Muni Art: Fast Pass, Oil on Wood

Muni rider Steven recently told us about Blair Bradshaw‘s rad Fast Pass art. I totally wanna see these in person.

We got in touch with Blair, who had this to say about his artwork:

I’m a huge fan of mass transportation no matter what city I’ve lived in — most of my work deals with systems (periodic table, language, transit, ZIP codes) and Muni is of course no exception. I started collecting Fast Pass cards six years ago (I think like a lot of people) because of their design, also knowing one day they would be obsolete. When I had enough to make a piece, I couldn’t figure out what to do. Nothing seemed great enough to sacrifice them. I decided to just paint the ones I liked the best based on color palette. I’ve done a couple that have been birth days/months of people as well.

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For You: Fast Pass Surprise Prize

On Twitter, @chanan_rose told us about a surprise find:

Just found a #muni fastpass from ’97 in a book i got @ Green Apple months ago. #FTW

Circa 1997! This is some kind of weird personal trifecta of three things I love: Fast Passes, books, and Green Apple (follow them on @greenappleguy!). My world is blown.

You too can geek out on Fast Passes — we have Fast Pass Clipper Card holders on sale at the Muni Diaries Etsy store. Made with real Fast Passes just like the one above. Check ’em out.

New month, Fast Pass, dead Clipper card

clipper-card
Photo by Sam Churchill

Muni rider Erica wrote us with one helluva situation. We at MDHQ are stumped by this one, so we turn it over to you, dear reader: Anyone have advice for Erica?

Help! I’m having a hellvua time with my clipper card. I bought the October fast pass over the weekend, online, and the next time I tried to tag my card I discovered it was dead. De-magged, probably even though that’s not supposed to happen. Yeah right. Anyway, since I couldn’t tag it, the Oct fast pass never showed up on my clipper card. I went to clipper service in the Embarcadero station (pain in the ass), and the very nice man gave me a new card, but couldn’t transfer the pass since it hadn’t yet showed up on my original card.

You see where this is going. Is the pass ever going to show up on my card, or am I screwed? I’ve been carrying around the receipt, but it’s such a hassle to convince the operators to let me board…even though at the same time ten people are getting in the back door without paying.

What to do? Have you ever encountered this problem?

Well? Bueller? Bueller?

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