GET NEW POSTS VIA FEED
OR EMAILRant: More Mass Transit Tales
My last MUNI post was griping about clueless passengers. This one documents some of the annoying stuff I’ve experienced on San Francisco’s mass transit over the past few years.
- Mr. Sloshed at 8 AM: I used to occasionally ride to work with the spouse and catch the 15 across town. One morning it was standing room only, and one of the riders was a drunk, bearded biker guy who was talking on the cell phone to a buddy of his. His tale of getting drunk the night before was loudly ranted to all in close proximity. He told his friend that he hooked up with a “G… I… R… L…” (spelling out the word for some reason) but that “G… I… R… L…” had a bottle of “G… I… N…” and he woke up somewhere in Hunter’s Point. He then went into a story about how he got stuck in Mexico and owed someone money who flew him down there, but he couldn’t pay them back until he paid his mom back for something else. The story ended when he realized he was going in the wrong direction on the 15 the whole time as we passed the ball park. He frantically got off at Market Street.
- Let You Off? You Drive!: Another bus ride home during a rain storm resulted in a traffic jam in the Financial District. A skinny, freaky dude (looked a bit like a rat) got sick of the stop and go traffic and asked the bus driver to let him off the bus. The Chinese bus driver refused to do so, saying he could only open the doors at a designated bus stop. Freaky dude walked up to the driver, complaining and raising his voice. Driver again said no, pointing out how the bus was trapped in the middle of the intersection and he couldn’t just let people off there. Freaky dude kept badgering the driver, to the point where the driver lost it, stood up, and started screaming in broken English, “You want open door? You drive bus! You sit down and drive bus then!” Passengers began yelling at both the driver and the man (including myself) telling both of them to sit the hell down and shut up. Sheepishly, the freaky dude gave in and took his seat, shaking his head the whole time at how unreasonable the entire world had suddenly become.
- I Kick You: Sometimes when I want to block out the world I take the seat in the back of the bus, in the far corner by the window. Unfortunately, the back contains is a full row of seats and you can become trapped. I was once blocked in by a scary guy who used the back center seat (facing up the entire aisle) as a means to live out his violent fantasy of kicking everyone who got up to exit the bus. Each time a person arose, he’d let loose with one or two legs, pretend-kicking while muttering guttural expletives along the lines of “crfntn stpd btch!!!!!” Several people edged away and took seats further up, and I wanted to join them, but I was stuck in that corner seat. I stared out the window for quite some time until thankfully he left, not having noticed me at all.
- You’re Not Fooling Anyone: Girl with large sunglasses and iPod sneaks onto the bus through the back door. Driver starts yelling at her to show her pass. She can’t hear, or pretends not to hear. The bus driver yells about how the bus ain’t movin’ until she shows her pass. No response. Driver gets up, walks down the aisle, and talks about how you’re not fooling anyone. Girl, publicly shamed, gets up and walks off the bus.
- You Made Me Run: Sad story of an overweight woman who boarded the bus, panting and wheezing, and accused the driver of passing her up at the previous stop. Long story ensued about how she was asthmatic and disabled, and “you made me run.” While we all had sympathy for her, the wheezing and moaning went on a little too long (say five minutes), and I couldn’t help think she was being overly dramatic near the end in order to really put the point home that the driver was an immoral human being.
- School Daze: I’ll never take the bus that goes down Van Ness just as school lets out. The last time I did so, about fifty rowdy children boarded, and their idea of after-school entertainment is to shove each other off the bus at each stop and see if the shove-ee can get back on before the driver closes the doors. This violent activity was peppered with laughter, cuss words, and slaps. It’s also customary to punch the side of the bus a few times to let it know who’s boss. Other dumb kid behavior I’ve witnessed: throwing pennies at pedestrians from the bus windows, kids refusing to give up their seat to old folks, and long conversations about who kissed who and who is a homo.
- Don’t You Ever Talk To A Conductor That Way: Conductor asks to see a passenger’s ticket. CalTrain rider says he doesn’t like the conductor’s attitude. Conductor says “Don’t You Ever Talk To A Conductor That Way.” CalTrain rider goes into a rant about how he rides the train every day and is a customer, and he’s getting bad customer service. Conductor threatens to toss the passenger off the train. Conflict ends in a red-faced stalemate. After the conductor leaves the car, rider asks around for people’s phone numbers so he can have a list of witnesses when he lodges a complaint.
Still, none of what I’ve seen in San Francisco over the past few years tops the horrors of New York City. When I lived there for a year, subway panhandling was common, and someone claimed she stabbed a mugger with a compass. I once saw a woman and man in a swearing, screaming match and frustrated, the man marched off in disgust. The woman began yelling at him, threatening to pull down her pants and take a dump right there in the station.
The punch line is she did it. And in typical New York Fashion… nobody gave a crap.
Categories: General, Humor :: Tags: ::
Trackback URL
Front Page
Previous Post: Link Sharing: 11/15/07 - Comics, Cats, Dieting, Gas
Next Post: The Prisoner: A Change Of Mind
Related Posts: Rant: San Francisco MUNI :: Link Sharing: 11/9/07 :: My Podcast Experience :: MUNI Rant: This Might Be The Last Straw ::
"Heh... yeah now that I think about it, was that theater as empty as youremember? So many plot holes - of which you list several. I think Hubbardwrote himself into a corner with the premise - the humans are enslaved by anall powerful alien race, so how exactly do you get the humans to a levelwhere they can overthrow their masters? It seems half the solution wasmaking the Psychlos complete morons... anyhow, it's definitely good forlaughs." - 
[...] betterdays wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt [IMG Webomatica]My last MUNI post was griping about clueless passengers. This one documents some of the annoying stuff I’ve experienced on San Francisco’s mass transit over the past few years. Mr. Sloshed at 8 AM: I used to occasionally ride to work with the spouse and catch the 15 across town. One morning it was standing room only, and one of the riders was a drunk, bearded biker guy who was talking on the cell phone to a buddy of his. His tale of getting drunk the night before was loudly ran [...]
This is a great post. I have to admit, as ridiculous as some of the transit experiences are, I also kinda derive some sick pleasure from the experience. I mean, sure I grouse about the stuff I see on Muni, but when I think about it — it’s often entertaining too.
A few of my favorite Muni memories:
1. Pissing Man. I remember one sweltering day on the Montgomery subway station and the outbound platform was packed. A 2-car N arrives and the second half of the second car is totally empty! Sweet! I think to myself. I go for the empty part of the train. Bad move. As soon as the doors close I realize that most of the passengers are huddled in the other side of the car and the sorry few that remain all have hands over their noses or handkerchiefs covering their mouths. The reason was that there was a tremendously ripe stench of body odor and urine. I looked around frantically for the perp and realized he was right in front of me. There was an empty seat next to him and there appeared to be urine in his own seat as well as in the empty seat next to him and on the floor too. I stepped away to also cover my nose from the stench. At the next stop, before anyone could say/do anything, a large black woman boarded and headed straight for the empty seat (bad move!). She sat down and almost immediately turns to the peeing man and shrieks “Ewww!!! You stink!!!”. We continued to Van Ness where the Muni cops came on board and forcefully removed the peeing man — but didn’t clean up the mess (he put up a vigorious struggle too). After he left someone put some newspapers on his puddles. The train was still stinky and the seats were empty and at every stop, some newly boarded passenger would attempt to sit down in the chairs only to be warned by one of us not to sit there. I had to wonder, once we all exited, if someone sat in the piss puddle once there was no one left to warn them…lol.
Lesson learned: If there’s an empty seat in a full train — it’s probably b/c it has a problem (ditto if there is an empty section on an otherwise full train)
2. The pathetic rumble. Another time there was a hispanic fellow reading a library book. He pulled out a pen and started writing in the book. A white guy, noticing this, starts to berate him loudly. “Hey, that’s public property! My taxes paid for that, you can’t mark it up!!!”. Needless to say a lot of verbal abuse was exchanged as well as a lot of very un-PC anti-hispanic slurs from the white guy. Both men were rather physically unfit, so the encounter turned into one of the more pathetic fights I’ve ever witnessed as both got up and started weakly kicking each other and slapping at the other’s midsection. They finally got off at a stop and exited. As we drove off there they were limply kicking each other…
Lesson learned: Mind your own damned business…
3. The pointless evacuation. Once I was on a train that was speeding through the Sunset Tunnel. All of a sudden there was a loud “clonk” (as if part of the train had fallen off). The driver braked and we sat in the darkness in the tunnel. He told us to hold tight and wait while he figured out what was wrong. Meanwhile some nutjob yelled “smoke!!!” and a dozen unhinged people on my train panicked. Someone opened the emergency door and these dudes jumped off the train and ran into the dark tunnel. The rest of us were left scratching our heads. In particular I was thinking how the hell is running headlong into a subway tunnel safer than staying on the damned train?!?! Needless to say, the idiots who jumped ship ultimately caused an even bigger headache for those who remained since they had to shut down all trains in the tunnel while the police and a fire unit scoured the tunnel trying to rescue the morons who ran.
Lesson learned: A bad situation will invariably be made worse by some moron along for the ride.
I have several others. But I’ll have to save them for another time. I think the fact that we remember this stuff speaks volumes about their impact on our otherwise mundane lives
I can’t help but think that while these transit encounters are annoying when they happen, they certainly do keep the commute from being anything but dull.
haha… the urination and evacuation ones are really great. I’ve only had the pleasure of seeing some mysterious toilet paper on a seat that everyone avoids sitting on until the only “empty” seat is the one occupied by the damp piece of paper. In your case you actually saw how it got that way!
I’d say the majority of the time my mass transit rides go fine but yeah… when it’s bad it’s certainly memorable.
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]