Having A “Larry David Day” on the N and Around Town….

As I mentioned previously, I managed to avoid the latest MUNI goof-fest on the KLM lines going downtown on Friday. Little did I know that upon leaving my home for downtown to go see the Simpsons Movie, I was going to have what I have named a “Larry David Day” in honor of the star of the show Curb Your Enthusiasm, and those odd situations one sometimes find themselves in around town.

The fun started when I boarded the N on Carl St. at Stanyan and was a bit surprised to find so many apocalyptic looking old hobos on the train. These were not your usual less-fortunate citizens sharing a ride as part of our usual diverse N Judah riders. These were the kind of angry, older, pissed off types that all have that look on their face that says “I’m gonna go down and don’t mind taking as many as you with me as I can.” I’ve written about these types before.

Anyway, as we traveled downtown, our mix of commuters, apocalyptic hobos, and geeks such as yours truly made our way without too many incidents, aside from a loud argument over the relative value of plastic bottles vs. cans (No I am not making that up). I got off the train at Civic Center and met up with colleague Mason Powell, to go see the movie and get a sandwich at one of my favorites, Tommy’s Joynt. Aside from a few dumbass fratboy types from out of town who blocked the line with their incessant guffaws, body slamming, and dumb questions (tourists, behave, please) it was fine.


Then things started to get weirder. When we got to the theater and picked up our bought-in-advance tickets, there was another weird, apocalyptic vibe. As I picked up my tickets from the machine, a clearly agitated woman glared at me and said “Hey…HEY! HOW DID YOU GET YOUR TICKETS FROM THE MACHINE! THEY SAY THEY’RE BROKEN! HOW? HOW?!?”

She might as well have been calling me out as an apostle of Satan himself. I quietly replied “Uh, I bought these online and am just picking them up. For real” and she kinda glared at me as if somehow I had Magic Ticket Powers.

As it turned out there was a whole line of super pissed off people who wanted to buy tickets from the machines and were denied.. One person got so pissed off they smashed a machine (see accompanying picture). I swear someone was on their phone calling Ban Ki-Moon to alert him to the human rights violations clearly being committed.

Now, we realized we had accidentally arrived slightly earlier than expected, so we figured we could just show our tickets and wait in the lobby, as I have done 100s of times, and admire the cleverness of movie posters in clear view of the kids.

Heck, no. You see, we had apparently violated the Movie Theater Laws by wanting to enter the paid section of the theater more than an hour before the scheduled start time. The joke being of course, we were literally 3 minutes away from being allowed in anyway. I could literally hear the theme music from Curb Your Enthusiasm playing while we waited out the 3 minutes. Fortunately I’m a patient person, but if it had been one of those pissed off ticket machine people, God knows what would have happened.

Finally we got to sit down in our (unclean) theater and we were wondering why no one was showing up to see the movie since there were so few people in the theater. The answer was that a) everyone showed up at the last minute in the dark and b) the loud talker contingent from Elsewhere In The City showed up en masse.

Fortunately we were at least in one of the bigger theaters so we didn’t have to listen to the constant advice, critiques and blabber from the loud talker crew. We did manage, however, to hear their clearly cries of outrage when people were politely telling them to be quiet. I wasn’t aware of the sign in front that said “the other movie theater patrons really need to hear your advice to the animated characters on screen,” but that seemed to be the case. And theaters wonder why people wait for DVDs….

The day did end well when we went to the reliably friendly Blackthorn Tavern and had a few drinks to celebrate a weird Larry David Day, and went home. If I had a video camera and some editing skillz, perhaps I could have made a clever YouTube video of the day’s events.

Today turned out to be a nice sunny day so I’m going to depart the cool kids here at Ritual Roasters (which turned out to be a nice place to type out this post, even if it isn’t on the N line) and enjoy the rest of the day.

Remember, if you have any odd interactions with your fellow citizens on MUNI or elsewhere, drop us a line and we’ll include it in a future “Reader Mail” segment!

This entry was posted in SF Photos, Street Theater, Urban Life and Culture. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.