I’m going to go out on a hydraulic handicap loader and say that the new bus shelters are pretty awesome. Of course, it’s most likely the case that I’m just really, really tired of the old ones as I think they’ve been in place since I was born. I mean they looked pretty old in 1986 in Star Trek IV and… holy crap, I just made a Star Trek reference. Sorry.

Anyways, new is good, yet also confusing as in, how on earth are they figuring out the deployment pattern on these things? There’s the really nice new ones at Geary and Leavenworth (this happening corner), but then they go no further up. There’s one at Sutter & Van Ness, but then none the rest of the way down Sutter. I don’t think that Post has any at all and other streets down towards Market are spotty at best, yet I admit I’ve yet to walk every street in the Loin in search of new bush shelters. If someone else feels like this, let me know what you find. I’ll probably be eating in the meantime.

But from a practical standpoint, one of the things that’s going to be a real advantage of these is the fact that there is less glass in them. The days of playing, “smash the shelter” will hopefully diminish a great deal and I can’t even imagine what it must have cost the city to put in new safety glass each time one of those panes went. Obviously, it’s a shame that to get these new shelters, city administration had to sell out to Clear Channel, but I suppose that’s the price of newness in our mighty broke city. For what’s it worth, the industrial styling fits in pretty nicely amongst the urbanity of the Loin, although others may disagree?

There are those of us who drive around getting one million dollar speeding tickets because we were born lacking in certain areas and thus have something to prove. Then there are those of us that drive around a used moving truck with a freakin’ shark (laser beams optional) painted on the back of the lift gate. Oh, wait, but it gets better as this guy dressed up the side with even more aquatic glory.

I’ve heard that in between getting mad ass for his truck at Sutter & Leavenworth, this guy also mentors disadvantaged inner-city kittens as well. He’s a class act through and through.

akit has had some pretty solid coverage of the recent meltdowns for ClipperCard. Being that most everything I need in the Loin is walkable, I don’t often find much of a need for my ClipperCard. I have one nonetheless. In fact, both evarels and I have had them since they were Translink, but I just wanted to share some of my own adventures with this new card.

I love everything about our new, blue cards and the fact is, these have been needed in the Bay Area ever since the technology has been around since our overlapping transit systems as just nutty. Now if only they could merge the redundant management staffs of all the entities.

What I don’t like about these cards is that a) they changed the name, which was an awesome, name from the future b) that it cost half a million to change the name and c) that the ClipperCard seems to have its head up its ass. I’m not exactly sure what’s going on and while setting up my original Translink on the website wasn’t perfect, it worked. I had to go down in person to Montgomery Station to get my new card up and running (yeah I know my old Translink is still valid, but it was getting ragged). The conversation went something like this:

“My ClipperCard won’t start autoloading, even after I tag it and wish really, really hard.”
“Your card has no money!”
“I know, that’s why I set it to autoload. This worked previously with my Translink.”
“But your card has no money! You can’t use it!”
“Yes, I know. The loving souls on the phone told me to come here to make it work.”
“But it won’t work without money!”
(My approach needed changing and embellishment.)
“So, my dear fellow human being in charge of all my access to public transit, how does the card get money?”
“Use the autoload online!”
“Can’t I just load it here?”
“Yes! You can! How much?!!”

And that was how I got my new card working. I’m still not sure what happened, but having just used the card this morning, it seems to be okay. Now, as to why things have blown up so much, I have to say I’m a bit sad as I know a lot of people will point to these problems and want to declare the card DOA, but damn, it’s nice not to have to carry a roll of quarters around when riding the bus.

One last thing, why in the hell is the MyTransit Center at Montgomery Station open from 10AM to 6PM? Just to make sure it’s not useful to commuters?

SFAppeal has a good roundup of what’s been said as well.

Living on Jones Street, I have a few ways I can get downtown. However, there’s no way to get directly to Market and Jones. Had I lived in this neighborhood prior to 1954, that would have been different: I would have had the now-dismantled Jones Street Shuttle cable car. The Shuttle ran from 1891 to 1954 (or 1951, according to some sources) and was part of the extinct O’Farrell-Jones-Hyde line. The Shuttle ran straight up (and down) Jones Street from Market. At Jones and O’Farrell, you would transfer to other cable cars that would take you east on O’Farrell to downtown, or over Nob Hill to a terminus in North Beach.

The Jones Street Shuttle, now that I think about it, sounds like a pain in a neck: who the heck builds a five-block cable car line? Why not just run the cars straight from Jones all the way to North Beach? Why the transfer at O’Farrell? Seems like though times may change, mass transit administrators decision-making skills remain obtuse. Pics below… of the cable cars, not the administrators.

Shuttle at the transfer point. Tracks to the right continue down O’Farrell to Market. Tracks heading toward left of frame go down Jones to Market Street terminus.

Jones Street Shuttle crossing in 1950s, vs. today. Note parking garage is still the same.

Workers tearing up the Jones Street cable car tracks in 1955

Photo credits: San Francisco’s California Street Cable Cars, San Francisco Public Library historical photo archives, Google Maps.

Not that I’m super-surprised, but the 38 Geary (or as some call it, the Dirty-Eight) was recently found to be one of the most dangerous bus routes in the city. It came in second in “security incidents,” just behind the 14 Mission. The 38 and 38L are among the most frequently run buses in SF, so it’s uncertain if the lines are more violent on average, or if they just have more total incidents. At any rate, this MUNI report says the most frequent crimes are vandalism, disturbance/disorderly conduct, and passenger assault.

I’ve never had an incident that’s been more than merely unpleasant on the 38, mostly it’s been inebriated dudes looking to make conversation on their way to the VA hospital. But if you want to keep the unpleasantness to a minimum, avoid the 3pm to 6pm crush and Fridays, says this article by the SF Examiner. Despite the high number of crimes on the 38 and 38L, SFers on Yelp seem to have “a soft spot” for the bus which (in my mind) acts as a divider between the “plausible” and “busted” parts of the Tendernob. Yelp commenter Joe C. perfectly sums up my feelings: “It may be crowded and dirty but it’s always running…” Word.

Much like the graffiti van, this one is a regular around the Loin. Someday, in the not so distant future, when the rent on the Turk Street studio is due, I can imagine a Craigslist ad for this puppy along the lines of, “The most San Francisco wagon in the City. $5,000 just for the paint alone. Trades for Styx bootlegs on vinyl also considered.”

Update: Word has come down that in addition to my not being able to properly spell the names of prog rock groups, that this van was the old KFOG van–straight from the bird’s mouth.

I was walking down Mason a couple of days ago and realized that the Hertz rental office which was up between Geary & Post is now down between Ellis & O’Farrell. While seemingly unimportant, for anyone who has had to drive down Mason when those Walmart Greeter rejects had to coordinate parking more than two cars, there will be rejoicing. It was really quite terrifying to see such a clusterfuck of sitting cars on a daily basis and let’s keep in mind that this is a one way street with three lanes, of which, they usually took two.

Oddly enough, they’ve now moved in to the old Budget space. This is going to be hard for them to screw up as all their Parkers will be tooling about on the second floor of a garage instead of the middle of the street, entertaining the tragic crowds that still frequent Ruby Skye for some godforsaken reason.

I don’t have a car and I do sometimes rent, but I have to admit that I defect from our hood and head up to the Hertz at Pine & Van Ness. The rates are cheaper as you get out of the downtown, hotel district, and it’s a lot easier to get in and out of. Of yeah, there’s also a gas station next door to it so that you can squeeze the exact right amount of gas back in to the car to not overspend on refilling it. Leaves more money for chicken tika masala.

You know you hate me for saying it, because you know it’s true. Whenever you see one of those little motorized carts driving around, it’s almost always some insanely large pile of human driving it. In my hometown, there were actually two incredibly large piles of human that loaded themselves on to one of those to “drive” out to the local Indian casino to win whatever pair of new shoes baby may have needed that month. My childhood consisted of random flecks of color and culture in case you were wondering.

But, here in the Loin, I see a surprising number of these carts wheeling around. And unlike seeing a 400lb woman piloting her way down the supermarket aisles with her orbiting children picking out the groceries, there are indeed guys riding these around who don’t have legs or are paralyzed or are in some other way, legitimately handicapped. In this case, I’m totally pro-fatcart because they then go back to being what god intended them to be: motorized wheelchairs.

I’m just really stunned at the speeds these things will get up to. Sure, there’s the version that’s slower than trying to walk between Clay & Pacific via Stockton in the afternoon, but then there’s this version that flies by faster than I can sprint (but please don’t ask to see me sprint as I’m all limbs.) Like that one in the shot above near the Civic Center Library. That cart went blazing past a dude on a bicycle. This all makes me wonder that if they aren’t going to put limiters on these things, then can we all have one? And what would have to do to get one? Pull some mix of George Costanza stunt? And most importantly, would you be able to use the carpool lane on the Bay Bridge, not that that matters anymore…

Since most of you are probably locals and not tourists, you might not know about Muni’s 74x bus, also known as CultureBus. It is yellow bus that for $7 a day (from 10am to 5pm) will take you around San Francisco’s major museums and main points of touristic interest. Also, passengers will receive discounted admission to certain cultural destinations such as the California Academy of Sciences or the De Young Museum.

What we like the most about this bus, though, is watching it take the camera-wielding tourists in shorts through the streets of the Tenderloin on its way to or from the Asian Art Museum (see full route here) and the Civic Center. It’s good the bus doesn’t have any stops by the strip-clubs…

…of course enterprising bars/clubs near the stops might get wise to all of this and start advertising some kind of a pub crawl that overlaps with the route for those looking to be less cultured and more anyone-in-Ibiza-ed. Naturally, we feel this would really take off if there was a secondary route that ran up to Fisherman’s Wharf, over to the bridge and then back. These types of buses work well in many cities and it almost seems like they want it to fail by running such a limited course.

A little while back, we were riding the 38 out of the Loin and off to a far-flung adventure when we saw this sign on the bus:

Now, we’re big giant heaping fans of public transportation and we always wish that people used it more and would stop having this fear of it. But this story is really a mystery. Is it a testament to the strength of the bus driver? Because we’ve had her once or twice as a driver and we need no convincing as to how badass of a driver she is.

But, to us, the story comes across a bit strange. It really plays in to the hands of the people who are of the opinion that public transportation is incredibly dangerous. We honestly can’t think of anyone actually being attacked while on public transit in recent memory, while even our state politicians can get carjacked. Sure you may get folks on the 27 trying to ensnare you in a conversation about how they talked to Jesus and Nixon the night before, but for the most part, they’re harmless. No one has rapped on our shoulder with a gun to try and steal our blessed haul from Trader Joe’s while riding the bus.

Given that these posters seem to be hard to find, maybe Muni rethought this whole campaign?