Like sliding doors and dominos and butterflies flapping their wings, you never know what’s going to happen when you miss your stop on Muni Metro. At Muni Diaries Live earlier this month, SF comedian Ronn Vigh had us in stitches with a tale of serendipity and being stuck underground, because Muni.
Ronn’s story didn’t quite fill his time slot, so we urged him to keep going. He did, and the crowd was thoroughly enthralled. Listen to his entire set here:
Ronn (and fellow MDL performer, Dhaya Lakshminarayanan) will appear at Harvey’s in the Castro tonight. Whether you missed them at Muni Diaries Live or not, go see them. Unless you, like, don’t like to laugh or something.
According to Peter, what does it take for the perfect transit experience? A rad destination and open-container boozing on the bus, of course.
SF Chronicle columnist Peter Hartlaub graced the stage at Muni Diaries Live this April with tales of frozen turkey/bologna sandwiches, screensavers, and mullet’d Muni drivers. Who wouldn’t want to freeze the moment on their last Muni ride to Candlestick Park?
Muni Diaries Live is our twice-a-year live storytelling event at the Elbo Room. We’ll be back this fall with another great lineup and riotously hilarious Muni stories.
BART operator Kelly Beardsley lets us in on one little secret about driving BART: passengers love pressing the intercom button to complain about annoyances big and small, or even to just chat with him for no reason at all. At the last Muni Diaries Live show, Kelly recounts the shenanigans over the intercom on one eventful BART ride.
I love intercom calls, they always crack me up. You know on BART at the end there’s that little box that says, In Case of Emergency, Call the Operator?” Sometimes people just push it and just chatting me up. Like, “Hey, I noticed you just made another transfer announcement at Lake Merritt Station. I don’t usually hear transfer announcements at Lake Merritt Station for the Dublin-Pleasanton bound passengers. Are you going to make a transfer announcement at Bay Fair?” And i’m just like, “Oh I like to mix it up! I like to make sure people get to where they need to go!” And the guy’s like, “Oh that’s really cool, man, so what other places do you make transfer announcements?”
We get stupid calls, we get fun calls, and we get complaint calls like, “Hey! Hey! There’s this girl and she’s got a bike and she’s eating a burrito and she’s in the handicapped seat!”
On one mellow Sunday, Kelly gets an intercom call at Fruitvale station about two guys screaming at each other “about to fuck each other up!” He calls it into Central, but the intercom caller wasn’t finished.
“I’m looking out the window and I see that no one’s fighting and thought, maybe they worked it out! So I get going and a minute outside of Fruitvale and I get another call. It’s the same guy but now with other people too. “Hey man! You better get someone!” I hear screaming in the background and I’m like, “Has it escalated?” And the guy goes, “This motherfucker’s got a bike! He’s got a bike raised over his head!”
Watch the rest of the video to hear what happened!
Sit right down and you’ll hear the tale of beloved Muni Diaries alum Jesse James (current holder of the Muni haiku champion belt) and how he went from niche Amazon order to AT&T Park and back home again. Hilarity and perhaps a life lesson or two ensue.
Jesse told his story on stage at Muni Diaries Live in early April. Catch up on all the MDL action over the years. You won’t be sorry.
Science writer Annalee Newitz fulfilled our geek dreams by sharing a story of how Muni is actually on the side of righteousness when an obnoxious driver gets in its way. I particularly love that she recounted the early days of being in the tech industry in the Bay Area. Here’s the video of her terrific story as told at Muni Diaries Live on April 5.
Every single person in the room at Muni Diaries Live was hooked when Gina Gold opens her story by saying, “I have a BART story. I’m not proud of it because usually people are telling stories about a person not acting right, but I AM that person.” Here’s the video of Gina telling her you-wouldn’t-believe-it story that started out with a perfect morning in a Beale Street penthouse.
Let’s just say that Gina’s story makes these BART twerk-a-holics look like junior varsity players.
So put your headphones on and enjoy Gina’s BART story. Oh, and it’s Gina’s birthday this month. Go to her TMI Storytelling show next week in Berkeley and give her a high five in person.
