Weekend Photos: Laser Muni

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Do you believe in life after death?
Photo by Jen

Muni Diaries would be downright ugly without the beautiful photos from our Flickr pool. Thanks to the amazing photographers on Flickr, we are nominated in SFWeekly’s Web Awards in #22 Best Flickr Pool! If you haven’t, please take a minute to vote and sprinkle some love on these awesome photogs. Voting ends in just a few days (Aug 30).

A couple of fun things to do this weekend and early next week:

  • San Francisco Reggae Festival. Not to be confused with the recent Dub Step Festival, this one features Rankin Scroo, Junior Toots, and DJ I-Vier. Saturday, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. Fillmore and O’Farrel. Take Muni there: 2, 3, 22, 31, 28.
  • Pop-Up Low Tea at the Barrel Room. Quality teas, small plates, mochi balls, brought to you by the folks at The Tender. Sunday Aug 28, 12 p.m. – 4 p.m. 620 Post Street. Take Muni there: 2, 3, 27, 31, 38, 76
  • Uptown Almanac pop up comedy night. Tuesday Aug 30, 7:30 p.m. at The Roxie. 3117 16th St. Free Pabst and comedy, organized by the kings of snark. How can you miss it? Take Muni there: 12, 14, 22, 33, 49, BART.

Enjoy these photos and your weekend!

Milan 1895 in the Intermission
Photo by Franciscophile

Van Ness in the Dark
Photo by Benjamin Soto

Full-spectrum F Market
Photo by moppet65535

Muni, downtown San Francisco
Photo by Joshua Gatts

Category: diaries

Let’s Play ‘What’s Grosser?’

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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?

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

Muni, Muni, Read All About It

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Commute, N Judah
Photo by Heather Champ

Love the smell of ink and paper? You can read all about public transit in that old-school, paper way.

Four cool public transit books:

  1. 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.”
  2. 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.”
  3. 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.”
  4. 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.

Category: diaries

Travels with Shady on the 8BX

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Photo by Rubin 110

The F-Market/Wharves operators are very quick to remind us all, tourist and local, that packed trains may mean picked pockets. Lest we forget, some tourists take the 8BX-Bayshore “B” Express also, and folks definitely take advantage of them.

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.

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