Witching Hour

When is this?

Perhaps in five minutes after 5 p.m. when all the elevators fill with office workers ready to go home. Perhaps it is senior citizens looking out their window and seeing the rain has stopped and the sun is out. Perhaps it is the classroom bell ringing at Marina Middle School, signaling the end of the school day. Or the end of a baseball game, a Niners game, or the last fireworks grand finale. All these things have a different time of day or night, but would fall under the phrase, “witching hour.” And this hour is the time, just like out of Mad magazines’ panorama cartoon collage, with everyone from every part of the city saying the same thing at once, “Let’s go before the mob starts!”

Would you really like being on a run that leaves the Ferry Plaza at 5:05 p.m., especially if there are tunnel problems? Or would you rather be in Daly City leaving in the non-peak direction, with a few baby sitters or house cleaners returning home?

Would you rather be leaving the industrial area near dog patch on the 22 after 5 p.m., or in the Marina, a residential area, hours after school has let out?

Does your run leave Fillmore and Bay five minutes after the bell rings at the largest middle school in the system, or would you already be on the road ten minutes away from the school, heading up the hill past Union? At Muni, just like in stand-up comedy, timing is key.

Leaving time from the terminal never had more importance. And many times we never know exactly when the clock has struck, or the shot was fired. All we know, with a sinking feeling as our bus fills up before we even get to the second transfer point along our run, that we a going to get “beat up” on this trip and get killed. Oh and by the way: Crazy can show up at any time, any place!

But lest we forget the skip stop rule, and when our bus gets loaded to capacity, we no longer have room, and can’t take on any new passengers. The fault, dear Brutus, is how the hell do we do it and avoid the ninth level of Muni hell!