The City of Stolen Time

If you don’t live in San Francisco or care about city infrastructure, skip this post. I am compelled by my own impotent rage to document the abject absurdity of commuting in this city. This is anecdotal and subjective in nature; for statistics, please see Joe Eskenazi and Greg Dewar’s excellent SF Weekly article, “The Muni Death Spiral”. Today the N-Judah train I was riding during rush hour stopped at Church and Duboce due to “train control problems”. (For those of you who do not commute in San Francisco, that stop is the last above-ground stop for the N, meaning that all the commuters trying to get downtown and to the Caltrain station are out of luck.) Above-ground, all the F-Market trains and shuttle buses were packed. I did...

Read More
Posted on 10 May 2010 | 6 comments

bits of tid

bits of tid

People who dispense with niceties used to catch me off-guard. Before my current job, I expected a minimal exchange of greetings before a request for help. I wonder if, as a result, I have done away with my own greeting patter when I am out in the world. It does seem a bit superfluous at times, especially when we are all so furiously busy, scuttling between inputs like crazed crabs. Because of this intensified pace, I become more conscious of how to phrase answers to questions without being condescending or curt. A dyslexic patron today obviously felt quite embarrassed for mixing up the microfilm for 1906 and 1960, and I wonder if my bland “no problem” response was sufficient, or made her feel lessened. I can’t imagine being dyslexic; so much...

Read More
Posted on 10 May 2008 | 3 comments