So tonight we decided to trek down to the Mission to check out the Riders with Drinks spoken word party hosted by the addictive Muni Diaries, a blog that collects stories happening on Muni transit vehicles that are often cringe-inducing or scary, but also often heart-warming and amusing. And although this is not strictly a Tenderloin related event, Muni Diaries does have the occasional bus story happening in our neighborhood. And a bunch of fabulous local San Francisco city bloggers (like ourselves, *cough*cough*) were present, making it a really fun event. We didn’t stay until the end though, since we arrived unknowingly too early and by the time the performances started we were feeling like baked potatoes in the oven-like heat of the crowded Makeout Room. If we had thought about it, we could have read a book in the meantime like the girl below, but we are so not hip enough for the Mission Friday night scene. Oh well…

Like everybody else there, we were excited to briefly meet the founders of Muni Diaries, Eugenia Chien (who was recently featured on I live here: SF, highly recommended) and Jeff Hunt, who explained how they started sharing Muni stories when they were studying journalism at SF State and collecting them in some sort of analog way. Below you can see them opening the storytelling evening:

We also got to hear Angelie and Julie, the lovely ladies of Muni Manners, who selected a couple of their most necessary etiquette rules for riding the Muni, such as the nead to keep nailclipping private. A must-read blog for all those people that use gratuitous foul-mouthed expletives or who love having very private and very loud phone conversations while riding the bus.

But the best performance we saw was a song dedicated to the 30 Stockton bus by the striking (and tall) Tara DeMoulin pictured here, sung to the tune of sea-shanty What shall we do with the drunken sailor? including an audience sing-along of the chorus. And judging by the amounts of laughter and applause inspired by Ms DeMoulin, we can safely say it was one of favorite performances of the night.

It all pretty much reconfirmed the fact that people love to write, read, and go to bar events, paying homage to their Muni adventures. Naturally, singalongs about “Chinese guys with open flys” make for some awesome catharsis. We will never view the 30 Stockton in the same way.

Update: Thanks to Rumnose who made a video of it, we can now watch Tara DeMoulin’s fabulous 30 Stockton song as much as we want!

Related posts:

1. I live here SF: Tenderloin Pride
2. Café Royale offers a bit of everything
3. A little Asian Art Museum History