At 4:04 p.m. each weekday over the past school year, a rhythmic honking blared outside Willie L. Brown Jr. Middle School in Bayview. It was the 44 O’Shaughnessy pulling up to the bus stop, but it was more than that. The sound was Mc “Mack” Allen’s signature arrival tune, a playful greeting for the swarm of kids he picked up every day like clockwork.
The 60 or so who took his bus home learned to listen for the tune. But it wasn’t just the honking that made Allen a beloved bus driver. He’d ask the kids how their day had been and make chitchat as they boarded. He’d call out each stop, reminding students lost in conversation that it was their turn to get off.
Allen became like a secret guardian to the middle schoolers. “He always made sure we got off at our stops,” said Sam Sullivan, an incoming seventh grader. “I thought it was really sweet. Normally bus drivers don’t do that.”
When Allen started driving the 44 O’Shaughnessy line last August, he was nervous, knowing that the middle school was one of his stops.
“It can be very difficult,” he said. “It can be very trying. A lot of times middle schoolers are in a kind of an anti sweet spot of not having a lot of necessarily good self-control or emotional maturity.”
But eventually, Allen came to think of the 20 or so minutes he spent dropping off the middle schoolers as the best part of his day. “They were more interested in taking care of each other, having more fun,” Allen said.
Usually, Muni drivers get reassigned over the months, but Allen drove the 44 line consistently for the last school year. His run finished last week with the end of the school year. Allen was reassigned to the 29 Sunset in the afternoons, though he’ll stay on the 44 O’Shaughnessy in the mornings. He’s not sure which line he’ll be on once school starts up again, so last week he gave his students a heartfelt goodbye.
As each child got on the bus, he handed them a poem.
“My kids are on the bus now,” it read, “and I don’t want to let them off at San Bruno or Mission or Glen Park / I want to take them to the beach / and buy them ice cream. Of course I can’t, so I’ll do the one thing I can, / like I always do.” It continues, “I’ll take them home.”
“I was struck by getting to hear his voice,” said Chi-En Yu, parent of a Willie Brown student. “He has really loved and cared for these students.”
Allen has been a Muni operator since 2021, but he’s been a poet since elementary school. Driving a city bus was not the most obvious career path for the wordsmith, but he always had a deep appreciation for public transit. Over the years, he’s fused the two interests, writing about transit and publishing his poems on social media.
The poem Allen handed his young riders last week was inspired by a scare in December, when there was a police alert near the campus. “The blood ran out of my entire body,” Allen recalled, noting that he feared there had been a school shooting. “I feel like all of the kids who ride my bus are kind of my kids. I have a sort of protective feeling for them. And I was so scared.”
When they got the poem, the kids were delighted. Some responded with thank-you notes. One parent, Shelley Estelle, organized a group gift: a custom hoodie with the school’s logo rendered in Muni’s unmistakable font. Her son, incoming seventh grader Zane, crafted a wooden ornament of Allen driving the bus, which Allen keeps on his mantle at home.
“I’ve certainly never seen any bus drivers like him,” Zane said. “It was a very unique experience for everybody.”
Lydia Yu, an incoming seventh grader, made sure to sign a thank-you card. “He was very caring,” she said of Allen. Her mother added, “What he’s doing embodies this notion that all of the city’s children are our children.”
“I was just really touched by the fact that there was another adult out there looking out for our kids in a way that we didn’t even know,” another mother said.
Allen was recognized for his community service Tuesday at a Board of Supervisors meeting. He read his poem at the meeting, a forum in which transit is typically discussed in the context of budget and service cuts.
Five Muni lines — the 5 Fulton, 21 Hayes, 6 Hayes-Parnassus, 9 San Bruno, and 31 Balboa — will have service cuts starting June 21. Allen was candid about the real cost of shrinking transit. “Public transit uplifts community and holds people together,” he said. “When we cut transit service, it doesn’t actually save money. It actually costs more to cut transit service. But who carries that cost changes.”
Many students rely on Muni to get to and from school. According to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s 2025 Student Travel Tally survey, about a third of sixth graders get to school on transit. Muni is free for anyone 18 and younger.
“The city isn’t kind to our little guys,” said Lia McLoughlin, another Willie Brown parent. “To see that there’s somebody actively taking care of them, even if it’s just getting them from point A to point B safely … it’s huge.”
To McLoughlin, the most powerful thing that Allen did for his young riders was make them feel seen. “They’re not invisible,” she said. “Somebody sees them for who they are.”
When the kids gave him their notes and gifts, Allen felt seen, too. “I’m tearing up just talking about it,” he said. “It wasn’t clear to me until that moment if it was a mutual feeling.”