Your place to share stories on and off the bus.
Thousands of people marched to protest proposition 8 over the weekend in San Francisco and beyond. Matt from the marriage equality website, Stop8.org, sent in these pictures of protesters marching alongside our beloved transit system.
You can see the rest of Matt’s protest-day photos in his Flickr photostream.
If you’ve got more transit-related protest pics, send ’em in.
Especially if they involve getting to today’s protest at City Hall, i.e., via Muni.
Email us here and we’ll get the images posted. We’ll post videos, too, if we have the bandwidth.
I was on the loudest bus Wednesday. And that’s saying a lot coming from someone who’s regularly accused of being the loudest person anyone knows.
I live along the 31-Balboa line. Though I only know two other people who live on this line, I highly recommend a ride just for the quick-and-dirty, 40-minute lesson in San Francisco neighborhoods and people. It starts on Market, just south of the Financial District. It goes past the nicer parts of Market (until you hit the mall), then past the not-so-nice parts (mind the needles). Straight through the Tenderloin it goes, through the Western Addition and Fillmore, past Laurel Heights and into the Richmond, toward its final stop by the ocean. By extension, you can imagine the bus has a range of clientele, from FiDi yuppies to awkward USF students to cadres of obnoxious, fearless teenagers to petite Asian ladies armed with pink plastic bags.
You can probably tell where I’m going with this. No, I’m not race-baiting; I despise all willing disrupters of the bus ride equally.
But let’s focus on those obnoxious, fearless teenagers for now. They were not only loud talkers; they used the rude, yet effective “Can I get by, shit!?” to cut through the standing crowd. They then used the actual bus as a drum to accompany their impromptu song for which people silently (read: passive-aggressively) shot them angry looks. The irony meter (and everyone’s patience) tipped when a man aggressively asked them to quiet down. He then proceeded to yell into his phone about some hot chick at Starbucks.
I think that ride even beat my morning journey on the F; the one with a whole classroom of eight-year-olds.
What do you think is the loudest line? Please let me know so I can avoid it at all costs.
Tara Ramroop isn’t that loud. OK, maybe she is, but never on the bus.
Yesterday’s post from Suzanne about a cyclist hit by Muni at Townsend and Fourth got me thinking of a post I did a few years ago about the hierarchy of urban mobility.
That was then. But I’d only make a few modifications today.
In simplified form:
1) pedestrians
2) cyclists
3) mopeds and scooters
4) motorcyclists
5) public transit
6) privately owned cars
7) service trucks
Thoughts?
I was on a 49-Van Ness yesterday evening, as the results for several East Coast states were coming in and Election Day was gearing up for the good stuff.
First, I listened to a man chatting with someone on the phone, who gave the most recent play-by-play results he had been watching for all day. He then demanded a free lunch if Obama reached 350 electoral votes. Results right now (9 a.m. on Thursday) show he’s at 349, with no major network yet calling North Carolina for the president-elect.
Then two boys got on with their moms. They were buddies, clearly, talking about school and their Halloween costumes, particularly which Halloween superstore had the best Batman costume.
Boy 1 was Hispanic, and said he lives wayyy down the 49, meaning he probably lives in the Excelsior, or somewhere else near City College on the south side of town. He had a few things to say about Tuesday’s election.
Boy 1: Everyone gets to vote today. Where are you from?
Boy 2: Los Angeles.
Boy 1: Oh. That’s near Mexico, right?
Boy 2: Yeah, kind of.
Boy 1: Well, I’m from Mexico, and McCain wants us to leave. He wants all the Mexicans to leave and go back to Mexico. But Obama wants us to stay.
Make of it what you will.
It wasn’t even close, and Muni Diaries applauds the voters of San Francisco.