Al Pacino

So as I had mentioned in my first post, it's really the people that make each MUNI experience unique. Just to be clear, when I say "people", that encompasses everyone from the drivers, fellow riders, neighbors who wait at the bus stop, the buskers playing their instruments in the stations, and any animals that may make their way onto MUNI. Yes, animals.

In my 10 years of riding MUNI, I have shared rides with everything from dogs, cats, birds, rats, live crabs, and chickens. Yes, chickens! While dogs are acceptable as long as they are wearing a muzzle and have paid the $2 fare, other animals are not...which never seems to stop people from bringing the whole pet menagerie on board. Several years ago before San Francisco banned the sale of livestock at the Chinese markets, I was riding the 31 Stockton bus through Chinatown to North Beach. At the time I was working as a nanny (and hating my life!) and this was the most direct, albeit frustrating, route to take to work. Let me set the scene....Chinatown in San Francisco is the largest on the West coast and the second largest behind New York City's Chinatown. It is full of designer knock-off handbags where, for example, you can buy a Coach purse...only it will say "Cooch", and heck for $20 who cares? It is also full of 10 cent tchotchkes (look it up! Urban Dictionary defines it as "a small piece of worthless crap"...I couldn't have said it better myself!) that were made in (you guessed it) China! It is also overrun with Asian people coming from and going to the market. So at any given time at any given bus stop on Stockton, there will be a sea of short black-haired folks with pink plastic bags (everything in Chinatown seems to come with one) pushing, shoving, elbowing, and downright fighting to get on board. Now I played college basketball, and I'll be damned if the best "box out" I ever received wasn't from a 4' 9" octogenarian Asian woman! Literally, you would think that every bus is the last one to or from China! But I digress...So my bus pulls up to a stop on Stockton, and there seemed to be a ruckus coming from the front of the bus. It was apparent that the driver was not going to let someone on. There was indecipherable bickering back and forth when finally the driver announces, "You are not bringing a live chicken on my bus!"...which was followed by the woman holding her chicken by the legs and several swift thuds of her wailing it against the side of the bus until it was no longer "alive". Problem solved.

So to make my trips more entertaining, I like to assign people random names. These are usually the same people that I see at my bus stop everyday or that I encounter on the train on my ride home. For example, there is a little old frumpy lady who lives a block up from me. She is probably 60, but dresses like she is 80 and always has a winter coat on and lipstick on her teeth. She's very sweet and chatty and wears orthopedic shoes. One morning she wasn't at the bus stop, and our usual driver actually asked me, "Hey, where's Aunt Bea?". And so you have it...Aunt Bea. There's also a Russian neighbor who is a mathematician for Kaiser Permanente. He REEKS like garlic. Morning or afternoon. Garlic. Therefore, I have named him "The Garlic Ruskie". There's also Hello Kitty, Captain Stubing, and a woman I just call "Angie" because she is a dead ringer for a former co-worker of mine whose name was Angie. I'm sure you will hear more about them in later posts.

Being a dog lover, I always get a kick out of seeing dogs on MUNI. As I'm waiting for the bus this morning, this woman comes to the bus stop with her cute black and white puppy on a leash...not sure of the breed. Could have been a Cocker Spaniel, but was lower to the ground and had curly fur. It was obvious they were going to get on the bus. It was also obvious that this woman was going to ignore the muzzle policy. Now as I was saying, I like to assign names to my fellow riders...that includes dogs. I love a good dog name. Personally, I think it's hilarious when pets have people names like "Steve" or "Walter". So looking at this puppy, I had already decided that it's owner had probably named it something predictable like "Lucky", "Bandit" or "Pepper". So imagine my surprise when the bus pulls up and the driver says, "Your little friend is going to need a muzzle and you're going to have to pay two dollars for your little friend." The woman begrudgingly put the muzzle on her dog and paid the fare. She settled in next to me and as I reached out to pat her dog I said, "What's his name?". "Al Pacino", she replied. Of course it is. So I "said hello to her little friend". Seriously? Al Pacino? Why didn't I think of that?

Thank you for riding MUNI,

Yours Truly

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