26-26-26 Valencia

It's Saturday the 26th and the iPhone says we have 26 minutes to wait for the 26 Valencia bus. This is the kind of magic we have always associated with the 26 Valencia, the bus line of which we are most inordinately fond. It's not like the 14 Mission, which we need, or the 33 Stanyan, which we respect, or the 38 Geary, which we fear (in a Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit kind of way).

No, the 26 Valencia is a magical creature - 26 minutes (supposedly) to wait on the balmy evening of the 26th - just the kind of numerology we would expect from this rare creature, the unicorn of buses. We feel that spotting a 26 Valencia is good luck (2x13?) - it gives the day a special air.

Which is why we were dismayed to see that the Municipal Transit Authority's Transit Effectiveness Project (that's a mouthful of bureaucracy) has hatched to plan to snuff out the 26 Valencia. Posters have appeared on poles up and down the route asking folks to comment on the recently-released Draft Proposals to Transform Muni.

Perhaps the rare and elusive 26 Valencia is not a practical bus line, but is not the unicorn an impractical creature? Does this mean we should kill them off? If the 26 Valencia were to perish, we could never again have the extraordinary experience of spotting Michelle Tea on board -- Tea, of course, made her first big literary splash with her novel Valencia.