Comedian John Waters was recently at the Jewish Community Center where the host asked him about riding Muni. According to the host, “everyone hates Muni!” I think he means love-hate. Or love to hate. But John Waters actually just loves the ride.
“Sometimes when I have nothing to do, I feel like it’s just like an amusement park ride…I love it, it really makes me happy to ride Muni here.”
Watch the video and find out what he has to say about the F and the J, and hear why his love for Muni is the only controversy he’s ever caused.
Poet and Oakland Grand Slam champion Joyce Lee is one hell of a storyteller. At Muni Diaries Live in April, she quieted down the rowdy crowd with a sobering story of watching a life go by on Muni. Sometimes when we tell people about Muni Diaries Live, people ask me: “Is it just a bunch of people complaining about Muni?” Not in the least, and this video is just one more reason why Muni stories are so much more than that.
Joyce is a frequent performer at Tourettes Without Regrets, the amazing monthly show at the Oakland Metro that is part spoken word slam, part variety show, and the rest — you just have to see for yourself. The next show is tonight, so don’t miss it!
We hate to lose such a local talent, but Joyce has big ambitions — she is going to Kenya later this month to hold free creative writing and poetry workshops for Kenyan women. If you are interested in her project, check out Joyce’s blog.
B-boys and B-girls and everyone else in between, listen up. You have to watch this video. We found it hot off of the Twitter wires (thanks, @SAAjorge). These totally amazing dancers mixed up an old school black and white dance video from the underground in London and remade it on Muni and BART.
Sick, right?
From the filmmakers:
This is a collaboration between Neverstop and YAK FILMS. Music remixed by Sammy Bananas of Fool’s Gold Records.
Dancers in order of apperance: Chonkie F Tutz (TURF FEINZ), Retro (D4M), Waa Waa (Oakland Turf), eNinja (TURF FEINZ), D Kwan (popper from 2nd Nature), Scorpion (Storytellerz), Bboy Karloz (MTK), Lil’ Looney 2 Smoov (TURF FEINZ), T7 (TURF FEINZ), Freshh (Turf Dolls), Zeus (Anamaniakz), Frost (Supreme Soul, Triple Threat), Jerm (TURF FEINZ), Johnny 5 (TURF FEINZ), Kash (YAK). Music remixed by Sammy Bananas of Fool’s Gold Records.
Turn the volume down if you’re at work, but there is death metal on Muni! Watch the band Animosity take over an LRV (the N, I think?) and the passengers are just like, “No big deal.” There’s a bad-ass stuffed animal in the video too.
A really small thing made my trip on the Pittsburgh-Baypoint train on Saturday memorable. I got on the train at Civic Center station and saw two guys in their 40s sitting together eating their lunch. An old lady with a cane got on the train, and one of the guys got up to give her his seat, but she didn’t want to sit next to his friend, which made me sad.
I looked away for a little while, then I noticed that everyone was looking over in my direction. I turned around and saw that three young teenagers had got on the train, and they were playing with yoyo-like toys that I hadn’t seen before. It was a ball on a string with a handle, and they were balancing the ball on the handle to showing off their skills on the moving train. The two guys who were eating their lunch were amused and asked the kids to show them how to play with it. And everyone in that corner of the train was smiling.
As the guys left, they gave the kids a fist pump and said good bye. I asked Willem, one of the kids, what the toy was. He told me that it’s a Japanese toy called kendama. You can see Willem showing off his best move on BART in the video I took above.
Thanks, Willem and friends, who brought a smile to our BART ride on Saturday.
Subway riders in Shanghai arrived at their morning commute to find that three of the columns at the platform had been transformed into punching bags for them to vent their frustration. Huffpo reported about this hilarious ad campaign by Adidas. The punchbags have slogans that read, “Every year you have to wait on the platform for about 1,824 minutes. Don’t waste your time, come and have some punch!”
Unfortunately, the nice kids interviewed in the news clip didn’t have much to say about their frustration other than, “I saw this other guy punching it with his fists. I thought it was interesting so I tried kicking it.” Is the subway system in Shanghai so efficient that the riders don’t have more colorful complaints? I can only imagine a swinging punchbag at the Van Ness station. Good times.
