Community

In honor of Transit Month, we’re talking about the community of public transit. Community Magazine is an independent, print-only publication that celebrates Muni, the joy of transit and the experience of seeing San Francisco by bus or train. In this episode, we speak with Community Editor in Chief Jac Matter Resnik and Designer in Chief Jack Sloop. We also are joined by Muni Is My Ride Author Lia Smith, who is a contributor to the magazine. And SFMTA Digital and Brand Communications Manager Dovid Coplon stops by to talk about the Muni Store.

You can learn more about Community at communitymagazinesf.org, and you can find the Muni Store at themunistore.com

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MELISSA CULROSS, HOST: Is there an appetite for a magazine dedicated to our public transit system, Muni? The creator of just such a magazine thinks so.

JAC MATTER RESNIK, COMMUNITY FOUNDER AND EDITOR IN CHIEF: This town loves Muni. It’s pretty incredible. You walk around, you see people in, in Muni merch. I don't think you see that in many other cities. 

MELISSA: Welcome to Taken with Transportation, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s official podcast. I’m your host, Melissa Culross, and you can’t spell “community” without Muni in the middle of that word. So, that is the name of an independent, printed-hard-copy-only publication about Muni. In this special Transit Month episode, we have caught up with the founder and editor in chief of Community, Jac Matter Resnik. We’ve met in the Financial District, and we begin the conversation by asking Resnik how long she has been in the city by the bay.

JAC-1: I have lived in San Francisco…I moved back here two years ago. I first moved here in 2017, lived here 2017 to 2019. So, 2017 was my first experience really becoming a Muni rider, um, a frequent rider of the 38.

MELISSA: How did you learn to use the system? 

JAC: So, my first experience using Muni, I was attempting to meet my friends at a brewery.  I can't remember what brewery, and I wish I did remember that detail. But I took it from the outer Richmond, and I was really confident. I looked at the route. I knew exactly where I was going. I get on the bus, and I realize I'm going in the wrong direction. But I, I didn't quite know how to do it in a subtle way. I felt so embarrassed as if everyone would have known that I was taking it in the wrong direction. So, it took a couple tries to really get used to it. And for a while I was, I would only take the 38 because once I nailed that route, it was the one route I knew. So, it took me a little while to really get comfortable with taking other lines and routes.

MELISSA: So, you know, when I first moved here, I went into a convenience store, and I bought a Muni map, a paper map. And I used it so much that I had to tape and re-tape it together so many times. You know, in a way I feel like technology is good, but if I had to learn Muni now without that map, I'd do it, obviously, but I'd be a little bit sad. It was so comforting to have something to hold. 

JAC: I really wish, I mean, we'll get into this with the magazine, but, you know, obviously, I'm a big fan of physical media, being able to look at things, open things, touch things with your hands, look at things like that. I would have loved to learn Muni on a physical map, I think.

MELISSA: So, you mentioned the magazine. Let's talk a little bit about that and what inspired it. 

JAC: Yeah.  So, I was, so first of all, I've always loved print media. I, I'm a journalist by training. I don't do that as my day job anymore, unfortunately. But one day I picked up a copy of this magazine called The San Franciscan. Erica Messner started it. And I picked up the last copy at Green Apple. And I was so blown away at this idea of having a print magazine that was dedicated to San Francisco, specifically. It was kind of a riff on The New Yorker. And I was looking at it in Dolores Park. My husband was sitting next to me, and I thought, “Man, I'm so sad this magazine isn't running anymore.” And I was like, “Maybe we should do something like this.” And he was like, “Maybe you should do something around Muni. You love Muni.  There could be a really cool way to do things around the different, the different lines and the history of the lines and the businesses along the lines.” So, I told a friend about that. And I said, “You know, I would, maybe I should do this Muni magazine situation.” For a long time, we all called it Muni Mag in our friend group. And it kind of took off from there.

MELISSA: As a consequence of this, can we say that Dolores Park is where great ideas are born? 

JAC: I would definitely say so. I would say reception has been overwhelmingly positive. I mean, this town loves Muni. It’s pretty incredible. You walk around, you see people in, in Muni merch. I don't think you see that in many other cities. Um, but people have really loved the magazine. And I think, again, having something really physical you can hold on to. Hopefully you read it while you ride Muni, which is my dream. You know, I think there's a lot of different ways that people have kind of interacted with this magazine. And it's been a really nice mix. I would say the first issue was mostly me writing and begging people to submit photos and articles. Fast forward a year later, I now have 25 different contributors, artists, writers, a really great designer, Jack Sloop. So, I'm really excited about kind of where the magazine has headed. We had one article about taking the N-Owl, which if you've never taken an owl bus, it is truly an experience. Someone wrote about the experience of riding, late at night. You see all kinds of riders. He saw a nurse finishing her shift. He saw someone getting on in a crop top and rollerblades. He saw people talking after a Giants game. I felt like that article really encompassed why I love Muni and why, you know, I think there's always an opportunity to see something really cool and interesting on, on every ride. 

MELISSA: So, you mentioned that you do take the 38 a lot and that you love it. Is that your only favorite Muni line or are there other favorite Muni lines? 

JAC: Oh, I have so many favorite Muni lines. I mean, the line that I take now is the N. I think my personal favorite now is the 43. I think riding through the Presidio, the windows are open. You have the eucalyptus. You see the glimpses of Golden Gate Bridge. Um, I think that's probably my favorite line to take. 

MELISSA: The 43 is an excellent bus, also. It goes from one end of the city to the other. Like, you, the way you can see all the different neighborhood...or not all, but so many different neighborhoods on the 43, I think is, is absolutely priceless. 

JAC: It's, it's really special. Whenever I have friends or family visiting San Francisco, I try to get them on the 43. 

MELISSA: So, what made you decide to change the name of your publication from Muni Mag to Community? And where I'm kind of going with that is also to ask you, what's your community around Muni like? 

JAC: Yeah, so, I will say I still sometimes refer to it as Muni Mag, um, for short. But I think Community really, really encompasses not only the Muni system, but again, San Francisco as a city, as an ecosystem. One of the first times that I took the 38, I started to notice, you know, the same people, right? You see the same commuters. And so, I was taking the 38 maybe for a couple of months. I was in my early 20s, and I kept seeing the same man on Muni. And eventually he asked me out on a date. And I remember calling my parents and saying, “Not only did I meet someone…” And of course, you know, when you're dating, you're kind of thinking, “Could this be the one?” I said, “I met someone, and I met them on Muni.” It was like my perfect dream. Safe to say, that did not go anywhere. But I think what I love about Muni is that, again, anything can happen. You don't know who you're going to meet, who you're going to bump into. I think now that I'm really established in the city, I have my own community. Almost every time that I am either taking the N or walking to the N, I see someone that I know. I see a friend. I see a grocery store clerk that I know. I see a barista, a bartender. And so, it just makes me feel really connected to the city and to my, my neighborhood.

MELISSA: We did a podcast episode about people who met their partners on Muni. Even though that didn't go anywhere for you, that might be an episode that you'd be interested in.

JAC: It's very, you know, it's very interesting. Um, again, I just think that if you really open yourself up. I think if you take your headphones off when you're on Muni, and you really kind of open up, kind of you're, you're open to the environment and the people around you, I think really anything can happen. 

MELISSA: What are some of your ambitions for this magazine? How long do you think you'll keep doing it? 

JAC: I was just having this conversation about how long I want to keep doing Community. I mean, hopefully forever. It started as a passion project, but really, you know, it's, it's turned into again, you know, pun intended, a really great community of people that I would have never met otherwise. And now I found myself, you know, if I talk to people about doing this magazine, now people come to me and they say, “What's going on with Muni? Why, or what's the best route?” And I've kind of turned into this Muni expert somehow, even though I'm far from that, which has been really cool. But I think, in terms of how long I want to keep it going, yeah, as long as I possibly can. My vision is really to do an issue that focuses on each different line or different segments of each line. So, you can really dig into the neighborhoods, the operators, the history. So, I would love to kind of go in that direction moving forward. 8:03

BUS ANNOUNCEMENT: Please hold on.

MELISSA: Resnik mentioned Jack Sloop, who also works on the magazine. So, we decide to chat with him, as well, about his role in this project.

JACK SLOOP, COMMUNITY DESIGNER: I guess I credit myself as the designer in chief for Community. I think that’s an incredibly over-pretentious title. I think that I just happened to be lucky enough to come across Jac. And she was like, “Hey, I wanna make a magazine.” And I said, “Say less.” I’ve done a ton of magazines for a ton of different community organizations in the past. And this was exactly what I was looking for: transit, San Francisco and a writer who, I mean, she is talented beyond belief in the amount of content she’s able to put out, and the quality of what she’s doing. So, from then it was…I told her, “Listen. I have no interest in editing. I have no interest in writing. I do enough of that in my outside life. I just want to make beautiful magazines. And I will have no input on what you write. And she said, “That sounds great.” And “Designer in Chief” also implies that there’s other people under us. Which, like, it’s really just the two of us, kind of, figuring it out and asking people, like, “Hey, do you wanna be involved?” And that’s, that’s really all it is, and it’s really fun. 

MELISSA: We ask Sloop what he hopes readers will get out of the magazine.

JACK: We want people finding community, as the name implies, on Muni. We want connecting with San Francisco. We want people, um, travelling in a way that’s part of the city, in a way that’s part of all of what this beautiful place is. And, you know, I have a car, okay. But the magazine is really about showing the landscapes of the technology and the experience of connecting with a city via transit and what that looks like. Which, personally, I think is incredibly extraordinary. And I think the, the magazine is a love letter to what this city is, and how we move through it and the beautiful things we can see in it. And ultimately, of course, Muni, itself, and the ways it helps us connect with the city. 

BUS ANNOUNCEMENT: Doors are opening.

MELISSA: Resnik and Sloop put the magazine together, but we also wanted to talk with one of their contributors. That led us to Lia Smith. She’s a transit enthusiast and writer of the book Muni Is My Ride, which, by the way, is on the Transit Month reading list that you can find at the San Francisco Public Library. Smith begins by telling us how Muni Is My Ride came to be.

LIA SMITH, MUNI IS MY RIDE WRITER: My husband is an artist. He saw a passenger on the bus that he just fell in love with the image, made a drawing of that passenger and then put it away. And then that drawing was followed by about eight others over the course of several years. And then he said, “Hey, I wanna make a book.” And so, it kind of went from there. I asked him if he would be willing to do portraits of operators. So that was kind of, like, my pushing because I felt Muni operators are unsung heroes. So, he agreed, and he's…became a much better portraitist…much better at doing portraits over the course of the project, which was in the end, uh, maybe 10 years. So, once we started interviewing operators, it became clear, like, okay, this is really our soul because we're both transit enthusiasts, both ride Muni all the time. My husband also rides a bike. Like, we're just very public transportation, low carbon footprint, et cetera, et cetera. So, the more we talked and interacted with operators, we thought, “No, this book is a celebration of Muni.” And so that's, that's how it evolved. 

MELISSA: And the book came out at the end of 2023. Do I have that right? 

LIA: Right. Yep. It was really hard to find a publisher because it was considered by most publishing companies as a niche project. Like, who would be interested in it except for people who live in San Francisco, which is reasonable. But anyway, we lucked into Patrick Marks, who's the publisher. Been in the book business, like, his whole adult life. And, um, he said, “Yeah, I'm going to publish this book. I love Muni.”

MELISSA: Smith says she got involved with Community after meeting Resnik at an event. 

LIA: She said, “Oh, I've heard so much about your book, and can I get a copy?” So, we signed it for her, and she told us about her project. I mean, she's a total go-getter, um, and said, “I really want to stay in touch with you.” That was in June. By July, she had sent us an email telling us all about Community Magazine and asked if she could excerpt from Muni Is My Ride. Of course. So, that's how we met Jac. She invited us to her launch party, which we attended. And she just brought together all these great people for her first issue. And we were happy, not just to help her out, but also, she's promoting our book.

MELISSA: Now that you are part of, of Community, the magazine, what do you hope for it? What do you hope this project brings about?

LIA: Jac's mission to make every San Franciscan in love with Muni, I think is a wonderful goal, and I'm all for it. I love her analog idea to get people off their phones and get them interacting. A lot of people who are Muni fans talk about that. I talked about it in my introduction in the book. So, I think Muni, riding Muni really humanizes us. It puts us together with people we wouldn't normally associate with. So, I totally applaud Jac, and I hope it kind of catches on and sort of becomes part of what I see as the current zeitgeist. It's really amazing how many people, both people who were born and bred here or lived here for most of their lives and then total newcomers are Muni fans, Muni advocates. They, they're creating art. I've never seen anything like it in my life. So, something's happening, and Jac is contributing to that.

MELISSA: Earlier in this episode, Resnik mentioned seeing people wearing Muni merchandise. So, we want to take a minute to talk about the Muni Store. Dovid Coplon is the SFMTA’s Digital and Brand Communications Manager, and he runs the Muni Store. He tells us how the relatively new store got going. 

DOVID COPLON, SFMTA DIGITAL BRAND COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER: In the way, way back machine, in 2023, we released our first holiday sweater. And that holiday sweater was a huge success. And then we, we opened the store in November 2024. We are coming up on the second full year of the store. And kind of funny, on our launch, we had so much trouble just keeping the store fully stocked. We've learned our lesson, and we are much more aggressive about stocking now.

MELISSA: So, how can the Muni Store, or Muni merchandise, itself, promote community?

DOVID: I kind of slice this in three different ways. One, in particular, is brand equity. The MuniWorm is, if not the, at least one of the most recognizable brands across the city. And it has an extremely loyal following. Another way that I like to think about that is through customer loyalty. We have avid transit fans, and those fans love to show their pride. And so, you see, whether it be in our partners, the San Francisco City Football Club and their jerseys, or you see it in the merchandise from our Muni Store, or even the Market Street Railway Museum. There is a tremendous amount of pride that our customers have in that worm. And finally, I think it's really important to mention about employee satisfaction. Our colleagues also have that same pride in the work that we do and in the way that we show up. And so, I think they love to show their pride on their clothing, as well.

MELISSA: As Coplon says, we released our first holiday sweater in 2023. Well, we just might have a little breaking right news about the 2026 holiday season.

DOVID: So, we will have a holiday sweater, which will probably launch sales in late October. I did just see an early prototype, and I have to say it looks absolutely fabulous. I love the fact that our Creative Service team gets so excited about designing the sweater every year. This, I will just allude to, is a little bit more of a traditional design. It is really, really attractive.

MELISSA: Something to think about as the season approaches. Thank you for joining us on Taken with Transportation. We’re a production of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, and you can find the latest episodes at SFMTA.com/Podcast, as well as Apple, Spotify, our YouTube channel or wherever you listen. I’m Melissa Culross, be well, travel well and happy Transit Month!