About the Chicken Story (and Perils of Running a User-Generated Site)
I was standing on the side of the stage at the Make-Out Room last Friday at Riders with Drinks when our emcee Suzanne brought up four members of the audience to tell their own Muni story. As one of the audience members began to tell a story about an Asian (Chinese?) woman bringing a live chicken on the bus, I cringed. The story sounded uncomfortably familiar.
In the story, the bus driver tells the woman that live animals are not allowed on board. NonplussedUnaffected, she snaps the chicken’s neck and boards the bus.
Minutes later another writer in the audience approached us and echoed my discomfort: This story sounded remarkably like an urban legend she had heard before. When it was time to give away a prize to the best storyteller, the audience chanted, “Chicken! Chicken!” I felt even more uncomfortable. In the chaos of running an event, we did not have a chance to intervene on stage, but the “chicken story” stayed in my mind all weekend.
A little internet search showed that various forms of the “chicken story” has been circulating the city for a few years. But if an audience member said that she witnessed the story first-hand, isn’t that the end of story?
Not for us.
