Don’t Be “Sorry” On The 47

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On my way to SPUR’s Blogging in the City event last night, a cross-dressed man boarded with a bulky roll-on luggage that was topped with yet more black garbage bags filled to the brim. He had crooked teeth and a startled, amused look on his face. As he made his way down the aisle he talked to no one in particular a little too loudly.

Passengers around him looked alarmed and shrugged at one another, trying not to notice.

As the cross dresser got up to leave, a girl accidentally bumped into him and muttered, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be SORRY,” he said sarcastically. “Do you know what ‘sorry’ means in the Merriam Webster dictionary? It means ‘worthless.’  WORTHLESS.”

Under her breath, I think the girl said, “That’s not true.”

“YES it is!,” the cross dresser said, “and I don’t need your negativity!”

Photo by Flickr user Poldavo.

Fleeing Fleet Week

Okay, okay, yes, we went to Fleet Week. And by “go to Fleet Week,” I mean we grabbed some sandwiches at the pretty people’s Safeway and plopped our asses on Marina Green for free to watch a bunch of screaming planes do tricks. A friend had never experienced the glory, and being the nice people that we are, we chose to humor her.

Getting over to the north side of town from the Mission was actually a pleasant exercise. The 49-Van Ness zipped us right down to where we needed to be. The bus was neither crowded nor slow. We got there in about 20 minutes, I’d guess.

Getting back home was a different story altogether.

We waited things out a while at a friend’s house on Chestnut, then boarded a nearly capacity 49, only to stand there for what seemed like a eternity (seriously, something tells me, hours later, that that bus is still there). We got off at the next stop, after peering up Van Ness (to the south) and seeing nothing but stopped cars with their brake lights on.

So we walked. We walked from Greenwich to Market, passing at least three 49s and three 47s. We walked all the way to the heart of the Mission. God knows whatever became of any of those Van Ness buses.

Anyone else experience meltdown over the weekend with all the hullabaloo? Please share.

Gramps gets in your face on the 47

I was sitting across from a young woman who was talking on the cell phone, most probably about some relationship woes. When I got on the bus her conversation sounded like it had been going on for some time (“Well there are some things that I haven’t discussed with him but we need to talk about it to see where he stands…”). All sounded ordinary enough.

She was talking away about her relationship when an old man got up to get off the bus. He walked right up to her, his face tight and clenched. “You will never be happy. You are too selfish and mean to ever be happy,” he said.

Then he got off the bus.

The young woman was embarrassed and said to her phone companion, “Yeah, some guy on the bus, sounded just like mom, huh?”

Delicate Etiquette When Giving Up Your Seat

I was on the 47 Van Ness yesterday following the fire at the Castro station that put KLM etc out of service for a period of time. When a group of riders got on at the Van Ness and Geary stop, I saw that a few of them were perhaps elderly and definitely looking kind of tired. So I got up and gave up my seat because I was getting off at the next stop anyway.

“Ugh! Do I look THAT old?”

I heard a voice behind me as I tried to make my way to the back of the bus.

You just can’t win!

Eugenia

What happens when the 47 doesn’t come…

It was Friday night and I was trying to get myself from my quiet neighborhood to a hoppin’ joint in SOMA. But being that I am not the kind of girl with the cash money to cab around town (hence this blog), I waited for the 47 in our freezing cold July weather. Minutes turned into half an hour (as usual), so I decided to start walking down Van Ness, you know, to get a little exercise and see where the bus would catch up with me.

I walked and walked and of course, by now you can guess, the 47 is nowhere to be found. As I approached a red light at Van Ness and Geary, a nice silver Jetta rolls up and stops right in front of me. I noticed that the car is packed with four young men dressed in button-down shirts and fancy jeans — the typical outfit one might say is the douchebag uniform here.

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The 47, my new best friend

I had another harrowing experience waiting for my F car this morning on Market at Van Ness. Two alleged trolley-bus Fs (their signs said they were, in fact F buses, and included “Market/Wharves” and everything) came by after a long while…and both drivers said they were stopping at Eighth Street. If you didn’t know, Eighth Street is about 3-4 blocks from where I was standing. And the F train is a charming little streetcar that is mostly for tourists, and therefore hideously unreliable. It is, unfortunately, among the fastest ways to get from the Embarcadero BART station to the northeast end of town, second only to walking, if you have time. It might (might) tie the 10-Townsend or the 9x, though both are crazy crowded in the mornings.

I hadn’t seen an F train for 15 minutes at least, and Jeff, my partner in life and Muni Diaries, said NextMuni was estimating it wouldn’t be there for another 20 minutes. I thought I had to take a cab to work for the third time in a month – a ride that costs at least $10 more than the $0 it normally does. My golden solution was a 47-Van Ness, which hit its scheduled stop on Van Ness at Market right after I got there. The driver was helpful when people asked questions, and it put me a block from my office. Thank you, 47. I always liked you better than that dirty sister of yours, the 49.

Meanwhile, people gathered at the F stop across the way in greater numbers, looking expectantly up Market for a car that probably still hasn’t gotten there.

I wasn’t that late (got in around 9:25 instead of 9:10), and I don’t mind the ride. It’s just unfair (and highly lame) when you have to play guessing games with your commute. If this keeps up, I might just break up with the F train altogether – this time, I mean it.

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