MUNI – 24 Divisadero

This line seems to have the most unfriendly drivers, particularly at night. They skip stops with people waiting, especially if it’s only one person. If they see someone running for the next stop, no matter how close (I was passed while in the intersection next to a stop), they speed up to avoid picking them up. If you’re at 30^th and Mission, it’s a dice roll whether they’ll just keep on Mission to 26^th rather than turning like they’re supposed to.
I’ll give one star back for the drivers that work the day shift and the fact that there aren’t too many phantom 24’s on nextmuni. But you should definitely avoid relying on it in the evening.

I have been taking this route 25 years and I am loving it. Why do I enjoy taking this route?
It’s not always super crowded with almost space to stand unlike the 44, 8X, 29 and some other busy MUNI routes. The frequency of buses operating this route is relatively efficient compared to the 23, 44 & 54. Other than that, this route is quiet so getting a comfortable ride is easy.
DOWNSIDES:
1) If you are boarding this bus from its 3^rd St terminal (between Palou & Oakdale), be careful. As an advisory, some people in this area are nice while there are folks who stand around looking for trouble.
2) I agree that the new version of this route recording is horrible which is a point John has brought up in his review update.* I’d wish MUNI kept the route number and name announcement as «24 Divisadero.»
*Entrance greeting recordings for all of MUNI’s bus routes started on December 5, 2009. It won’t be long until MUNI makes the decision to change these entrance greeting recordings.
Overall, I’d rather take this route as an alternative if I don’t want to get on the 44. It’s practically easy to get a seat upon getting on the bus 70 – 80 percent of the time.

A necessary evil with both wicked and pleasantly surprising moments. Two stories that sum it up:
1. 7:50 am. Guy near back of bus drinking an alcoholic beverage from a brown bag. At 24^th street he throws the can out the window and starts swearing at everyone around him.
2. 5:30 pm. The driver is zipping along Castro and crests the hill at 16^th Street. A woman in the front yells «Who do you think you are? Steve McQueen?» The entire bus erupts with laughter.

I hate you 24 Divisadero. I don’t get it. I show up early and you’re even earlier than me and drive past or you’re late and I miss my connection. Sometimes you are so crowded that you drive right past us. I was so hopeful about the relationship but I have discovered it is actually easier to walk 15 minutes to a reliable bus than to try to catch you.
Screw you. Screw your operators. Screw your dirty ass passengers. I’m walking.

I’m a fan of the 24.
It picks me up two blocks away from my house at McAllister and from there takes me to the Castro, Noe Valley, the end of the Mission, and to my friends front door in Bernal Heights. Plus it runs all night, so I don’t have to add a cab fare to my bar bills.

Catch this every day from 24^th & Castro to 3^rd & Palou, and return, & love it… Think of what this bus sees on each trip:
Pacific heights
Western Addition
Castro
Noe Valley
Mission
Bernal Heights
Bayview
I’d suggest this route covers the yin and yang of this fair city, and the crowd onboard is reflective of the route. In the morning it’s mainly kids getting to school and non-​English speaking folk getting to work around Industrial Boulevard. Lots of regulars. The area around 3^rd and Palou can be a tad exciting, and fragrant, but hey — everybody is entitled to live their own life, right?
I’m a 40-​something generic white guy. Love this ride. Never a (too) bad experience. Try it sometime

its quite the love-​hate relationship between me and the good ol’ 24. i must say that in the last 10 years i find the bus to be a whole lot more safe than it once was. this bus used to have me shook as a youngster. but lately i just find that it rarely comes and is always packed. ill say it again 1) RARELY (like every 25 min) comes and 2) is ALWAYS packed. except during the late night hours of course.
now here’s where my love for the 24 comes in to play. ive found that when hanging out in bernal heights in the late night and my constant urges to not pass out anywhere but my very own bed leaves me with the 24 option. this bus comes about every 25 minutes and generally has no more than 4 quiet people on it, and it gets me within a 15 minute walk from my house. so from cortland to divisadero/​geary in 10 – 15 minutes is really not bad. amazing in fact. all i need is friends with i-​phones to look up when the next one is coming and im good to go.
but to take it everyday to go to work (or to be anywhere on time) would be complete hell and id do anything i could to find a different route.

I’m probably going to regret this, but I’m actually bumping the good ol’ 24 up to three stars because of some nice changes that have occurred in the past year.
For one, I DON’T HAVE TO RIDE THIS BUS THREE TIMES A WEEK ANYMORE. (Sorry for the all caps, but it’s hard for me to express in properly capitalized prose exactly how thankful I am every week that I no longer have the job from hell that I had for almost four years. OK, back to the review.)
For two, soon after I complained about this bus’s frequency declining, it actually improved. A lot. That doesn’t usually happen with Muni.
For three, they got rid of the Fulton stops in both directions. This may be a small thing, but it makes my life about 0.34 percent better. There really was no reason to have two stops in two blocks when only one of those stops (McAllister) has a connecting bus line. Yes, I realize there are more businesses at the corner of Fulton, but people can and will walk a flat block in this city.
I was about to remove a star for the horrible new recording of the entrance greeting. It literally says, «Twenty-​four duh-​VEEZ-​a-​dero.» I’m all for pronouncing things correctly, but I’ll take the straight-​up gringo way over this completely failed attempt to pronounce it correctly. And yes, I can pronounce it correctly in Spanish, and no, the way the recording pronounces it is nothing like this. If you don’t believe me, please ride this bus to find out.

Man, this line is scary!
I take it to work sometimes, but really half the time I fear for my life. The bus is full of rude, swearing, hoodlums. One time one of them threw a milkshake at another, which exploded all over him and a few innocent bystanders. Another time some guy climbed out of a window while the bus was at a red light!
The timing on this line is also flakey. One time I was waiting for 30 minutes for the line, then all of a sudden four busses came. FOUR! Didn’t make much sense, I basically had the bus for myself (which actually was a relief, given the above).
Take the 24 if you must (as I must sometimes), but definitely at your own risk.

The Good:
Runs straight through the city from North to South (and vice versa). Very easy to transfer to other lines, and it stops right by my house; less than ½ block. It also runs 24 hours, making a great line to get to and from bars/​home late at night.
The Bad:
Runs about every 30 minutes or so. Ugh, it’s so infrequent that the chances are you’ll be extra early or super late to wherever you need to get to because odds are, you’ll have to transfer to another bus and the timing is usually way off.
The Ugly:
Because it runs up and down major streets only, there can be tons of traffic, making your wait at the stop (and bus ride) longer. Plus, there can be several people trying to flag down cabs at the bus stops so A) buses are stuck behind cabs that are illegally stopped, or B) buses won’t stop because they think you’re part of the entourage flagging down a cab.

i have lived in 3 different apartments in 6 years in san francisco and every one has been on the 24 line. so we are old friends. or i guess old frenemies. i ride the 24 every morning and afternoon to and from work these days – noe valley to pacific heights and back.
it is absolute hell in the morning. you are riding on a bus full of schoolchildren who poke you in the face with their backpacks and don’t give you a seat even though you’re almost 8 months pregnant and the hills on this route are incredibly steep. the kids are loud and rude and blare awful music and make me think that bringing another child into the world is an awful mistake (unfortunately a bit too late now).
but that’s if you actually are able to get on the bus. most of the time it is running late and you wait forever, only to see one or two in a row. and recently the driver hasn’t even been stopping at my bus stop, he just drives on by ignoring me, which forces me to wait for the next bus which is sometimes over 10 minutes away and makes me late to work.
i appreciate that the line goes exactly where i need it to go. and i know i’m not the only person in the city who takes the bus and i shouldn’t expect it to be empty and not stop until we arrive where i want to be. but out of all the bus lines i’ve ever taken, the 24 is always the most convenient for me and offers the worst service. next time i’m moving to the richmond.

I’m so glad that #24 exists because I was looking at the map trying to figure where the hell Alamo park is.
There! I found it! ooh it’s close to Castro! about 10 blocks!
I decided to ask someone just to be sure I’m right. The guy was nice enough to tell me that I’m better off taking the bus than to walk the dozen blocks.
I’m so glad he told me to take the bus instead because walking uphill all the way would kill me.
Thank you #24 for existing!

Hell to the NO…
Fine…I’ll give you a star because I appreciate that this line literally goes everywhere… but seriously… GHETTO.
Granted…I was taking this line from a work event in Bayview Hunters Point (need I say more?), but I literally felt shady and unsafe when boarding this thing. And to top it off… it was 20 minutes OFF schedule… I was so pissed and I almost missed my performance in the Castro theatre.
To top it all off… I’m sitting there just minding my business, when the guy in front of me pulls out a white shoe cleaner dispenser and proceeds to tag on his window. Don’t get me wrong, shit, I appreciate graffiti art… but on a freaking muni bus, right in front of everyone? COME ON!!!
Never again.

The 24 isn’t my line. In fact I never take it.
So as I’m standing on Fillmore around 10pm, waiting forever for a 22 to come, I see an empty 24 come by, trudging along at 10 miles an hour. It’s a phantom bus!
At first he didn’t open his doors, but he must have figured what the hell.
Me: «Is this the 22?»
Phantom 24 Driver: «Where ya goin’?»
Me: «Haight St.»
Phantom 24 Driver: «Aight, I’ll take you there»
So we start off again, never to exceed 10 miles an hour. However, it was our own personal MUNI chauffeur as we were the only ones on the bus and the only ones he picked up. Once we got off on Haight, he probably went off to pick up more random people where they weren’t expecting him.
I still don’t know why you were down this way, or if you stole the bus and was giving joy rides, but thank you Phantom 24 Driver.

It gets me from work to walking distance from my house. Pretty alright by me. It can also take me to the Castro (when I want to buy comics from my favorite gay comic book store!) It’ll even give me a ride all the way up to Noe Valley if I feel like dodging strollers for the fun of it.
Yeah, so it gets pretty crowded at the end of the work day… and Divisadero is slower than a sloth stuck in maple syrup on a cold day… but whatevs. That’s what iPods are for.

The 24 is the 22’s nicer little sister. It runs up and down Divis and although it’s no walk in the park, it’s better than the bum-​riden, jerky 22.
If you’re in Lower Haight heading towards Pac. Heights, walk a few blocks west of Fillmore and take the 24 instead.

The 24 is able to take me home, to work, to the Castro and the Mission.
Unfortunately, I find it to be quite unreliable. Part of this could be my fault. I can never wake up in time to catch the appropriate bus to get to work by 8. I usually find myself walking to work. And seriously, 9 times out of 10 I get to work and no bus has passed me by, which means that it would not have been worth waiting for the bus.
I added an extra star because taking the bus to work is a 3-​minute bus ride versus a 20-​minute walk.

I love public transportation.
Love it.
I love the crazy conversations, I love getting all up close and personal with ‘the people’, I love that for peanuts I can get across town, I love checking out the cute guys that come aboard, I love playing the game when did Mr. Hobo last have a shower?
Let me repeat, I love public transportation.
And yet the 24 keeps me wary of the whole public transport system. It SHOULDN’T be this bad. Even when it isn’t chock a block with folks (as it usually is), the trek up and down the hills between Castro and Bernal Heights are enough to make it feel more miserable than most bus rides. Maybe I’ve just got a weak stomach, but this bus always seems to disappoint.

*This is the scenario on any given Tuesday — Saturday, when I take this bus to work*
I check
, which tells me there is a bus coming in 1, 11, and 21 minutes. I think, cool, I’ll shoot for the 11 minute bus, and walk out the door. It takes me 2 minutes to get to the bus stop.
I check NextBus (on my mobile), and it tells me the bus is coming in 9 minutes. Cool. That means I’ll get to work right on time.
3 minutes pass. NextBus says it’ll be 6 minutes until it arrives. Neat. Right on schedule.
2 minutes later, I check again (I’m impatient). 17 minutes! What? How did this happen? What happened to the other one???
Then, about 20 minutes later, two or three buses roll up to the stop, one after another, as if everything is normal and it’s totally not their fault that I’m late for work.
Bastards.

Some days there’s rain. Some days there’s sun. Some days, your dog is house trained and some days he’s «fussy.» What was that emotionally stunted, bench dwelling, simpleton (who still managed to bag the hot Blonde) fond of saying? «Life is like a box of Chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.»
Sadly, you know exactly what you’re going to get when you ride the 24. There’s no mystery when you board this one way ticket to hell and back. The element of surprise has long been stripped away and, like it’s inbred bastard cousin the 38 Geary, you’re always guaranteed the same shit caked, fall down nasty, headache inducing, never on time even after you’ve checked next bus twice, white knuckle, slow as molasses, teenaged girls on their teenaged cellphones who say things like «no that bitch didn’t», spit on the seats, hep on the railings, hot mess of an experience.
Know this 24 and know it now, we’re coming to a final stand off and one way or another, only one of us is walking away alive.