49
August 2019
It’s 1am, and you’ve decided to take the bus home. The taste of your Super Burrito warms your soul and the remnants of tomatillo salsa burn your tongue as you push past the fracas at El Farolito’s entrance, stepping from the restaurant’s bright fluorescent white into the dim orange world outside.
Past midnight on a weekend, and the Mission’s heart is pulsating. Ubers and Lyfts whoosh through the convergence of 24th and Mission, and drunken crowds throng the sidewalks. There are 4 dudes skateboarding up the northeast entrance of the BART station, their wheels clacking on the brick floor and walls. There are a few homeless people on every corner, tottering around peering into trash cans.
You take this all in as you cross Mission Street towards the bus stop on the northwest corner of the intersection. There’s really no reason to take the bus--$4 for a Lyft Line and you’ll be whisked home in 8 minutes or less. But it’s Sunday tomorrow and you’re already going to wake up sleep-deprived and hey, why not do something different for once…..
So you sit on the bench and people-watch, ears still ringing from the tunes at Bruno’s, breathing in the fresh cold air that’s your favorite thing about this city.
In front of you, across Mission Street, is the ever-bustling line of El Farolito. Largely composed of millennials like yourself, the line is nonetheless interspersed with more socioeconomic diversity than most other places in the city. Inside the window is a furious bustle of activity, the Latino employees (who you’ve come to recognize after dozens of visits there) racing against time like they’re on a reality show.
To the restaurant’s right, in the brick-lined northeast plaza of the BART station, a group of middle-aged Latino men stand and shoot the shit. The skateboarders you saw earlier have stopped doing tricks and are now slowly circling the station entrance. One of the homeless men has started pushing his grocery cart up 24th Street towards Valencia, bent low for maximum leverage over the overflowing vehicle.
There are two others with you at the bus stop, a Latino restaurant employee and a Filipino man in a black jacket and jeans. Both are hunched over their Androids, tapping away until they hear the unmistakable pneumatic whirr of a Muni bus approaching.
It’s 1am, and the 49 bus is PACKED. No joke—it’s like Tokyo up in here. Every seat in this 2-segment bus is taken, and the aisle is similarly clogged—you barely make it ten feet before you can go no further.
Who the hell is riding the bus at this hour?
Well, no millennials, that’s for sure. No white people or Indians that you can see, either. Latin Americans, Chinese people, and Filipinos abound—representing the majority of the bus’s population. Many are still clad in their restaurant uniforms, some carrying paper bags probably full of leftovers. Weary faces everywhere as a contingent of San Francisco’s working class returns home from another night of toil.
49 Van Ness / Mission
Physical Geography: The 49 plies a north-south route through the heart of San Francisco. It begins on Van Ness Street in Fisherman’s Wharf, continuing down Van Ness until that road’s union with Mission Street just south of Market. It runs all the way along the Mission’s central artery, south through Bernal Heights and Outer Mission, before finally breaking with Mission Street near Balboa Park and ending near CCSF.
Social Geography: In another manner of speaking, the 49 knits some of SF’s core late-night hotspots (Polk Street, Hayes Valley, the Mission) with the neighborhoods where many of their employees live (Outer Mission, Excelsior, Balboa Park).
You hop off the bus four stops later, in Bernal Heights. Nobody gets off with you. Most of the people who live on your street are asleep, having long since been whisked home by their Ubers or Lyfts. On another night, you would have been there with them.
Standing for a moment on the street corner, alone, you watch the packed bus as it whirs on down Mission and out of sight, carrying its sleepy human cargo homeward into the night.
Welcome to San Francisco.