Muni Diaries

Today is Muni Diaries’ 12th birthday! It seems like only yesterday it was born as a scrappy little blog. Today, it’s almost a teenager and has certainly developed that snarky veneer we all so appreciate in tweens. Watch out, world!

Even in these times of sheltering-in-place and newly reduced Muni service, your stories remind us that, just like on the bus, we’re all in it together.

By the numbers, we’ve held 23 live shows, tweeted more than 27K times about your hilarious commute, and counted more than 4,000 of you who told us your commute stories.

These are a few of our favorite tales over the years:

• Kindness of strangers on BART when you need help with your tie: a woman helps a young man on BART who had trouble with his tie.
  
• Artist tips his cap to Muni drivers: Muni was the refuge for this artist during a tough time in his life while he was living on the street.
  
• Applause-worthy way to combat prejuice during pride week. We love the way people stand up for one another, especially on Muni.
  
• Skip school and use Muni as your escape vehicle: Not so easy when your dad is the driver. (not very visual?)
  
• Strange cargo: What is this styrofoam, tho. Or is it styrofoam?  I still think about this sometimes (clearly).
  
• Muni’s laughing at us.
  
• Feminine mystique stuck on the walls of a bus.
  
• Pregame ain’t waiting for nobody.
  
• Private Muni ride. Way pre-rideshare apps. In retrospect, I wouldn’t compare this experience to finding the white whale of Moby Dick but that’s perhaps more about my growth as a writer than this particular story.
  
• Muni humper; parts 1-3, only because it shows how strong our community is and adamant about calling out this gross bullshit.
  
• Punk rock Johnny Cash; we continued to get hits on this post years after we first posted it, showing how much one person can make a difference in others’ lives.
  
• The behind-the-scenes story, from artist Jeremy Fish himself, of the Silly Pink Bunny heist!

We couldn’t have done this without you, the story-submitters, the Muni riders, the San Franciscans who, for no other reason than to share experiences, contributes to this collective storybook. To the next 12—we really, truly, can’t wait to be riding Muni again once this is all over.

As always, we are here for your tales which you can submit by finding us as @munidiaries on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or email us at muni.dairies.sf@gmail.com.

Photo of Alexandria Love at one of our many Muni Haiku Battles, taken by Right Angle Images.