Sunday, 7:50 a.m., Haight Fillmore - Union Fillmore

She rides up front, a new rider. I would have noticed her before.
She's got some sort of disability, but that is not why she caught my eyes.
I was sitting four rows back once when I saw her ankles.
She's got these perfect ballerina ankles - an extension that any other dancer could spot from a mile away. They are quietly admirable.
So, last week I tried to talk to her about dancing. I tried to ask if she had ever been a ballerina.
She mumbled and wiggled and I caught harsh glances from other riders for "bothering" her.
I felt a pest. Perhaps, her disability might be on levels more than I had presumed.

But this morning I was moving toward the back and passed her trying to carry on a conversation plain as a political sex scandal with the stranger next to her..
She waved good-bye to a woman who ignored her at Fillmore and Golden Gate and stepped off through the front doors.
She walked with a cane, but all the more daintily across the street.

I was jealous of her gait and pained that it was me that she didn't want to talk with.

-photo compliments of Art Barn

Thursday, 3:20 p.m., Union Fillmore - 16th Harrison

Dancing.

Holding on to the top bar, bumping her hips into the person to her left and then the person to her right, with a little pop-pop uuuh, on each side.
In her other hand she totes a blue iPod mini with no scratches from use.
She sings along so we can all enjoy the song.
She yanks one ear bud out and says to her friend next to her, "Aw, hell no. I'm gonna kill that bitch."
"Who?" her friend asks.
"That girl at the stop. She got my same color iPod. That bitch tryin' to gank my style."

My Husband is Black

She'd told me a story before about moving seats away from a man on the 22 and him calling her a racist.

So this day...
A middle aged black man gets on the bus and sits right next to me. I was in the back row and the bus was fairly empty.
There were two Eastern European girls, cute, sitting to my right in the back row.
The middle seat would have been a more appropriate choice.

But he sat next to me and I was like, "Okay. Okay, let's see what this is all about."
He crosses his legs away from me and begins to grind.
His hands in his pockets, no eye contact, just staring off into the distance, he's humping.
It looks like a dog trying to itch its ass on carpet.
A few stops later I get up and have to pretty much crawl over him.
I say, "ExCUSE me," in a way that means, "You've got to be fucking kidding me with this humping business."
I was just like - alright dude, I've had enough - and if you call me a racist I'm going to tell you that my husband is black.

-JRo

Saturday, 6:50 p.m., Union Fillmore - Oak Fillmore

He's roughly eighteen years old, Mexican. His friend sits across from us and does the Catholic cross bit every time the Deuce Deuce passes a church.
He's on the phone next to me and drooling everywhere.
Drool down his chin onto his Raiders tee/dress.
He reaches into his mouth and props his lower grill to the side and continues the conversation.
We had a double grill situation.
And his friend throws one more Hail, Mary as I step down.

-photo compliments of Matthew Lee

Sunday, 8:32 a.m., Haight Fillmore - Union Fillmore

Distraught, but I had to get on the bus. I had to go. There's more life than time.
The stranger next to me, I wanted to lay my head on his shoulder and cry, the way I've held firm hands with strangers on planes during turbulence. "We're in it, in this life, we're going to make it, but only together," we say.
He and I really can't be all that different that he wouldn't understand how the weight of the world was too much today to even tie my shoes.
He got off at Geary and I missed him.
Encapsulated by people, totally hollow and so alone.

-photo compliments of Josh Damon

Saturday, 7:10 p.m., Union Fillmore - Fillmore Hayes

If you're a seasoned rider you should know if the person you are seated next to on the Deuce Deuce is tolerable, if they don't have a seeping head wound or aren't masturbating under their over-sized hoodie, then don't move.
I'd seen her on the 22 at the same time before, so she should have known.
She's quiet in manner, folded in, wearing her mousy brown hair held to the side with a girl's barrette placed high on her head close to her part. She is sitting next to another girl, the kind of white, blonde girl that I wager hears, "You look like someone I know."
At the stop the four-seaters open up and the meek little lady moves to the window.
This is always slightly offensive. 'Do I smell?' 'Am I talking to myself?' we think.
And I see the blonde say to herself, "Mmmpht."
At the next stop four about 14-year-old hood rats brimming with brand names and testosterone get on and encircle the invisible woman, sitting on all sides of her.
Their conversation, uncomfortable to write let alone hear, goes, "You look like a house nigga."
"A What?!"
"Like a nigga they be keepin' in the house all day with that wide nose."
"My nose is the same as yours faggot."
"Naw, you be lookin' like one of them workin' in the field all day niggers."
"Man, fuck your face, nigga."
"Nigga, please."
And my attention goes back to the girl, her sharp pointed nose glued to the window.
The girl next to me points low to her back and looks at me and says, shoulders shaking to withhold laughter, "Awesome, she moved to that seat."
And we can't help but to crack up together as the boys begin to pass a basketball back and forth in front of her inch-thick glasses.
Don't move on the 22, unless you are being felt up or actually sitting in vomit.
You can always get someone crazier.

-photo compliments of goodsista

Sunday, 12:45 p.m., 16th Church - 16th Guerrero

A blind man boards the bus and my life seems easy.
His feelers are out for a seat. No one knows if he/she should help. Do we say, "There is a seat there. No, two over, there."
Is that belittling? The only standing rule on the Deuce Deuce seems to be ignore, so no one says a thing.
The bus takes off and he adeptly puts on his sea legs.
He tap-taps until he finds a seat, negotiates his space, taps again and sits.
The last thing, I think to myself, I would want is heightened senses on the 22.
The piss smells more pungent. Perhaps, he can deduce whether it came from gin or vodka. The noise is louder. The tightness of quarters, a jungle even with the courtesy of vision.
He is smiling. And I'm humbled and a little jealous.
He may be getting more out of life, more out of the ride, in certain ways, than I ever will.

-photo compliments of Megan Allison

Sunday, 12:30 p.m., Haight Fillmore - 16th Guerrero

While the two men sitting across from me were not wearing, "I'm not gay, but my boyfriend is" t-shirts, they certainly were gay. Enough time in San Francisco, and being a single little lady with a thing for six-packs, will quickly hone one's ability to, at singular glance, identify a man whom could cook a better quiche than me.
These men were actually dressed exactly alike. Overly tight, exorbitantly priced tees, relaxed, pressed jeans and very neat and clean Chucks.
One says to the other approaching Church and Market, "This bus can get pretty ghetto. And it's not because of homeless."
"Oh, really?" replies the other.
"All these black kids get on and are obnoxious. One goes to me, 'What you don't got a job?' And I was like, 'Yes, I have a job.' And he was like, 'Then why don't you get a car?'"

The two men exit the bus just as six foot tall penguin contemplates whether or not his hips, spanning that of three people, will fit through the Deuce Deuce doors. He decides not and continues waddling down Church Street.

-photo compliments of Henry Goins

If It were any other City

Oh God, I do have a story.
This one time I was on the Deuce Deuce and these two huuuge crackheads got on. Big, white guys with these huge dilated eyes.
And then this little geeky old man got on, just a little Jewish guy with glasses.
And they all went to the back of the bus. Something happened where the crackheads called the little, old guy a nerd.
And he squeaked, "I am not a nerd."
And they started beating the shit out of him. Just like wailing on him on the back of the bus.
And, you know bus drivers in San Francisco, the driver was just all la-da-da driving along, nothing happening.
And no one on the bus did anything.
If it were any other city, or if the crackheads had been black, the bus would have been pulled over, there would have been cops, there would have been arrests, but it's the Deuce Deuce.

And my friend one time saw this guy get on after being shot. No, wait! That was me. I saw that guy. He got on after being shot and was just holding his head.

And this one time, this guy got on after robbing a bank. A Wells Fargo....yeah, they caught him.

I've just seen so much.

- Sterles

-photo compliments of monty

Deuce Deuce Live (Dirty version)

You're not going to believe this story, she starts by saying.

I was riding on the 22 to work and I looked up at some point and realized I was the only white person on the bus. Not only was I the only white person, but everyone seemed to know each other. The 22 is its own community like this living, breathing thing.

And so the driver, for whatever reason, had to slam on the brakes and everyone lurches forward. And one lady was like, "Ohhhh my neck." And some other lady was like, "Owwww, my back."

And the bus starts to rumble, "My neck, my back, Lick my pussy and my crack," until the ENTIRE bus is chanting the dirty version from Khia. They all knew the words.

And I'm just like, Wha, What? Is this really happening? I'm just like this little, like white girl and I don't know the words so I'm bummed that I can't join in. And people are getting up out of their seats and bumpin', "My neck, my back, Lick my pussy and my crack."

And I thought of all the times to be riding solo because no one is going to believe that the 22 fully just broke out into this completely awesome nasty hip-hop chorus line.

And, well, now I know the words.

-B. Blackburn

Riders' Digest

Although you can't look into his eyes, you can see the peace beneath the shades he's pulled down. To bother him would to be to ask someone diving into a book, "What are you reading?"

With our body in the seat and our gaze out the window, we riders crawl into our minds and digest what the day has laid before us. From the Marina to the Mission - a moving meditation.




-photo compliments of juicyrai

Toddlers

Only toddlers, she says, could love the 22.

-Leanne Waldal

Typographic Pet Project Prototype

The Deuce Deuce is a love affair.
We could ride bikes.
I could ride a motorcycle.
But I keep coming back.
I want the abuse.
I want the love.
We love the life of the ride.

-photo compliments of Tag Savage, whom shares the affair

I Heart Alexander Crane

This sign reads: "To the girl with the Feather Earrings: We saw each other on the 22 on May 28th - Find me on Facebook - Alexander Crane."


















Sign seen from the 22 Fillmore near Haight. True part of the story: I had just seen a girl with feather earrings waiting to get on the bus on Fillmore near Sutter. She was on the phone and at the last second didn't get on the bus. Hope AC finds his woman.

- Jen Maiser

The 22 @ Walgreens, A Good Day

A good day on the 22. The bus is chill. It is sunny. A rare ride of leisure, knowing well I would have roughly two hours with no appointments, depending on when the bus finally crawled past my work. Personal soundtrack: Bob Marley's Mister Brown, very apropos for Fillmore and McAllister. At Fillmore and Geary an immense, motherly black woman gets on toting two handles of KFC. She sits down one seat removed from me, sets one bag on the seat between us, the other in her lap and goes to town eating the chicken. It smells so good. I put the song on repeat. She is a very adept fried chicken eater. No crumbs. No grease on her LA Lakers jersey. I close my eyes and taste the KFC deeply in my nose and listen to Bob Marley.

- JRo

photo compliments of Art Bowers

Serenity Times Twenty-Two

I saw her on the bus
and thought she looked so serene
and at peace and I wondered
what her "life story" was.

- Laura Wiggs

Friday, 2:50 p.m., Haight Fillmore - Fillmore California

I got on and was overcome by a sense of you. It made me drop some of my change. The driver grew tempered as I scrounged the perforated ground for impossible dimes. I stood and looked to the back. You weren't there. Maybe I had just missed you. I know that feeling like my right hand pinky knows the home key and the delete key as well.
"Well good," I thought. I looked like hell and felt worse. There's no hiding on the Deuce Deuce - or from deadlines and unforgiving sunshine. And no amount of makeup will cover my ass after three whiskey sours, two cups of coffee, two term papers and two hours of sleep.
My headphones on, three songs in to Electrelane's Powers Out and nearly asleep - there you are - boarding and walking down the aisle.
Of course, of course I would see you today, with my hollowed out eyes like a deranged zeppelin, after all this time.
But, at least I can still rely on my instinct. I knew you were on this bus. I smelled your intentions before I could smell you.
And you do. You sit next to me and you smell so nice.
I think about opening the window and jumping out. I'm so tired it would be a pathetic attempt, resembling falling off of a bed more than fleeing.
I think about opening your mouth and crawling inside of you.
Small talk is mean.
I'm playing polite with the one person I can still feel rustle on the horizon. We used to talk about children's names, now it's the weather. What an insult.
But, it was humbling to see your inescapable face - I'm responsible for my regrets, holding them close like my passport in Mexico.
It's your stop. And you rise to exit, and say, "Good-bye," in a way that sounds nothing like, "See you later."

-photo compliments of A modern girl, Tina, from San Francisco

Sunday, 9:00 a.m., Hayes Fillmore - Union Fillmore

Why am I always surprised. I am such a feeble creature. The way I have weather amnesia in SF. I find myself saying, "It wasn't this cold last summer. It didn't rain this much last Spring. It wasn't this warm last May."
But it's Sunday morning and the bus is not supposed to be this full. But it is and for some reason, I am surprised.
I get herded to the middle next to a teen mom. There is a small, Chinese woman sitting in front of me. I'm damn near straddling her. And she smells. I know in America we have some absurd obsession with hygienic smell, but really, she smells like how my ex who worked in a kitchen, how the bottom of his pants would smell after being dragged in sink water and discarded beef cutlets soaked in garlic all night.
The mom is holding her maybe two-year-old son. The boy is staring at me and I quick stick my tongue out at him, lowering my defense status to that of a toddler. He looks away and begins kicking the Chinese lady in her little dome covered in a floppy hat. I think of saying something, but if I open my mouth I imagine smell particles flooding in like a whale eating krill, so I would taste her.
Finally, the woman grabs the child's foot and says, "He kick me. He kick me too much."
And the teen mom responds, "So? It's a fuckin' crowded bus. Get a car if you don't like it." Everyone goes quiet and stiff. Confrontation on the bus mimics an instant game of freeze tag.
"You old bitch," mutters teen mom.
At Geary the man sitting next the elderly woman gets up and teen mom sits down with her child. The child, a little over an inch away from the elderly woman, just stares. Stares and then stares some more at her now.
And then...I fart.
I have no idea how it escaped. Liked a trained double-agent, it is silent and violent and it smells grotesque in the way that only unassuming girls can fart. It is peeling my eyelids back it is so bad. It is too warm on the bus for farts of this magnitude and it just expands and lingers at nose level like a half-dead balloon.
I look down at the Chinese woman and try to glance over and place blame, feign like it was the boy. But, she is covering her nose and mouth and glaring with two, angry round eyes. There is no fooling her.
So, I start to laugh. My shoulders are shaking. Because my smell trumped her smell and that is some accomplishment.
The teen mom sees me laughing and says, "Holy God, was that you?!"
And I can't stop laughing, my face clown red, and I say, between chuckles, "Yeah."
"Oh my fucking God. My baby's shit don't even smell that bad."
I say that I am sorry, but I can't stop cracking up.
"Woo, girl. Daaamn." The toddler is hysterical with giggles.
An older guy behind me, pushing me and also pushing 300 lbs. says, "That's almost impressive."
And now, we're all laughing. Me and the hundred people crammed into the 3 x 3 space where we are standing smelling my ninja fart. Everyone laughing, except the little, smelly Chinese lady still covering her nose and mouth.

The 22 Transfer

The 22 lets me off at the corner of Fillmore and Chestnut where I make one of two sorts of transfers. The first is the kind to curse. The second, also to curse. Okay, the first is a running forward curse. The second is a running behind curse.
At 7:40 am, the 22 to the 30 is an unreliable route. Fillmore street descends two steeply for the bus. So it moves over to Steiner. The bus cannot turn when a car is parked to close to the corner. If a Mercedes or Audi or a garage truck blocked the zigzag down the hill for five minutes all of us on the bus sat for five minutnes as the driver honked. On occassion the driver changes to a different line midway down the hill. “Everyone off,” he announces without warning. At that point, I am running the remaining 6 blocks to Chestnut.
Assuming I arrive at the corner of Fillmore and Chestnut, I catch the 30. The 30 runs turns off Chestnut at Van Ness to get over a couple of blocks to North Point. That runs into Fisherman’s Wharf where I’m going. During commutting times though, the 30 bus picks sides. Three of four 30 buses run as the 30X, the express bus to the financial district. It has fewer stops because its only purpose is to haul people in the Marina to downtown. Riders on the 30X wear ties, skirts and suits.
The leftover 30 buses took the rest of us. Schoolchildren, moms, dockworkers, construction workers and asian highschoolers rode nest to me.
In running kind of curse I step off the 22 to see the 30 is already at its stop, across the street. If I miss it, I get chewed out at work for being late. So I’m chasing after it. Some mornings I climb on just in time. Other mornings, I run for two blocks before watching it pull away from me. I arrive late.
For the second curse, I wait with the suits in front of a swanky Marina restaurant. A small group of them swells before the 30X collects them. Some mornings, I watch a handful of groups amass and board before a regular 30 comes. I tense up, one eye pegged to the clock as the minutes pass and no 30 bus whines up the street. 30X, 30X, 30X, finally, a 30. 7:55am. I hope there are no more snags. If there aren’t my boss won’t be on my case.

Riding the regular bus.

-J. Marchildon

To the Fillmore on the 22 Fillmore

Pete had sprained his ankle performing ill-advised feats of strength and agility in order to impress a pretty lady. Jordan had not yet grown his beard. Their was another person with us, mild mannered, jovial. I can't remember his name, but it was probably Ben. I was oblivious to their intentions until we boarded the 22 Fillmore at 16th and Mission. It was Monday, an Indian summer's late afternoon. Pete had bought tickets to the Spoon show at the Fillmore. It turns out dancing on crutches is not all that difficult. Thanks guys. Thanks 22 Fillmore.

- David Murphy

Waiting

I had been waiting at the stop for so long that I thought I would die of old age before it came.

- kid ampersand

A Poem and a Driver

Driving the Twenty Two

Driving America to America,
Indian, Irish, German,
Spanish and Swedish ghosts
looking over the shoulders
of black and Asian and Latino:

Being a shuttle
gathering all these threads
red and black and gold and brown and white
and weaving them into
this town's fabric -
Ah, who would not smile?

- Birrel Walsh

Ladies and Gents Represent

http://www.munishirts.info/

Eddie Murphy Doppleganger

I was fairly convinced that I was sitting behind Eddie Murphy, in a jacket he wore in the 80s.

I tapped him on the shoulder to ask for his autograph, and he socked me in the head.

Darn near punched my lights out. T'wasn't Eddie.

- Anders Porter

Gato

I got on the 22 Fillmore. I've lived around the corner from it for 20 years.You never know what you're gonna find.
I see this woman sitting there with a CAT in PUBLIC, on the BUS, dressed in a kitty-sized SOMBRERO with the word "Mexico" embroidered on it and looking completely serious like there was nothing wrong with any of it.

- Lisa Geduldig

Another Day In Paradise

- Shanan Delp

Mrs. Doubtfire

Mrs. Doubtfire rides the 22 and so should you.

Bus stop, Market - Marina

As I was waiting at the bus stop, a couple of black girls probably around 13 years old sat down beside me and began arguing about when it was their friend was shot."It was Monday night she got shot!""Uh uhn, Tuesday night."They didn't look all that stunned or distraught. Is it really that common? Someone pop my bubble.As the bus goes from Market St. to the Marina, the bus fills with minority school kids and elderly as it nears and passes through the Fillmore, then empties out almost completely by the time it hits the Marina district, which is full of well-maintained houses and BMWs.

- Jin Zhu

Thursday, 8:35 a.m., Haight Fillmore - Union Fillmore

The bus is packed, so packed that my friend called to ask me to set up her room at work and I told her I was on the same bus as her - she just couldn't see me. "Hell ride," she replied.

I am in the very back row all the way in the corner seat. This seat carries with it a certain sense of anxiety. I know if I have to be let out everyone will be slightly upset. It is like having to turn left with traffic behind you. Everyone is thinking, "Why the shit do you have to turn left in front of me?!" My stop is coming up and the two people next to me think as I pass through the laps of as-is strangers, "Oh great! Of course you have to get off the bus here. Just when I got to sit down and space out. That's just great!"

Two rows forward and facing me a small, Hispanic woman is looking out the window and one tear escapes her eye. It dangles there in the corner and she looks too sorrowful to care, frozen in morning despair. It begins to cascade down her cheek and she pulls her shirt sleeve over her hand to wipe it away. She clenches her eyes tight to keep any more from escaping, but it squishes out a few more and she takes the corner of her cuff to her lash line to sweep running mascara. One deep swallow. She's staring like a fish trying not to blink - eyes like good, glassy surf. She wipes her nose a couple of times. She's holding it together for the sake of the bus.

I wanted to go over and hold her. I wanted her to look over so I could mouth, "Are you okay? It will be okay." I wanted to be a monster and ignore her, spare her the embarrassment of being human.

She got off at Broadway. I imagine she will go into the bathroom and shut the door at her place of work and dump the emotion out of her eyes without the reflection of an unforgiving public.