Tony Quarrington

“I get your affection for sourdough bread and the Giants, but Muni? Are you crazy?”

I can hear any resident or informed visitor exclaim.

“The service is totally unreliable, the drivers insolent and a sizeable number of its customers are so weird, not to say unhygienic, that they’d fail the audition for any self-respecting freak show”.

Ah, but there’s the rub. It is the “all human life is there” quality that makes Muni or, to give it its official title, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, so endearing – provided, of course, that you’re not planning to be any place soon or are of a squeamish disposition.

But then – I don’t have to travel on it every day, though, on balance, I think I might, at least if only for the material it would provide for my writing.

As a child, I remember hearing from my tiny black and white television set that there were “eight million stories in the naked city”. I doubt there are many fewer accounts of life on Muni. Here are some of mine.

But I would never desert the Muni buses or the clanking F Streetcar service, both of which provide the perfect stage for San Franciscans to play out their anxieties or set the world to rights.

Few Muni journeys are uneventful, even when as time has gone on, a greater proportion of passengers have their noses pressed against a mobile phone screen.

On this occasion, however, we enjoyed one of those classic and not infrequent confrontations between driver and passenger.At Church and 18^th on one occasion, a fearsome looking, heavily built and extravagantly inked gentleman boarded at the rear with his equally frightening American Staffordshire Bull Terrier. Now, the sign at the front of the bus declared that “any number of signal, service or guide dogs for the disabled are allowed to ride Muni free and unmuzzled”.

On the face of it, it appeared that this particularly member of the canine family was unlikely to fall into any of the above categories, hence the intervention from the brave driver, a slight, fifty something Chinaman, felt that this was not the case who hollered:

“Muzzle that dog at the back”.

“He’s a service dog”.

The driver was undaunted:

“Muzzle that dog at the back”.

To which the newly boarded passenger repeated in a gruffer tone:

He’s a service dog”.

This utterance was accompanied by several violent and obscene gestures which had the effect of diverting the attention of his fellow passengers momentarily from their digital companions.

At this point, the driver discreetly and wisely withdraw from the confrontation and the back of the bus breathed a collective sign of relief. One young man, judging that it might still be in his best interests to befriend the man, summoned up the courage to enquire of the victor:

“What are his (the dog’s) skills?”

“Seizure alert” was the blunt response.

“Oh I get ya”.

I doubt he did, but it seemed imprudent to prolong the conversation, and this was a sound withdrawal strategy.

Nobody was going to gainsay that, although it did provoke a seemingly measured discussion about the value of muzzling dogs on Muni. Fortunately, the debate had not reached the stage where the dog’s party piece would be put to the test before we disembarked at 29^th Street and the climb back to our Bernal Heights cottage.