If you have no idea what I’m talking about:
From Muni Diaries, the translation: Muni Fisticuffs
Original YouTube video
Interview with the cell phone filmer

Factual point: despite MUNI saying it’s the 20, the filmer says it’s before the Stockton Tunnel, and the 20 doesn’t go through the tunnel. So I’m just confused. The young woman who stood in between them is my new hero.

Map showing present TransBay Terminal and Temporary Transbay Terminal

The present Transbay Terminal primarily serves AC Transit buses for East bay commuters; Greyhound also has its San Francisco terminal there. Both these services will move to the temporary location.

Judging from drawings showing “prospective” appearance, the temporary terminal will be a circle of bus shelters with a few planters. The temporary terminal will displace a large parking lot whose customers are urged to consider alternatives, including not driving into the city at all. The parking lot will close Oct. 31, 2008 for construction of the temporary affair.

Across the street from Forest Hill Station, there is a damp, cave-like bus shelter with a stone bench inside. One afternoon a few weeks ago I was waiting inside that shelter for my bus, the 36, and not too far away was another regular of the line, an older Chinese man with a casually dapper style. He’s pretty recognizable, as his outfit is consistent from day to day: in his slightly worn suit, his durable leather vest zipped up under the coat, that awesome beret pushed back from his forehead, and the large bifocals that cover half his face, he gives you the impression that he takes care to look good, but not to excess. He’s really got more important things on his mind.

For instance, the likelihood (or not) of the 36 ever arriving on time.

You see, the 36-Teresita is one of those lines designated by Muni as “community service,” which in polite English means “unpredictable.” Unfortunately, it’s the line I live on, so I spend a lot of time waiting on that stone bench inside that shelter, repeatedly prodding my BlackBerry for the next arrival time. Nextbus.com sometimes predicts that I have twenty minutes to wait, but then the next time I look, it predicts forty minutes — meaning a run has been dropped in the meantime.

I poked the BlackBerry: this time it predicted ten minutes to go.

Soon I noticed our man in the beret was talking to a beautiful dark-haired woman. She was slightly distracted by her children: with one hand she was preventing her restless older daughter from wandering into the path of the oncoming buses, and with the other she was giving additional support to the sleepy infant strapped to her chest. I recognized her: as it happened, I’d seen her at Tower Market several months earlier, when she was pregnant with that very child. It was definitely her: she had an unforgettable face.

I checked my BlackBerry again: eighteen minutes to go. So I started eavesdropping on their conversation.

He was from Hong Kong, she was from Armenia. How long had he been here? He waved his hand and said he’d been here a while. The subject seemed not to interest him, so he turned it on her. She’d been here six months; did he know where Armenia was? He didn’t. Turns out that it used to be part of the Soviet Union, next door to Georgia, and to Turkey. (Mention of Iran was avoided, by design or by chance.) In response, he began to explain where Hong Kong was, but she stopped him, as she already knew. He offered that he had lived in the island city itself. At his feet were two bags. One was a red paper bag with the Lexus logo on it, stuffed with Chinese newspapers and assorted groceries. The other was one of those omnipresent pink plastic bags that seem to grow in Chinatown and the inner Mission. He picked up this second bag and offered the little girl a packaged snack from it, which she accepted shyly, with wide eyes. Then he offered something to the infant, who was less impressed. After a moment’s evaluation, the kid pitched the gift back into the bag whence it came, prompting laughter from everyone.

Three buses blasted by: a 43, a 44, and an 89. People would run by, notice the kids, stop long enough to make goofy faces at one or both of them, and then continue on to catch their bus. A flock of teenage girls screamed and shouted their way past the shelter; ten seconds later, they screamed and giggled their way back. They’d run in a panic for the wrong bus, and thereby missed the right one.

I prodded the BlackBerry. Five minutes to go.

On the far end of the stone bench sat another elderly man, in a yellow suede jacket. He lives at the end of my street, and we’ve been on several buses together. He seemed to recognize me.

“Waiting for the 36 too?” he asked.

“Yep,” I said.

“Story of our lives!” He said this with a tolerant air. “I missed the 3:00 today. Left the station and there it was, leaving.”

“Sometimes I used to miss it because I’d stop to check the schedule in the station,” I offered. “Now how dumb is that?”

He smiled. “Pretty dumb, I’d say.”

I waved my cell phone. “There’s supposed to be one in a few minutes.”

“Wishful thinking!”

The woman brought her children into the shelter, and as she walked in she scanned the place. As usual it was heavily littered with newspapers and plastic bags and empty bottles, but on that day every surface was also plastered over with wet cherry blossoms, blown off the trees by the recent storm, and things were still a little damp. Something about all the petals and the water made even the most sordid trash seem kind of clean, in an elemental way. The woman and her kids approached me, and I scooted over on the bench to make room for them.

She sat down, but all of a sudden there was our man in the beret, standing over us, waving a rolled-up newspaper in the air, telling her to wait, no, wait, and motioning her to stand and step forward. Puzzled, she stood and stepped forward. The second she was out of the way, he spread his newspaper out on the bench where she had been.

“O.K.,” he said. “Now sit.”

She sat down on the newspaper, grinning at me, as he retook his position at the mouth of the shelter. Our sentinel, ever vigilant for the 36, and for the comfort of a lovely young mother.

I poked the BlackBerry again: just eleven minutes to go.

The 76 also stops at a place called Site SF-88, which was part of a network of 280 Nike missile sites intended to guard U. S. cities from Soviet bomber attacks during the Cold War. (Here’s a map of Nike sites in the Bay Area, and an article about them from the Straight Dope.) The military shut down SF-88 in 1974 (the ICBM having made the Nike pretty much obsolete), but now you can visit the site as I did and see a slice of Cold War history. Pictures after the jump.

I talked with some nice people from Vancouver while I was waiting for the bus to come by on Sutter. We spoke of that city’s Lower East Side, and how it might well be worse than our Tenderloin. They took another bus, but switched to the 76 later, and I caught up with them when I came.

The trip to Marin is, of course, quite beautiful.

There are open houses at SF-88 on the first Sunday of every month from 12:30 to 3:30, with guided tours from docents, including many Nike veterans. The site is also open on Wednesdays through Fridays during the same hours.

If you arrive by Muni, it looks like this:

What is this thing?

Turns out it’s a computer, although the output is much simpler than most of the ones we use, seeing as it’s based on clockwork and all:

As part of the tour, you can see (real, but inert) missiles raised from the magazine:

You may also ride the elevator down into the magazine. This is the only time I’ve been instructed to “hold on to the missile, please.”

I took a video as we ascended from the magazine:

After my visit, I walked from the Nike site to Fort Cronkhite while waiting for the bus. The California poppies were in bloom:

When I got to Fort Cronkhite, I met a family from North Carolina who had come to visit. They were waiting for the bus as well. But at least the scenery was pretty:

It took a long time, but it showed up eventually. I recognized more than a few people from my trip earlier that day.

And, of course, the trip back is just as lovely:

If you go, the following information may be useful:

Muni, 76-Marin Headlands
SF-88 Wikipedia article
GGNRA Nike Site SF-88
Fort Cronkhite
My photo sets of Marin by Muni and SF-88

The 15 was important to me early in my years in San Francisco, when I loved hanging out in North Beach but couldn’t afford to live anywhere near it. I also was a member of a dance collective (it was the early 80s, you know) with a studio out on Third and 20th Streets in a converted factory building. Sometimes, after performances, reluctant to go back to my little room in a flat shared with roommates I didn’t like very much, instead of catching the 22 back to the Fillmore I would catch the 15 to North Beach and go to City Lights Books and walk around. I was too broke to go into any of the bars and too shy to go into any of the strip clubs, but the funky action of North Beach still cheered me.

And come to think of it, before that, I rode the 15 out to the very first job I ever had in San Francisco: a temp data entry job at a Blue Shield office at 2 North Point. I kept that job about 5 weeks. It was the first money I ever made out here in California.

So here’s to the 15, which is being replaced by the T-Third line for its trip up the eastern side of the city, and by a new extension of the 9 for the foray into North Beach.

And beginning April 7, the T-Third line will open full-time. Among other things, this means the death of the 15 Third St. bus. The 15 line’s extension into the Financial District and North Beach will be taken over by extending the 9-San Bruno line.

Finally, city officials are trying to crystalize support for the Central Subway, a huge project that will build a new line extending from 4th and Townsend to Chinatown, largely replacing the 30-Stockton — one of the most overcrowded bus lines in the country, I’ll bet. Trains might be running in the hole by 2015, just in time for Barry Bonds to hit home run number 2500.

Update: Speaking of Muni, I just saw this great post by a local blogger: several of Muni’s retired streetcars ended up in the snows of Lake Tahoe, where a well-meaning but unorganized buyer hauled them for a public transit scheme that never got off the ground.