Now We No Longer Have Our Chocolate Bus

Now that we were back, we were looking forward to waiting for MUNI and smelling all the chocolate-y goodness of the new aromatic "Got Milk?" ads (insert Got MUNI? joke here). But alas, we came back a day late and a dollar short. Due to the usual stuff, the chocolate-smelling bus stops are no more. Meet the new MUNI bus stop, same as the old MUNI bus stop.

Yesterday, the order came down that the strips that gave out the smell were to be taken down. That meant those things were up for a total of one day as they just went up on Monday. The reason is because smell activists (what? You didn't think they existed?) complained that the smell could cause asthma attacks or other sundry badness when getting a whiff. Of course, one could stand at the bus stop on 16th & Mission and realize there are a lot worse things out there to smell but we digress. Also making complaints were activists for anti-obesity organizations afraid that it would make people want to eat cookies, diabetes organizations afraid that it would make people want to eat cookies, and "homeless advocates who argued the smell would leave them hungry and unable to purchase food." That, of course, would be bad.

The company who made the strips disagreed with the action, naturally, and said they wouldn't cause any problems, but they would say that. In fact, they decided to use SF first to try this out because well, it's San Francisco and they thought if it could fly here, they'd have no problems anywhere else. Obviously, they underestimated us. Members of the "environmental illness community," however applauded the decision and a member of the MTA's governing board said they'd try to prevent something like this happening again because "some people find it offensive."

As for Nathaniel Ford, he wanted to make some things clear before ordering the strips taken down, mainly that we here in San Francisco are "not against chocolate chip cookies and we are not against milk." Thanks for making that clear-- we'd hate to be thought of anti-chocolate chipites. Of course, they could have vetted the thing so they knew this was happening. Apparently, they were a little surprised by all this.

Ooopsie.