Municide

The final installment of municide at Bay to Breakers. Many a bloody victim.

Sorry for the slow video output. I have been gone for almost a week listening to great music, getting hailed on, and generally kicking it in cool little Eastern Washington towns.

I am still working on the main B2B video (with a little luck it will be finished before B2B 2007), until then check out this video of MUNI road kill and an interview with Kelli, one of our readers who didn’t even realize it was us until she saw the pictures on this here blog after the fact. Enjoy, more to come soon.

We interviewed Frank Chu at Bay to Breakers. Suffice it to say the interview is absolutely amazing.

What an epic day. The Municide bus was on a rampage during Bay to Breakers 2006, painting the streets of San Francisco in blood. Our bus got plenty of laughs, a few looks of disgust, and a ton of “you guys are just sick” comments. Hey, it’s funny because it’s true.

In true Muni style our inebriated and obnoxious drivers slowly made their way along the route, stopping often, swerving uncontrollably, dragging body parts and hitting as many pedestrians as possible. And we set a new Muni speed record by travelling 7.46 miles in 4 hours!

The real Muni seems to have celebrated this special day by fucking up again. Hey, at least they didn’t kill anyone.

Shout outs to the other Bay to Breakers participants representing public transit, we saw a BART car and a multi-car CalTrain. Sweet.

Some pictures of the ridiculousness below. There are a few more photos other people took up on flickr. We’ve got a video of the day coming too, once we get around to editing a bit.

On our way to the race… already drunk by 7:30 am	We interview Frank Chu and get his words of wisdom about Muni and the 12 galaxies
Aren’t we pretty?	We even managed to hit people in the bus stops, just like Muni!
One of many Municide casualties of the day.	What a bloody bus
Shout out to Municide.com supporter, Jamison	By the end of the race I was dead. This picture is not staged, I was actually passed out under the bus.

News Flash: Hundreds killed and maimed as a MUNI bus went out of control at Bay to Breakers this Sunday.

That’s right folks. A Municide bus is headed to Bay to Breakers this Sunday, so watch yourselves. The fine folks of www.municide.com are preparing a rig to “run” in this years Bay to Breakers. Look for our bus complete with “patent-pending 3D gore-o-rama”. Come on by and say hello if you see us out there. Don’t forget: get run over by the bus and win a free jello shot! I know it’s not a multi-million dollar liability settlement, but it’s all we got.

Check out the bus in its formative stages (you’ll have to find us at B2B to see its final form, we will be somewhere in the back moving slowly, probably off course. What else do you expect from MUNI?):

Looks like we’ve got a little feud going on between Muni and Caltrain. For a while there it seemed like Caltrain was dominating the fatality game. Yesterday was the seventh fatality of the year for Caltrain. And with this last one Caltrain managed to hit a 13 year-old boy (while he was possibly listening to music, can you smell an iPod lawsuit?). So Caltrain’s been batting a pretty solid average so far, with one death for approximately every 2 weeks of 2006. Impressive.

But Muni fans, fear not! After an unexplained absence, Muni has returned and is back to killing! Proving once again that all forms of public transportation can inflict equal harm on the citizens of the Bay Area.

2006 is shaping up to be a solid season for transit death, so stay tuned, and stay the hell off the street!

Edit: accidently posted my draft filled with typos. i suck. oh well

Well its been awhile since my last post. Doug got a car, so no more daily commute for me. Plus my weekend and owl trips have been pretty tame. I’ve really just haven’t had much to write about. Thankfully this weekend the MUNI gods blessed me with a journey of epic proportions. There were transfers, retransfers, break downs, screaming matches, reinforced stereotypes, pedophiles, missed stops…it was glorious. Basically everything a MUNI ride should be, so long as you are a story-starved pseudo blogger and not someone trying to get someplace in a safe, reliable, and convenient way.

It all started innocently enough. I just wanted to get from 24th and mission up to Van Ness and Green to meet some friends and watch the final four. Luckily MUNI in their infinite wisdom have placed a line that goes directly from my point A to point B. Of course the line in question is the always entertaining 49. I mean its only supposed to take 33 minutes, no problem. So I sit back, relax and watch two 14 buses go by before the 49 rolls on up.

Of course the double length bus is standing room only on a Saturday afternoon. This was to be expected as it’s pretty standard for any bus going up the Mission corridor on a weekend afternoon. I shuffle my way towards the back. Next stop we get the obligatory shouting from the driver “move to the back” which is good because people are stupid and don’t really get the concept on their own. Next stop, same verse “move to the back” along back comes a noticeably intoxicated/high/crazy/whatever man who is quite large. A smallish hipster guy is shuffling behind him as the bus lurches forward. Apparently the hipster kid got too close or stepped on his foot or whatever, so this guy turns around and gives the kid a full on shove to the chest. Four minutes in and we have some physical violence, fuck yeah. Hipster kid averts eyes and avoids further confrontation.

At this point drunk mexican man makes his way back towards me. Sweet. The only thing between me and him is three teenage asian girls hello kitty gear and all. The drunk guy proceeds to inch closer to one of the girls and start whispering something to her. She inches away, he keeps coming, whispers incomprehensively and giggles to himself, reaches up and touches her shoulder and whispers something else, she inches further away and talks shit in japanese to her friends. He doesn’t really get the picture as they keep creeping away until their stop comes a moment later. Violent pedophiles a great way to start any MUNI trip.

At this point I score a seat woo hoo. By the way the bus is creeping along amazingly slowly. Mission is a slow street in a car its is even slower in a bus that stops every fucking block. MUNI please for the love of god take out every other stop. I will trade walking a single block for getting down Mission twice as fast. Same goes for the 27 up leavenworth. I know I am not the only one thinking this.

Soon after I scored a seat an older lady started moving toward the back. I gave my seat to her and resumed the stand. Her septuagenarian friend was not so lucky. Apparently the FUBU wearing kid next to me didn’t feel the need to get up to let her sit down. Why are people such piles? We stop at 16th and there is the usual flood of people on the back doors. MUNI should issue cattle prods to upstanding MUNI riders like myself so we can guard the back doors and teach etiquette and morals shock therapy style.

We get past 14th and I know things are going to start looking up. Once you get past market the bus usually clears out a bit and things start cruising along. Wrong, wrong, wrong. We approach a group of guys working on the overhead line who yell out stop to the bus driver who dutifully obeys. There we sit dead in the water. The bus is still packed and it’s getting very hot. Of course the driver provided zero explanation for what is happening. We sit 5 then 10 minutes, still zero movement and just as much explanation from the driver. People are getting stir crazy. Door shaking is starting. Finally a mexican guy yells out “fucking sheet lady drive dee fucking bus, sheet man less go, what dee fuck” the accent was an amazing touch, reminded me of a certain Adam Sandler skit from my youth. Though, I have to admit I agreed fully with him. After close to 15 minutes a 49 pull sup by us. People literally are shaking the doors screaming at the bus driver who as of yet has not given us the green light to get off the bus. She puts open the door screaming at us as we go “remember I told you not to get off my damn bus…”

I say fuck it and walk a block or two beating the bus up to Market where I decide to get on now that I have had a little fresh air. I hop on to the now absolutely packed bus. One 49 on a Saturday afternoon, two busses worth of people on one bus is a joke. As I step up I am greeted by the cheery words “this bus is only going to Post street, Post last stop”. Oh MUNI you devious fiend. So away we go and travel another 10 blocks where he dumps us out to fend for ourselves yet again. “Another bus is right behind me” are his cheery parting words. “This is fucking bullsheet man…fucking complete bullsheet…are you stupeed…what dee fucks goings on…how many fucking buses we need to take” are the partying words of the mexican man to the driver. Once again I completely agree. Him and the bus driver have a brief screaming match before the bus drivers wanders off to the MUNI black hole. So we wait two buses worth of people waiting to get onto yet another bus.

Up comes another 49 a few minutes later. The bus proceeds to blow by us without starting. A near riot ensues as people go chasing after the bus screaming. The bus stops half way up the block as we go chasing it up the hill. We get there and who opens the door but the driver from my first bus. Of course, who else would it be? She greets us as the previous driver left us with obscenity. One we inquire why she didn’t stop for us she says “I told you not to get off my damn bus; the man said stop so I stopped the bus I told you not get off my damn bus…now don’t give me no lip”.

This is all well and good and at least make some sense to the people who were on her bus. The people who were on the other bus have very little idea what she’s talking about, the tourists who just happened to be trying to catch the 49 when she rolled up have absolutely no idea what the driver is talking about. This bit of higher level thinking is a bit advanced for a driver apparently. Also how amazing is it to have a job where you get to cuss at your customers. Man that would be fun. Somehow I don’t think my boss would go for it though. They should list it as a benefit on MUNI job descriptions: health care, dental, paid vacation, freedom to berate customers with impunity.

At this point I consider walking/taking a cab/shooting myself/shooting her/ and finally decide to just ride this wave of MUNI joy to natural completion, which I do without further incident.

Total travel time: 1.5 hours
Time exceeding 511 estimate: 1 hour
Average speed: 2.1 mile per hour
Not bad MUNI. Not bad.

And you thought Muni only employed one pimp.

This picture was taken outside the Woods operating division Muni building at 22nd street and Pennsylvania.

Now, I realize it’s a bad picture, but if you look at the license plate of this Muni employee’s car you’ll notice that it reads GSMOOTH. Fuck yeah.

What does this picture teach us?

1. Muni workers get paid enough to buy a sweet-ass Mercedes
2. Muni workers don’t take public transportation to work
3. Muni workers got game

So ladies, remember that next time you ride Muni you just might be riding with the one and only G-Smooth. The ride may be bumpy, but his game is so smooth.

A: It’s easier to stick the dollar bill in the slot if you fold it lengthwise.

Buh duh bum ching! I’ll be here all week. You can use that one if you want.

For those of you who don’t know, if you’re trying to pay your bus fare with a dollar bill it really does work a lot better if you fold the bill lengthwise before putting it in the dollar-taker machine. Just like at a strip club. I swear.

My Saturday night ended, as it does all to often, with me waiting drunk at a random bus stop along Van Ness hoping the 90 Owl bus shows up sometime in the next 40 minutes. Though this times things were slightly different. Rather then sitting in the MUNI provided bus enclosure, I decided it was a good idea to pass out drunk on the sidewalk in front of the enclosure. Classy I know. Somewhere along the line a Good Samaritan wandered by and asked me if I was ok. I somehow made an affirmative noise. He then asked if I needed some water. Affirmative again. He gave me a nice fresh bottle of water. Thank you Sir.

I sucked that down, gained some composure, stood up, and immediately vomited all over the sidewalk. I’m not proud. The 90 eventually came and picked my sorry ass up. I only remember one event on the bus. We were stopped for a prolonged period of time at a green light. I asked the driver what the deal was? I swear she replied “waiting for a bus”. I don’t know I was drunk, hell maybe she was too.

My ride was made a million times better by the fact that I had at least some water in my system. Once again thank you anonymous Sir. In fact by the time I got to 24th St, I was well enough to jog part of the way down to 24th. I was worried Vallarta was going to close before I could get there and order a delicious Burrito Mexicano Al Pastor. God bless them and their 3:30 closing time.

Oh yeah I got to give credit where credit is due. Abel you make a mean Sasquatch. They are quite effective. Also, I got to say I was lucky I wasn’t playing bar golf like the friends I met up with out at the bars. Who knows what would have happened.