The N-Judah Chronicles

Hey Greg,

I found the following bulletin taped to an out of order fare box on the last car of an outbound N tonight. Most of it is obscured by an "Out of Service" sticker, but you can get the jist from what is showing.

"Complains have...operators urinating in pub(lic)...of 3rd and Marin Street. This is unprofess(ional)...tolerated. Employees will...action up to and including disn(???)... Your coope(ration)...appreciated.

So basically it appears that a few of the bad apple Muni operators are having a piss party in the vicinity of 3rd and Marin (a whole block away from the new yard, which I assume has facilities for them to use).

Thought you'd find it amusing.

You'd think with all the emotional and political fallout from Muni's collapse would make folks at Muni, who are on the hot seat already, try and keep things in line at least for the short term. Hmm.

Posted by Greg Dewar at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Yet Another Pic of the N Judah at Duboce + Church

Posted by Greg Dewar at 5:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Just so we're all clear - I am well aware of how the search result for "N Judah Chronicles" has been hacked by hacker bastards on Google.

However, I do not have the technical know-how to fix it. So while I appreciate the (many) emails and IMs and whatnots about this, unless someone out there is willing to show me how to fix a MovableType 4.01 installation that's been hacked like this, I honestly don't know what to do.

Trying to move the site to Wordpress has been difficult enough - I'm not a PHP/internet/webserver/software engineer - and this annoying hack on top is really frustrating. And, being an orphan customer of Movable Type software, it's not like I can go find help easily the way I could if I'd been smart and used Wordpress all along instead.

Speaking of Wordpress, I'm trying to make the move without killing 5 years worth of links in Google, although at this point I'm so frustrated with the whole thing, I'm ready to just move, and say "f**k the linkage" because using MovableType is a) difficut and b) impossible to find any reliable help to get this done fast.

Thanks again for your concern - and if anyone out there can actually do this, I'm afraid I don't know what to do since programming computers and the like has never ever been my area of expertise.

Posted by Greg Dewar at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Coming back from dropping my kids off at school, I came up 14th Ave in front of St. Anne's. The N-Judah was stopped in the middle of the intersection and a paratransit van was blocking the street.

As the on-scene Muni employee was recording information on their accident sheet, some people were getting off of the paratransit bus and walking around, leaving. The bus driver was walking around as well, going into the church at one point. It was hard to tell who was who. I kept hearing the bus driver telling the Muni guy that there were no injuries.

I watched for a minute and realized nobody was watching the folks in the van and that some of them were injured. A quick call to 911 would solve that, right? NOPE. Took 2 calls and almost 10 minutes before the first PD officer arrived. SFFD arrived right afterwards and took over. They calmly started evaluating everyone and found that there were in fact multiple injuries and that the passengers weren't able to evaluate themselves or communicate.

Funniest part? Watching the scene unfold and the calm atmosphere with everyone doing what they needed to UNTIL the lady that was obviously the MUNI manager in charge got there. Took her 5 tries to parallel-park her car before she got out and started barking over the radio. Tension escalated, voices rose, radios chattered and the calm disappeared. Another example of how NOT to manage a scene.

Last I saw, the SFFD was loading the passengers into another bus for a hospital trip for a better checkup.

We need a stop sign at this intersection.

Hopefully no one was seriously hurt. People using roads near any Muni train need to realize that these huge machines can't stop on a dime, and you have to pay attention when driving near any Muni train. That's not a commentary on Muni operators - that's just a simple fact. Even under the best of circumstances, stopping a rolling Muni train takes a while - that's just physics at work. Likewise, Muni operators are challenged with many things going on around them to keep track of as they pilot a bus or train in urban areas.

UPDATE: Examiner coverage, SF Appeal coverage and SFist coverage of the incident.

Posted by Greg Dewar at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Wow, that was fast!

Within moments of an announcement of a potential charter amendment to change the way the broken, dysfunctional SFMTA is run, the Mayor's crack team of taxpayer-funded PR people were in full attack mode. Apparently even discussing any idea to change the MTA is sacrilege, Satanic, even. Because it's so well run and cost-efficient and gets you where you wanna go on time, right?

I'm going to take some time to read this thing myself later today. I'll keep an open mind, although it's difficult to assess this since nothing is set in stone. In other words, people need to tone down the alarmist reactions and remember the following:

-There is no evidence, that this thing will go to the voters at all,

-There is no evidence if it does go to the voters that said gang of Supervisors will raise the (tons of) cash and hire the talent to run "real" campaign to pass it.

-We have no idea if it will be modified, or if, as my friend Joe at SF Weekly suggested, just a bargaining chip in a bigger political poker game.

So for now, while I applaud anyone for at least trying to tackle the Muni mess, we are a long way from anything real that can be objectively assessed. That's why it was so disappointing to see so-called "rider advocacy groups" like Rescue Muni on the immediate attack, doing the Mayor's bidding early this morning on Twitter with alarmist rhetoric over this thing when really, we have no idea what this thing is going to look like.

Wouldn't a better response to this mushy proposal have been a detailed critique + actual suggestions to improve it so we get a better Muni? Isn't that what rider advocacy groups do best? Or is currying favor with Room 200, and the political establishment more important?

It's the San Francisco Way to play "choose up sides" and fight to the death if something wasn't made by The Faction One Belongs To, because playing politics is more important than actual results. For the Mayor's press flack to run around screaming about this thing is laughable as Mayor Newsom is simply unable to tell anything but lies about Muni, and has done a lot to destroy it.

Don't think for a moment that this doesn't apply to the "progressives" who came up with this - they literally copied the Fix Muni Now amendment and pasted it into theirs, but of course didn't bother to include Sup. Eslbernd in the discussions because of political differences. Cheap shot, boys. A better Muni isn't a "progressive" issue or a "moderate" issue or whatever - a better Muni is what we owners of Muni deserve, and we don't give a damn about political sides.

So, to review: some Supervisors (!) have made a suggestion that may get totally rewritten, and may not even get to the ballot, and if it does, may not even have the cash (at least $500,000-$750,000) and talent to get it passed. There's plenty to like and hate. There's plenty of time for everyone to modify this before it might go to the ballot. It might be all nothing more than a bargaining chip to achieve some other goal so all this emotion may be for naught anyway.

All we really know is that the moment you discuss trying to fix a broke Muni, you start to find out how San Francisco's dysfunctional politics prevent practical solutions - and you start to see who represents which factions that keep it that way.

Maybe the real solution is for the alleged elected officials and their apparatchiks to stop worrying about which "team" gets more political points, and instead worry about how best to achieve something for the common good of Muni's owners. Wouldn't that be a nice change?

Posted by Greg Dewar at 8:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

It's also clear that no serious attempts were made to control costs or reform Muni substantially. Between the management/labor audit, work order audit, and the effectiveness of fare enforcement (and let's not forget their fantasy budget projections) , it's clear that many of these cuts never needed to happen. Nathaniel Ford and his boss, Mayor Newsom, and all the overpaid managers and consultants could have cared less. They don't seem to understand how Muni works, nor do they realize they work for us, not for the frat boy in Room 200.

So today, I'm issuing a challenge to the senior management of Muni and the board of the MTA: I dare you, no I double dare you, to ride Muni exclusively for a month. And I don't want to hear the typical elected official/bureaucrat's excuse about "oh I'm so busy I can't use it all the time blah blah blah."

News flash: we, the owners of Muni are also busy. And yet you somehow deem our time worthless while you enjoy big pay, benefits or whatever it is that keeps you in a position to continue to ruin our lives and our city with your poor decisions.

So let's see which one of you, if any of you, is up to the challenge. I would have issued this challenge to the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor, but we know how pointless that would be. Either they'd lie about it or ignore it anyway.

Who wants to take bets on whether we'll see our pricey, under qualified management team on Muni for a month? Anyone? Anyone?

Posted by Greg Dewar at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

This weekend, as I've noted, there's plenty of fun things to do in and around town. However, Bay to Breakers is one of the larger events, and as our friends at SFist and the fine people at the SFMTA have noted, there's some serious impacts on Muni service you may want to know about. Check both sites out for a detailed schedule of service changes.

Easiest way to describe it? The city will be split in two for a while by an array of partiers and runners, so if you have intricate plans to go north or south, be aware you will have delays.

Also, if you plan on using the Special Event Buses and whatnots, PLEASE be aware that the cost is $10 ($7 with pass, as per the SFMTA site, so please stop yelling at me ok?). And, try and buy said magic ticket early, instead of waiting until the end of the race when you and 60,000 other people will all be cramming into slow busy buses and trying to pay (because you're all cool and pay your fares, right?) Yeah I know "$7or10forslowmuniomgwtfcursemutterswear" but let's see if the we can hold off a failwhale fleet this time, shall we?

Finally, if you're wondering just what you can and cannot do at said Bay To Breakers run and wish to avoid being compressed by The Man, our friends at the SF Appeal have a basic list of do's and don'ts for the event. Play nice and play safe, everyone!

Posted by Greg Dewar at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In addition to such sights as Martin Luther King Jr. on a $20 bill and most of the central coast of Califonia simply gone (or at least not a part of the USA, we're not sure), we also saw a place where fare evasion was almost nil - by way of the use of a national "show me" (the alt-universe's word for national ID card) required to board any bus, anywhere in the country. Yikes.

Compared to what we have (a semi-functioning Translink/Clipper card and fare enforcement that's suspended when successful) and you begin to realize the over-reaching statements about "racism" and "fascism" about San Francisco is a bit far fetched. I mean, a national ID card required to ride the bus? Ouch.

But here's the truly witty rejoinder - this isn't advanced technology from an alternate universe at all. Estonia has a national electronic ID card that's used for all kinds of things: voting online, voting in person, a travel document in the EU, paying bus tickets, etc. Reloading it isn't a pain in the ass, it's more accurate than Clipper, and overall said ID card is way way more useful than a California driver's license, a passport, and a Clipper all in one.

Oh, and what happens if you don't pay? Well, unlike here, where some foul mouthed "f*ck you pig" rhetoric is fashionable amongst the trustafarian, temper tantrum leftists, in Estonia, not only are you issued a fine - you're taken off the bus, put in a police bus, and taken to bus headquarters where you're given a lecture on why not paying is not cool. Needless to say, they're not having the phony debate about "ooh fines aren't a bounty ergo we must stop enforcement of all fares and pay for Muni with unicorn taxes" talk we have here. It's a bit extreme, but that's how they do it in Estonia.

The point? Simply this: A tiny nation like Estonia seems to have figured this basic stuff out. Heck, Third World countries have figured basic things like this out and run better transit systems than we do in larger areas. And yet in San Francisco, the alleged home of "tech innovation" and whatnot, we have an over-politicized, inefficient way of doing things that ensures we get the worst of the worst. And whatever you do, don't expect the owners of Muni to do anything to help - it seems they'd rather leave the system in the hands of a lying incompetent fool like Nathaniel Ford, then wonder why it sucks.

We don't need a national ID card to improve collection of fares. But we do need a sense of duty that we're all in this together, and have everyone (insert list of ways to improve Muni finances here) do their part. If we're not willing to do our part, don't complain when they cut services again, and again, and again.

For more information on the alternate universe in FRINGE, consult your local library or such sites at Fringe TV where you can find out more, and endlessly speculate about said alt-world.

Posted by Greg Dewar at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

The biggest event is the first annual Inner Sunset Street Fair, which will occupy Iriving between 9th and 10th, and 10th Avenue between Irving and Lincoln. Go to the website for a complete list of activities and a map of the event. This event coincides with the city-wide Sidewalk Sale by local merchants as part of San Francisco Small Business Week.

On the same weekend, the annual Vintage Paper Fair will be held Saturday and Sunday at the Hall of Flowers in Golden Gate Park at 9th and Lincoln. If you're looking for something unusual to give as a gift, or you're into antique photography, souvenirs and the like, this is worth attending.

And, don't forget that on Sunday, the (in)famous Bay To Breakers race/mobile frat party will begin bright and early. Word is that LinkedIn will be trying to beat the Guinness World Record for longest centipede. (Insert horrifically tasteless Human Centipede joke here).

With all of this, and more going on, plus service cuts, be aware that things may move a bit slower on the weekend that normal. But with all sorts of fun going on here, maybe we should take a cue from our friend Eve at SF Appeal and start calling it the Inner Funset, eh?

Posted by Greg Dewar at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

And don't forget - the guy who was called "crazy" and did much of the engineering of said transcontinental railroad was Theodore Judah - for whom Judah Street and the N Judah are named after!

Posted by Greg Dewar at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Ride the N for $1.25!

Posted by Greg Dewar at 12:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I hate to say "I told you so" but...once again one of the many points made in the Muni Death Spiral article has been proven correct. Muni's crackpipe budget nonsense, has been proven to be officially a joke. The whimsical notion that Muni would "sell taxi medallions" was just that - a whimsical notion invented by overpaid aides in City Hall or the MTA (where one ends and the other begins is questionable these days).

It's akin to me saying to my landlord that I'll be paying my rent with a unicorn that poops rainbows at the end of the month. It's a lovely notion and if it happened would be superdeluxeawesome, but its likelihood of happening is virtually impossible. Unfortunately, Muni's bumbling means we all pay.

I'll be posting more substantive posts later, but I couldn't resist, especially after the catcalls from Nathaniel "300,000 Man" Ford.

Posted by Greg Dewar at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)