The Chicken on the Bus Goes…

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Photo by Flickr user chudo.sveta

From the Muni Diaries submission inbox:

So this isn’t strictly a Muni related incident but it’s tangentially related to the fuss about the alleged story about Asian woman killing a live chicken before boarding a bus in Chinatown.

A few weeks ago I was visiting my friend who is working for the Peace Corps in Honduras. We were in the capital, Tegucigalpa, trying to catch a bus out to a town near her village. When the bus finally rolled by, it was nearly full but we got the last two seats waaaaay in the back of the bus. There was a family of three sitting in the two seats next to ours– a mom, a dad, and a young girl on his lap.

After settling in for the three-hour ride, I started watching the family. I don’t understand much Spanish, but I could get enough that they were worried about something. They had a small brown bag, maybe the size that you would put a sandwich and an apple in. The girl was really excited about something in the bag– I decided it must be a new toy her parents had bought her in the big city and now they were going home. The mom looked in the bag and said, “Where did the other one go?” and I thought, “Oh, there were two toys and one must have fallen out onto the floor.”

They started looking in their other bags and under all the seats around them. Then the dad picked up the paper bag, opened it up and a tiny chick poked its head out and said, “CHEEP!” The girl laughed delightedly and everyone around them suddenly had a newfound interest in finding “the other one.”

Category: diaries, Funny: Muni LOLs

Snakes on the 9!

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From the Muni Diaries submissions inbox:

This actually happened in 2001, but this I just heard about this site today so….

New years eve 2001/2002, I decided to go to one of those giant raves they used to have at the Cow Palace. I lived downtown, so took the 9 out to the Cow Palace. The trip there and the party were uneventful, but ride home was surreal.

A few stops down the line a guy gets on and sits down near me. He was a big ripped dude, probably 6’6″ 250lbs. He was wearing what looked like a prisoner jumpsuit, and had a cast on his arm. He was sweating like crazy and his eyes were bugging out of his skull.

He was sitting across from me near the back of the bus. He kept twitching and muttering under his breath, standing up then sitting right back down. The only word i could make out was “snakes”. Before long he started asking people if they have seen the snakes on the bus. Of course, nobody had, and this just starts to agitate him.

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A Letter to a Fellow Passenger

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Waiting for a phone call.
Photo by Flickr user Mylla

The use of cell phones appears to be the biggest bus etiquette faux pas this week. Rider Sara had an earful of phone conversation on the 5 from “Caroline” so she’s written her a personal letter here.

Caroline, summer student at the Lines Ballet School at USF, SHUT THE HELL UP.

The next time you think it’s a good idea to get on a completely packed 5 during evening rush hour and make phone call after phone call, why don’t you actually stop and think about it. And realize it is a terrible idea. I don’t need to hear you scream to your friend that, after much consideration, you decided you’d like to go to law school at Harvard or Yale. Oh, wow, it took consideration to realize the No. 1 and No. 2 ranked law schools in the nation are where you need to be? Good luck fighting for those spots with the million other idealistic kids who are going to apply to law school this year.

But as you said, your dad is right, you’re a shoe-in. I mean, you did three practice LSAT questions and got them all right! Congratulations. And your dream of going to law school so you can work at a nonprofit? I hope you’re willing to fight with the zillion laid off lawyers and deferred incoming associates whose law firms are paying them to go work at nonprofits.

Fortunately, I was able to turn my Kanye West up loud enough to drown out whatever you said next. That is, until you took the empty seat next to me and proceeded to call person after person at USF to inquire about the iPod you lost on campus today. It probably got stolen while you were on the 5 by someone like me who wanted you to pay dearly for making their commute more irritating than usual. I hope whoever stole it is enjoying the Taylor Swift and Kelly Clarkson you most likely have on that damn thing.

Got a Muni gripe or a holler? Let us know.

Category: Funny: Muni LOLs, WTF: Weirdness on Muni Tags:

Driver Smoke Breaks

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smoke_break

The following came to us from Matt Baume, the man behind the Muni Alerts Twitter account, among other things he’s spearheaded.

I took this photo at the end of the 41 and 45 lines, where drivers take breaks after a run. One driver is smoking. She doesn’t have a driver number on her uniform.

This raises a tough question. Smoking at transit stops is illegal in SF — Muni maps spell out the exact code that prohibits it — but what are drivers supposed to do if they’re addicted to nicotine? Where are they supposed to go to smoke on their break?

This lady seemed like a nice person but her smoke was stinking up the whole bus stop. I don’t know what the solution is, aside from firing smokers. I guess you could argue that smokers are unfit to drive buses, since they’ve chosen a habit that adversely affects their ability to do their job legally. But that also seems pretty harsh.

— Matt Baume

What do you think? Sound off in the comments section.

Category: diaries, Photos, reflection Tags: ,

Ringtone Riot

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cell phone silent (マナー) mode #450

In Japan, the Kanto Railway enforces that cell phones be on silent mode. Photo by Flickr user Nemo’s Great Uncle

I was riding the F line several months ago during the morning rush hour toward downtown. A teenage girl boarded somewhere around 8th or 10th Street, and her cell phone began playing some sort of ring tone at a very high volume. The driver told her that she needed to silence the phone, to which she explained, “I’m getting a text message.” When the phone continued to play, the driver stopped the car at the next stop and told her that she needed to either silence the phone or get off and that he was not moving the car until she did one or the other.

She again explained, “I’m getting a text message.” The explanation, of course, made no sense to anyone on the car. Silencing the ringer doesn’t prevent a text message from being received, and by this point, the phone had been playing the same ringtone for nearly five minutes. So the car didn’t move, she didn’t get off, and the other passengers, now becoming late for work, grew restless. Shouts began to erupt from the back of the train to “Turn the phone off!” Soon, the whole car had joined in the shouting, and the girl, instead of turning the phone off, kept shouting back that they should shut up because she was getting a text message. A riot felt imminent.

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