Sunday, March 2, 2008

F Market Tours: the way to see San Francisco

F Market

Riding the F Market, past the shopping hoards, past the junkies, past the gays. San Francisco laid out in all its varied splendor. Our personal F Market driver for the day was very serious about her job.

My first sight of her was when she insisted on helping an elderly couple off the train, even though the husband was perfectly capable of helping the wife.
"Let me help you!" she yelled.

Next, she stopped to lower the wheelchair lift back down to street level, then remarked to all her passengers, "Some people have nothing better to do, so they mess with that."

Ringing her bell at every car or person that got in her way, we continued up Market Street. Typical for 6th street, two riff-raffs got on the back door entrance but our driver was quick to spot them, "Hey you. You get on front. All passenger get on front!" They ambled up to the front, mumbling, "How much is it?" They found that between the two of them, they didn't have enough, so they got off. "Better to walk, you lazy ass!" yelled our driver.

Two more stops with indistinguishable names later, a homeless man with a cart full of cans got on. He stopped at the front of the train to get his money ready and the driver snapped, "After you're done, please move to the back." He got his transfer and did so, but as he made his way back, some of his cans fell out of his cart. Again, our driver was quick to handle the situation, "You better get your stuff together!"

At the end of the line, Castro and Market, Cru and I got off and I asked our lady driver if we could take a picture. She reluctantly posed at first, but after a couple outtakes, she was happy. After we showed her the final picture, she framed her face with her thumb and forefinger and said, "But it's TOO ROUND!" Then chuckled gaily.

F Driver

1 comment:

Allan said...

This reminds me of one of my favorite Muni Haiku entries:

end-to-end Market
so what *does* the ‘F’ stand for?
ferries or fairies?
–jill