MUNI. Arguably, one of the worst public transportation systems in the world. I might be biased after seventeen years of being stuck in tunnels, overcrowded buses, and unreliable busses out the wazoo. But somehow, even after all of this, I still love MUNI. I love staring out the scratched windows, the people I encounter, and most of all, how many memories I’ve made traveling through the city. In this column, I want to impart to you the knowledge gained from my seventeen years of roaming San Francisco.
This is my last year riding MUNI for a while, as I’m a senior and will be leaving the city for college next year. In Fast Past, I’ll clue you in on the best and worst bus lines and my experiences with them all. My plan is to create a MUNI map like the ones you see at bus stops, but with my memories infused throughout them. By the end of the cycle, I’ll have a map that I can hand out to people with my experiences of different lines on one side and a MUNI map on the other.
The title of my column comes from the MUNI monthly pass, aka the Fast Pass. But with the help of Jon (editor at SMW and pun-maker extraordinaire), I arrived at the title Fast Past, a play on how my column is a combination of MUNI and my past. If you look closely at the cover image for this post, you can find my column name too! This is what fast passes used to look like before Clipper and they’re a big part of my early memories of MUNI. So, with all this in mind, I think it’ll also be the cover of my whole project, which I can’t wait to share with you all!
