about us

Our mission:

Muni Diaries is a place to share and read rider tales and news about the sometimes crappy, sometimes efficient but essential public-transit system of San Francisco.

Saw something hilarious on a ride? Grossed out by bad Muni etiquette? Checked out the same hot thang on the bus every day this week and didn’t get up the nerve to smile? The idea is: If you have something to say about a ride, about a route, or even about politics surrounding public transit in the city, Muni Diaries is your forum to let the world know.

We are a ragtag group of San Franciscans who love the ups and the downs, the good and the bad stories in and around the buses and light-rail cars in our city. But we can’t emphasize enough that we want Muni Diaries to be a user-generated exercise in storytelling.

Bookmark us or subscribe to our RSS feed, or even better, begin telling your Muni stories today.

Contributors
Suzanne

Suzanne has been riding Muni since 1999, and though it hasn’t exactly been a party, she tries to make the relationship work without being consumed by hate and despair. She has a problem staring at all things gross and a knack for finding them in the smallest details.

These days, she rides Muni from Church and Market (usually after three trains go by) all the way to Mission Bay. She thanks god every day that there aren’t schizophrenics yelling, can-collectors on board, loud, swaggering teens, drunks, or abusive parents feeding Capri Suns and candy to snotty-nosed children. She relishes being on a packed train when everyone remains in complete silence, and she loves seeing the immensity of the Bay Bridge emerge on the T-line. There is beauty to be had if you can only look out the window.

Suzanne is a graphic designer at a publishing house, where she is pushing for a book on bicycles.

Rob

Rob Nagle is a designer and copy editor at the San Francisco Examiner. He is currently most dependent on the Muni Metro lines, which, compared with most bus lines, are actually pretty good. If he doesn’t see the N or the J coming from his early vantage point at Church and Duboce, he will go down into the Church Street station at Market and become annoyed if he has to wait more than 10 minutes. Out of five possible trains, this shouldn’t happen, but of course, sometimes it does.

Rob lives in the Lower Haight so he will also take the 6-Parnassus and the 71-Haight-Noriega from time to time if he has to. Rob and Muni get along because Rob lives in a place with a lot of Muni choices. If Rob lived in the Outer Sunset, Rob and Muni wouldn’t be speaking to each other.

Eugenia

Eugenia’s an editor at a little beleaguered company that’s so far the numero dos search engine in the world. By night, she is a freelance writer and some-time commentator for 91.7 KAWL. When she’s not in front of a computer, you can find her busily wiping her hands with Purell and trying not to breathe in too many germs on the 47 line.

Jenny

Jenny Parma is a writer by choice and a rider by necessity. You can routinely find her on the 71, 6, and 33 lines.

Favorite Muni story: Fifty-something Chinese woman on the 38 asking for a Kleenex while showing off her booger.

Tara

Tara Ramroop writes and edits the online curriculum for an ever-expanding San Francisco art university. Then she goes home and writes things for fun and for side-jobs. Her work has appeared in Planet magazine, Busted Halo, The San Francisco Examiner, the San Mateo County Times, and The California Aggie. She wrote daily local and regional news in California on just about everything from 2001 to 2007.

Aside from avid wordsmithery, Tara enjoys reading, walking, politics, friends’ pets, and an unfettered affinity for icanhascheezburger.com. She loves going out of town, whether it’s one or 100 hours from home, and finding delicious, discounted bottles of wine at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s.

Tara grew up in the Bay Area and currently lives in San Francisco. She has a tepid relationship with Muni, and can be found on the 31-Balboa, F-Market/Wharves or 49-Van Ness. Sometimes, you can find her frantically trying to flag down a 9x, a 10 or a 47 in a pathetic attempt to get to work on time when her regular lines have failed her.

Jeff

One of Muni Diaries’ co-founders, Jeff Hunt spends most of his days copy editing at Wired.com. He used to write and copy edit for a newspaper and a handful of magazines and other printed, dead-tree publications. But, feeling buoyed by his move to online news, hopes never again to lend himself to such wanton destruction of nature and causes of litter on city streets.

In all seriousness, though, Jeff enjoys reading and editing just about anything. He likes dogs. He likes getting out of town. He likes tasting copious amounts of wine, and eating good food. He recently decided that pizza wins over nachos. Close call.

He also runs Here and There, an almost-daily compendium of tediousness, hilarity, and life-altering reality.

Jeff recently discovered that, while he grew up in the country’s eighth-least-walkable city, he has spent the last eight years in the most-walkable.