There are a handful of  Trader Joe’s here in San Francisco.

For you who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a “different” kind of market that’s mainly concentrated in California and the east coast.

We try to get to one of our local ones as often as we can.

Here’s why..

San Francisco Muni Train - home of Veronica the sexy Muni Lady

I have a serious confession to make..

I have a torrid crush on The Muni Lady.

Yes, I said “torrid.”

Muni is the public transit system here in San Francisco. It’s short for “San Francisco Municipal Railway,” which is what they call it despite the fact that they run buses too, which aren’t on rails.

The name has stuck around since the old days when pretty much everything was on rails, including cable cars and horse-drawn street cars. They still have the cable cars for nostalgia’s sake, but thankfully the horse-drawn cars are a thing of the past because horses tend to take a dump on the street, and sometimes your shoes if you don’t get out of the way fast enough.

By the way, did you know that our famed Golden Gate Park here in San Francisco is built almost entirely on horse poo?

It’s true!

Back when horse-drawn streetcars were plentiful the city needed a place to put all the horse poo they shoveled off the street everyday, so they carted it off in wagons to these sand dunes out by the ocean.

This went on for decades, so plenty of horse poo piled up, which must have been quite pleasant for residents of that area.

Then, right around the time mechanization started to put horses out of a job, someone came up with the idea of having a huge park much like New York’s Central Park, then someone else said, “Hey, those horse poo covered sand dunes out by the ocean would make a great park because we have decades worth of built-in fertilizer!”

This has nothing to do with The Muni Lady of course, because she wasn’t born yet when they made Golden Gate Park. Heck, I wasn’t even born yet. But the fact that our park is made out of horse poo is almost as fascinating as the fact that most of the downtown district is built on top of the remnants of old sailing ships.

It’s true!

But I digress, so let’s get back to my crush; the sultry, sexy Muni Lady.

Her name is Veronica, which may or may not be accurate, but nobody really knows her name so that’s what I call her.

This is what she looks like..

Veronica, the sexy, sultry Muni Lady

This too may or may not be accurate, because nobody knows what she looks like, so this is what I like to think she looks like.

Veronica, you see, is THE VOICE OF MUNI and, if you’ve ridden on any of Muni’s vehicles, you’ve heard her sweet, sexy “celestial melody” (Longfellow) call out the stops and other information.

“How sweetly sounds the voice of a good woman.” – Massinger

San Francisco Cable Car - sadly sans Veronica

The only exception is the cable cars because the city wants to keep them all nostalgic and, as I already said, Veronica hadn’t been born yet in 1905, so the cable car operators take care of that task as they ring their little bell and belt out..

“Montgomery, next stop! MONTGOMEREEEEE!!!”

But Veronica is much more pleasant to listen to, primarily on the Muni Light-Rail Trains. Her hypnotically melodic tone reverberates throughout the station while one is waiting on the platform, and then she can be heard INSIDE the train once one boards!

This is awesomeness, because I just can’t get enough of her. I wish I could record her and put an audio file on here for you.

When she says things like..

“Outbound.. two car.. N.. in four minutes. Followed by.. one car.. K.. in six minutes.”

..I get goosebumps.

Then, when I’m on the train and speeding through the dark, scary tunnels, she provides words of warmth and comfort..

“Next stop.. Forest Hill Station.”

MORE goosebumps!

On certain days after having zipped through the multitude of downtown stations, I have to change my underwear after getting home.

It doesn’t end there, either. She’s on all the buses!

I’m telling you, this broad really gets around.

San Francisco City Bus with Veronica aboard

When I’m on a city bus I hear my sweet siren call out the street name of each stop as we approach it..

“Lombard Street.”

*swoon*

I can’t imagine what it’d be like to be married to such a wonderful gal. It’d be absolute heaven to come home after having slaved over a hot netbook at a wifi cafe all day to hear..

“Dinner..  lamb shanks in pomegranate sauce with garlic mashed potatoes.. in ten minutes.. followed by.. Crème brûlée and espresso.. in thirty minutes.”

*swoon*

*drool*

We have another transit system that runs through San Francisco called BART, which is an unfortunate acronym for “Bay Area Rapid Transit.” Bart consists only of trains — really long, fast ones — which run in a straight line under the city as they speed along on their way to outlying areas including cities on the other side of the bay, which means they go through a long underwater tunnel.

So, in that sense, they’re not really competition to Muni, although one has a choice of taking a Muni train or BART train if one is going from, say, Balboa Station to any of the four downtown stations.

Personally I opt for the Muni train because of Veronica, as you might have guessed. Even though BART is about twice as fast.

An ugly-ass BART TRAIN sans Veronica and bells

This is because BART doesn’t use Veronica’s voice to announce the train arrivals, sadly enough. BART uses a synthesized male voice that I have cleverly dubbed “Bart” and he sounds like one of those voice boxes people who can’t speak use to talk.

Actually, there are two Bart voices — one for the outbound trains and one for the inbound — and they both are synthesized male voices but one is just an octave lower than the other to (I’m guessing) differentiate.

The higher one will say..

“Next train.. nine car.. Richmond.. in five minutes.”

Then the lower one will say..

“Approaching.. five car train for Daly City.”

..and it’s all rather boring.

When you’re inside the BART train, the driver announces the upcoming station on the public address system..

“Folks, we have the Embarcadero Station coming up, all out for THE EMBARCADERO!”

So at least that adds a little flair to it and it’s better than the synthetic voices, but the BART drivers don’t even get a little bell to ring like the cable car drivers do, so I’ll take VERONICA over the whole lot of them anytime.

But alas, I know as well as you do that things are seldom as they seem, which means that Veronica probably looks like this..

Veronica, aka Matilda the sexy, sultry Muni Lady, in Walmart

And her real name is probably Matilda (no offense Matilda, if you’re reading this) and she probably doesn’t even live in San Francisco. She’s probably a professional voice-over person who lives in New York or Los Angeles, neither of which has a park made out of horse poo.

I have nothing to back up that last statement though. They might have horse poo parks too, so please comment and let me know if you live in either city and can vouch that they have horse poo parks.

But when it comes to the likes of Veronica, a man can dream, can’t he? Especially when he’s on the train platform, waiting for the N-Judah..

“Approaching.. two car.. N.. destination.. pure audio bliss..”

*swoon*

A BART train approximately a mile long approaches Balboa Station, and the synthetic announcer makes synthetic announcements while the train swallows a college girl and some other people before whooshing off at high-speed to Fremont..

As a San Francisco Muni train approaches, you can hear Veronica make a few announcements starting at 0:25. Oddly enough, she didn’t announce the stations while inside the train in this 2008 video — she does nowadays though. In this video you can hear her again at 7:40.

Ride along for the whole video if you want to take a trip Rhodester and coffeesister take rather often..

To continue what we started in yesterday’s post, which is to put something up in recognition of PRIDE WEEKEND here in San Francisco, we here at The RhodesTer Chronicles would like to say that everyone should have a SASSY GAY FRIEND.

Yes, everyone! We do. Hi James! And Rick. Plus a handful of others.

And you don’t have to be a major character from the works of Shakespeare to enjoy the useful advice of a sassy gay friend. You can be just anyone.

We are.

Biatch.

“San Francisco Joe” entertains the crowd on Friday night, June 25th at Java Beach Cafe in the outer sunset district of San Francisco.

For the record, the crowd this late consisted of the three girls closing behind the counter, a girl on a laptop to Joe’s left and a lovely young couple to the right of Rhodester.

And Rhodester, of course.. eating something and drinking a beer.

This is what happens when hipsters die young. They go to heaven where gothic blonde angels serenade them with Lady Gaga songs on harps..

..you happen to be feeling inadequate today.

If you can’t see the video, try this.

Here’s proof..

Now take our poll..

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

It’s bad enough when the flaming nut-jobs from the
Westboro Baptist church say “God hates Jews and fags,” but this?

(We bet the little girl got caught listening to Lady Gaga and has
to hold the sign as punishment. Cherry Cherry Boom Boom!)

Dedicated to the flaming nut-jobs of Westboro Bapitist “Church”..
Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say) -Lady Gaga
(VEVO video, USA only.. sorry)

Here’s how much..

Not seeing the video? click here

in loving memory of Ian and Rufus
Visit petfinder.com to find a shelter in your
area and rescue your future best friend.

HAPPY IN PARAGUAY – by DJO

What happens when people with too much time on their hands dub over old Star Trek TNG episodes with things that it looks like the actors are saying but they’re really not.

What say you?

..it’s important to follow these three simple steps.

1. Keep a cool head. Explain what’s happening in a clear, calm voice.
2. Have all of your information organized and ready to go.
   
3. Whatever you do DON’T SWEAR, or they just may hang up on you and let your loved-one die, because that’s really kind of offensive, you know.

..it isn’t pretty.

..with what HAS to be the worst actors/singers EVER,
demonstrating the worst product EVER.

Please don’t shoot the messenger – that would be me – after viewing. It’s shared as a warning to you all. A warning that things are not quite right with the world. That perhaps we should look inward and examine ourselves, and humanity. Then, after examination, we should collectively take icepicks and stab our eardrums again and again and again.

Late addition – HERE’S how to make a commercial ad video.. T-mobile got it right.

..but in a way, I have.

SOME PEOPLE just need to.. uh.. umm.. erm..

..AVRIL LAVIGNE on ACID.. what say you?

Here all along I thought it was just college kids with webcams..

..Coffeesister and I have decided to throw a dance party, and you’re all invited!

Unfortunately, this is the only DJ we could get with our budget..

An old friend of mine was being kind of a show-off by trying to impress me with his real estate holdings and how much money he’s making nowadays by “flipping houses” and developing properties.

It didn’t work – I wasn’t very impressed, and we even ended up coming to the realization that we don’t have much in common anymore.

On the other hand, THIS GUY rocks..