Calling all streetcar nerds!
In a city that worships at the alter of the new, there's something infinitely comforting about respecting that which came before. The streetcars are a perfect example. MUNI, the shorthand for the San Francisco Municipal Railroad, honors its centennial birthday this year. One big celebration will take place this Sunday, November 11 from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. at the San Francisco Railway Museum with early 20th century cars taking history-lovers down the new T line tracks. MUNI was born when voters approved a $2 million bond in 1909 that would insure a public system. Streetcars and cable cars had been operating since 1873 through the private enterprise of the Market Street Railway Company and later the much-maligned monopoly of the United Railroads. MUNI, however, gave the public a bit of an edge in deciding how they'd like their wheels to roll.
The F Line, our only official streetcar line, glides from Fisherman's Wharf to the Castro and you can choose from the following live fleet. It takes passengers 4.5 miles for only 2 bucks a pop. I used to take the streetcar every morning downtown to work for there's nothing ickier than having to go underground with your first cup of coffee. This being San Francisco though, you'll always have one vagrant on the F who is drinking something from a paper bag and speaking in tongues. But consider it part of the landscape.
There's this beautiful sentence in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar that makes me think of the F Line: "On every side of me the red and blue and white jacketed skiers tore away down the blinding slope like fugitive bits of an American flag." Although Market Street is not terribly hilly, there's this breezy feeling about catching one of these colored "skiers," these little time machines that can take you direct to the neighborhood of rainbows or to the seaside residence of sea lions and postcards. But these streetcars are more like "fugitive bits" of the United Nations, for we have 3 "trams" from Milan, Mexico City and Toronto. San Francisco, to her bosom, also welcomes cars from around the country, from places like Birmingham, Alabama, Cincinnati, Ohio and (who can forget?) Boston, Massachusetts.
The whole tech-cutting-edge angle here can be overblown and overrated but there is one app that has been more than useful in celebrating antiquity. It's called MUNI Rider and it gives you the real time of the next streetcar (or bus or cable car or MUNI tram). So perhaps new and old can work together after all.
* This will be one of many articles covering transportation in San Francisco and the Bay Area. Check out these photos of MUNI's history at Huffington Post. The photo I've included is from Market Street Railway, the non-profit preservation partner of MUNI.*
The F Line, our only official streetcar line, glides from Fisherman's Wharf to the Castro and you can choose from the following live fleet. It takes passengers 4.5 miles for only 2 bucks a pop. I used to take the streetcar every morning downtown to work for there's nothing ickier than having to go underground with your first cup of coffee. This being San Francisco though, you'll always have one vagrant on the F who is drinking something from a paper bag and speaking in tongues. But consider it part of the landscape.
There's this beautiful sentence in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar that makes me think of the F Line: "On every side of me the red and blue and white jacketed skiers tore away down the blinding slope like fugitive bits of an American flag." Although Market Street is not terribly hilly, there's this breezy feeling about catching one of these colored "skiers," these little time machines that can take you direct to the neighborhood of rainbows or to the seaside residence of sea lions and postcards. But these streetcars are more like "fugitive bits" of the United Nations, for we have 3 "trams" from Milan, Mexico City and Toronto. San Francisco, to her bosom, also welcomes cars from around the country, from places like Birmingham, Alabama, Cincinnati, Ohio and (who can forget?) Boston, Massachusetts.
The whole tech-cutting-edge angle here can be overblown and overrated but there is one app that has been more than useful in celebrating antiquity. It's called MUNI Rider and it gives you the real time of the next streetcar (or bus or cable car or MUNI tram). So perhaps new and old can work together after all.
* This will be one of many articles covering transportation in San Francisco and the Bay Area. Check out these photos of MUNI's history at Huffington Post. The photo I've included is from Market Street Railway, the non-profit preservation partner of MUNI.*
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