Caltrain: Faster than Flying for Pigeons? 10.18.11
From Caltrain rider Andrew Sarkarati: This pigeon is going to be pretty damn lost when it gets kicked off the train at San Jose!
So, You Think You Can Plank? 07.21.11
Icing is so 2010. The cool kids this year are all about planking. They’re planking on Muni. And they’re planking on Caltrain, as captured by rider and Twitter user Scott Brown (above).
Riders of Muni, BART, and Caltrain, we’re issuing you a challenge: Email us your planking photos to us. We’ll post them next week and crown one lucky transit system the best for planking.
Now, go forth and Plank!
Where Banksy Meets Caltrain 06.24.11
Photo by Angela Kilduff
Muni Diarist Eugenia also nabbed a photo as she sped by this morning.
Anyone know who’s behind this imitation/emulation or when it showed up?
Debating the What and Where of Caltrain’s ‘Pimp Seat’ 05.11.10
Photo by Flickr user jovenjames
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen a variety of tweets from Caltrain riders who expressed glee in nabbing the “pimp seat” on the train. This made us wonder: What is the pimp seat on the train? So we took to Twitter to find out.
Luckily, readers and riders were happy to help; consensus is that the pimp seat is on the upper level of an old-school car. It’s the double seat at the very back, giving riders room to stretch out and store their stuff, too.
There also appears to be a decoy pimp seat:
And thoughts on if it’s fair for shorties to grab this special spot:
Finally, @Ryan sent a picture of how awesome the pimp seat can be:
Are these guys right? Is this the best seat on the train?
Caltrain Candy Man and the Best Compliment 04.29.10
Photo by Julie Michelle of i live here: SF
Ed. note: Silvi Alcivar of The Poetry Store told this story on stage at Muni Diaries Live! last Friday. If you missed her and her beautiful typewriter at the show, here is her story. She was also featured on SFGate this week. Oh, and yes, we take Caltrain and BART stories, too! You can find the rest of Caltrain stories on this page and on our @caltraindiaries Twitter feed.
I was having a terrible morning. Not only did I have to get up at 6:30am after about a week of way too little sleep, I had to get up and get on my bike, to get to Caltrain, to go to Menlo Park to get my boobs squished in a machine. Why did I have to go all the way to Menlo Park for my annual mammogram? Because I’m a poet, and poet’s don’t have health insurance, at least I don’t, and the free breast screening program I’m enrolled in meant I had to venture out of the city if I wanted to make sure my boobs were cancer free.
Not only did this feel like a hassle, I was also so broke that I almost couldn’t justify paying $12 for a day pass. I thought maybe I could get by without one, but I didn’t want to chance it, so I dished out $12 I felt like I didn’t have.
Thanks to the timeliness of Caltrain, I arrived at my appointment proud of myself for being half an hour early. I’m never early. Ever. When I went to lock up my bike, crap! I didn’t have my lock. I walked in, bike in tow, and a man appeared out of nowhere and started ushering me and my bike out. “No, no bikes in here, just leave it out there.” He pointed to a far away space not within easy eyeshot of anyone, let alone me, who was going to be in another room, getting her boobs squished in a machine. “Look,” I told him, “this bike is worth more money than I have right now. I can’t risk anything happening to it.” He gave me a look that told me he obviously was not a bike commuter, or even a bike commute appreciator. I begged the receptionist and finally she let me leave my bike right outside the door.
When I went to check in, sure enough, they had no record of my appointment. In fact, the receptionist informed me, “But we don’t do mammograms here.” A phone call or two later it turned out I was sent the wrong paper work and sent to the wrong place. A woman on the phone told me, “Your appointment is actually in San Mateo in 10 minutes.” “I’m on my bike,” I told her, “and on Caltrain, there’s no way I can’t make it.” She offered to pay for a cab. I was so frustrated and disappointed I couldn’t even talk because if I talked I was going to cry. She asked if I wanted to reschedule and I choked out, “Not. Right. Now.” Then I retrieved my bike from the place it remained perfectly safe and I headed back to Caltrain.
Of course, when I got there, I had just missed the SF train and had to wait. When finally I got on, all I wanted to do was close my eyes and disappear. Lucky for me, no such thing happened. It was about 10 a.m. or so and the bike car was virtually empty, but of course, some guy decided to sit right in front of me. (more…)
Caltrain sleepcar? 04.06.10
From astute reader Andrew, who snapped this on Friday, the day a pedestrian fatality caused delays in the a.m. commute:
Spotted on the south-bound 210 on Friday morning. Snoring away. Obviously she’s not too worked up about delays related to the hit pedestrian (which was referred to on Caltrain info boards as an “obstruction”).
Got a story from Caltrain, Muni, or AC Transit? You know the drill: Submit your story here.
Caltrain Good Samaritan? 04.02.10
Twitter user @TexasGirlErin posted this image on TwitPic with the caption: “There are still good people in the world. Caltrain tix lost anyone?”
If your credit card starts with a 5 and ends with 356, send an e-mail kulida@bloguje.cz to claim your prize!
Breaking up is … easy to do, on Caltrain 03.31.10
Photo by Flickr user ruba8
Caltrain is generally thought of as a somewhat civilized form of public transportation. People get on, open their laptops, read their newspapers, and generally keep to themselves. The one exception? Cell phones. For some reason, people forget that when they are riding on the train and talking on their phones, other people — lots of other people — can hear them.
A month or two ago, I sat in front of a man who was on the phone with his best friend’s girlfriend — whom he had recently slept with. He was trying to convince the woman to leave the friend and hang out with him.
On a recent morning, a very impassioned woman on the SB 220 was on the phone with her boyfriend. Things… things did not seem to be going well in this love affair.
“It’s not the drugs, it’s not the alcohol. It’s you,” she said into the phone. “It’s always about you. I need you to agree not to call and harass me at work anymore”
I will give this woman credit — for whatever the drama was, she managed to maintain an infuriatingly calm tone throughout the conversation.
And so it continued.
(more…)
Veteran on Caltrain 12.17.09
Photo by Flickr user roland
Many people have told us that Muni isn’t the only Bay Area transit with colorful tales. In November, with the help of trusty commuter and Muni Diaries reader Laura, we launched the Caltrain Diaries Twitter feed. If you’re not already following, we’ll pause while you go and do that.
Now then, do you think Caltrain commuters have the same voracious appetite for transit stories and photos as their Muni counterparts? We certainly hope so. Laura’s seen an endless supply of entertaining, informative, and thoughtful tweets so far, and we thought it’d be nice to give stories from other Bay Area public transit systems a space on our site. Check out the Other Bay Area Transit page (over there! On the top, next to the Home link).
If you have stories from Caltrain, email them to caltraindiaries@gmail.com. Laura received our first Caltrain diary from rider Jason, who saw a seemingly confused man board the train and learns that the man has just been released from the VA hospital. Read about what happened next.
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