I took a ride on the 71 Bus. If anyone has any questions about SF specific things, please ask. Also, I broke a couple of rules here. I went over the thirty minutes, and I was on a moving location. I hope that isn't a problem.

This was written from about 1:40 PM to 2:10 PM on Wednesday October 22:


I am currently at the corner of 22nd and Lawton awaiting the 71 or 71L bus, aka my observation platform. A Mormon church with a large evergreen tree is in front of me. Behind me is a bunch of those kinds of trees that are most often pruned to have small puffballs of leaves, the area that they are growing in is bordered b red painted brick walls. The song on my iPod has just changed from How am I Different? By Aimee Mann to Dr. Online by Zeromancer. Why do I still have that crap around?

Across the street is a house with bird of paradise plants in front of it. It is painted blue and has a tile roof. A man weraring a red hoodie and jeans walks pass pushing a bicycle. For some reason he reminds me of Little Red Riding Hood. I am the Walrus just started playing. Cars pass by frequently, Lawton is a street with comparatively few stop signs than other streets.

The bus just got here. It's number is 1884, the driver is a kind looking African American woman who reminds the bus's population to "please hold on" even though the automated voice that the bus has does that every few minutes. Most of the current residents of the bus are clustered at the front. A bald asian man in his sixities gets off from a seat close to the back. He is dressed entirely in denim.

The closer we get to ninth and Irving, and after that the Haight, the type of person on the bus changes. The 71 becomes the bus of the counter-culture, not the bus of the outer sunset, which is anything but the counter culture. A woman with intricately braided dirty blond hair, brown boots, and black pants decorated with red Chinese dragons sits down next to me. The bus has just reached the point where it states that it's near 9th avenue but isn't there yet. The street is constricted by a blockade placed one block back for road resurfacing. A white motorcycle rides past my window. The rider looks at me briefly. We reach 9th avenue and stop in front of the pacific catch fish restaurant. It replaced a really great cafe called "the canvas" a few years back and is nothing like the canvas in a bad way.

The people in the front of the bus have changed. they are no longer Sunsetters, specifically mid-sunsetters, a group distinct from outer and Inner Sunssetters, both of which have a much larger percentage of people you would want to talk to.

There is more road construction here, twin sign holders, one armed with a "Stop" and another with a "slow" attempt to dissect the traffic. The bus reaches fifth avenue. A woman wearing a white dress and a purple shawl gets on. Two giggleing teenagers sit in the seats that would fold up if a person in a wheelchair were to get on. I notice that the woman in the white dress is reading mystic river, and that she is carrying a leopard print suitcase.

The bus reaches Stanyan and Fredrick streets. A teenager wearing a baseball cap adorned with a styleized sun and three starts at triangular points switches seats. He then gets off at Haight and Stanyan, as well as a painfully thin woman. An old guy in a grateful dead shirt gets on. The man in front of me speaks Spanish into his cellphone loudly My limited Spanish catches the words for bitch and food, but nothing more. He stops talking. We pass by the Red Victorian theater and I can't see what's playing.

The bus passes by stores called thins like "tibetan gift corner" and "bang on custom t-shirts". We pass by the giant sculpture of a woman's legs sticking out of a window. The three urban tribes of haight street, the hippies, the punks, and the normal people who pay for everything mingle.

The bus heads up to a church and park, both of which's names I can't remember I do remember that the park has gutters paved with tombstones that were once there. (I'm serious!) A very runk man gets on the bus and talks about riddles with the woman with the braids. He asks her "what two days of the week begin with T besides Tuesday and Thursday?" he answers his own riddle a few seconds later "today and tomorrow". the man wears a bone necklace and a bolo tie, he has a scraggly beard and looks to be in his late thirties. The woman gives him a riddle "What did the zero say to the eight?" she says. She answers her own too with "nice belt". The woman leaves and says goodbye. The two exchange names and comment that they will see each other again on the bus. Her name is Lisa. His name is Jeff.

Jeff proclaims that he gets bored easily "that's why I do that kind of crap" he says. He talks to another woman. He talks about giving people tours of Golden Gate Park where he took trails to the monuments that nobody ever goes to. He talks about the World War 1 rock that has the names of everyone that died in World War 1 from San Francisco etched on it. He's actually really smart, but really drunk. the bus arrives at laguna and haight. We pass by Victorian houses. The man, Jeff, talks about the De Young Museum tower. He says it has a 180 degree view of the city, then corrects himself and says it's 360. The woman he's talking to tells him that she's new to the city. He tells her a riddle: "How can you tell when it's raining cats and dogs?" Again, he answers it: "You step in a poodle."

They start talking about politics. He talks about how he thinks that Al Qaeda "supported McCain, apparently with a video." I really, really doubt that. (I looked this up later, and it's actually a lot more complicated than that.) He talks about how he doesn't like Colin Powell. We drive past the SF Girls Chorus building. We turn on market street. The coinciding talk to you like you have down syndrome voice proclaims "market and Van Ness". A large group of people get on the bus. A few get off.

We are now officially in down town. Buildings can fall on us. Yay! :) Jeff proclaims that he is lucky to live in the Tenderloin, and that he lives with government support. The woman, the one who's been talking to Jeff, gets off the bus.We stop at eighth street. Jeff gets off. I notice Burger King and Starbucks to my left and right. People flock to them. Two different crowds. Hamburger culture and coffee culture. We are one or two blocks away from Civic Center. We pass the Orpheum theater that has Phantom of the Opera playing at it. Throngs of people flock outside a Carl's Jr. A handsome man with a tattoo on his arm of an X with a little diamond in the center sis down near me. The tattoo looks vaguely runic. I look out towards the Carl's Jr. People are clustered around the fast food watering hole, and none go in or out. A man with a mohawk walks his bike. Nearly all of the people outside of the concrete watering hole wear hats. We drive past the strip clubs, music stores, young republicans out of place in suits who are walking their dogs. We drive past another "gentleman's club" and a store called Oxford Street. A low end fast food powered commercial neon hell. A woman who got off the bus earlier miraculously gets back on the us, and we haven't turned around. Faint talking resonates from the front of the bus.

Many old men play chess in front of a muni station. a police officer talks to one of them. We are now at Forth and Stockton, a hell of tourism for the cable car turnaround. Now that's dying down for fall and winter. Black and white photo ads for some store called Diesel are on a construction site to the right of the us. another bus drives up near us. We see another radioshack. Another walgreens. Another macy's. Endless consumables.

I haven't talked about the bus much yet, Where I am sitting in the back and to the utmost left it's encrusted with stickers and graffiti. I stick a "nina hagen 4 president" sticker (given to me by anna one a few weeks ago) to a chair. WE pas battery street, We pass banks now. Lots of banks. too many banks. Spear street. We pass by a small flower shop. the windows are open and I can actually smell it. A "big dog city" taxicab gies faster than us. We turn right, down a smaller street. "Ferry terminal, this is the last stop." rings out from the loudspeaker. Tge bus turns right. I notice a strange mural of people doing various things. It's cluttered to the point of confusion. the bus stops I get out an sit down on a ledge that has been outfitted with metal pieces to prevent skateboarders from doing tricks on the ledge. Soon they will just find new tricks. After that they will forget the old ones and the city will take the things off. Fifty or sixty feet away is a collection of shopping carts with garbage bags. the ferry building's tower rises above palm trees, raising the american flag. Cigarette butts litter the ground. The smell of nicotine, nothing, and the sea goes through my head.