Did you know there was a movie theater on 17th Ave. and Geary that used to play lots of children’s films? That was just one of the destinations that this Muni Diaries Live storyteller would see on her Muni journeys growing up in San Francisco. Comedian and native San Franciscan Yayne Abeba started riding Muni by herself when she was 7, along with all her relatives ages 1 to 6.
“Muni was our baby sitter, and I learned a lot of life lessons on it,” she says. As a child, you could find Yayne dancing and singing her way around San Francisco with the San Francisco Children’s Opera. In 1995, she began studying with Jean Shelton at the Jean Shelton actor’s lab. She was bitten by the comedy bug in 1999 at Tony Spark’s Luggage Store.
You know how sometimes you just stumble upon greatness unintentionally? That happened to us when we were planning last month’s Muni Diaries Live.
One rando day I saw someone post a Throwback Thursday photo of herself and her dad, decked out as he was in an honest-to-goodness Muni operator uniform. I followed the breadcrumb trail to Klee Wiggins, daughter of a Muni bus driver.
Fast forward to that night in November at the Elbo Room, when we were all treated to 12 minutes of delightful and hilarious and touching stories of growing up in a Muni family.
Have you ever taken Muni with your parent-types? I did once. It was pretty nondescript, except for that one guy …
Earlier this month, comedian Dhaya Lakshminarayanan told the Muni Diaries Live audience a tale of her trip to Big Lots on Muni with her pop. Hilarity ensued, of course. And a new slogan for this site and Muni general? Have a listen below:
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!
