john ater / photographer

there is something about riding public transportation i find fascinating. texas’ car culture permeated my thinking until i moved to san francisco and in that move, i found the frustrations of owning a vehicle. a necessity in texas, cars here breed more trouble than they are worth. so i take muni, not the most efficient or timely public transportation in the world but it works fairly well.

on those rides are a seemingly endless number of interesting people, from folks with money to the homeless, a rainbow of colors and nationalities, tourists and residents, all of us briefly going in the same direction.