Your place to share stories on and off the bus.
The other day, I saw Muni mider Arun wearing a cool Fast Pass T-shirt from Upper Playground. This guy was so nice, he even said he loves Muni!
Oh, and if you’re in the market for Fast Pass T-shirts or Clipper card holders with authentic Fast Passes in them, get thee to the Muni Diaries Etsy store!
Holy shit, I love this photo. Peter tipped us off to it in the comments on a post from earlier today highlighting creative seating on Muni. Flickr says the photo was taken last April. Bullshit: This was taken in December 1978.
Photo by Telstar Logisitcs
Muni rider Brian overheard this gripping tale on the 67-Bernal Heights.
A mugger shoots and murders the parents of a young Bruce Wayne, who studies for years to become Gotham’s dark knight. A space ship crashes on a farm, and inside is a baby boy wrapped in a red cape adorned with a letter “S” emblem; this boy grows up to be Superman. After being kidnapped by Vietnamese terrorists, scientist Tony Stark constructs a powerful iron suit to destroy his captors and escape, and Iron Man is born. Every great comic book character has a memorable origin story. But no superhero can top the story I heard about the man who drives the 67 bus.
At one red light, a young woman standing near the front of the bus notices his bible, too, and can’t hold back her curiosity. “Hello, sir. If you don’t mind my asking — how did you become religious?” the girl says. She sounds Dutch, and she’s holding a basket in her left hand, the bus pole in her right.
“Oh, I’m happy to tell ya,” the driver says. “God saved me when I was very young. You wanna know how he did that?”
“Of course.”
The driver looks pleased. The light turns green, and he starts his story as he hits the gas.
“So back when I was a teen, I used to always drive really fast. I’m talkin’ stupid fast, OK? I had a sports car, and I would take that thing up to maybe 120 sometimes on the freeway.”
The passengers sitting near me begin shifting their eyes in the driver’s direction, with concerned looks on their faces.
“So this one night at like 2 in the morning I’m speeding down the freeway and I hear a voice in my head.”
Slow down. Stop.
“I say to myself, that’s ridiculous, why should I stop? This is an empty freeway, it’s 2 in the morning. Ain’t no one out here. And then I hear the voice again.”
Slow down. Stop. There’s a car up ahead.
“So I hit my brakes and stop. And sure enough right in front of me there’s a car that’s been in an accident. Its headlights are shut off, and it’s sideways across the freeway. I came so close to driving straight into it!”
“Wow,” the woman says.
“So I’m stopped there on the freeway and I’m in shock, and I’m asking, how can this be? How can this be? And I started crying right there. God saved me! God saved my life that day. And so then I decided I would stop driving so stupid fast, and I would become a bus driver to take people places and keep them safe.”
He ends the story with a short sermon: “Thank the Lord. Praise Jesus.”
The bus comes to a halt at a stop. “Wow, that’s so amazing,” the woman says. “Thanks so much for sharing that with me. I’m getting off here, but would you like a date?” She takes a date out of her basket, hands it to him and hops off the bus.
The bus continues through the rest of the route, and I’m the only one left with the driver as we approach my stop. I shoot him a quick thank you as I step off.
The driver takes his right hand off the steering wheel, extends it toward me and says it again: “Thank the Lord. Praise Jesus.” The doors shut behind me, and the lights flicker off as the bus drives away.
Got a Muni story? There’s a website for that. Submit your story to Muni Diaries!
Photo by Heather
Heather‘s rad Muni tale is a few years old, but evergreen for us:
All kinds of weird shit went down on my bus ride back from HMCRA today–people transporting enough grape juice to quench a high school, a 60-year-old dude totally covered in (some really awesome) tattoos (we’re talkin’ legit head-to-toe, here)–but this guy wins hands down. Homie totally just rolled up onto the 33 today with this patio chair, put it down in the aisle next t to me, and sat down in it. From something like 16th and Mission to 24th and Potrero.
We missed this dude when we did a roundup of creative seating on Muni last month. Apologies.
A few days after we posted a roundup of various Muni tattoos, one of the tattoo’s owners contacted us to tell us more.
Julie is the proud owner of the Muni neck tattoo. Here’s what she had to say upon discovering it on Muni Diaries:
That is me 3 years ago, at the fresh-faced age of 18 when I first got the tattoo. The day after, I was in Costco with my mom, and three dudes stopped me to ask if it was really the worm, and snapped this picture.
Here’s what Julie said about why she got the Muni worm tattoo’d on the back of her neck:
At 15, my mom kicked me out of the house, and I was out on the streets. I would sleep on the 90 or 91 when it was extra cold or rainy out. The drivers, despite their rough exterior, showed me ultimate compassion and sometimes would give me food or hot chocolate. The entire experience of being a street kid had a huge part in the chick I am today, so I got the worm.
Plus, it’s unique to San Francisco, and I’m a city kid to the core.
And the reaction she gets to the tattoo?
It’s always fun. Usually a laugh or two and then a question of why I got it. A lot of tagger kids think it’s pretty cool which always amuses me. Muni operators get a good laugh out of it too, and cable car drivers always tell me it’s my life pass and I can ride their trolley for free any day.
So much awesome is happening on the nape of Julie’s neck and in her story. Thanks for sharing, Julie!
This and other posts are being corralled over on our 100 Days, 100 Muni Stories page. Check out these tributes to the Muni experience, and send us your best Muni memories.
