I was waiting for the bus this morning and I was happy to see a totally empty 7 coming around the corner. The 7 starts right by my house in the upper haight and goes either to Van Ness or all the way downtown. Most of the time the 7 is a double bus so it’s huge and is almost never filled.
I was waiting at the bus stop with a bunch of people as well as a handicapped person in a wheelchair. When the bus came everybody got on the bus but the bus driver wouldn’t let the person with the wheelchair on because she said that he had too much stuff attached to his wheelchair (bag, blanket etc.). This is complete bullshit because the double bus was completely empty and wouldn’t have gotten in anybodies way. This pisses off the handicapped person and he proceeds to pull his wheelchair in front of the bus and not let her move. She is all to pleased with this and proceeds to tell everybody to get off the bus. She then grabs her bag, unhooks the electricity cables and walks off says that he can talk to her supervisor.
So now there are a bunch of people and here comes a 71 which is a short bus that goes all the way from out in the avenues to downtown. This bus can get pretty packed, even by the time it reaches the upper haight. This driver takes all the passengers onto his half full bus AND the guy in the wheelchair. No questions, no crap..
The guy in the wheelchair is still pretty pissed about the other bus and is still talking about it under his breath. The thing that really got to me was the amount of people who blamed this whole situation on the guy in the wheelchair. That he was making them late for work with his insistence and his complaining and what an asshole he was. He even got into a shouting match with another person on the 71 because some guy was pissed to have to get out of the way of his wheelchair. I could not believe what I was seeing and hearing. The whole bus seemed to turn into an angry mob. Someone couldn’t make it to the exit for their stop so they shout racial shit at the bus driver that he “can’t understand english”.
It was a sad bus trip and it didn’t make me feel very good to be living in this city.