You Don't Get To Celebrate, Muni

In the barrage of significant milestones that have taken place in 2012, you may not have noticed that 2012 was the 100 year anniversary of Muni. I wouldn't have noticed it myself, aside from the fact that Muni told me. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Muni, the transit system decided to let its passengers ride for free on Friday. That was wonderful, except I'd already paid for a monthly FastPass and Muni's little anniversary gift saved me ... no money whatsoever. But I wouldn't be writing my bitter little blog post just to rain on Muni's self-generated parade. No, my friends, I'm writing this bitter little blog post because, seconds after the driver of my rail line on Friday morning announced that it was Muni's 100th anniversary and that everyone would be riding for free, the train crawled to a halt, and she added, "There's a delay at Church and Duboce, we don't know what the problem is, I don't know how long we'll be here, if you need to get downtown I suggest taking the 43 or the 44 bus."

So let me get this straight: on the day that Muni is celebrating its 100th anniversary, Muni makes me late for work? You know what, Muni? You don't get to celebrate. I mean, OK, you don't have to apologize, or feel sorry for existing for 100 years, or anything like that. But you don't get to be proud. You don't get to boast. You still don't work very well. The day you run like an exemplary transit organization, maybe then you can do a little celebrating. But not yet.

On a similar, more uplifting note: while waiting in line on Friday at the salad buffet place where I often grab lunch, I noticed a sign on the wall that read, "Beat The Scale! Your Salad Is Free If It Weights 1lb." Now, I read that sign and I thought, "First of all, who the hell is going to bother to put just enough food on their plate so that it weighs exactly 1lb.? Is that what this country's come to?" Then I thought, "I couldn't even guess how much a lb. of food is. I have a rough sense of how much 10lbs. is, or maybe even 20lbs., but just a lb.? Forget it." Then I thought, "And even if someone does manage to make their plate weight exactly 1lb., why would the cashier even point that out? It would have to be some crazy old lady who obsessively casts her eagle eye on the scale, waiting for that moment when she can claim, 'Aha! I beat you, scale!'"

I should also mention that this salad bar place has a little card with eight circles on it that they hand out, and every time you eat there, they put a sticker on the card, and when you fill up the card, you get to eat one meal for free. So I walked in there Friday with a card all filled up.

I approached the register and the cashier said, "Since your salad weighs 1lb., you get to eat for free today."

Get out of here.

I said to the cashier, "But I wasn't even trying to do it." He said, "That's OK, it's free." Then I said, "But your not supposed to tell me!" There was no use arguing. I kept my filled-up card for another day, and ate my free meal.

So there you go, Muni. You were bailed out by the salad buffet place.

Up In The Air (Reitman)

Sometimes I think, if you're not trying to make Apocalypse Now, then what the hell are you doing? Sure, I understand, you can't make Apocalypse Now on the first try; you've got to work your way up to it. But I get the impression that Jason Reitman wouldn't even want to make Apocalypse Now if he actually had the budget. He's just not that ambitious.

So aiming low, he hits his target. I could think of worse outcomes. He probably thinks he's being really profound trying to make a movie about "The Economic Crisis." Honestly, for those of us with some perspective, the "Economic Crisis" is small potatoes compared to other events in human history. Sure, for our generation it's a bit bracing, but if you want to see an "economic crisis," watch The Grapes Of Wrath.

I still have a hard time buying George Clooney as anything other than "glamorous movie star." I can't even remember his character's name; in my recollections he just registers as "George Clooney." His character also feels like a screenplay construction. Are there really people like this? Or, more to the point, does Jason Reitman actually know any people like this?

Maybe I'm being a jerk. This movie was mostly a pleasure to watch. Compared to She's Out Of My League or Hot Tub Time Machine, it probably is Apocalypse Now. A friend of mine was saying, "I think there's room in the world for these little mainstream dramas. In a perfect world a movie like Up In The Air would just be average, instead of really good only because most other movies really suck." All right, well, how about this: if you're not trying to make Apocalypse Now, at least try to make ... The Graduate? Maybe it's not fair to criticize a movie just because you feel like if you met the director you wouldn't have anything in common. Call it what you want.

A final note: there's a character in this movie who says her dream job is in San Francisco. Yeah, well, wait until you ride MUNI for five minutes and have to sit next to 18 smelly quasi-homeless guys on the way to work every morning and try to find an apartment that isn't completely falling apart and isn't bleeding your wallet dry, and tell me if your dream job is in San Francisco then, bitch.

She'd probably just live in the East Bay and work in the city.

Film critic rating: ***1/2
Little Earl rating: **1/2

If A Law Falls In The Woods, And There's No One There To Enforce It, Is It A Law?

Such is the question I pose to myself every time I watch a passenger hop onto the back door of Muni without paying the fare. What is the driver supposed to do? Yell "Hey! You! Stop!"? Or how about "Come on...please? Pretty please? Pretty please with sugar on top?" There is one driver and almost 100 passengers. The driver's main responsibility is to drive the bus. S/he is not a security guard. The passengers are all very desperate to arrive at their destination and they can't wait one more extra minute to watch the driver meekly attempt to enforce the unenforceable.

A couple of weeks ago an elderly black man brazenly stepped on through the back door. The bus was already half empty. Usually people hop on through the back door when the bus is obscenely crowded. But we were near the end of the route. An Asian woman stepped on through the front door at the same exact time, flashing her FastPass. This man was not even trying to be discreet. The bus driver, who was also black, shouted out, "Hey, come on man!" The elderly (probably homeless) fellow proceeded to launch into an incoherent tirade. "Hey come on nothin'! I don't owe you shit, you know what I'm sayin'? I'm goin' to the Greyhound station. I don't owe no one nothin', I been ridin' this bus for forty years and I do what I want, my daddy was a bus driver, you don't tell me nothin' you hear?" The rest of the passengers, mostly white-collar workers such as myself, sat there silently, pretending not to hear. Unfortunately I had my headphones on, so I did not catch the full conversation clearly. After only two more stops, the man then ran out the back door. The bus driver turned around, shook his head, and let out an amused laugh. "I thought you were going to the Greyhound station!" Some of the other passengers chuckled awkwardly.

Another day, riding home from work, a swarm of gangsta-looking teenagers jumped on through the back, laughing and shouting. The bus driver called out, "Gotta come in through the front door! The front door!" One of the kids barked back, "Hey man, is that how you talk to your wife back home?" The other kids snickered demonstrably, and the bus rode on.

Is Muni just hoping that most people, out of guilt, or the kindness of their heart, pay the fare even though there appears to be nothing Muni can do to punish them if they decide not to do so? Has Muni considered hiring more people to "enforce" the fare? Oh my God, what a concept. Last weekend I rode to Palo Alto on Caltrain, and guess what: on the way there, and on the way back, someone came by to check my ticket. I guess Caltrain can afford to hire these people. Or maybe San Francisco simply knows that their poorer citizens have no other way of getting around and they figure it's not worth it to make a scene with a group of unhinged teenagers.

And so I ride. And I pay. And I pray.

The Bus Snob

There is a rare breed of creature roaming the Muni lines of this city. You know the type. The man who stands ten feet away from the back seat of the bus and won't let anyone pass him, even though twenty people are trying to squeeze into the back. The woman who sits in the aisle seat with her purse resting on the empty window seat next to her because she values her personal space too much. Well if you're so high and mighty that you can't even let strangers sit next to you unless the bus is really, really full, then what the hell are you doing riding the damn bus anyway lady? If you're so all-important that you can't recognize that there are other people in the world who exist besides you, buddy, then get the hell out of my way because I have the decency to scoot all the way to the back of the fucking bus so that I can make some room for other people to get on. Jesus Christ pal. And don't even let me get started on the people who ask you to open the window for them because "Oh my God, I'm dying on this packed bus and it's so traumatizing I can't even breath unless you open the window for me mister." We all have to ride the crowded bus, none of us likes it, but we do it, so just suffocate and die already.

Fight On The Bus

Somedays the bus just doesn't want you.

Yesterday was one of those days. I could taste it in the air. Chaos was brewing on Muni and I was destined to feel the wrath.

All that needs to be said about my destination is that it was in Potrero Hill (south of Market St., east of the Mission), I had never been there before, and I needed to be there on time. I knew it would be tough, so I gave myself a lot of leeway. My first plan of attack was to take the new T line along the Bay, because it runs out of the other main stations under Market St. and its above-ground stops are probably easier to spot. I spent fifteen minutes watching the screen in the station that tells you which lines are coming, and the T never showed up at all, so I figured it must not have been running at that time (2 p.m.). On to Plan B.

I looked at a Muni map and it appeared that the 19 bus would get me pretty close to where I wanted to be. I stood out on Market St. and only had to wait two or three minutes before the 19 came. I sat down near the back and congratulated myself on my quick resourcefulness. After a couple of strange turns, I suddenly found myself smack in the middle of the Tenderloin. "When's this line going to turn around?" I began thinking. Eventually it sank in that I was on the right line but headed in the wrong direction. I knew this would happen; that's why I'd wanted to just take the rail line and not have to worry about ending up in the Tenderloin by accident. Well what now? The bus lurched forward at an agonizing crawl, finally making its way up to Polk. I saw another bus coming in the opposite direction. Maybe it was the 19, I figured. I quickly got off and tried to dash across the street. Sure enough, it was the 19. Salvation! The green light was unusually long, however. The light finally turned yellow, but the bus rode right on through. "Well, I'm close and surely it'll stop and I'll be able to run up to the door," I surmised. Oh no. The bus didn't stop. Apparently not one person was waiting at the stop to get on, and not one person was waiting on the bus to get off. The bus went bye-bye.

As I stood around waiting for the next 19, a sketchy guy kept fidgeting with a little box on top of a nearby trash can. After about 12 minutes, the next 19 began riding up. The sketchy guy finally walked over and displayed the box to me, which contained two watches, and made a noise which communicated that an offer was being made. I mumbled something incoherent and barely managed to squeeze into the front of the bus, which was packed. I took my bag off and put it on the floor, per Muni etiquette, and an old lady said, "That's my knee." Apparently I hit her knee with my bag. I grumbled "Sorry" and tried to move further back, which of course is tricky when the bus is moving, but I have become a master at such maneuvers and I did my best. Finally! I was on the right bus, and I was actually moving in the right direction. I had to pinch myself to believe it.

After a couple of blocks, a cluster of people got off and I was able to sit down near the back, which happened to be populated by a boisterous group of African-American high school kids. I had my headphones on so I didn't really hear what they were talking about, but it seemed lively. A few blocks later, a sleazy middle-aged white guy sat down right next to me - and I mean he sat down right next to me. I could feel him leaning into my body. He wasn't looking at me, and he didn't say anything to me, so I just stared straight ahead and pretended I was too braindead to notice. "Just a few more minutes and I'll hopefully be there and this nightmare will all be over," I kept telling myself optimistically.

The man suddenly began talking to the high school kids. Did they know each other? He had a curiously thick Eastern European accent. The kids and the man began laughing. Apparently he was flirting with a particularly chubby black girl. "I jerk off to you," he said. Then he spat on the floor. Every stoplight seemed an eternity. As the girl got up to leave, the sleazy guy reached across me and tried to shake her hand. "What is your number?" "I don't have a number," she said, amused. He turned and put his hand on my shoulder for a few seconds. Did he understand that I was a stranger? Did he think it was normal to lean against strangers on a bus? Hard to say. Whatever, just a few more blocks and I could ditch this sordid scene once and for all.

Suddenly another sleazy white guy, let's call him Sleazy Guy #2, got on the bus, and sat right across from me and Sleazy Guy #1. "Hey what's your problem man?" Sleazy Guy #2 said, apparently to Sleazy Guy #1. "What is your problem buddy?" Sleazy Guy #1 replied. "Hey I'd appreciate it if you stopped staring at my crotch." Upon hearing these words, I realized that my effort to stay on the bus until I reached the appropriate stop would be in vain.

Now, if I had been faced with this exact situation when I first began living in the city, I probably would have stuck it out for a little while longer and waited to see how the situation panned out. But being more experienced in the ways of Muni, I knew that such blunt, unprompted hostility was my cue to make a hasty exit. I got up and headed for the front of the bus. Only a few seconds later, the brawl was on. My judgement was expert. The black high school kids began hollering, but I think even they were slightly taken aback by the suddenness of the violence. The bus driver shouted, "What the hell is going on?" As she stopped the bus, I made my way out the door and began walking down the street. Other people began getting off. After two minutes, I turned around and the bus was still there at the same spot. Staying on the bus wouldn't have even saved me time.

I imagine the police were called, but I didn't stick around to find out. Who knows? Maybe the sleazy white guys worked out their differences.

My ride back was uneventful.