Results tagged “fungwah”

Looking for another way to die? Fung Wah has expanded its service to include trips directly from Providence to New York City, since it was so inconvenient for Providence residents to come up to Boston to catch the bus, or to hop on it when it came through their city. Starting June 15, you can go directly from RI to NYC (and vice versa) without worrying about any silly Massachusetts getting in the way. Brilliant. For Rhode Islanders. We guess.

BusJunction is a new service that allows you to search a variety of bus services to find the best price for a ticket down south. Currently, you can only find fares from Boston to Hartford (who goes there?) or New York (Chinatown, Penn Station, or the Port Authority). The service, established in DC, searches fares from Megabus, Bolt, Vamoose, DC2NY, Greyhound, Trailways, Peter Pa, Lakefront, Fung Wah, Lucky Star, Eastern Travel, and New Century. In our search for a ticket to New York, the cheapest one-way option was Megabus at $9, followed closely by Lucky Star or Bolt for $10. There doesn't seem to be a round trip function yet, but we look forward to seeing what the site comes up with.

Know how it can cost like $200 to take Amtrak's Acela to New York? Know how that's crazy expensive, way costlier than flying? Well, apparently Amtrak got the memo, or noticed that nobody has $200 to go to New York in this economy, because it's lowered one-way (!) Acela fares from Boston to NYC to a mere $79 (though most fares were $89 when we tried to book a trip for this weekend, with a few $62 return trip options). Still doesn't beat the Fung Wah, but it's a slight improvement.

Usually, when the infamous low-rent Fung Wah buses have an accident, it's funny. That's because no one has died.

Ah, the Somerville Theatre. It gives you beer; AltCom gives you laughs. Together, beer and laughs are dangerous—they can make you pee your pants. Bostonist narrowly avoided a very wet debacle last night as we took in the hilarity that was AltCom. When there are four comics and the first act is already making you giggle like a schoolgirl and cross your legs desperately, you know the evening’s going to end good—but hopefully not in a way that involves pee. Unless you’re into that, or whatever. In addition to peeing opportunities, AltCom 2008's Saturday night performance boasted a bunch of comedy high rollers: the Walsh Brothers, Morgan Murphy, Jim Jeffries and Patton Oswalt.

Via Wicked Local, Newsday reports that a Somerville woman gave birth yesterday at the Port Authority bus station in New York. We can't imagine a worse place to give birth, except perhaps on a Fung Wah bus that's in motion. The family was apparently en route to Oklahoma City for some inexplicable reason--we recommend avoiding all bus travel when 9 months pregnant. Despite his strange beginnings, the baby (born at around 6:00 p.m. Tuesday near Gate 24), is apparently doing just fine. We expect he'll be really into that "Wheels on the Bus" song when he grows up.

Recently, BoltBus announced that it would be entering the low-cost bus fray. And now another company, Megabus, would like to be at your service for your rides to New York City. From the New York Times:

Planning a trip down the Northeast Corridor? Leave the Hitachi Magic Wand at home. Or say hello to the Fung Wah.

Due to red tape, the Vamoose bus, which Bostonist had written about recently, is no longer allowed to run from Cambridge to New York City.

--Maybe Fung Wah isn't so bad after all. The local press picked up on a b0st0n LiveJournal story that a Peter Pan bus driver felt that his passengers on a trip to Boston should be punished and forced to stay on the bus in Framingham because one of them called the company about his poor driving. The driver's sorry ass is about to get fired. [WBZ, b0st0n Live Journal]

Other -ists, such as Chicagoist, Houstonist, and Austinist, regularly peruse Craigslist's "Missed Connections" for the good stuff. Boston's Missed Connections have been fairly straightforward, with the exception of the guy who thought he found Fung Wah Love. But this has been a good week for impressive Missed Connections. First, a love note to a "meter maid" caught our eye: You waited until I backed into the parking space to tell me that in the future...

--Paul F. Ware Jr., the special prosecutor looking into the Big Dig has cost the state $1 million so far. Maybe, if the AG's office actually gets around to getting some money out of Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, they can foot the bill. [Boston Globe] --More gratuitous limos and tour buses in New Hampshire! Oprah's coming to town to campaign for Obama! She'll be in Manchester, NH, on December 9. [WBZ] --The Worcester Telegram & Gazette gets...

--Eunice Kennedy Shriver, sister of Ted Kennedy and JFK, mother to Maria Shriver, and mother-in-law to Arnold Schwarzenegger, has been hospitalized at Mass General, although no one is saying why. She is 86. [Boston Globe] --Today marks the last day of Bob's Southern Bistro and the opening of some generic swanky watering hole. [WBZ] --With the departure of the infamous Mark Flomenbaum, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner is disinfecting its hazardous practices by...

With Thanksgiving and the holiday season approaching, the time has come to focus on travel options. Vamoose buses now offer WiFi access and guaranteed seating, but perhaps it is time to take another look at its oft-maligned competitor, the Fung Wah Bus. Established ten years ago, Fung Wah, which is Cantonese for “magnificent wind,” has gained notoriety for buses slamming into guard rails and getting stuck in a toll booth. But even with these occasional...

Did you know? Red Sox fans get happy when the Red Sox win. And they get sad when the Red Sox lose. They also like to nibble on munchies during the game. The Globe apparently didn't think that their readers were aware of that fact, so they hired the MIT Media Lab for a study that showed up on Sunday's City & Region front page. In the study, MIT's Media Lab observed Elena Tate,...

All of Fung Wah's accidents were kind of cute, in a twisted sort of way. Fung Wah is the cheap transportation of choice for all the cool kids wanting to get out of town. But Fung Wah's latest scrape with the law isn't cute at all. Fung Wah must pay a blind couple $50,000 because the company wouldn't let the couple take its seeing-eye dog on the bus. Fung Wah must also cough up a...

A startup by some MIT grads started making waves a year ago when they began putting some venture capital to use to build their social networking site. After a year of growth some issues arose with their name, coincidentally with their expansion from Boston into New York City and the Bay Area. HeyLetsGo was to be no more; they were looking for a new name. Today they announced their new identity: Going.com.

We were impressed by the verbal descriptions of Fung Wah's latest driving mistake, but it should be seen to be believed. Bostonist reader Nedward was kind enough to share his on-the-scene shot of the Fung Wah bus wedged up on a curb in Weston:

Fung Wah accidents are bad news, especially for those riding the bus. But their reliable clumsiness is always a source of humor. Most times, when you hear the words "bus accident" in Massachusetts, someone will invariably ask, "Oh, was it Fung Wah again?"

Crime seems to have gone down because a) no one feels like going outdoors and making trouble or b) the news stations are so busy reporting on the endless road accidents that they don't notice any trouble.

The old saying goes that nothing is certain except death and taxes. You should add Fung Wah buses to that list.

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to. In Austin, bands are beginning to confirm for SXSW and the rumor mill is up and running. Good thing, too, because we all know how much Austinites love live performances. Austin also found itself in the national spotlight, with Longhorn Legend...

Apparently there's not a cosmic law dictating that buses are allowed to have only one brush with disaster per week. Yesterday, an MBTA bus with over 40 passengers caught fire.

The only things certain in life are death, taxes, and problems with Fung Wah buses. Mac Daniel reports that the latest Fung Wah problem involved two tires coming right off the bus as it headed down the Turnpike.

Wednesday 11/1

Yesterday the Fung Wah Bus Line agreed to conditions of operation outlined by State and Federal regulatory agencies. One of the provisions was that they would no longer allow drivers who could not speak or read English to operate their vehicles to make trips between New York and Boston. It isn't clear how many drivers they had in their employ that didn't have a basic command of the English language, but if such a rule is already on the books it could have been enforced as a precaution, not a reaction. Federal requirements for commercial passenger bus lines require that drivers can speak English in case of an emergency. We started to get all up in arms about how there's no official state language, etc, etc, when we remembered that this isn't an issue of rights. State's have the right to issue drivers licenses and suspend them as having a license is a "privilege" and not a "right."

The threats of massive traffic slow downs hit us over the long weekend. City officials and the main stream media were warning of resulting problems as some hundreds of thousands of students returned to school and workers returned to a full schedule after the summer. Despite the Big Dig issues stemming from safety checks and repairs after the July incident, traffic wasn't all that bad. Reports from the field indicate a relatively normal commute (though the requisite bitching about the Green Line was thrown in).

Oft noted as of late, it seems like Armageddon Boston more and more. But troubles aren't all local. Take a look at the many other, much worse, events in the world: wars, tsunamis, and that's just the beginning. The quagmire that is the US engagement in Iraq routinely makes the dailies as young local servicemen are killed abroad. What's captivated our attention lately is the new surge in violence between Israel and Lebanon. Measuring the scale of conflicts is often done in human lives lost and humanitarian concerns raised. Brookline based blogger, Andy Carvin recently put up another measure of scale – distance between Beirut and Northern Israel as it relates to Boston and Providence. Generally we measure the distance to New York in hours traveled on the Fung Wah, or between here and Florida in dollars spent on an airline ticket. Have a look at Andy's mash-up of the Middle East and North East to get a sense of distance from where the rockets are being launched and where they're landing – basically Providence to Lowell.

If the mustache isn’t going to work for you in everyday life you can always go for the finger mustache. Not just wiggling your finger under your nose anymore, the last year has seen a variety of mustaches inked on index fingers. Of course it was bound to be labeled ‘so yesterday’ at some point – probably just about the time JB did this Fox 25 spot (video below) back in January about a Providence tattoo artist who’s been giving people the ‘stache job for months. Boston shed some finger tatt tears at the convention last September – we’ve got another four months until we find out what’s in store this year.