Is This Your Stop, Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?

No matter what time I get on the bus between 8:10 and 8:30AM, about 6 million people have also chosen to ride the bus at that EXACT time and they are all just as surly, frustrated, and impatient as I am. A memo to everyone who tries to get to the door 5 minutes before their actual stop: Most of us are probably getting off there, too. Instead of climbing over 1549569239 people to get to the door, just wait until the bus is stopped and it will probably be 90% easier. Seriously. I have friends I haven't brushed up against that intimately. Family members.

There are two buses that run from where I live in the Upper Haight to downtown in the morning: the 6 and the 71L. Somehow, they are both consistently packed. Clearly San Francisco requires:
1) more buses
B) fewer people

I'm lobbying for both, personally.

San Francisco punishes those of us who have elected to ride public transportation with a myriad of horrifying conditions including, but not limited to:
-filthy buses covered in graffiti
-over-crowded buses that make sardine tins look spacious
-crazy asshole bus drivers who are either driving WAY too fast or jamming their foot on the break pedal in the nick of time
-far too many muni delays/breakdowns
-munis leaking water from the air vents in the ceiling

...why oh why do they visit these evils upon us? We're just trying to get to work!

As much as the morning and evening rush hour commutes are pretty much the pits, the only thing I consider worse is "weekend bus." If you thought it was bad enough being squashed next to 6 million other working professionals just trying to get downtown, you have clearly never ridden weekend bus. You may think weekend bus is better because it will be less crowded/less traffic-y/friendlier...you are wrong.

Weekend bus is populated by a couple types of citizenry:
1) The Tourist - Whether they be foreign or domestic, they are usually confused, carrying large bags, and wasting countless minutes feeding actual dollar bills into the bus fare machine. They are also guilty of pulling the stop-cord in the muni when its underground, door-standing, and asking bus drivers for directions to Powell/Union Square/their hotel and making the rest of us late.

2) The gutterpunk/homeless person - It's not clear how they got on the bus. Perhaps they snuck in through the backdoor and didn't pay their fare. Maybe someone (tourist) actually gave them money to ride. Either way, they are now setting up camp in the bus for the duration of its route. If it's not a 5 foot stink-radius keeping you from sitting next to them, it's the crazy homeless person diatribe. Usually I can drown it out with whatever is on my idevice, but that gets harder when it graduates to pure, unadulterated insanity.  I once rode the 33 home from Portrero to the Upper Haight with a crazy woman who spent the entire 20 minute ride yelling about how 9/11 was our fault and we were all going to burn forever in a fiery hell. It was one of the most terrifying bus experiences I've ever had. The other being when Matt and I took a 71 downtown and a drunken Irishman was thrown off the bus by other passengers for being drunk and then proceeded to punch in the back bus door window as the bus driver tried to determine whether or not he should let him back in. OF COURSE YOU SHOULDN'T LET HIM BACK IN!! He is a crazy person! He is punching the bus! Just drive away, you maniac!

Of course, what really trumps all is weekend night bus. I was recently riding a 71 home to the Haight from downtown that was almost entirely populated by drunken southern athletes and their trophy girlfriends. They actually called a black man "Cletus" and  verbally harassed him until he exited the bus. When they finally got off in the lower Haight (haha! suckers.) the rest of the bus let out a collective sigh of relief.

San Francisco public transportation gives me the urban blues. Gas prices and global warming be damned - suddenly I long to drive my own car down a suburban road and park it in a large parking lot that probably used to be a forest.

The Grass is Always Greener

I didn't realize how much I missed grass until I went to Berkeley for the first time the other day.

When I got out of the car, it smelled like plants and trees and living things, instead of that weird funky sewer-like city smell that wafts through the streets of San Francisco.

They have grass there...allow me to pause for dramatic effect - They have grass!! Instead of extra-wide sidewalks smeared with crap and littered with trash, they have a normal sidewalk and a strip of grass before the road starts.

They had trees that were not encased in iron cages and labeled part of the "Urban Forest."

It was like paradise. I immediately wanted to drop everything and move to Berkeley, just so I could have grass. Of course this would mean I would probably never come back to the city for "fun." It would mean I would get swallowed up into Berkeley's suburban (waste?)land and only commute to San Francisco for work. This would probably make me sadder if I had more friends in San Francisco that I would (probably) never see again. But, as it is, I don't, so it's not that big of a deal.

And then there was an earthquake.

Okay, it wasn't earth-shattering. But it was a 4.0 and to a New Englander, that's basically catastrophe. I took one look at the origin of the quake - Berkeley - and immediately began to re-think my burning desire to move there.

Still - it would be nice to live in a building that homeless people and gutterpunks didn't routinely pee on every Saturday night.

Sometimes I really miss suburbia.