Your place to share stories on and off the bus.
Image: davitydave
From Muni rider and Giftly Marketing Director Nish:
Sometimes, the unlikeliest of seat angels (on a 14-Mission, no less), will back you up when no one else will.
A reminder to be kind to your “handicapped” rider pals, dawgs.
Photo by Tom Prete
Muni rider Susan wants to give her 1AX driver a high five. Here’s why.
She also has a great skill at driving the bus; she doesn’t feel the need to speed up, then jam on the brakes, sending all of the standees flying (a skill that would be good to teach most of the other 1AX drivers!).
A few months ago, to try to balance all my negative reports to Muni, I sent in a compliment about her, and printed out a copy to hand to her in case the Muni computer eats the compliments the way they seem to eat the complaints. She was really suprised to read that compliment, and now I always get greeted with a big smile.
THANK YOU #1619! You are a wonderful example of how Muni could be.
Ah, daydreaming now of “what Muni could be.” If you have more examples of exceptional Muni operators, let us know.
Photo by Flickr user jen_maiser
A couple weeks ago, rider Martha told us about a 49-Van Ness that smelled like basil, which was noteworthy because the 49 never smells like something you’d want to eat.
“Muni smells like…” actually shows up a lot on the @munidiaries Twitter feed. Here are our recent favorites.
Yummy
@jessicasuzette: #Muni smelled like strawberries, somebody went to #farmersmarket love clean trains.
Could go either way
@WillieFDiazSF: Someone on this Muni bus smells like Hot Dog juice. Makes me wanna have a BBQ.
@jdaisy: this LTaraval smells like fish AND chips.
The Bad
@cache_theory: the smells of the #sfmuni…urine & moth balls
@RGreenberg: Guy just got on #muni smelling like week-old pants, and fertilizer.
The Optimistic
@fsquared: This bus smells like pancakes and syrup. #wishfulthinking #muni
We’re constantly impressed by your creativity and the, um, evocative descriptions you send. So keep ’em comin’!
Hilarious! I was super pissed when I just missed the 21 Hayes outbound, so went to wait for the 71 or the 6. Then … I saw this beauty. It was worth it.
I first saw Joyce at the Tourettes Without Regrets’ 10th anniversary show, where she knocked my socks off with her poem, “Crazy:”
“I’m only as crazy as my love is. And my love checks your Facebook every fucking day.”
Joyce has an upcoming poetry CD/DVD, her first professionally produced CD/DVD. She’s also got a Kickstarter page to help get the CD/DVD produced, so check it out if you liked what you heard!
Want more Muni Diaries Live? Check out our Muni Diaries Live event recap page and relive shows you might have missed!
That must be what Ciaran asked himself. He says, “I finally found a use for this French wifi connected rabbit I bought.”
Inaccurate predictions sound a little better from the robot rabbit, eh?
Update for the geek inside all (ok, some) of us:
Ciaran sent over more notes about how he programmed the robot rabbit called Karotz, which he details on his blog.
An excerpt: First you write javascript programs that interact with an API to control the various Karotz functions like the ears, text to speech etc. Find the developer’s forum on Google Groups (use Google’s automatic translation feature because it’s mostly in French).
Then spend a few evenings writing the Muni times app, using available bus arrival data through xml feeds. You’ll need to use tinyxmldom.js. Upload the code to the rabbit through the website — good luck trying to debug it, though. There is a Linux vm for developing but it’s only a javascript vm, not a simulator.
Wow. Or, you can always just watch the video above like we did.
Thanks, Ciaran!