Muni Diaries

Buzzfeed Books Editor Isaac Fitzgerald proves a universal fact: stories happen on public transit in any city. In this Muni Diaries live performance, he shares the story of falling in love with a girl (and getting over it quickly) with the aid of a few heroic acts on the D.C. Metro.

Comedian Gina Gold is the host of TMI Storytelling, a monthly series in Oakland. In this week’s story, Gina shares what happened when she rode BART with her coworker from Market Street Cinema, all in the name of improving her job skills.  Gina has a new podcast called "Do You Think I'm Kidding?" -- check her out on iTunes.      

H.P. Mendoza is a San Francisco treasure. The seemingly tireless moviemaker and musician’s works include Colma: The Musical, Fruit Fly, and I Am a Ghost. When he’s not making movies, he’s doing rad museum takeovers with ‘80s-style scavenger hunts. All of this, and he’s also just one of the smartest, nicest people you’ll ever meet. H.P. graced the stage of Muni Diaries Live back in 2011. This week’s episode is the story of how he came to love San Francisco when he was a kid thanks to his dad’s Muni routes. He even included a rather catchy song about Muni and BART at the end of his performance. Please enjoy, share, subscribe, and rate the podcast!

Courtney Riddle is the zine ambassador of Market Street, selling small handmade books out of a formerly abandoned newspaper kiosk, The Grand Newsstand. She’s been distributing zines to unwitting tourists for more than a year now. When not sitting in peculiar street furniture, she makes her own zines, does calligraphy, daydreams about urban planning, and rides unusual Muni lines (how about that 36?). In this episode, she shares her aspiration of becoming a Muni driver, but there's just one small issue she had to overcome.

  For Valentine's Day, we bring you Ariel Dovas and his story of his very first kiss...and it happened on Muni! Ariel is a  local filmmaker and the Creative Director at BAYCAT (Bayview Hunters Point Center for Arts & Technology). He is also a co-founder of the collaborative art space The Secret Alley. Go to MuniDiaries.com to see episode extras and old photos of Ariel that he dug up just for the podcast.    

In preparation for St. Valentine, we have an episode from comedian Caitlin Gill, who won't hold back her opinions about couples who make out on Muni! SF Weekly said this about one of our favorite comedians: "If hapless and fearless could occupy the same body, it's in Caitlin Gill."

When he was a kid, SF Chronicle writer Peter Hartlaub would take public transit to San Francisco 49ers football games at Candlestick Park with his dad. Years later, Peter discovered his own "transit utopia" aboard the 77X-Candlestick Express to the stadium. That bus was filled with the rowdiest, most colorful, most loyal and dedicated football fans this city has possibly ever known. Now Candlestick and the 77X are memories—gone, but clearly not forgotten.

Writer Justina Wu is the producer of Beyond Borders Storytelling, a series of bi-monthly workshops and story jams for travel adventurers in San Francisco. In this week’s story, Justina tells us about how one Muni driver really took charge of a crazy situation.

Recent Aussie transplant, cartoonist, and writer Sarah Hunt tells the story of what it’s like to arrive in a strange, new land that mirrored the one she grew up watching in movies and TV. It has to be a good thing for those of us who’ve been here a minute to see San Francisco, BART, and the Mission through Sarah’s fresh, loving eyes. Hear about all those things we take for granted as Sarah experienced them for the first time.

Comedian Cara Tramontano is a model Muni rider. One day she meets Edison, the world's most enthusiastic bus driver who is doing this job for a very quirky reason. 

For SF native Klee Wiggins, Muni isn't all that bad. After all, if not for Muni, she might not be here to share her comedy with the world. Her origin story starts in the '70s, when, as Klee describes it, Muni was a "mafia of sorts." Stories in her early San Francisco life are tied intimately to various bus lines, including some that no longer exist.

San Francisco comedian Kristee Ono comes clean about how she finally learned to take Muni. An unfortunate incident involving chapped lips and a DUI helped her find her own Muni community.  You can see a video of this story and other episode extras on MuniDiaries.com/podcast. Submit your own stories at MuniDiaries.com.

On this week’s episode, we bring you Tarin Towers, a writer and longtime San Francisco resident. She's been riding Muni since 1995; in fact, she used to take the 22-Fillmore to her graveyard shift in the Japantown Denny's. Remember that place? On a bus ride during the first dot-com wave, she encountered someone whose casual nod was hardly the end of the exchange. This story was recorded at Muni Diaries Live on April 18, 2015, at the Elbo Room in San Francisco.

San Francisco writer Beth Spotswood tells the tale of how a group of Muni riders banded together during a slight bus malfunction. With the help of a good friend and her phone's audio-recording app, Beth became a Muni pro during the course of one commute home.

BART operator Kelly Beardsley has had many odd jobs in his life, but driving a BART train is probably the quirkiest of them all. And sometimes being a BART operator means you have to deal with some very human elements of life. In this episode, Kelly tells a story about a disturbing and hilarious behind-the-scenes tale from the driver’s seat.

Wonder Dave is the cohost of Seduction Feroce, Story Showdown, and Tourettes Without Regrets. In this week's episode, Wonder Dave shares a story of how he uses his Muni time to keep the flame hot with his long-distance boyfriend. This story was recorded at Muni Diaries Live in San Francisco on April 16, 2016. For episode extras, go to MuniDiaries.com/podcast.

Former Muni Haiku champion Jesse James grew up in Southern California. He and his mom were very close, but Jesse wanted to move to SF. When he did, his mom came to visit. Naturally, they rode the bus together. This is Jesse's story of what happened when he and his mom took Muni together and Muni dared to challenge an older lady trying to cross the street in front of their bus.

Mandy Hu is a lawyer by day; by night, she tells stories at the Moth, Queer Open Mic, and the Basement Series. In this week's episode, Mandy brings us a story about learning to let go of some habits when it comes to late-evening commutes, and somehow it involves Harry Potter. This story was recorded at Muni Diaries Live on April 16t, 2016 at the Elbo Room in San Francisco.

ChrisO is a musician and hair stylist at Honeycomb Salon in Noe Valley who has an impressive record collection. He regaled the Muni Diaries Live crowd at Elbo Room in April 2016 with a story of running into someone he knew from a past life on the bus, and you’ll have to watch the video to see what he found out. “I was taking the 19-Polk bus for the first time. In 2003, the buses that were used for the 19 line were the most florescent light-flickering, brownish yellowy interior-having, murdery buses in the whole city. They just looked like you were gonna die on them. We all get on the bus and I notice there is this guy staring at me. I thought: Is this like a “Cruising me to have sex thing, or pretending to cruise me to have sex thing so you can kill me?”