The Sadism Of San Francisco's MUNI: Making People Miserable For Decades, And Loving Every Second Of It!

READER: You can stick this in your "and-I-thought-my-own-transit-system-was-bad" file.
MUNI: You can just stick it.


Dear Reader: There is only one reason to ever recommend San Francisco's municipal transit system (MUNI) to anyone:
REVENGE.


Today marked the 11,121st time MUNI has tried to make my life miserable. It always succeeds. Over the period of 38 years, it has taken my superlative love for the City and brought it down not one, not two, but ten notches: each day I wonder at how many fantastic things and people the City has to offer, then I experience MUNI. It's particular form of sadism depresses me. To make matters worse, I live in Park Merced and I'm tethered to the M Metro line. Everybody at Park Merced and at San Francisco State University is tethered to the M if they want to go anywhere. It could be said that the M is the worst of the worst which it may very well be, considering the alternatives.*


If you live in Park Merced, it takes 90-120 minutes to get near the Embarcadero; longer if the system has an intended "slow down". "Fiction!" say the MUNI administrators. "Fact!" say the people who actually have to ride the thing. 


90-120 minutes. If you have an important 9AM appointment, better get up before dawn. 


There are more horror stories about MUNI than there are MUNI cars...or drivers, but since I've had to suffer through it all for 38 grueling years, I might have a greater number than the average person. I've gotten stuck in the tunnel so many times that I've considered setting up housekeeping  inside of it. I've gotten stranded (along with other passengers) when the driver says "this is the end of the line for me, take the next bus." There seldom is a "next bus" for 30 minutes. I was stranded at Bayshore and Cortland at 1AM. No explanation, just "get off!" I've known a driver to purposely give wrong directions to a slightly tipsy man as a joke. I've had a driver allow me to board a bus after I've asked if it went to a certain destination, then, after he started up, laugh, and say "but in the opposite direction!" I've known of a bus station being "lost" by MUNI (put in storage during renovation of the stop, then never found). But the worst experience of all did not involve and bus, a driver or even a route:


Life overlooking the Bayview disrict's 3rd Street was a constant stream of shootings and ambulances, possibly because that particular stretch, and one particular corner saw the most homicides in the city - 7 homicides in 5 years.  The funeral parlors never knew a recession.** 


One morning, I looked out the front window and saw a bizarre sight: on the most homicidal corner in the City, workers for the new T-line were placing sets of green steel benches, forming a "conversation pit".


It wasn't a bus stop. Nor was it near a proposed T-line stop. I spied a policeman surveying the scene, gesturing to the workers. 


I ran downstairs and across the street.


"Office, what's next? TV and a gun rack for the shooters?" He looked at me with agreement.
"I know what you mean. The idots. On the worst corner and not a bus stop. They have their orders, though and I can't do anything about it, but maybe you can."


?? 


Get on the phone to City Hall, The Mayor, any friends who have friends. Once they rivet those damn things into the pavement, they're permanent and there's nothing any of us could do about it."


I had visions of men with high-powered rifles kicking back between rounds as if in a shooting gallery, so I ran back to my apartment, made frantic calls and within an hour, the cop, the workers, the benches had vanished. I breathed a sigh of relief: the building had gone through jack-hammers (on Saturday mornings no less!) repeatedly correcting MUNI's damage to sewers and late-night tweakers having parties on the unfinished station platform (our building spanned a good portion of the block). 


(Side note: my MUNI karma being what it is, I rode the maiden voyage T-line train downtown - all 400 passengers got stranded near the Cals-Trans station. MUNI's general manger gave an immediate press conference for mea culpas. BFD)


PURE SADISM


What MUNI has against the citizens of San Francisco is anyone's guess, but since absolutely no one on earth could possibly be that inept, that stupid, that clueless about public transportation, it's safe to say that the constant screw-ups are done for MUNI's amusement. And yes, I've seen station attendents laughing at the frustration of riders. I've seen workers lumbering around at a rate that would make a sloth look like Speedy Gonzales, giving disdainful glances to people. The last act of true civility I've witnessed was the thanks a driver gave to passengers when they alerted her that she was going in the wrong direction (MUNI had pushed her on to a new shuttle route without telling her exactly what that route was***).


And as everyone knows, making polite-but-critical remarks to MUNI is useless, simply because it positively revels in its sadism. MUNI is absolutely immune to criticism: only when outcries reach fever pitch does MUNI react, and usually with a costly promotional stunt like Clipper. Think of Clipper this way: a convenience for MUNI with only slightly easier access to a platform or buss stop where you'll wait for MUNI just as long. Using money for additional cars has never been a priority for MUNI. 


As for rectifying the mess we call MUNI, well, many people have proposed scrapping it entirely and having the City purchase a fleet of donkeys. But then sadism comes through again: any MUNI driver would be reported to the SPCA. 

*Sorry, the 28 (Baker Beach) and the 17 (tools around in circles in Park Merced or goes to West Portal by way of the North Pole) do not count - not if you need to get to civilization or BART.
**But going to the funeral of a gang member was dangerous, since the gangs always tried to pick off a few relatives.
***This actually happened TWICE on the same shuttle route - the other driver was not as appreciative)

Maybe Cindy Jacobs Had Something To Do With It

I thankfully did not know this morning, that one of my lousier days awaited me. If I did, I never would gotten out of bed.

It started with a computer glitch – one that wiped out all of my daily spreadsheets in an instant, sent them off into the ether never to return no matter how I begged and cajoled my laptop.

I also screamed.

I then tried to console myself with my beautiful ocean view. It was beautifully clear – almost unnaturally so, and I decided to take a picture of a small white craft heading toward the Golden Gate. It looked so alone yet peaceful.

After turning it on, the camera’s screen went black. The lens and its focus must have joined my spreadsheet in the ether. I panicked, seeing as how I couldn’t afford a new one.

I picked up my morning’s pieces, put them aside and concentrated on my schedule: pick up my overdue paperwork for Project Open Hand from my doctor’s office (I really need to get groceries - no paperwork, no groceries), go to a urologist for the results of some tests, go to Open Hand, then to Best Buy to return a godawful boombox, hopefully to put the return toward a camera on sale, shop at Safeway for a special dinner I was making tomorrow, go to Superstar Video to pick up a movie I had special ordered three months ago, then have coffee (just coffee) with a new internet date – a beautiful man who billed himself as “stallion.”

But of course, the horrendous excuse we have for a transit system, MUNI, decided to make the day worse. Much worse.

I panted as I came into the doctor’s office. The paperwork had not been filled out, I was told. Please wait. “About four minutes,” I said. Ten minutes later, I was handed the paperwork and I raced my next appointment. The crawl of MUNI took it’s toll on me and I frantically phoned the urologist’s office to tell them I’d be 10 minutes late.

I was 25 minutes late.

“OK, just tell me straight, biopsy or no biopsy?”

“Biopsy,” he said. Despite antibiotics, my PSA levels not only staid the same, they actually went up!

“How long for the biopsy appointment?”

“As soon as you want. How about a week?”

I didn’t ask how long the results would take. The possibility of prostate cancer was too  eminent. He told me to discount the 20% possibility and not think of it at all. Right. He couldn’t even understand why I seemed so stressed out. I blurted out  a computer-camera-MUNI-must-get-to-Open-Hand-before-it-closes line before I zoomed out the door.

The urologist’s office was next to St. Mary’s Hospital so, of course, there at the bus stop was an ambulance blocking the MUNI lane.

I got on a belated bus, and sprinted four blocks – and arrived at Open Hand 8 minutes after it had closed. 

I then walked to Best Buy (about 1 mile), proceeded to pick out a great buy on a camera and then was told by the check out clerk that I would have to go to Customer Service to process my return. The line for Customer Service looked like it stretched to China and I knew I couldn’t possible make my date if it stayed.

I put the camera down and walked another mile (no direct MUNI service) to my date.

He really was tall and beautiful, friendly and animated. Then he told me about his Valentine’s Day and revealed a nice silver bracelet.

“My boyfriend gave me this as kind of a lavalier kind of thing and I have to tell you that we’ve decided to try to be monogamous.”

The stallion turned into a nice, pet-able pony.  My caregiver side wished him all the best. I won’t tell you what the rest of me wanted to do.

I went to Safeway, then Best Buy and picked up the video.

I got home at 9:00PM.

I’ve just finished making crème brulee for tomorrow and eating my dinner. It is now midnight.

The Curse Of The Prophetess

I can’t help but think that “propethess” Cindy Jacobs, Cindy, Japan-is-shaped-like-a-dragon Jacobs, had something to do with this day. The video I had picked up was…porn. No, IT wasn’t cursed. I was cursed, because by some weird stretch of the imagination, Jacobs had put a curse on me just for being who I am. Does that make sense? Kinda.

Because when you write about the machinations of the Christian Right (especially the more lunatic fringe), you develop a sense that it will do anything, from voodoo to imprecatory prayers to make your life miserable. It’s not guilt. I’ve done nothing to be guilty about. But the sense that somehow I have upset their machinations, their plans, their “prophecies” creeps up on me once in a while, a I shiver to think of what would happen if they knew my space, where I existed, where I lived and loved.

And somehow, Jacobs found out. Or someone like Jacobs. Maybe Lou Engle. He’s always been railing against gays as “those people who embrace the darkness” (just before, of course, the ubiquitous “but we must love them.”).

OK. Probably my wild imagination.

Oh, I should also tell you that I’m writing this in WORD. For some inexplicable reason, my internet connection has been lost.

To Be Continued. Maybe.