A weekend walk through Hayes, Civic Center, Russian Hill and elsewhere turned into, first, an ambush of bodily humours, and then a scatological scavenger hunt.
“Is it animal or human?”
“Projectile or pre-meditated?”
The nose gives you information your head wishes to forget.
Later in the week, I was on my bike when a driver refused to accept my existence and hit me. It was more of a lovetap - one that I could have avoided if I heeded the advice of a witness waiting at the bus stop and “stayed the hell of the road”. But my parents raised me to share my toys and I think the roads are for everyone to enjoy.
Every day is a golden day for a MUNI story. Yet, strangely, I don’t have much to take from this week other than the same slow crawl of a city bus. The bus stops, picks up passengers, waits for traffic to pass by, lurches forward, stops, picks up passengers, waits for traffic to pass…This week we learned that by shifting roadway priority to MUNI’s streetcars and buses on just 10 corridors, 3 out of 4 riders (out of a daily 600,000+) would see a speedier commute.
But to do this, you have to change the way the average person sees the city street.
It’s not a freeway…
It’s a fantastic walkway and a thriving marketplace for local foods.
It’s not an offramp…
It’s not a parking space…
It’s a PARK(ing) space
So it can be done. Convincing people of the value of the land in an urban landscape may be as slow-going as MUNI, but a paradigm shift is possible.
1 comment so far ↓
What a great explanation of how things can change for the better. I needed the reminder that the City is improving somewhat, especially after spending a week away from SF and coming back to find it filthy. Hopefully eventually people will also learn that it’s a sidewalk, not a toilet.
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