The other day I had yet another jam-packed, no-as-a-matter-of-fact-this-ISN’T-a-clown-car experience on MUNI. People were literally pressed up against one another, all trying to get home from downtown and, as usual, the people waiting at every stop along the way assumed that they would all somehow be able to fit into the 2 square feet of available space. One of the people who got on happened to be the type who absolutely has to ride in the back of the bus at any cost. I’m not talking about the shifty-eyed suspicious-looking type, either; just regular semi-yuppie looking people who bypass all the seats in the front of the bus just to be able to obsessively get to the back, which, I might add, is my least favorite section of the bus because either you have to sit sideways, facing the people across from you, or be trapped on the end of that 6-person back row seat with god knows who else.
Anyway, even though the aisle is full of people standing back to back, this person insists on squeezing through each and every pair of back-to-back-people in order to get to the rear of the bus, which you couldn’t even see at this point. He gets to me and whoever’s back was pressed up against mine and does that little excuse-me point, motioning that he wants to get through. So I move the whole available inch, and he tries to squeeze behind us, all the while wearing a backpack so full that it looks like it should belong to some junior high school nerd, all bursting at the seams with textbooks and Trapper Keepers and whatnot, which makes me even madder because if everyone on the bus with a backpack took them off their shoulders there would probably be a whole lot more room.
So, he’s trying to squeeze and of course it’s not working, as there is literally no space whatsoever to move into. He gets stuck between me and whoever was behind me, and in his obvious frustration turns around, looks at me and says all haughty-like “You don’t have to push.” Umm, OK, Mr. Nothin’s Gonna Stop Me Now…I was so shocked at the inanity of that statement that I couldn’t even manage to blurt out any of the 50 witty things I could have said, which is OK, because I didn’t think of them until 10 minutes later, anyway.
Oh. Note to people who neglect to wear deodorant because that they think that they “don’t need to:” Believe me, you need to.
7:30 am. Waiting for a bus
Well, after getting up and dragging myself out to the bus this morning, I made a startling realization: There are no buses coming!
7:35 Waiting for a J-Church
That’s better. Just as I got to the corner where the new Rite Aid is being built (which, I might note is right under an AIDS hospice… tres tacky), I noticed a J-Church coming up Church Street. Yay. Then I was able to get a seat. Double Yay. Fast forward 5 minutes. Powell Street Station. A vagrant comes on the bus. Afore mentioned vagrant starts urinating in his pants. Yuck. Then said vagrant pulls out a handkerchief, and starts dabbing at his pant legs. Double Yuck. Then the vagrant smells the handkerchief and puts it back in his pocket. Triple Yuck.
I really need to get a job that I can walk to.
Usually I don’t run into too many problems traveling on MUNI to work, only from work, but that didn’t seem to be the case a few mornings ago. As usual, I board a relatively full bus at my bus stop, ride all the way to Eighth Street (I need to get off at Third Street) and upon almost reaching the actual bus stop, come to a sudden halt. The bus driver then tells everyone that they have to get off here, that the bus will be going no further. Of course, everyone starts mumbling little expletive-filled comments to themselves, as most people take the bus all the way down Market Street to the end of the line in the financial district and we were still quite a ways from there. While getting off the bus I notice that we are 3rd or 4th in a line of halted buses, all stopped at the bus stop, all with people piling off of them. At first I thought that the first bus must be broken down, but then hear shouting and see a small crowd of onlookers gathered around the front of the first bus. It turns out that there was a vagrant/homeless-looking guy in a wheelchair purposely sitting in the road right in front of the bus! People were yelling things to the tune of “just get out of the fucking road, why’re ya in the road, why’re ya making everybody late?” Wheelchair Guy was visibly hostile and kept whacking the front of the bus with his cane and snarling back, the only comment that I happened to overhear being “You can just walk! You people can just walk!”
At this point there were 5 buses and a trolley all stopped, one after another, held up by the relatively small and hostile Wheelchair Guy. When I saw that the entire reason why I had to get off the bus, walk a block to the nearest underground stop, and start my commute basically from scratch by waiting for yet another mode of San Francisco-flawed public transportation was not, contrary to popular belief, the fault of MUNI this time, but the fault of a crazy homeless/vagrant guy basically just being an asshole, I literally felt my blood pressure go sky-high. I felt like a cartoon character with a tingling red line of anger rising up my whole face little by little, eventually making my entire face bright red — the only thing missing was the smoke coming out of my ears accompanied by the sound of a train whistle. I wasn’t quite sure why someone couldn’t have just picked him up, wheelchair and all, and deposited him back on the sidewalk…or even wheeled him somewhere (preferably into oncoming traffic, I was thinking as I began my “those damned homeless people” diatribe in my head.) I wonder if the reason that there are so many crazy people in San Francisco is because the city just grates on people, little annoyance after little annoyance, until they just can’t take it anymore.
Over the past two weeks or so, I’ve been following the usual avoid-the-damn-underground-and-take-the-crowded-bus routine. One notable episode happened during one of the times that I was taking the 21 Line, y’know, the one that doesn’t really take me anywhere near to where I live, but that I have to take because all the buses that do are packed? Unfortunately, the 21 was also packed that day and halfway home the bus driver stops at a bus stop and, for some inane reason, lets more people on. Due to the sardine-can status of the current passengers, this was impossible. The driver then stands up, turns around to face the bus and says, while looking at the obvious lack of room, “Can’t you all just show some consideration and just move back?” Then somebody swore at him, and nobody really moved anywhere. At least this commute wasn’t like the time when the driver did the same thing — let more people on than the bus could hold — and then said “we’re not goin’ anywhere ’til I can see the door” and then proceeded to sit there while the stoplight turned from red to green to red to green. When some of the passengers told her that there was literally nowhere to move to, her oh-so-brilliant response was “Well, then someone’s gonna hafta get OFF!” If this isn’t something to make your blood pressure go right through the roof, I don’t know what is.
How screwed up is this? On the evening news, we found out that a N-Judah streetcar went for three stops without a driver! It seems that our hero went out to “get a drink of water” and “forgot to put on the automatic override” and the MUNI simply went along it’s preprogrammed route, sans driver. The funny thing is that nobody really noticed. When asked, MUNI officials stated “That’s yesterdays news. We have many more problems this week to deal with.” Sigh.
For some strange reason, I haven’t been having any MUNI trouble getting to work by 7:30 in the morning…a bus usually comes within 5 minutes and it’s never really packed. Getting home, however, has been an entirely different story. Since the underground is at a virtual standstill due to the glitch-ridden computerized automatic train system, I’ve been avoiding it like the plague. Evidently, so has everyone else. By the time any buses get to my stop, which is only, like, the third stop into the route, the buses are beyond full and the drivers won’t let anyone else on. On Thursday, since it was my turn to go to the grocery store, I waited for an F-line above-ground train which drops me off right there. 3 F’s went by completely full. All of the buses that take me within a block of my house were also full. After watching the full buses go by for half an hour, I started getting a panic attack. I was trapped downtown! There was no way to get home and it was way too far to walk! This could go on for hours! More and more people started standing at the bus stops, and every time a packed bus came along, a collective shout of four-letter words would ring out. Scowls were everywhere. To make a long story short, I ended up taking the 21 line, a bus that goes nowhere near my house or the grocery store. I ended up walking 8 or so blocks to Safeway and then walking the 5 blocks home. Of course I had on my most uncomfortable, most unruly work skirt on, the one that likes to twist around and “ride up” while you’re walking with a heavy bag on your shoulder. So not only was I pissed, starving and sick of walking in work shoes, I also had to keep pulling my skirt down every 2 minutes.
Total commute time, including the 9-items or less line at Safeway: 2 hours. (Usual time, including groceries: 45 mins.)