You may not know it, but there is a graveyard on the corner of Geary and Presidio. If you go there at 4:00 a.m. you will see real, live zombies walking around. Half asleep, in matching brown blazers, sweaters and pants, they wipe sleep from their eyes and cruise with ease to their destination—the San Francisco MUNI buses. There they sit for a good part of the day, driving our butts around town—from here to there, home to work, then back again. Kell, (who declined to give his last name) sets his alarm every day for 2:15 a.m. He is one of those zombies and drives the second bus that travels the 31-Balboa route Monday through Friday. For the past 33 years, Kell has been hustling people from sand dunes to the ballpark. He starts his shift before most of us get out of bed—4:27 a.m. He is one of the approximately 2400 employees that work over nine-hour days for $26.50 per hour, moving more than 700,000 people daily. According to MUNI spokesperson Maggie Lynch, San Francisco boasts the seventh-largest transit system in the United States, grossing around $13 million a year.

But getting up early isn’t what bothers Kell the most. Lately it’s been the people. “There are some nice people, but most don’t understand. They think we’re lazy and overpaid,” Kell sighs, grabbing the large wheel of the bus to make a wide turn. “My biggest fear is someone spitting on me. You know why? ‘Cause I would come unglued and I would lose my job,” he says. “A young girl threatened to do that last week and I told her that I would give her a beating on her behind.”

But honestly, who can blame him? Everyone has a story about some “crazy” on the MUNI. But to a bus driver, seeing something bizarre go down every hour is desensitizing. In a city with over 7,000 homeless people, it reaches a certain degree of normalcy when it’s your job to drive around the rich, poor, obscure and insane people of San Francisco.

“A homeless man got on last week and, the poor person, he had such an odor, that I had to hang my head out the window to breathe,” Kell laughed uncomfortably. “I’ve called for assistance from time to time. Just by riding yourself, you’ll see. You get some characters. You see some strange situations.”

Strange situations huh? Kell, like many other MUNI drivers, trek through the heart of the city’s sketchiest regions—like the Tenderloin and the Western Addition. But he also carries the swanky lawyers of the Financial district and the pink-bag carrying women of the Richmond.

So what kind of people does MUNI really move? Are the drivers the only ones who see the insanity?

9:15 a.m. 71-outbound (19th and Lincoln)
A homeless man who had just been stabbed gets on the bus. He limps as he walks to the back door with all his heavy, black plastic bags. Tracing down his dirty khakis to the back of his legs, it is easy to see that his calf is covered in brownish-red blood surrounding a distinct hole where a knife obviously pierced through. The wound looks fresh. Good morning San Francisco!

2:47 p.m. 22 Fillmore (Haight and Fillmore)
The bus is crowded with high school kids just released from the cage of school. The volume of the bus is that of an NSYNC concert, complete with shrill cries and beat-boxing. In the back, two of the students tag their names onto the windows of the vehicle. The bus driver suddenly stops the bus and gets up. He is big and powerful, and walks to the back of the bus to kick the two amateur graffiti writers off. Confusion briefly ensues as they exit, then the bus rolls on.

5:33 p.m. 38 Geary (Powell and Geary)
This is the most traveled bus, carrying an average of 20,000 people a day. It doesn’t matter what time you ride, you have to get on through the back door because of how full it is. The smell is reminiscent of Euro-trash B.O. and a football player’s dirty, wet sock after the homecoming game.

11:59 p.m. N Judah Night Owl (6th and Market)
Sometimes, all the fun of riding MUNI is the people you meet at the bus stop before you actually get on. Here Al D’Catalano was waiting for the bus. A 70-year-old homeless man’s and local drunk, he fell over a good three times and people had to pick him up. He has eyes that look like a blind man’s and hangs on to the MUNI sign tightly as he says, “I’m just going to crash at the beach!”

2:41 a.m. 91 Night Owl (Market and 3rd)
A deaf woman gets on the bus with a re-burn cigarette, screaming incomprehensible gibberish at a fellow passenger. No one really understands her.

3:45 a.m. 91 Night Owl (Fulton and Presidio)
Drunk, underage SF State freshman fill the bus, wearing bright green tights and Urban Outfitter “original” shirts. One looks kind of sick; the others carry on a loud conversation, and pose for various digital cameras and camera phones. After they stumble out at Holloway, the bus remains empty for the night.