The white collar bus
Today I decided to change my route to and from work, just to mix up the commute monotony. Up the somewhat steep hill on Geary to the Presidio, I waited for the 38BX, or as I like to call it, “The white collar bus”. This route goes into downtown from the Richmond, an area of houses big enough to have yards and cars, and a mostly car-centric area of town, or as some of my friends affectionately call it, “Fog City”.
The Fog City commuters are a different class than what I’m used to on the normal 38/38L I take. They all smell nice, for one. I didn’t see any drunks on the bus, and I didn’t fear for my life when sitting in the back. That’s another thing: the bus is full, but not packed and certainly not “crush capacity” as the 38/38L typically is. The driver was talkative, mainly because it was an older bus that didn’t have the digital stop announcements.
From the stop at the Presidio, the white collar bus’s only stop directly downtown and in front of Embarcadero Bart. On the short walk to the Bart station, I passed perhaps a dozen tempting breakfast eateries. I looked at my watch, and it was only 7:50! I had crossed town in only 19 minutes instead of the normal 30!
I was so shocked by the surreal speed of Muni, that I took the bus back home. While waiting for my coach to arrive, people lined up single file for the bus. No large mob of people waiting for the doors to open, but rather an orderly line of people whipped into shape by The Man. The next stop was back to Presideo Avenue. No people sneaking in the back door, no people refusing to move back, and no drunk passed out in the back.
So I think that instead of taking the poor and blue collar bus to and from Bart every week day, I’ll take the 5 minute walk up a steep hill to the Fog City bus. I could use the extra exercise, and it is sorta nice sitting next to people who bathed this morning.