Your place to share stories on and off the bus.
LaDonna Witmer sent us this “cinepoem,” which she shot stealthily on the N-Judah. She is an Outer Sunset resident and says that the N was easily her first choice in picking a backdrop for her poem called “Homogenous.”
LaDonna is featured in today’s I Live Here: SF, photographed and curated by the wonderful Julie Michelle. Check it out!
Photo by Flickr user eric-m
Remember when all BART stations had restrooms? Yeah, neither do we.
Photo by Whole Wheat Toast
For those who don’t know, the 53-Southern Heights is one of seven Muni routes scheduled to be completely eliminated on Dec. 5. It served parts of Potrero Hill for many years. And trust me, you don’t wanna walk that hill every day.
There’s some talk of various ways to honor these great urban warriors: flash mobs, wakes, “last rides” (a religious reference for those who haven’t had their coffee yet). How are you going to mark this grievous occasion?
Muni Diaries, being of the written word and all, is asking you to pen an obituary for your most beloved dying Muni route. The deadline passed on Sunday, but you can still sneak one in. We’ll be running them in the upcoming weeks. Details are here. Write a diary here.
*Yes, the title here is an allusion to the story of Jesus. Deal.
Photo by Flickr user Whole Wheat Toast
The following was originally left by Amy as a comment on “My own personal N-Judah.”
I used to always end up barely making it onto the last 17 leaving from West Portal — it stops at 11:30 on weekdays or something ridiculous. I could’ve always taken the M, but when it’s foggy and cold and nearly midnight, not to mention dark, if I saw that 17 as the M was pulling into West Portal station, I would take it. I would always be the last person left on the bus when I got off at my stop. I always figured it was because the SFSU kids were usually the only other people on the bus and they all got off near the dorms. One day though, the 17 had a new driver and about 10 minutes before the bus was to approach my stop, he stopped and said it was the end of the line.
I asked him why he was letting everyone off early, and he looked surprised. He then explained that the actual end of the line was at the Lake Merced entrance to ParkMerced because the bus had to go home eventually, and then asked if it was my first time taking the 17. And that was when I found out that the former driver had been going out of his way to drop me off at the stop right across the street from my apartment. I wish I had gotten the name or at least the number of the bus before I left the city — that kind man always, without fail, made sure I got to my stop, and I never realised he was going out of his way in time to thank him.
Oh, how we love an uplifting Muni story. Got one? Send it here.
By now, you might’ve seen a video floating around the intertubes called, to varying discrepancies, “A trip down Market Street.” If not, go watch it. If our guess is correct, and you have this soft spot for San Francisco in the middle of all your frustrations and angst, you’ll love this footage of our city in its simpler, yet equally fascinating days. It shows the view from a streetcar traveling east toward the Ferry Building, on a Market Street free of cars (easier to do in those days), with pedestrians and horses and buggies crossing the tracks ever so lawlessly.
Owing to the popularity of that video, we came across the above program, sponsored by The Long Now Foundation. The very long program is broken up into easy-to-digest chapters. The un-embeddable chapters we want to call your attention to are: Fillmore Hill Cable Car (lots of great footage of Fillmore and other old cable car lines) and South of Market (which includes archival footage of the Transbay Terminal around 1941). There might be other transit-related bits, but frankly, we haven’t had enough time to watch it all. Here’s a link to the entire program, but you can watch it by the chapter.
The man responsible for the footage, Rick Prelinger, will be presenting more archival video of San Francisco on December 4 at the Herbst Theater.
Photo by Flickr user numlok™
We’ve gotten more than a few posts and pieces of mail complaining about fare inspectors. There was the so-called shaved-head fare inspector from hell. There was another story of a rider dumping her purse in an attempt to locate her proof of payment to the same shaved-head fare inspector from hell.
And today, a post from Muni rider Diq, who really stuck it to the man seems to think he had a clever idea for how to piss off fare inspectors:
As I approached the crowd of officers and the teenager, a clever idea came to my mind. I still had to get rid of October Fast Pass, and I already had my November pass. So I took out my October pass and just flicked it at the officer as I walked by without stopping. It didn’t hit him. It just flipped up in the air and zipped toward the ground.
Genius, that.
What we’re wondering is this: Why do fare-paying, Fast Pass-holding riders have such disdain for fare inspectors? You’re legit, eh? In our experience, it takes a total of about 2-point-something seconds to show your proof of payment. If many of us have Fast Passes and aren’t boarding at the back door, why do people hate fare inspectors so much? Are they the new DPT? Why the fuss?
Just off the top of our head, here are some relevant news stories:
Muni finds almost 10 percent cheat fares (SFGate)
Fare evaders cost Muni $19 million a year (Examiner)
Muni’s mid-year $45 million deficit (Streetsblog SF)
Now, we’re not necessarily here to argue how to fix Muni’s budget deficit. We’re simply pointing out that there is one, and that perhaps it’s only fitting that the agency would want to crack down on scofflaws when said scofflaws cost the system (and by extension, us) at least $19 million in missed fares.
Help us out here: Why do you hate fare inspectors?