Last night I attended Brainstormer’s pub trivia game at the Blackthorn after a brief hiatus. It was fun, we won, and our small, 4-person team has managed to stay in the running for the Bay Area-wide tournament coming up. After sticking around for a little bit to talk to some of our friends there I went home.
Later that night I heard my cell phone beeping with SMS messages from Twitter. Tommy, the bartender there took the N home as he always does and reported that apparently 2 women drove a car INTO the downtown tunnel and that all traffic on the Metro lines was backed up. So I re-tweeted his post to whomever in Twitterville might be up at midnight to read such things. He also took a quick photo with his iPhone so I could twit-pic it as well.
Now, this alone would make for an interesting story. However, after the dust had settled a bit from this incident, he sent me a text message. And this is the twist to the story that makes it cool. You see, it seems a MUNI driver, one of those Good Ones I keep insisting exist, made sure he and others got downtown to their connecting buses on time via the J Church. He didn’t get a driver number, only that his name was John, that he was an SF native, and was a genuinely Good Guy late at night. So naturally, I wanted to Twitter the heck out of that.
This isn’t the first time we’ve had correspondents relay N Judah related information via SMS and Twitter. A few weeks ago, when a cable snapped at Duboce and Church, various Loyal Readers and Twitteratti relayed real-time updates of the situation, which I re-tweeted (as I was not at home and could not write it all up fast enough on the site). You can follow me at via Twitter if you like, for occasional updates, or just follow along in the Twitter window to the right. Many times when I’m away from the computer it provides an easy way to do updates that aren’t always worth a whole blog post.
Anyway, it made for an interesting late night at the very least. And kudos to the MUNI driver who was super awesome to the owner/riders. Can we please get rid of the bad apples and give more recognition to the Good Ones, MUNI? Please?
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When will people learn?! I swear when retards do this, they need to go on public display with a huge sign “I DON’T KNOW HOW TO DRIVE” or something along those lines.
Your telling me, but why wasn’t this story reported on sfgate this morning? OH well we know where to go to get the scoops in the future!
Which kind of car – Toyota Prius or Volvo? I gots to know.
Was not allowed close enough to get a proper picture so unfortunately I could not see the make or model just the tail lights, if I had my jail broken iPhone with me I could have zoomed in & gotten video of it.
And this points out one of the reasons why streetcars disappeared in most places in the USA–it’s too easy to get and keep a driver’s license. Many years ago I interviewed a German consular official (in SF) and he explained to me how much more rigorous both driver and vehicle licensing procedures are in Germany, which may be why public transit and intercity rail travel are so much better over there. I live near San Marino, an affluent city next to Pasadena. Lots of high-performance European luxury cars driven by low-performance drivers.
@Bob: Amen. Another highly qualified MUNI driver just creamed a minivan last night.
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/Muni-collision-injures-up-to-10-people-46152257.html
Bob: it’s really the other way around. If you don’t have a car or at least a driver’s license, in most parts of this country you’re basically disqualified from public life. When you HAVE to drive in order to have a job, to buy food, and so on, it would be nearly impossible to enforce strict standards: there will be a massive outcry, and many people will choose to take their chances without a license. Anyhow, I recommend physical preventive measures be installed at the tunnel portals, such as a large number of sharp spikes and/or a pit that would be guaranteed to trap the car before it gets into the tunnel. And experience shows that a Breda is perfectly capable of towing out a car disabled by such a device.
@Bob: You are exactly right. Sometimes I think that an average US driver would make it at most 10sec on the German Autobahn before ending up in crash.