Hipster Baby T-Shirt Project: the 38 Geary

I love the San Francisco bus system, known as MUNI. When we no longer live here, I think I will miss MUNI more than anything else about the city. A lot of people complain about MUNI for breaking down all the time or being smelly, but I love it. MUNI really serves everyone from the homeless to the high-powered stock broker who doesn't see any sense paying $28 for a day's parking down in the financial district. If you have a MUNI pass, you don't need a car in this city. MUNI is to San Francisco what the subway is to Manhattan: essential for getting around on the cheap. And you know I'm cheap.

To me, there is no greater bus to exemplify all that is wonderful about MUNI than the 38 Geary. I've heard that it is the most heavily-used bus line on the planet. A bus comes every 5-7 minutes. It goes all the way from Land's End at the western tip of the city to the TransBay terminal at the heart of the financial district. So it goes through Russian and Chinese neighborhoods, the Fillmore, Japantown, the Tenderloin, and Union Square. Along the way it picks up some unusual characters. There's an Asian dude on it all the time who wears knit caps with holes that allow two very prominent antennae to pop out from the top of his head. They are technically his hair, but they look as stiff as pipe-cleaners. The day Alito was confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, I heard the following very-typical MUNI conversation between two elderly black homeless ladies on the 38 Geary:

"I would want a range rover if I had a car."

"Girl, don't you know a land rover is much better than a range rover?"

"What'you talking about? Range rovers are better than land rovers."

I stop listening for a few moments, then I hear:

"Girl, you don't know what a filibuster is? That's when they just keep on talking and talking and talking so no one gets to vote."

I really wish I knew how they got from the Range Rover/Land Rover debate to a discussion of democratic cowardice on the Senate floor. But I'm sure it was very MUNI.

One of the greatest features of the 38 Geary is the bus itself. It is extra-long, and the middle of the bus bends like an accordion around corners. And you can stand in the bendy part! It's almost as cool as that place where you can stand in Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico all that the same time. The front of the bus is on Market Street while the back is on O'Farrell. Pretty cool. Wood and I love to take Juniper on the 38 Geary, so I made her this t-shirt where a photo I took of the bus goes across the middle, but at the accordion part it bends on the body:
Just throw this shirt on with some orange baby legs and set her down in front of some orange-colored graffiti. That's a recipe for a color-coordinated hipster baby right there. I am trying to teach this kid the word "bus" so that whenever she sees one she yells "bus" the same time she yells "ball!" everytime she sees something round or yells, "da da!" everytime she sees her mother. She can say, "up," "ready," "ball," "bubble," "apple," but even though I have repeated the word bus in her ear a thousand times while strangers look at me like I'm nuts, she still won't say it. So I'm going to dress her in bus clothes until she gets it right.

Remember, a custom-designed (by me) hipster baby t-shirt is one of the prizes in the First Annual Sweet Juniper Weird Search Hit Contest, which ends Monday night. There are already some hilarious entries there, so check them out if you haven't already.