a Muni driver, and it’s been so long ago that there is already a spoof of the breakup.
Remember the good old days when even Android robots rode Muni?
Photo by Kevin Wong/Right Angle Images
BART operator Kelly Beardsley lets us in on one little secret about driving BART: passengers love pressing the intercom button to complain about annoyances big and small, or even to just chat with him for no reason at all. At the last Muni Diaries Live show, Kelly recounts the shenanigans over the intercom on one eventful BART ride.
I love intercom calls, they always crack me up. You know on BART at the end there’s that little box that says, In Case of Emergency, Call the Operator?” Sometimes people just push it and just chatting me up. Like, “Hey, I noticed you just made another transfer announcement at Lake Merritt Station. I don’t usually hear transfer announcements at Lake Merritt Station for the Dublin-Pleasanton bound passengers. Are you going to make a transfer announcement at Bay Fair?” And i’m just like, “Oh I like to mix it up! I like to make sure people get to where they need to go!” And the guy’s like, “Oh that’s really cool, man, so what other places do you make transfer announcements?”
We get stupid calls, we get fun calls, and we get complaint calls like, “Hey! Hey! There’s this girl and she’s got a bike and she’s eating a burrito and she’s in the handicapped seat!”
On one mellow Sunday, Kelly gets an intercom call at Fruitvale station about two guys screaming at each other “about to fuck each other up!” He calls it into Central, but the intercom caller wasn’t finished.
“I’m looking out the window and I see that no one’s fighting and thought, maybe they worked it out! So I get going and a minute outside of Fruitvale and I get another call. It’s the same guy but now with other people too. “Hey man! You better get someone!” I hear screaming in the background and I’m like, “Has it escalated?” And the guy goes, “This motherfucker’s got a bike! He’s got a bike raised over his head!”
Watch the rest of the video to hear what happened!
Or something like that.
About a year ago, a similar setup resulted in a pop-up barber shop at a Muni shelter. What other clever uses of shelter electricity await us all?
Via Muni rider Brandon.
Your San Francisco Giants return home tonight following their brave effort in the War on Dodgers/lesser-evil-but-still essential bad baseball teams. Our fellas were triumphant, so what better way to honor their heroic efforts than to sardine it up and head to the ballpark in a crowded Muni train? The Giants will play games at AT&T Park starting tonight and every day through Sunday. Yay!
Image by Avner Geller.
Photo by Lynn Friedman
Editor’s Note: Ricardo M was a Muni driver from 1981-1988. Originally trained on the LRVs, he spent six months at the Metro Division operating the K, L, M, N Lines. In the seven years that he worked as a Muni driver, he’s driven just about all the trolley buses spanning from the 41, 21, 6, and on. “But, mostly, I drove the 14 Mission line because then I could speak Spanish while I drove all day, from Embarcadero to Daly city and then back again.”
Ricardo sends us this story, which he says is one of his favorite experiences as a Muni driver.
I had just left the Embarcadero terminal, heading south on Mission Street. I already had about 15 people on my bus. When I arrived at the Mission and 2nd Street zone, there were about six people waiting for me, including a man in a wheelchair.
As soon as I pulled my trolley bus into the passenger zone, the man in the wheelchair rolled himself right up against one of the open doors of the bus, reached out with his right hand, and grabbed onto one of the door’s side handles. He looked up at me as if to say something, but the people behind him had already started going around him, stepping out in front of him and going up the stairwell.
Finally, only the man in the wheelchair remained on the sidewalk. His wheelchair was of the regular folding type (no motor), with thick leather bags attached to the armrests. He looked like a bronco-riding cowboy in his large ivory straw hat, a Western shirt, boots, and a silver buckle on his leather belt.
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Photo via treesandtrains
Possibly even slower than arriving on horseback, Aragorn has expanded his transportation options to include Muni. The hobbit in the pink carriage doesn’t look impressed, however.
Also spotted on Muni: Jack Sparrow.