Your place to share stories on and off the bus.
This rather Twittertastic note came to the Muni Diaries inbox the other day from Muni rider Ari:
there was a lady passed out on the floor of embarcadero station obviously not having a good night. happened around 11pm on august 3rd.
Thanks for the info, Ari. Tough Monday for this woman …
Photo by tangobaby from the Muni Photos Flickr pool
Amazing photo by tangobaby that I don’t really want to ruin with words. So I won’t.
Instead, I’ll recap a pretty busy week here on Muni Diaries. I’ll start with the post that kicked the week off for us: the July post of the month. Honors this month go to Plug1’s photo post: The Proof-of-Payment game. Later Monday, we posted a report of the M crashing into a car over the weekend, a story that was quickly eclipsed later that day in the now-famous SUV sandwich with F trains for bread. Later in the week, for whatever reason, old news about MTA’s purchasing an insurance policy came to the fore, and our weeks-old question was answered.
Also on Monday, we published the first of two posts by our favorite Muni mom, Beth W. One was about a cool new feature on txtmuni, an SMS service for bus predictions. The other was our first Muni poem, a villanelle.
Image by Plug1. Click here for a larger view.
Muni Diaries would have withered and perhaps disappeared if it weren’t for some of the amazing photographs we’ve published of life on Muni. We have a category here on the site for what we call “Photo Diaries,” little slices-of-life that take place on Muni. We like running our Weekend Photo Diaries over the weekend, when traffic on the site slows down and we give readers a chance to get away from their computers. Muni photos, in a word, are vital to the continued existence of this site.
That said, we’ve witnessed some particularly troubling events in the past concerning our (and by “our,” we mean you, us, the riding, internet-ing public) capturing and posting of photographs on-board Muni vehicles.
Well, veteran San Francisco photoblogger Plug1 has taken it upon himself to get to the bottom of Muni’s vague policy regarding this subject. Below is a chat he had on Twitter with 311, and after the jump is his take on what’s going on. It also appears on his blog, WHAT IM SEEING.com. Perhaps the vagueness won’t surprise you. But there is some hope yet …
Photo by Flickr user eb78
This sad story comes to our inbox from Muni rider kevinas:
I was riding the F line on Saturday morning, going toward downtown. The car stopped in front of DeLessio’s cafe, near Valencia, to pick up passengers. One young man got on and placed a dime in the fare box. The driver told him, “The fare is $2, not ten cents.” The kid said, “That’s all I’ve got.” The driver replied, “That’s not my problem.” The kid got off through the back. Shortly after the car started going again, he trough a rock or some similar object at the car, smashing one of the windows, and covering a terrified woman in broken glass. Fortunately, it did not appear that she was hurt. I briefly considered chasing the kid down and doing my best to whoop the shit out of him. But I thought better of it.
Yeah, we know the $2 fare can seem steep. But smashing a window? What’s that really gonna solve, eh, kid?
Photo by 2girls1queen
Update (August 6, 2:17 p.m.): SF Appeal helps answer the question this post asked 18 days ago. Thanks, guys!
Original post: Regular service has resumed after yesterday’s West Portal accident, but the fallout is far from over. The SFAppeal reports that 48 people were injured, four of them critical. Ahem, anybody smell a lawsuit coming? This brings us to a KCBS story that a reader sent to us about how the MTA board approved the purchase of something known as catastrophe insurance, which pays for lawsuits. Pretty sad that such a policy is warranted.
But lo and behold, a mere three days following the board’s vote, an accident more or less validates that decision.
Since the MTA board just voted to purchse the “catastrophe insurance” last Wednesday, we’re not sure if a further vote is necessary to enact the insurance policy. Or does the Board of Supervisors need to approve this?
And does the policy cover Saturday’s crash? We doubt it, unless this is a magic policy that’s magically already in place. It would be nice, if only to cover Muni’s already-broke ass. If the policy isn’t in effect, we foresee the potential for multiple lawsuits. If that happens, does Muni fall into an even deeper hole? Ugh.
Photo by Denay
Muni rider Denay sent this jewel to our inbox:
My friend and I were riding the 33 to our local friendly Comcast (sarcasm) and we witnessed an off duty muni driver clipping his fingernails in the back. He didn’t even bother to collect the freshly shorn nails off the floor!
Can we get a “ewwww”? We all know that people who ride Muni should not resort to manicures on public transit. But now operators are doing it, too? As Charlie Brown would say: Good grief!
