The Octavia Street Boulevard is open for business. From the light at Page st. heading south its timed lights and a swell of a hill to a smooth onramp.. 101 all the way and the 2 lanes make all the miserable fools coming off the corkscrew approach of South Van Ness look like muni riders..
So its friday and i'm ready to work, its always busy friday unless its thanksgiving or easter or some such family holiday where more people leave the city then come in..
Its four in the afternoon and its raining lightly in the bayview, which seems unusual for what is now supposed to be our summer in San Francisco..
First ride is an old lady on Mission going 6 blocks, then a dude picking up his fixed car at BMW, then a drive empty all the way to Ferry building where i get a street artist who got his car towed on the Embarcadero, so i take him to the hall of justice and console him on his lost $200.. cruise up to Market and 7th and pickup mom grandma and two 3year old twins, they are freaked out and tell me the whole gorey story of witnessing another 3year old lose his leg on the back door of a muni bus in front of Glide church, apparently the door shut on his leg and they couldn't extricate him and had to cut his leg off, the little boy said there was blood all over and they didn't seem that traumatized when they started bopping each on the head yelling "you the punk"
Then got this hottest girl in a month for a ride to Tsunami from Soma and i talked to her about the lighting of City Hall. Its red and green for the opera opening and i remenisced all the colors in past history and she suggested purple.
At Union/Columbus this guy waves me down and i stop and notice that he seems to have wet his pants but its hard to tell these days with stained and bleached jeans all the rage. So before i can leave this guy in my exhaust he gets in and asks me if i can go to San Anselmo. He seems very drunk and i smell something strange but i lower the window and talk about baseball while heading over the bridge. I learn through his cell phone conversation what i can, because of his thick Irish , that
he turned the corner and woke up later and he's not sure what happened but he's got a nasty abrasion on his arm and either he blacked or got beat up and ended up wetting his pants, either way he was cordial and generous by giving me a Franklin for a Grant on the meter.
Back in the city i ended up in the loop of North Beach-Marina. Drunk frat guys and soused sorority chicks.
In Noe Valley i picked up a New Orleans Evacuee and her 3 pretty gay boys and took them to the Cafe and 20 minutes later in the Castro i rode two newlywed gay guys to the Endup and they too were New Orleans Evacuees. They grew up in NO and had never left and moved here to SF 2 days ago. They were not happy to hear that bars close in Cali at 1:45.
Its the end of my shift and i get greedy for one last fare so i pick up two young women with back packs at 3rd/mission and they want to find a cheap hotel. we go to all the Union Square youth hostels and YMCA and there no room for these stranded travellers from Glen Falls, NY. Their car broke down and died in Red Bluffs and they had to stay with nice mechanics there for 2 days. In order to get to Eureka where a friend lived and was going to help them make enough money in 2 weeks to afford a plane ticket home they had to take a bus to Sacramento and another to SF where tomorrow they take another to Eureka. We finally found them 2 bunks for $44 at hostel in alley off Folsom st. and i tried to tell them not to give me a tip because they said they were broke but they insisted and i ended up with a 4$ tip on top of another good fare which put me over my friday night quota but i was late and when i checked in i got reprimanded for being tardy and i gave him the good samaritan speel about helping two girls from upstate NY lost and bedless in the big city and he asked me if they were at least good looking and i answered no, not really.
Another shift finished and it only gets better as i drive home in my personal car. I take the Duboce exit but as i'm appraoching the split for 101/80 the caltrans truck is pulling all the cones opening the previously closed skyway.. Is it open?
I take my chance on the deserted highway and at 2:35 in the morning on the 10th of September i become the first car to exit on the Market/Octavia freeway ramp. green lights all the way to Fell street and in no time i am home in lower Haight trolling for a parking space, which ends up taking 25 minutes and one stop from a cop thinking my search for parking suspicious behaviour. She lets me go on after i tell her"looking for parking"
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