Story of a Mad Bus Rider

Real Men Dont Walk

2008-07-29T09:46:00.000-07:00

In the 1990s, living without a car in Hillcrest, I frequently encountered the violent threats faced for "walking while gay." Shouts of "fuckin' faggot" from big wheeled pickups screeching down University came my way, snickers of hate from suburban roughnecks in the cab not unlike those shot from Mr T.'s Tank.

With help from Mars Inc. the "born again Christian" living in Sherman Oaks peddles good ol' boy nostalgia for the cartoon masculinity of A-Team/Rambo/Reagan:

a world destroyed by limp wristed pacifists like Unitarian Universalists and "The Church of Liberalism" as described by Ann Coulter.

The battle for big gun, fast car, blow-em-up, Death Race/ oil rig reality manliness verbally fought out daily by Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly conveys the suffering of former army privates now forced off food stamps inspiring shotgun revenge.

Every man wants to be a macho macho man
to have the kind of body, always in demand
Jogging in the mornings, go man go
works out in the health spa, muscles glow
You can best believe that, he's a macho man
ready to get down with, anyone he can
--"Macho Man," The Village People

My Book On NPR

2008-07-28T07:53:00.000-07:00

Well not quite.
But a story last Saturday on Weekend Edition captured its essence.
If someone asks what my book is about, one answer would be it is a 240 page reply to this story.

Blog going NoHo

2008-04-18T10:27:00.000-07:00

After nearly two years the story is changing.

I've decided to shift from writing about the broad interconnective tissue of transportation to writing about a micro-muscle, an eyelash--the redevelopment of North Hollywood. My near-hood is becoming the center of controversy as a model of TOD, transit oriented development, and I will be investigating what it all means.
Please check out my new blog NoHo Slumming.

Some of the questions arising over this transformation include:

What are the various visions of a more urban neighborhood?

Who is included and excluded in these visions?

How are the changes in North Hollywood linked to globalization?

Will gentrification mean worsening conditions for the urban poor?

How will the goal of reducing sprawl conflict or coincide with the goal of providing quality affordable housing?

Soiling Green Vehicles

2008-04-02T08:32:00.000-07:00


              You tell everybody.
              Listen to me. Hatcher.
              You've gotta tell them!
              Soylent Green is people!
              We've gotta stop them somehow!

The growing list of cities, including Los Angeles, that provide free parking to low emission vehicles requires that I clarify my objections to these mechanical stimulants for enviro-wanna-bes.

Most important, these cars are NOT eco-friendly. Yes, Americans so wish we could buy our way out of earth's destruction, but consumption of any massively complex mobility toy requires large scale plundering of natural resources--different metals for engine and sound systems, petroleum for multi-plastics, who knows what for interior seat plushness--and accompanying planet spoliation. Furthermore, driving these pacifiers of greeny lust contributes to the So-Cal lifestyle of earth stretching asphalt profligacy no less than driving a Hummer H2.

Nearsightedness in councilmembers hardly surprises, but hearing lefty stalwarts at KPFK give voice to clean car hawkers brings the reflux of vodka sauce beyond control of Prilosec to the brain.

Personally, I would love to replace my fifteen year old red paint faded Prizm with a shiny blue bluetooth Ipod comptatible new Prius, but I just don't have 25,000 lying around.

And who does? Certainly not the guys keeping your auto pristine pretty at the local car wash: an investigation by the LA Times recently found these workers living in superexploitation land--many are paid only in tips for a "trial period" after which, if they were good, they might get minimum wage.

So how exactly does doling out free parking and HOV lane access to Whole Food shoppers of almond crusted goat cheese over baby mixed greens with tarragon infused champagne vinegar dressing benefit the working poor? It doesn't.

Dump the hybrid and get in the fight for a thousand strong fleet of articulated buses rushing past traffic on dedicated freeway lanes. You might not meet mid '90s sitcom stars, but you will meet the people that mow their lawns, clean their toilets, iron their blue jeans and yep wash their cars.

Springtime for Summary and Partial Manifesto

2008-03-22T07:36:00.000-07:00

Well hello Canada!

My roll of recognition hit two last week. A producer at CBC's Definitely Not The Opera contacted me for an interview. The popular culture show's host asked me to explain the impact of traffic on people's personality. Why, for example, does weather seem to bring us together while traffic divides? Why do people have a sense of entitlement when they get behind the wheel? What leads to road rage? (You can listen to my interview here.)

Regular readers should know by now, but this provides an opportunity to recap, reset, reader's digest the past two years:

People love cars because they provide the feel of controlling a powerful machine amid a too complicated modern world.

Auto independence celebrated in action films, race car tv, and curvy empty road cruising ads masks the drivers profound dependence on others--from miners to highway engineers.

This fantasy of self-reliance extends equal blindness to the environmental devastation spreading far beyond smog and carbon emissions to the massive chemical spillage and metal extraction required for racing grave pits of personal mobility.

While feeding an illusion of unspoiling innocence, hybrids, electrics, biofuel Benzes all contribute to this high speed poisoning and ever further sprawl of eco-ruining asphalt-brick-steel ex-urban lives.

The micro-horrors of bus riding razor cut the personal party balloon, tiny leaks hissing the deflation of dreamy separation from quotidian vagabond grime. At least for a moment, one must confront the extreme inequality wrought by planetwide financial propping of U.S. super-consumerism.

This blog seeks to articulate the links between local/global pleasures/pains, with a politics of partiality not unlike Donna Haraway's:

"There is no unmediated photograph or passive camera obscura in scientific accounts of bodies and machines; there are only highly specific visual possibilities, each with a wonderfully detailed, active, partial way of organizing worlds. All these pictures of the world should not be allegories of infinite mobility and interchangeability, but of elaborate specificity and difference and the loving care people might take to learn how to see faithfully from another's point of view, even when the other is our own machine."
--Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective

Sunday Driver, Yeah!

2008-03-08T07:40:00.000-08:00

My blog has not yet cracked any of the top L.A. lists. My vain search for fame and an Amazon sales rank above 100,000 seems destined for dust. But has this dust been given the breath of life? This week Sue Doyle of the LA Daily News asked me to comment for a story she's writing on the decline of the Sunday drive, so here it is...

It is certainly true that home entertainment--tivo cable connected plasma system--has meant more reasons to stay in, and negotiating contemporary crowded highways brings connotations of stress rather than fun--why choose to drive on Sunday after weekdays filled with sometimes hourlong freeway fights?

But the decline of pleasure driving must also be placed in historical context.

The automobile's rise to dominance in the U.S. contains a central irony. In the early twentieth century the car was celebrated as bringing health to city dwellers by providing access to the country, but ultimately the auto's popularity destroyed the country through urban sprawl.

People who wish to escape the city for a scenic drive must drive farther and farther before finding scenic landscape for a peaceful roll. From San Clemente to Ventura, Redlands to Santa Clarita extends one large conurbation of strip malls, tract homes and office "parks" linked by very unpeaceful rubber screeching, metal flashing, smog packed asphalt.

The Sunday drive is dead, unless it's a drive to the mall, where, strangely enough, people like to walk--because a walk down Valencia's McBean Parkway or Thousand Oaks' Moorpark Road just lacks the same charm.

Park Oaks Shopping Center on Moorpark Road--Loopnet

Rocky Mountain Malling

2008-02-25T13:13:00.000-08:00

Photo of Denver International Airport by mcwatt00

Cool-Whip topped Brown Betty, deserted dessert in a back road alter-Denny's Diner, DIA just sits there waiting for the breakfast rush. Moist melt in the mouth crust, lush brown cattle displaced bison range, waiting to bloom asphalt, stucco, ceramic tile, crawls with scifi monster-cockroach tractor-scrapers.

Along Boulder-Denver turnpike emerge gumdrops on rolling hills, Monet haystacks in winter afternoon orange. A sign declares Beautiful Wildgrass Homes from the 200,000s.

At Westminster Center, two teens, plaid drooping over Soundgarden-T, zipped Hollister hood sweat, truck longboards onto coach for university town sidewalk cruising.

Snow frosted pine cliffs of Flatiron jutt behind tourists strolling Pearl Street for crafty treasures of authentic Coloradocity: jagged to heal migrane black purpelized crystal chunks, handwoven finger puppets--could be coyote, could be mountain goat--dangly bead earrings, framed watercolor kitsch sunsetting over rocky-mountain-high.

Brick towering shopping cliffs of Flatiron Crossing lit by red neon to pastel blue chains of familiarity--PF Changs, Dillards, Crate & Barrell--backdrops obelisk marked Mainstreet at Flatirons, coming soon to mimic neotraditionalist mimicry of nineteenth century small town parochialism, in the view from fourth floor Broomfield Townplace Suite by Marriott.

The walk from Broomfield Park-n-Ride, Highway 36 at Highway 121/ Wadsworth Parkway at West 120th St/Old Wadsworth Blvd at Highway 128/Interlocken Loop-- traverses Interlocken Advanced Technology Environment "a 963-acre, full service advanced technology business park," with "nearby safe, affordable communities . . . Interlocken offers pacesetting companies the location and resources they need to compete in today’s globalized economy, including an advanced infrastructure, superior multi-modal transportation access . . . extensively landscaped parks, trails, child care facilities, athletic fields . . ."

Triple A four diamond crown of past-present-futurist techno-habitation, Omni Resort, with "390 deluxe accommodations and suites . . . elegantly appointed and full of modern amenities" supplies "a wealth of on-site pleasures." 27 hole golf course, "ranked third best resort course of Colorado," hosts John Bronco God of Denver Elway/ Sun Microsystems Celebrity Classic. "Or if you’d just like to escape into a sanctuary of relaxation in Mokara Spa, two outdoor pools and whirlpool . . . The Omni Interlocken Resort is sure to sweep you off your feet."

Cold swept air burns fingers gripping duffel trooping through miles of dormant sod embracing perches of hexagon maroon office retreats. Rushes of headlights cut through disorienting darkness. At last, around a bend, a speckled grey rabbit flips through brush at warmth of motel lobby door.

Oh, all the trees are calling after you
And all the venom snipers after you
Are all the mountains bolder after you?
--VU

Spirit of the '80s

2008-02-12T09:57:00.001-08:00

The sun beams down on a brand new day / No more welfare tax to pay / Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light / Jobless millions whisked away / At last we have more room to play / All systems go to kill the poor tonight
--1980, The Dead Kennedys, "Kill the Poor"

Susan Meiselas, New York Times Magazine

December 11, 1981, the U.S. trained Atlacatl Battalion massacred 900 men women and children in El Mozote, El Salvador. In response, President Reagan, with characteristic vicious smirk of a well-trained Stalinist, brushed off flesh shrunk to scattered skeleton images as liberal media fictions.

January 30 in Simi Valley, machine gun tenderized corpses wreak from faux library colonial ivory halls while Gipper children McCain et al. soak in pink powdered sugar mist of Disney store raving mad x-trip plush toy history.

But 1980s presidential illness extended beyond checkbook deathsquad anti-communism fueling blowback across the globe. The cruel Reaganite virus dealt equal brutality to the domestic sphere. Cowboy actor rode to victory on the horse of hatred, demonizing urban poor as dependent on the dole. He whipped straight out racist rage against "excesses of the 60s"--strangely echoed by Obama--such as the pittance of aid to inner cities ravaged by decades of desertion--while billions continued to flow in white people welfare--suburban freeways, homeowner tax breaks, weapons contracts--toxic encrusted tickytack hill prosperity. Fed commitment to public housing abandoned, thousands sent to life of shower free butt cracks stench rising up my nose to nauseousness, so I pop a coughdrop and suck hard on eucalyptus but can't smother it away.

The big O, who worked on the South Side, should know better, but no less sad our Ba-Rock-Star candidate failed to call out the chicken manure of Clintonite hypocrisy. The Arka-Mart prez of neo-liberal nineties lapped a labrador sloppy slurp kiss on "starve the city feed the burbs" policies and piled on with baseball bat cracking across face of underclass, cheerfully signing malicious race-baiting "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act."

Last week, LAT transportation columnist Steve Hymon wondered where transportation policy would go in Campaign 2008. Answer: where clothespin nosed homeowners toss table scraps that might help street weary city folk survive in the shadow of sprawlholic backyard barbecue blackpeppered swordfish steak mango chutney lifestyles--in an unsacred waste burial ground just north of the Roxford Street exit on the Golden State Freeway in Sylmar.

Busterranean Homesick Blues

2008-01-30T19:56:00.001-08:00


DRIVING POINT OF VIEW

We are looking at pedestrians on the sidewalk through the
windshield of a moving car.

                          ED (V.O.)
             There they were.
             All going about their business. It
             seemed like I knew a secret--a bigger
             one even then what had really happened
             to Big Dave, something none of them
             knew...

On Ed, driving.

                          ED (V.O.)
              ...Like I had made it to the outside,
              somehow, and they were all still
              struggling, way down below.

--Joel and Ethan Coen, The Man Who Wasn't There

"Can you tell me how I get to downtown L.A.?" Blond sandpaper patchy Vandyke, fist clutching plastic bag, blue T-shirt too chilly for the weather exposes multi-tattoos and band-aid inside left forearm.
"The red line will take you there."
"How do I get to downtown L.A.?"
"At the end of this line you cross the street and take the red line."
Eyes in wide grief after the shooting of a white-tail fawn, "Look, I just got out of the hospital. I just need to get to downtown L.A. How do I get to downtown L.A?"
Wrenching frustration at simplicity, "When you get to the end of the line just follow everyone else!"

He turns down the aisle as my eyes close, primal game of fort-da, retreat into lingering bubble of a northern pike beneath the ice of Island Lake white-shards in purple pine lined sky, until, of all the open rows, why does he choose this one?

The woman in front of me twists back to offer him a quarter to which he opens his hand and reveals a half dozen tokens.
"Do you know how to get to downtown L.A.?," he asks her. "I'm not from here. I don't know why they brought me here."
She struggles to explain and then looks back at me, "Inglés?"

With a sigh I open my eyes fully, "Where this bus ends, cross the street, go underground and that train will take you downtown."
"Will you show me? I just got out of the hospital. They got me pumped with all kinds of stuff. I'm a little out of it."
"It's really easy. You can just follow everybody else."

"I have all these tokens. Do you want to buy them. I'll sell them for a buck."
"I don't have any money," I lie.
"1.50," the woman says. She points to each token, "1.50, 1.50, 1.50, 1.50."
"Do you want to buy them? Four bucks. I don't know why they gave them to me. I need to buy some food."
She shows him a bag of change.
"That's ok. Stores take change." He gives a slight smirk. "Dealers no. But I'm not gonna buy drugs. I'm hungry. I need to buy some food."
She holds out a mix of coins and bills. He drops the tokens into her hand. She drops the money into his.
"Gracias Señor, I mean Señorita. There's this great restaurant on 7th I used to work at. They'll give me a discount, and I can buy a hamburger. My friend's picking me up in downtown LA. Do you know Santa Monica? That's where I live. He's going to take me home."

My stop arrives.
"Good luck."
"Thanks."
I step off and dont look back.

Taste of Cherry

2008-01-18T09:43:00.000-08:00

A forest green Chevy 1500 pickup, front end crushed inward to the shape of California's eastern border, slows to a stall. Horns pout, tires wheeze past. Red liquid drips then pours--hopped up Kool-Aid Man busting forth smiley face painted black bright eyes through cardboard radiator of exhaustion--onto wet pavement.

The deliciousness of antifreeze comes from ethylene glycol, an alcohol like sweet Pernod-Ricard when mixed with water to white fizz Marseillais of the Marcel Pagnol trilogy, yearly freezing the brain of 90,000 pets and 4,000 children who no doubt confuse it with that other twentieth century mega profit "thirst-aid" of the food engineer--Gatorade.

Some states now require mixing antifreeze with a bitter, not the bitter of once popular Gin and Bitters but all-purpose tongue repellent denatonium benzoate.

Compounding bitterness would likely fail to end the mass ingestion of liquid bollworm waster by Vidarbha Farmers--20,000 suicides and counting--who gag on debt from gilded seed shillers of Ameri-corpo-ag Cargill-Monsanto-ADM green to brown revolution, and, oh yeah, pesticide.

Non-swallowing farmers still soak in toxin walking rows shooting rainshowers of organophosphates, shapeshifting to Wizard of Oz Scarecrow--Ray Bolger not to be confused with Tin Man Jack Haley replacing nearly killed by aluminum dust face mask Buddy Ebsen--brain damaged by concentrations of monocrotophos 158 times safe limits.

Cotton, back alley chemical addict, eating the big P at rates far exceeding its crop size, certainly contributes to what Rachel Louise Snyder estimates as the 3/4 pounds of chemicals in the average pair of jeans--the remainder coming from dyes and acids creating that comfy soft faded fit sliding down our hips of lust.

notice me...

gentrification of slush

2008-01-07T09:41:00.001-08:00

"We've landed, but we're in Sioux Falls," after open flips and activation jingles a clichéd Jay Leno one-liner replays through the 737 cabin. Delightful blizzard's poor visibility closed MSP, forcing a short stay on the FSD tarmac, but soon we are dropping into grey nimbostratus above white chocolate flakes rushing in slants.

Weeks of drifting gifts from blinding sky dump last year's Minnesota holiday bare ground memories. Snow inches on the road mix to root beer float slush above black ice occasionally exposed for perfect hookie-bobbin' conditions.

When I was six, the neighbor kid got the best of an ice fight. Frozen face burning within, my eyes descend down bare elm canopied street to find the approach of rolling sedan, legs scramble beneath torso inside puffed brown corduroy, half-pint offensive tackle's full force shoulder plunges into antagonist's back, murderously dreaming, boy slides, snow tires brake and skid at incline, but somehow grill fails to crush sixty-five pound pine cone frame squirreling for the curb.

Freeze shielded suburban shopping interiors long ago shoved winter garbed icy sidewalk feet shifters from downtown St. Paul, now preserved in black and white at Minnesota History Center with parking lot snowpile framing skyline of revitalized desertion.

Ever hoping for urban flight reversal, upscale "loft living" has arrived on former flood plain/ garbage dump Shepard Road. Working class immigrant West 7th re-imagined as West End Arts District with 19th century Schmidt's brewery--bought by Heileman in the 70s to produce Grain Belt now tattered sign of 1989 closing due to killer competitor wheaty fizz marketing blast of Clydesdale nationalism and animated frogs delighting nacho cheese dip munching football fan paunches--the centerpiece plan for a mixed use "urban village" includes 100 "artist live-work spaces."

Yet less than a mile down the road Summit Brewery, begun in 1986, thrives with "craft" beers sold throughout the Midwest and consumed by the quart at Axel's in Victoria Crossing where blond crew cuts revive the 80s in Cosby Show Argyle sweaters and, after cheers of encouragement, one jumps on stage for sticky hip re-enactment of Billie Jean as daughters of Thor lick lips to three inch captures of the event.

Although the T Cities house more Hmong and Somali immigrants than any other U.S. metro area, Crocus Hill remains a white bubble along Grand Ave, so when piano dueler starts harmonica several times, tantalizing cheers, only to switch tunes, then finally breaks into Billy Joel's ironic tribute to alcoholism, not a false dry eye in the place fails to sing along...
He says, Bill, I believe this is killing me
As the smile ran away from his face,
Well I'm sure that I could be a movie star
If I could get out of this place.

entrée libre

2007-12-19T08:13:00.000-08:00

Just past North Hollywood High by a small pool of water on the sidewalk lies a mouse, stomach slightly distended, pink toes softly outstretched to the side.

As if fallen from the sky she appears, a magical contra-Claus shrunken into her 70s teetering on chicken bone legs, grasping in each hand garbage bags overstuffed with plastic jugs and bottles. Riding hands free requires surf skills lacked even by many So-Cali young, so, after a few shaky stops and starts, she sits on edge of seat, back still towards me, stressfully pulling back obstructions as the quizzical squeak by, until time to drag clotted treasures of ubiquity through exit for inevitable liquidation.

In a 1960 episode of the Twilight Zone, Art Carney plays a hard luck boozer whose once a year financial boost comes from role as department store Santa.

Suit and beard cannot hide the breath-stink as he stumbles late into work of boosting kid consumerism. Canned to the street, a magical bag appears that conjures gifts for tenement tots whose parents aren't quite the Miracle on 34th Street Macy's-Gimbels merchandise wish-fulfillers with cash flows maintaining the essence of black Christmas. Formulaic Irish Officer Flaherty accuses tattered Kringle of thieving to mimic some slum squashed Robin Hood. In exoneration, sack reveals tin cans and alley cat--holiday gift-giving becomes phantasmagoria of the exterior.

For the holidays, everything must go.

choo-co-cheap-aholics

2007-12-11T08:09:00.000-08:00

In Leçon 24 of French in Action, Robert, l'Américain un peu naïf, wonders whether the train always arrives on time in France.

Mireille, la jeune Française sage, replies: "Évidemment, les trains sont toujours à l'heure. En France, les trains sont très ponctuels. Ils partent exactement à l'heure, et ils arrivent exactement à l'heure."

I thought of this last summer when Dad considered taking Amtrak from Simi Valley, home of Soviet style Ronald Reagan shrine, to catch a plane flying out of San Diego the same day.
"Dad, rent a car," I said. "This isn't France."
I could hear him grimace.

Reaganites like Dad gorged on the anti-effetist mythology of monster government pickpocketing hard worker Joe America to destroy private enterprising efficiency. Of course, under private enterprise U.S. passenger rail quite efficiently went to rot by the 1950s while Europeans taxed and spent their way to rail rider Valrhona 70% dark.

So when Parade middle America Sunday milquetoast magazine asks: "Will rail travel resurge?" Our answer: we prefer Hershey's, "The Great American Cardboard Bar!"

Winter Wonderland

2007-11-30T10:32:00.000-08:00

In the alley outside my window, like the jingling sleigh bells and clip clop of Clydesdales, the clinking bottles dug from dumpster into mudclad overcoat, near soleless sneakers, broken boombox overflowing grocery cart and thud of hinged lid dropping sounds not quite the squeak and pop of a clarinet player hunched on the 118 off-ramp at Tampa Thanksgiving morning. Between the quick gasp, achingly soundless downbreath, saliva squirts, key clicks, puff strained cheeks--lost embouchure with lost teeth--here and there, always sharp or flat, chirps an abject hint of Bye Bye Blackbird.

A crumpled reincarnation of Rafael Garrett: I first saw him in the mid 80s blowing a battered silver tenor outside the Wrigley field El Stop before midday drunk Cub fans looking askance or laughing and throwing him a quarter--just another raggedy lookin' black man--oblivious to the legacy of this multi-instrumentalist, who studied clarinet and bass under DuSable's Captain Dyett, recorded with Coltrane, helped found AACM, performed and taught across the world.

But for free improvisers busking truth--and for black men in Reagan America, which institutionalized the racist character of homelessness (49% of streetpeople are African American)--life could be shit 'til the next meal, so he might, to scrounge a little extra cash, crash another guys' gig--like Lester Bowie's trio playing in the back room of a West Side record shop. Bowie looked a little startled when half-way through his first set the old man walked in, but he graciously allowed Garrett's string tied bag of bells and whistles to transform tightly rehearsed arrangements into mismatched inflations of a tear.

Bloodshot eyes, are you listening?

After Hours

2007-11-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

Oh, someday I know
Someone will look into my eyes
And say hello
You're my very special one

But if you close the door
I'd never have to see the day again
--Lou Reed

Near 11pm the crowding at the Taco Bell trough outside my window hits its peak.

They idle in U-shaped noxiousness--gold plated Escalade, Honda CRV, BMW E90, Toyota Sienna, 1980s Cutlass no paint on bondoed fender olive hood mismatched to maroon body rear bumper hanging into street.

AC hums on max to cool restless perspiring double chin neck to leg flab pinched by nylon belt--to think outside the bun.

Stomachs search in Kierkagaardian anguish a moment of gloried hope as nacho cheese beef gordita nears mouth. With bite brown drips to upholstery. Ice grabbed from 32 ounce pepsi moistens paper napkin--dabbing dabbing, dabbbing--but it's no use. 360,000 gallons of oil spreads through the Kerch Strait--58,000 through SF Bay--shedding death from Black Sea to Muir Beach.

Clyfford Still 1949 No. 1 (PH-385)
1949 oil on canvas © Estate of Clyfford Still
Clyfford Still Museum

voi siete un clown

2007-11-08T08:53:00.001-08:00

In his remembrance for Criterion Collection's The White Shiek, Leopoldo Trieste recalls when Fellini asked him to take the role of Ivan Cavalli, the preening husband who has brought his new bride for a rigorously scheduled honeymoon in Rome:
"'You want me to be a comic actor?'
I actually got mad at him. I spoke ancient Greek. I could read Aeschylus like you read the paper.
'I'm a dramatist! You've got me all wrong! Leave me alone.'
'Listen Leopoldo, you belong to the race of clowns.'
I remember his exact words.
'You are a clown.'"

"Uuunnh," as I sit, rises a groan nearly whimper, like from a broken foot dog abandoned on outskirts of Rome circa 1940s neorealism. Soft sound hard to trace amid rackety hum, its source blends into tint windowed vegetable patch. Thin grey beard on balding cabbage head dressed in casual business attire but third look finds half shirt tail hanging, coffee stain on breast pocket, dirt rimmed cuffs on khakis.

The groan loudens, now punctuated by tiny croak gurgle whisp of belly bubbles. Hand grabs waist, bending, swaying forward, swallowing, "Ooooooaaah."

On-setting illness vague no more, image of chunk funky acid splatter to shoelace and nostril, passenger neighbors move to bus front.

Stomach upset memories of degurgitations, bent head over some strange Edina toilet, absent parent party weekend--how did you get here?--my incapacity stoking another of the recurrent grab and shoves between T. and K. over who will drive mom's Honda back to Saint Paul.

Fear to fascination--will rotting internality dissolve or burst? At Van Nuys the wrenching pauses then stumbles toward closing doors. Too late, rubber bound glass squeezes swelling melon. "Back door! Back door!" voice surprisingly strong, trap opens to release the suffering. It waddles then straightens--feeling better now?--just to end of platform. Arms outstretch, wings of a penguin leaning forward feeding the cement little liquid trickles. Again. Again. Again.

A Balmy Day in FLA

2007-10-22T11:19:00.000-07:00

In 1974 Broward County boosters, hoping to attract game fish, dump millions of nylon bound tires to create the Osborne Reef. Over time storms bust them loose to shred nearby natural reefs and wash up on North Carolina shores.

On ocean edge of ecodisaster emulsion blots of hyperglobality--petrolium tankers, containerships of lumber, orange marmalade, t-shirts--import/export from Port Everglades Foreign Trade Zone.

The air a carwash interior, droplets to downpour shampoo the yellow heat. Creamsicle skin strained muscles amble and pump along faint lightning steamed sand.

A man, squirting cartoon sweat, waddles with one leg twice-thick the other--salt rusted frontyard flamingo stem peglike limb.

Squeezed between cement skeletons of soon to be jacked up tropi-glamour condos

W Fort Lauderdale Hotel/Residences, with an interior that "incorporates elements of fenshui, color therapy and aromatherapy,"

and Trump International Hotel and Towers, "a one of a kind destination for the select few,"

are the broken plastered bones of 1950s era unsentimentalia.

My economy hotel room overlooks patio turned parking lot. Mattress squishes next to chipped veneer of nightstand on dull cracky linoleum floor. Half-inch of screw sticks out on bathtub faucet knob. Water drains slow through clogging sand.

Banyan tree swamp, former Fort Liquourdale, now Venice of South Florida, multimillion dollar yachts park along white tablecloth purple aquarium dining elegance. Open collared fifty somethings with blonded companions strut the sparkle studded sunglass boutiques of Las Olas Boulevard competing with the concierge and valet parking of chilled dry faux art deco Galleria Mall a mile north on Sunrise Blvd.

Not quite competing a half mile east at downscale curving Sunrise Lane, "The World Famous Parrot" hides amid neon xxx Playboy paraphernalia and tatoo parlor with hand on hips artist gruffing "Tattoo Bro?" to passer-by me.

By a smoke shop, a man stands on the sidewalk in white to grey Chuck Taylor low tops, ripped jean shorts, bare torso--body hair bleached by the sun, tufted over broiled apricot skin. He crosses the street to confront me sticking a two inch square gash on inside elbow in my face, "Hey Buddy, can you spare some change for some gauze and bandage?" I wave him off and pass by souvenir shops selling drunken sexhibitionist T-shirts--a Men's Room figure missing top circle with the caption "UNIVERSAL SIGN FOR NEEDS HEAD".

Back on A1A, a golftourist in SLK convertible, clubs sticking out the back, flips off a grey Dodge van with cardboard for one back window, "Go to fuck!"

Warm moist wind sways darkening palms.

With you, my life

2007-10-15T11:21:00.000-07:00

Napoleon put his hand on his heart because his hand was cold.
I put my hand on my heart because my heart aches.
--Ralph Kramden.

"Tell her I can do her make-up and hair tomorrow afternoon"
A splash of pink on the forehead sprouts from the spiked black hair of my Wednesday night traveling companion. Phone perched upon shoulder, she drags on board a roll-bag containing tools of a beautification student.
"Who?
What?
Shut up. You spoke to her?
I thought she hated me.
Oh my god, I miss her so much. I so want to talk to her.
Should I call her?
Tell her to call me.
Ok, love you."

Five minutes later rings the tinny mimicry of a pop tune.

"Hello?
Hey, I am so glad you called.
I am so sorry about what happened.
Y'know I totally didn't mean that.
Yeah, and Susan was totally trying to fuck with us.
I was so stupid and immature then.
I felt so bad.
You were my best friend, and I would never want to hurt you."

Imagination of Dirt

2007-10-08T09:08:00.001-07:00

On a breezy fall afternoon, from the sidewalk, a glance at the park interior, a woman sagging naked scrubs herself with soil, grass, leaves in the shade of an oak. The confused appears as a blotchy black and white reproduction of Boticelli's Birth of Venus in a scribbled 1950s high school textbook.

The grape tomato worm ricy grit tasteless on the tongue stuffed down to gurgling belly, gums laced with black goop, the condition of Pica, the condition of Rebeca in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude palpitates our Freudian pulmonary artery--the maniacal fist feeding of dirt, the drive toward dark essence, the intestinal brick-making lust, the nourishment of decomposition and death, the lowly exaltedness of bourgeois pretensions.

This residue of unexpressed sickness expresses itself in the rumbling blast of highrise apartments in the "Noho shopping cArts District". The MTA recently approved a billion dollar office-housing-retail tower near the Noho red line station as part of our Mayor's dream of bringing the New York subway lifestyle to rubber boinking buggyville.

But a study by the LA Times shows previous attempts to link housing to rail stops in Hollywood, Downtown and Pasadena simply increased congestion since residents continue to drive.

Blind sticking smudged fingers down throats, pushing yuck to the yuppies, inters the clarity of solving planned foolery.

Why not simply require the new housing only be rented to people without automobiles, saving money on constructing needless parking structures and reducing traffic snarls?

Because people without cars are also the city's poor, and to build housing for poor people cuts deep with the anxiety of failed romantics.

Chanson d'automne

Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
Blessent mon coeur
D'une langueur
Monotone.

Tout suffocant
Et blême, quand
Sonne l'heure,
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure

Et je m'en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m'emporte
Deçà, delà,
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.

--Paul Verlaine

inbetween bleakness

2007-10-02T09:31:00.000-07:00

Passing through the park a red orange feathering into grey tail squiggles after a squirrel perches on a "Ron Paul Revolution" sign. The squeaky bark of a Bichon hanging from a Honda CRV rings through the pines.

The sorely broken pungency of a refrigerator interior, not the moldy abandoned grime of a Frigidaire abandoned in an alley off Devonshire in Mission Hills but the ordinary unpealed onion, wrinkly peach, ziplock bag of fried rice and tofu, hoping it will not seep to tinge one quarter remaining half gallon fat free milk, melancholy soaks the dialogue of strangers sitting in the back bus seats facing one another.

"You headed for school?" asks the older man who has the height and headshape of Alan Arkin and a low creaking voice.

"No work," replies the younger. He recounts a one minute life story of wished I had-almost completed-still plan to... "Right now I am a mover."

"Moving is a good job. At least you stay active. Take care of your health and stay out of trouble because when a big break comes along if you're not healthy or you're in trouble, you won't be able to take advantage of it." Light tongue sticking to mouth roof ends the aphoristic exhaling.

A man with captain bars pinned to a camouflage hat crosses legs on the front seats, pulls a Binaca blast from his duffel and starts misting the surrounding sadness. He sprays the head, left-right shoulder, opens his mouth and takes it on the tonsils.

I blink at a pinch in my neck.

Gridlock Poppycock

2007-09-24T08:20:00.001-07:00

From LA City Photo Gallery

The Texas Transportation Institute annual congestion report again lists L.A. as number one street clogger in the nation, scorching by an extra 12 hours of delay second place metro areas San Francisco, Atlanta, DC. But according to local planning officials, the study significantly underestimates snarl by assuming cars move at 35 mph during rush hours when freeway sensors show speeds closer to 20 mph.

In August of last year, digital cameras clicking, Councilwoman and Mayor unveiled the new needlepointing approach to L.A. street slogging: bright signs in "anti-gridlock zones" prohibit parking weekdays 7-9 am and 4-7 pm, creating more lanes for stealhead cased creepy crawlies during crushy crunchy.

Has the Mayor's "small things" traffic solution helped? Drive down Sepulveda near Ventura 'round 8 am--bumpity-bumpity-bumpity--I'll beatchya on feet.

Reversing the escalator over the hill world of mudsludging requires closing not opening car lanes: Auto-authoritarianism must confront its assassination by frustration.

At least one person in our planning department is in the fight. Emily Gabel-Luddy, head of the department's Urban Design Studio, says in a September 18 LA Times Magazine interview, "What we're trying to do is reverse-engineer decades of thinking about the city." This requires making major boulevards "dramatically less efficient as automobile arteries."

To boost walking, bust on driving--including of feelgoody hybrids and electrics.

Free--to ravage you and me--thinkers of the Pacific Legal Foundation object, "So long as people ardently desire to live and raise children in detached homes with a bit of lawn, there is virtually nothing that government bureaucrats can do that will thwart that."

Portland, the bête noir of these auto-pitying libertarians, proves them wrong. While traffic congestion is worse, commuters spend less time in traffic than in other cities. Why? Because they live close to work and can actually walk or take the bus.

A study by the Urban Land Institute further supports the Portland model. Popping California politicos environmental egos overpumped by proposals for CO2 downing--higher fuel economy, cleaner fuels, greener building--ULI calls for the kooky idea of living closer to work. "Shifting 60 percent of new growth to compact patterns would save 85 million metric tons of CO2 annually [equal] to a 28 percent increase in federal vehicle efficiency standards."

But density alone is not enough. We need fast, frequent, inexpensive transit: bus-exclusive lanes as found in Jakarta, Bogota, Ottawa and many others following the Curitiba trail. The first important step towards this goal takes place on Wilshire Blvd, so write councilwoman Wendy Gruel and ask her to secure funding for Wilshire Bus-Only lanes.

Address:
Councilmember Wendy Greuel
Transportation Committee Chair
City of Los Angeles
200 North Spring Street, Room 475
Los Angeles, CA 90012
email: councilmember.greuel@lacity.org

Dogon A.D.

2007-09-18T07:56:00.001-07:00

Stone Arch Bridge, Minneapolis

Growing up in The Cities, Mississippi cliffs drew us to dark threats of joy--landscape of wind sent condom wrappers caught in chokeberry shrub, beer cans--Schmidt's, Hamm's, Grain Belt--beaten into stone bends, pockmarked by graffiti carved caves. Nothing to do on a summer night? Find an overlook with a pint of peach schnapps and gaze at barges twisting through birch crunched gorge.

One Saturday in the summer of '85, after a week of stocking detergents to dust-mops at Target mornings and phone-hawking the St. Paul paper evenings, I saw Julius Hemphill beneath cirrus striped sunset concussing free the structure of sandy silver floating from a bandstand on Nicollett Island.

A half-mile down river rough gray lines distinguished the undistinguished bridge--as Mom said, "It's hard for me to get in my mind--not like the Lake Street or Hennepin Avenue bridges, y'know, you can picture those"--which six weeks ago became loathsomely vivid mangled steel and concrete topsy turvy like Matchbox cars rolling off Tuna Helper boxes masking taped to tin foil fabricated cities.

After repeat dialings ending in overloaded circuit signals, I reach family, friends and learn of the almosts: my stepmother's book-club member drove over an hour before, my brother E. biked under that morning...

"But everyone's ok," I sigh.
"Well, not everyone," Mom's wry wise reply.

Walk on, walk on

2007-09-10T07:54:00.000-07:00

Juan Genoves, "Cuatro fases en torno a una prohibicion" (1966)

East of Laurel Canyon on Magnolia the one lane of traffic at rush hour can feed irritation as sugar to ants crawling from the palm up the arm depicted in the creepy surrealism of Un Chien Andalou to the point where that itch must be scratched--ants squashed.

Somewhere near three in the afternoon on a Friday walking through a plywood tunnel, avoiding rusty nails that might punch through flip-flops, breathing orange dust from the demolition of another 1940s era courtyard complex to be replaced by multistory luxury "apartment homes" with underground parking and fitness center, a nasaled horn blasts from the boulevard and as if in homage to Pavarotti's pipes holds on at a steady pitch.

"AAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNN."

Must be a mechanical malfunction causing the electric buzz to freeze. But as the cry gets closer I see its source: in a silver Xterra a man with a growling face pushes forearms mightily into steering wheel plastic. He follows a shocked to tremble woman glancing frequently in the rear view mirror of her 1990s era white Sentra.

A half-block down the sidewalk a police officer chats with some locals gathered at the steps of an apartment building. Suddenly, the officer dashes to his car and flies away, lights flashing.

As I reach the building I nod "Hello" to a man still standing at the steps.
"Did you see that?" he replies.
"Hmmm?"
"Road Rager."
"Oh yeah. I was wondering..."
"This guy was just laying on his horn. The cop was pissed," he laughs.
"That's crazy. So what was he doing here?"
"Huh?"
"What was the cop doing here?"
"Oh, he was just finishing up an accident."
"Crazy."

Walking on an ant crawls up my left toe, but I let it ride.

le fromage le monte au nez de l'Américain

2007-09-03T08:28:00.000-07:00

Epoisses image from Le Guide des Fromages

In the August 17 LA Times, Jay Handal, chairman of the Greater West Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, comments on the Wilshire bus only lanes approved by the City Council: "You can't take a third of the drivable lanes from people who are already stuck in traffic for 45 minutes. Take a guy who earns a half-million dollars a year. He's going to drive to a parking lot and get on a bus? I don't think so."

2 Days in Paris reveals this banality of Botox Hill Gucci Gangsters as the ugly American's universal revulsion. Julie Delpy's film, plastered with clichés, intended as farce, becomes wretched realism through Adam Goldberg's Jack, a New Yorker who refuses to take the subway.

Yes, they do exist: Upper East Side descendants of Tom Wolfe's Sherman McCoy but also Hell's Kitchen gentrifying professional hipsters who brandish Bush bashing but gushed over Giuliani when he "scrubbed the city" of its poor--and now, with chief scrubber Bratton in L.A., the battle line moves.

Our hero, Delpy's father, the American vision of French rudeness, discreetly scrapes a key into the sides of Citroëns, Peugots, Renaults parked on the sidewalk as he grins in broken English.

Paris has become l'enfer pour la voiture: former one-way high-speed corridors converted to two-way streets, bikes for rent with lanes partout, and concrete barriers allowing buses to race by traffic on schedule.

The political impossibility and necessity of sending L.A. automobilistes to hell begins on Wilshire Boulevard.

lighter fluid

2007-08-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

Blue jeans, black Ts and shoulder length hair mark the two as rockers. Her voice lowered by smokes, his beaten by dope, closeness in pitch makes them hard to distinguish but for his soft saliva sucking through--perhaps false--front teeth.

Nearing the Van Nuys Station, county government buildings rise on the horizon.
"I'm glad I don't have to go there anymore," he comments. "You know what that is right?"
"Hmm."
"The county courthouse. I'm glad I don't have to go there anymore."

We roll past industrial lots into the residential streets of Valley Glen.

"Wow, look at that!"
"What?"
"Did you see that mansion?"
"Uh Huh."
"I wonder how much that property is. That was HUGE."
"Not as big as Ozzy's though."
"Yeah, well."
"In England, Man!" she chortles an awe.

"Did you feel that?" His voice softens only slightly, "A guy behind me just sneezed on the back of my head."
"Aww shit."
"If he gets up I'm going to say something. That's what I hate about taking the bus."

On December 8, 2004, schizophrenic former quickieluber Nathan Gale stormed the stage during a Damageplan concert at The Alrosa Villa in Columbus Ohio, unloaded multiple rounds of a Beretta 92 and killed four people, including "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott. Gale's mother bought the semi-automatic pistol for her son out of pride for his service in the Marines and before the diagnosis that led to his discharge. Inside the grainy black and white menace of a nose guard's shaved head is certainty of identity and lyrics stolen by the Pantera lead guitarist, now buried with Eddie Van Halen's Charvel bumble bee guitar from the back cover of VH II.

"We was broke and hungry on a summer day
They sent the sheriff down to try an' drive us away
We were sittin' ducks for the police man
They found a dirty-faced kid in a garbage can, uh ha
Ooh! And I'm alone, I'm on the highway
Wanted, dead or alive
Dead or alive..."

The breeze of her hair waving to an internal rhythm, matching the rhythm of the whirring gears, touches my neck.

"You know that? D.O.A."
"D.O.A."
"D.O.A. Hehehe yeah."

River Rigoletto

2007-08-15T09:31:00.001-07:00

Dieser Gott kommt aber nicht mit Kanon. Er kommt mit der Stimme von Caruso.
--Fitzcarraldo

With wealth from rubber trees accessed through aria, he will build an opera house in the bleakly luscious Peruvian rainforest. As the wild blond man's steamship chugs up the Amazon, a Pathe gramaphone perched on top projects Caruso's mud-cleansed torrent of grief, sinking in the bubbling greenness that surrounds, clarifying the operatic cruelty of colonialism.

L.A.'s Amazon--the 405--passing through the impenetrable savagery of Brentwood and Bel Air, carries streams of leather seated super-powered canoes projecting interior stirrings of the latest Syd Barrett/Nick Drake inflected voice to hit the Morning Becomes Eclectic playlist. The high fidelity components for this wall of sound are now being manufactured in China. Delphi corporation, a leading maker of car stereos and the now de rigeur GPS systems, has 26 locations there, including a plant in the enormous Suzhou Industrial Park.

According to a 2004 article in E Magazine: 'To the west and east of the city, where two industrial parks are growing by nine miles a year, centuries-old villages are being bulldozed to make room for 20-story apartment buildings, foreign-owned mega-corporations, landscaped parks and western-style subdivisions. "Development," reads a Suzhou billboard, "is an Immutable Truth."'

Suzhou is one of China's ten "model environmental cities," but its canals remain polluted along with adjacent Tai Lake. In June an algae bloom on the lake forced officials to cut off water to the city of Wuxi. Environmental activist Wu Lihong had warned of this danger but was arrested in April and remains in jail.

Tai lake is a pond in the sprawling Yangzi delta, endplace of arterial gift to China's rice basket, now clogged by the largest hydroelectric project in the world. After 13 years of construction, the Three Gorges Dam nears completion ahead of schedule and under budget, promising to keep the economic bonfire burning. The 1.13 million displaced persons will have dreams of the Baiji's soft screaming song to remember.

Image from The Nature Conservancy

Beer Run

2007-08-08T08:44:00.000-07:00

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight! Schlemiel! Schlemazl! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!

Give us any chance we'll take it
Read us any rule we'll break it
We're going to make our dreams come true
Doing it our way

Nothing's going to hold us back now
Straight ahead and on the track now
We're going to make our dreams come true

There ain't nothing we won't try
Never heard the word impossible
This time there's no stopping us
We're going to do it

On your marks, get set, and go now
Got a dream and we must know now
We're going to make our dreams come true

And we'll do it our way, yes our way
Make all our dreams come true
When we do it our way, yes our way
Make all our dreams
Come true
For me and you
--theme from Laverne and Shirley

At the Days Inn 15 miles outside OshKosh Wisconsin (as supermarkets erased farmers, OshKosh B'Gosh assured their continued mimicry in miniature) in the orange tiled lobby, where a "continental breakfast" of burnt coffee and plastic wrapped sweet rolls is served from 8 to 10 am, a twelve inch square white board hung on the wall reads in pink marker "Guest of the Day". Below in blue is a name randomly chosen from the night's registrants. The honoree, at departure, opens a small plastic bag to find granola bar, bottled water and trial size hand lotion.

In the summer of '83 T and I drove mom through Wisconsin and the U.P. to grandma's summer home in Northern Michigan. Mom was to drive grandma to Florida while T and I drove back to St. Paul.

At that time the drinking age in Michigan was 21, but in the state that industrialized a German-Polish imbibing lifestyle, the home of Laverne and Shirley's Chaplin via I Love Lucy inspired beer bottling opening credits' scene, the drinking age was 18.

So, on our way back, in the border town of Marinette, we hit a convenience store for picnic supplies: bologna, sliced cheese, white bread, mustard, chips and a case of Old Style. As we lean against T's '69 Le Mans in the city park, nourishing a buzz, a couple of twelve year old girls leap from their swings and begin prodding us from across the playground fence.
"Hey, where you from?" One of them wearing a blue checkered jump suit asks.
"Minnesota," T replies with a grin.
"What are you doing here?"
"We're just eating lunch."
"Who said you could do that?"
"Whaddya mean?" I ask.
"Who said you could do that?"
"This is a public park, we can eat here," T plays outrage.
"No you can't," the other girl jumps in with authority.

The game of adolescent sentence senselessness builds to laughter, and any worry that it's already two in the afternoon, we still have 300 miles to drive and we're on our third beer, is far from the mind.

Finally, we promise to return in 5 years to marry the girls, jump back in the car, and peal out down the highway to Wausau, smoking a joint and cranking "Led Zepplin II".

200 miles later at Chippewa Falls, its time for a refill. We stop in a bar that serves a glass of Leinie's and shot of Jack Daniel's for a buck. After two or three of these, we're almost wasted but still 90 miles from home.
"You drive," T says.

Pleistocene Drip

2007-08-01T10:51:00.001-07:00

Relax a stare at pavement: sparkling pepper jewels, freckled with ginger, shadowed, grease spotted, tire skidded, patchworked, manholed, yellow striped, notations spraypainted of utilities below. Occasional white spots bubble in gaps of campfire blackened marshmallows not ready for s'mores. The breakfast lunch and dinner, the all-in-one energy bar, the bowl of milky cornflakes topped with chopped banana, Blue Bunny neapolitan, no-brand peanuts and canned chocolate syrup--of motor vehicle diet.

25,000 years ago a 3,500 pound ground sloth, dazed by the art of a juniper, stumbled into a salty molasses funk and sunk. The black goop of La Brea Tar Pits is actually not tar--a derivative of coal--but asphalt. The tedious work of mining these pits ended in the early twentieth century as a process of refining road's dark essence from crude oil emerged.

Asphalt plants, scattered throughout our metro areas--All American Asphalt in San Fernando, Valero Energy in Wilmington--generate the gravy of automobility. A 2004 study showed one neighborhood downwind of a plant had not just the predictable increased rates of cancer and respitory illness but also a more than threefold growth in suicides.

Gravy needs meat--bitumen needs gravel. Seventeen pits in San Gabriel Valley supply hard crumble for 70% of California roads. But please no dusty mess in Santa Clarita. A proposed gravel mine drew outrage from these clean exurban livers and a bill to prevent its construction by Assemblyman Cameron Smith. "We need to do everything we can to protect the quality of life in the region," Smith says with a straightface.

Drive 35 miles east to the development blaze of Antelope Valley and find Caltrans workers widening Highway 138 under fire from flying burritos and bb guns.

There was a piercing scream from the woods, followed by a pistol report. "Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain't punished at all?"
"Jesus!" the old lady cried. "You've got good blood! I know you wouldn't shoot a lady! I know you come from nice people! Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady. I'll give you all the money I've got!"
"Lady," The Misfit said, looking beyond her far into the woods, "there never was a body that give the undertaker a tip."
--Flannery O'Connor, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"

bête comme fedora

2007-07-23T08:37:00.001-07:00

"dessin numero 1" from Le Petit Prince

At the age of six, Saint-Exupery tells us in Le Petit Prince, he made a little drawing of a boa constrictor that had swallowed an elephant. When he asks grown-ups if the drawing scares them, they answer, "Pourquoi un chapeau ferait-il peur?"

As the 750 Rapid rolls through the Reseda intersection, on the other side of Ventura Blvd, at the edge of a furniture shop that features kitschy cast iron sculptures in its outdoor lot--a reclining black bear with cub, a pony tailed girl in swing--I calculate.

In Chicago, before the realignment of Lake Shore Drive and the construction of a campus extending Grant Park to the south, the Field Museum was separated from downtown by five accelerating lanes of southbound LSD. One summer day I saw a man, apparently piqued by the crosswalk light's delay, calmly step into the rushing torrent and stick out his hand like an intrepid Charlton Heston parting waters in The Ten Commandments.

Fifty yards before impact, oncoming drivers begin laying on horns with the persistence of a kid discovering the fun of a glue gun only to be left with a crumpled sketch of a replica Robie House for the Jack Russell--Brandy--a backyard of disastrously sentimental sawdust and a sticky mess running down the inside pant leg. After cars screech to a halt, the target of our urban knight's shock-chivalry walks nervously across the bridge of bumpers created for her.

Seeing a gap, I dash across the four west-bound lanes, pause between the center yellow lines, look right, dodge a couple cars turning left from Reseda and jump in front of the bus. The driver opens the door and asks, "Do you have a death wish?"

With a grown-up grimace I answer, "Pourquoi une voiture ferait-elle peur?"

Spirits Rejoice

2007-07-16T08:07:00.000-07:00

(19th annual Four Square Gospel Church Convention. Los Angeles Examiner photo from Bancroft Library.)

Last Monday a bomb threat at the Van Nuys Fire Station nearly closed down the meeting of MTA's San Fernando Valley Governance Council. Instead it brought the fiery spirit of Aimee Semple McPherson down upon the Marvin Braude Constituent Center. The sterile corner room became a tent of old time revival that had me rocking in my chair.

"Alleluia!" Angels moisten the eyes as the Chair calls for signal preemption to replace signal priority on the Orange Line.

"Amen!" Sweat beads collect until tiny streams roll down cheeks of harmonic tongues on swaying indigo robes that form the choir sonic ecstatic, affirming the Chair's demand for crossing gates at Orange Line intersections.

"But wait!" A growl builds from a pigeon's whisper as the necessary lesson of vigilance against corrosive power enters the homily.

"I know L-A-D-O-T..." A hiss bursts from the crowd, like the static clarity from the man playing a Fender knock-off through his boom box perched atop a shopping cart in the parking lot of the NoHo Ralph's, as "D-O-T" is mouthed, "will raise a jurisdictional ruckus at the challenge to north-south traffic. But we must get people out of their cars!"

The congregation erupts. Shouts of "Glory be to God" and "Praise Him!" roll through the chamber.

But the crown is yet to be placed.

"The astonishing success of the Orange Line, which in less than two years has surpassed the Gold Line in daily ridership shows the Curitiba model can work in L.A. For a fraction of the billions spent on a single rail line, we can build a rapid transit system throughout the city!"

Suddenly, a handsome man of about fifty with slicked back hair leaps onto his back row chair. He writhes and digs manicured nails into a double breasted Zanetti suit clad body as if ripping away leeches found after bathing in a murky pond. His lungs trumpet forth voices of the Pentecost like the horn of Donald Ayler on "Truth is Marching In" as it must have sounded at Coltrane's funeral.

He falls to the floor and crawls, a trembling salamander, toward the podium. Sweaty palms hoist unsteady limbs upright, saliva drips from lips moving frenetically at the mike, "bblbbbl...yayaya...I-I-I-I-I-I wawawawa was blblbblliind. I wawawas blind. I was blind. I was blind but now I see. I was blind but now I see. I was blind but now I see!"

The Time of Your Life

2007-07-09T07:19:00.000-07:00

A sign with "Apt for Rent" inside a large red arrow, below which is written in bold black marker "BACHELOR SINGLE", hangs beside a white plywood and brick complex on Tujunga Ave. On the curb in front sits a Jaguar XK8 battered from collisions whose wounds go unrepaired. Clear plastic sticks to a parking light above a rear bumper held up by red duct tape on one side--in a small effort to match the maroon body--and several strips of black on the other. The passenger door looks crunched in by a fire plug and all that remains of the left headlight is a bulb that hangs loosely from a gray wire. Below it a greasy red ribbon signals the loss.

The maroon of dried blood that flowed from a deep gash forms a long curve across the forehead of a man sitting next to me. Don Johnson shades, missing the right temple, sloop down his nose where flakes of skin peel from sunburn. He murmurs a thought train softly, and I let it blur through me to become the buzz of a child who runs with arms stretched as an airplane.

Suddenly he looks at me, "How old are you? In your 30s, huh."
"I recently turned 42."
"Ah, Ah, just wait 'til you turn 50. That's the best time of your life. Yeah, oh yeah, believe me, that's the greatest."

Long after the death of 24 year old James Dean at the fork of California Routes 41 and 46, the accident tale recounted reckless speed in a Porsche Spyder. But the wreckage and position of Dean's body indicated his speed at 55. Just before impact he muttered, "That guy's gotta stop... He'll see us." 52 years later, the trauma of internal injuries still lingers.

Al Fresco Feeding

2007-07-02T07:37:00.000-07:00

Image from Picnics Inc

The sad trickle of liquid from mustard packets along with an empty bag of Buddig deli meat lay scattered under the highway overpass, remains of a slapdash lunch for the itinerant eater. The pavement above displays saltines and grapes on a plaid picnic blanket curling in the wind. These picnickers, mimicking their ant companions, swarm with an obsessive hunger--a hunger for asphalt.

The uncurbable appetite for pavement sparked the great HOV revolt of the 1970s. When Caltrans restricted existing lanes on the Santa Monica Freeway to carpools, Maoists of the middle class brandished radiator grills to demand their bread of life not be robbed from starving wheels.

Caltrans administrators, in fear for their bureaucratic lives, promised from then on to only create carpool lanes when freeways were widened.

Billions are now being spent to complete the HOV lane system throughout L.A. county, while a recent study shows they are often no faster than lanes where people go solo.

The next fight is over congestion pricing--charging drivers to use express lanes during peak times. Not having them has cost the county federal grant money for transit projects.

The revolutionary avant-garde fighting for motorist rights is the California Automobile Association. "Freeways must be free! Car drivers have too long been oppressed! We need more lanes not less! Create double decker freeways if we must!"

Mmmm, double decker freeways. That sounds delicious. Pass the mayonnaise.

Slow-churned

2007-06-25T07:39:00.000-07:00

The Next Village
My grandfather used to say: "Life is astonishingly short. Now, in my memory, it is so compressed that I can hardly understand, for example, how a young person can decide to ride to the next village without being afraid that--apart from accidents--even the time allotted to a normal, happy life is far too short for such a journey."
--Franz Kafka

"It's too far."
My niece drones the blues with a voice sweetly trained by Christian pop sing-alongs.
"It's too far."
Naturally, as we begin a half-mile trip to the North Hollywood Diner, it was she who had suggested we walk somewhere to eat. "I'm tired of sitting in the car," she had said.

Dewy and lake cooled summers in northern Michigan stayed light past ten, and the wood of Grandpa's Victorian cottage mumbled softly through the night. The ritual morning walk brought sociability and contemplation. Between introducing a fidgety grandson to neighbors, Grandpa would mimic bird songs, recite poetry and quiz me on the names of trees. The sound of White Ash samaras crackled under rubber soles.

A retired Presbyterian minister, Grandpa never stopped teaching the sacredness of presence. In contrast to the stuff-fest practiced after fry-thru purchases--made perfect in world competitive eating--he admonished me to take time with my food. Later, he capped his fried chicken and string beans with a glass of buttermilk.

After half a bean and cheese burrito and an invitation to bake a brown sugar birthday cake, sobbing red face becomes cherub grin. "We're already there?!", she exclaims as we step through the courtyard gate to my apartment. "I can't believe we're already there!"

Home on the Grave

2007-06-18T16:58:00.001-07:00

(Image from Santa Clarita realtor Anna Riggs)

A green plexiglas half wall stands three feet behind the B of A ATM at Magnolia and Laurel Canyon, forming a little alcove of privacy and shade. After my first time using it, looking down at my receipt while turning around, I walk directly into the wall. Shaking my head, I curve around to the sidewalk. Two guys in a moving van are laughing and pointing at me. "Hey buddy, watch out!" I give them an embarrassed smile and walk on.

The poison of stigmatization seeps into the skin with prickly irritation pushing us to normality. In L.A. the normal don't ride the bus.

David Zahniser of the L.A. weekly reveals the absurdity of MTA self promotion by expressing the Angelenos revulsion toward a bus rider's daily indignities--turtle speed service, blaring infomercials, the odor of passengers who haven't bathed for months--which haunt the journey through angel city grime.

A nondescript corner in North Hills now sours your vision with the image of an anxious one hour wait on the way to a nursery for orchid food, trying to sustain a strange house warming gift for the horticulturally insecure.

Visceral annoyance at dysfunction brought by the swarming infestation of urbanity propels flight to spacious Castaic homes on cul-de-sacs filled with miniature basketball hoops and battery powered Barbie Jeeps, where domestic joy conceals a landscape of blight. A recent Audubon Society survey found California bird populations decimated by loss of habitat, some species declining 80 percent over the past forty years.

Forty-four years ago Hitchock told a story of nature's apocalyptic revenge. Bird beaks peck out eyes blinded by the quiet.

Beggars Banquet

2007-06-08T09:02:00.001-07:00

The Stigmatization of St. Francis, Albrecht Altdorfer

The process of moving forces a confrontation with the burden of accumulation. Like the mealy bugs that droop the leaves of my schefflera arboricola, leftovers--two jars of caraway seed, a cerulean paisley suitcase torn and frayed, maps collected from European and American travels--wilt me.

Packing and unpacking the years of residue momentarily clarifies the gasp of eye watered joy expressed at thrush rattled branches by Francis in Rossellini's Francesco, Giullare di Dio.

At a time when we try to smother our collective malaise with the commodified sparkle of a 40 inch plasma screen or BMW Z4, this bliss of dispossesion strikes the viewer as utterly bizarre.

To link spiritual beauty with being thrown to wallow in mud from the pouring rain after begging for alms so disturbs popular perversions of piety--from the Trinity Broadcasting Network's claim that gold plated limousines reveal God's blessing to the bunksters of "The Secret" who tell us thinking we own a Lexus RX 350 is owning it--signs of destitution require relentless extirpation.

Thus, last Sunday afternoon when four police officers grabbed a homeless woman, kicked her up and down like a Bozo Bop Bag, and roped her four limbs as if she were a rodeo calf, they merely acted to "serve and protect": serve as surrogate thugs and protect our hands from the slightest smudge of guilt for the daily butchery on the streets.

Pass that 24 year old bottle of Bordeaux to wash down 100 pounds of seasoned ground flesh: the 6000 dollar combo meal, exclusively in Gladys Park.

hit me

2007-05-28T08:27:00.000-07:00

Rather than the deep wheaty aroma that drifted over downtown from the Taystee bread factory, where Dad and I would pick up a dozen loaves of day old white from the outlet store to be put in the basement freezer until T and I would load chocolate chips between two slices and stick them in the microwave for a midnight snack, perhaps the scent of lilacs from the unpruned bushes that hung above the tall wood panel fence bordering Mom's backyard garden rushed through me with the head pain and lost wind when the car struck on Grand between Larry's Grocery, where Ramsey kids would buy candy from the extra wide bellied man who'd flash his baseball bat if he saw trouble, and Ace Hardware, where Dad had been buying supplies for his never-ending interior constructions. So full hands could not grab the five year old who didn't look both ways.

It would not be the last time I was hit while crossing the street but likely the most memorable. Second most was the time, some 14 years later and less than four blocks to the east at Snelling and Grand, when a sedan took a right turn smack into my left leg. I rolled myself up the curb and onto the sidewalk, grabbing my cramp and shouting "what the hell!" as I tried to walk it off. The sedan stopped and backed up. The driver, who I noticed through tears of agony wore the collar of a cleric, glanced over his shoulder at me. Then, apparently satisfied it wasn't serious, he peeled off.

The piercing stink of rotting carcass grows in the nose as I walk down Burbank Boulevard toward the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area. A lump of dusty fur, sunken eye sockets that form crosses, sags into the dry grass.

Blessings cat...Blessings...

Stir it Up

2007-05-21T07:09:00.000-07:00

The MTA executive loves numbers like my four year old nephew loves chocolate cake batter, except one time, when uncle wasn't looking, he used a big wooden spoon to start slurping it down like it was soup, so at dinner he had a tummy ache, and when daddy asked "Do you gotta go potty?", he shook his head no--too much raw egg.

The following is a letter I sent to the MTA board:

I teach at California State University Northridge and am the author of Watching the Traffic Go By, a book on urban transportation history published by the University of Texas Press, and I am writing to urge you to vote no on the MTA's proposed fare increase.

Our Mayor has admirably put forth a climate action plan to address the ecological disaster created by our city, but raising fares would do devastating harm to this plan.

According to the Texas Transportation Institute Los Angeles has the worst traffic congestion in the nation.

At the same time, U.S. census records show we are number 34 in the percentage of people who commute using public transit--less than 11%.

According to the American Lung Association, L.A. has the worst pollution in the nation, causing thousands to die from heart and lung disease and catastrophic rates of asthma and other health problems for children.

Just as bad as L.A.'s environmental crisis is its horrible conditions for the working poor.

Bus riders do the work that makes this city run--they are cooks, janitors, construction workers--but living in L.A. is increasingly harsh.

A study by Runzheimer International shows L.A. is the third most expensive city in the nation, just behind New York and San Francisco.

And according to the Demographia International Housing Survey, L.A. has the least affordable housing market in the world.

It is no surprise that we have 90,000 people living on the streets, a large portion of them families with children.

In short, raising fares would do tragic environmental and economic injustice.

(The official hearing on the fare hike is this Thursday, May 24th at 9 AM at the MTA headquarters--Vignes and Cesar Chavez.)

Numerical Severity

2007-05-14T16:35:00.000-07:00

Screen capture from Telemundo, May Day 2007, MacArthur Park

"There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay."

In a stunning scene from the documentary China Blue we see a designer jean buyer negotiate with a Chinese factory owner a unit cost below 4 dollars. Matching this cost by deadline requires all-night shifts where workers, mostly teenage girls, clothespin their eyes open so they can stay awake. Wages, which account for about a dollar of the hundreds paid by the mad urban chic for our ripped denim, barely cover the cost of the 12 to a room dorms and bowls of rice eaten in stairwells.

This logic of corporate gangsterism is manifest in the MTA executive caw: "Other cities charge 2 dollars a ride, so we must keep up."

What is this, a competition to see who can most brutalize the poor?

Will Minneapolis start converting low rent flats into million dollar condos, pushing more families onto the street so they can experience the garbage picking lifestyle of slumopolis?

Will Boston spend millions more on police to better terrorize youth of color and cut funds from counseling, parks and job training?

Will New York cops start randomly whacking heads of immigrant workers?

Will our city be a model for the nation in fighting for the dispossessed, the disenfranchised, the despised, or will it be cruel city U.S.A.?

Did we elect a progressive administration, or is this urban revanchism West Coast style?

"The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live."
--Gil Scott Heron

There are two public hearings on the fare increase, both at the MTA headquarters (Vignes and Cesar Chavez).
Saturday, May 19th at 10 am
Thursday, May 24th at 9 AM--Official hearing, board members must attend.

King for a Day

2007-05-09T07:33:00.000-07:00

Golden Evening Primrose/ Titus Canyon

Waiting for the Reseda bus around 9 pm is a man with a short white beard on a softly sunken face. A small rainbow colored sack hangs from his shoulder.

"You a student?" he asks.
"No, I teach."
"Oh, wow. How'd you get to do that?"

I give him a 15 second summary of my academic career.

"Man, that's great."
"How about you? Did you just get off work?" I ask.
"You really wanna know?"
"Did you just get off work?"
"You really wanna know?"
"Sure."
"Just got outa prison."
"Oh, wow."

He nods at me intently.

"Hmmm...So, where were you at?"
"Corcoran."
He looks off at the stoplights as they cycle through. "2 years. I was into heroine. It got me in trouble."

He turns back to look at me. "But I'm clean now, with God's help."
"That's great. So... do they help you, y' know, when you get out?"
"200 dollars and see ya."
"What about a place to stay? Isn't there some kind of transitional housing?"
"Yeah. Right now I'm on the street, but I'm working on it."

The stoplights cycle through again.

"They have programs... I might even go back to school." He smiles, "I just have to get through each day--one at a time."

The bus arrives.

"Well, good luck."
"Hey, you're bringing me positive energy!"

I smile and look into his eyes blooming desert flowers.

Punishment

2007-05-02T08:24:00.000-07:00

Ron Mueck Dead Dad 1996-1997

The lifeless prose of Seung Cho undermines the friendless man's
effort to embody Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov, but the media creation of a hacker film mega-star succeeded with pathetic enormity.

"Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off" evokes numerous B movie scenes of furious skin scrubbing after rash acts and, two days later, the scene of a bomb wasting 140 lives in a Baghdad market.

Just as the chain of hurt can't be cleansed from Raskolnikov's soul until he speaks his guilt, so our mitigation of global terror can't begin until we account for our crimes.

New York took a first step in this accounting when it released a carbon inventory as part of a climate protection plan agreed to by 678 cities across the world.

Although Los Angeles--leader in death by breath--has signed on to the plan, one wonders if the reckoning will ever happen. The notion of a collective burden runs counter to the neo-Reaganite drive of the urban cowboy whose "highway rights" are God given.

God Bless America.
God Bless L.A.

the hiss

2007-04-25T12:59:00.000-07:00

Hey Jude
Come on, Joe
Don't make that sad song
Any sadder than it already is
Hey Jack, get back
Get yourself together
Come on, come on
I know you’re thinking of your nervous love
I know exactly what you're thinking of
Hey Cid, no matter what you did
It can work out, work out
No matter how you feel right now
Hey George, do your chores
Don't feel sore
I know it's a lot more than just being bored
There's a heaven and there's a star for you
There's a heaven and there's a star for you
There's a heaven and there's a star for you
--Daniel Johnston

A ringing, like the high hissing pitch from a shower head, is in my ears. As blackberries bring a wave of weakened thumbs, ipods bring the cyborg ill-adaption of tinnitus.

Our addiction is to the simultaneous transcending and dividing of space. A podcast from Britain, a text message from Glendale, take us beyond our immediate surrounding and separate us from those in our presence.

While walking we no longer worry about whether to nod hello to the strangers we pass.

And the bus rider can close off surrounding sorrows.

I sit near the front of the Orange Line bus. My ipod is paused, but earphones remain in. At Van Nuys Blvd riders cram through the front door. A college kid stands to let a very large man with a rattan cane and dark shades sit down. "Thank you," he says.

I close my eyes and let conversations dissolve into engine's hum.

"Stop leaning on me!" shocks me from my stillness.

The man with the cane changes from feeble to ferocious.

In a crowded bus, jostling and leaning is the norm, but the scars inside this lion are deep, and he looks ready to break his cane over someone's head.

"Get off me you faggot!"

The target of his inexplicable outburst weaves through twisting arms and legs toward the back door while others give the wrath its space.

"Cocksuckers... I cant stand 'em... They all need to die..." The rage, like a homophobic sewage line, explodes, soaking us with a fecal stench. When I arrive at North Hollywood station, with bloodshot eyes, I'm gasping for breath.

The hulk of hate limps off and continues his seething, punctuated by cane stabbing cement.

Climb Every Mountain

2007-04-18T12:03:00.000-07:00

The march by some 50 hikers to the Hollywood sign last Saturday as part of the "Step it Up" campaign to cut carbon emissions beautifully stated the upside down nature of Los Angeles life: walking to gaze over the ecological sacrifice to driving.

Yet, perhaps to the surprise of Angelenos and non-Angelenos alike, the streets below, packed with quirky taquerias and 1920s bungalows, offer the walker a delectable feast for the senses--rose pedals, buttered corn, barking dogs... Even our Chief Planner, Gail Goldberg, delights in walking to the hardware store or movie theater from her Larchmont Village home.

Reading her profile in Saturday's L.A. Times, I smiled: she endorses higher densities and links planning to social justice. But the needle scraped across vinyl when I came to this: "she's still driving to city hall."

I felt like those diners at the Lake Forest Souplantation--one minute enjoying the health boost from garbanzo beans and carrot shreds, the next minute in a hot sweat bent over a toilet seat.

This administration pledged a "radical new urban vision." Right now, it's more like DiGiorno--sorry, you can still tell its frozen.

My Dear Chief Planner, Mayor and all of City Hall: start taking the bus! You can live in L.A. without a car today. All we need is exclusive lanes for express buses and frequent service--every 5 minutes peak hours, every 15 off-peak.

Step it Uppers: What can you do?
Get on the bus!
Get on the bus!
Get on the bus and fight with us!

Bis uns der Tod das kranke Herze bricht

2007-04-10T16:58:00.000-07:00

Anselm Kiefer, "Midgard", 1982-1985
Milwaukee Art Museum

"You're a fucking asshole!"
In the Longs parking lot, a man in his mid forties stands besides his old red Mustang and yells.
"Go fuck yourself! You're a fucking asshole!"
He wears a thin grey beard matching the color of his t-shirt.

The target of his rage is a taller but older man wearing a safari style cowboy hat, light blue golf shirt and khaki shorts.

I continue toward the bus stop, a queazy mix of voyeuristic fascination and dread in my stomach. Neither the Mustang nor the tall man's Kia Sedona appear to be damaged.

The bearded man gets back in his Mustang. The conflict seems to reach its end, but I am not 50 feet away when the shouting peaks again.

A small audience develops. Everybody keeps a distance.

The Mustang is now pulled parallel to the Sedona. The man roars from the driver seat through the passenger door window.
"Get the fuck out of here! What are you fucking talking about! I'm not going to jail! Now just get the fuck out of here!"

The Kia owner writes something in a note pad as the Longs security guard--a small, weeble shaped man in his 60s--ambles toward him.

As a kid I would pack garbage with my feet into an old green incinerator found in our junk laden basement furnace room. A few hours after turning it on, nothing remained but ashes collected in a bottom drawer.

In the passenger seat of the Mustang, a boy of about 10 sits ashen-faced.

The suffering parent is the suffering child.

Feed the Birds

2007-04-04T16:02:00.000-07:00

The lead article in last Thursday's LA Times Calendar section celebrates the art of the Metro and asks the astounding question: why don't more people take the subway in L.A.?

Why don't more people go dumpster diving at In n Out? Everybody knows it's the Dom Perignon of the fast food burger--not that pink champagne you used to buy at Walgreens to wash down the hot sauce soaked through two slices of white bread and fries underneath a half chicken from Harold's.

People don't take it because most Angelenos live, work and play more than a half mile from the nearest stop. And even if a stop was convenient, if you plan on going out in the evening, plan on taking at least 3 times longer than going by car.

This is not the Met--it's not even the 7 line to beautiful Jackson Heights.

This is the Red Line--NoHo to Skid Row.

Oh, but you can have the rest of my fries.

Bon Anniversaire

2007-03-27T11:00:00.000-07:00

What better celebration of mass murder can there be than the road movie.

As we mark the fourth year of crushed villages, mutilated bodies and over 650 thousand killed, the number four film at the box office is Wild Hogs, where we laugh at the reconstruction of masculinity through the roar of burning gas.

The biker adventure may remind one of the no less misogynist Easy Rider, but at least that film revealed the national sickness that provokes brutal imperialism.

Also immersed in 1960s misogyny, Godard's Week-end of 1967 remains unsurpassed at depicting the driver's indifference to slaughter.

Mangled vehicles and corpses appear everywhere as anti-heroes Roland and Corrine complain about the traffic.

For Iraq, it's not just that the invasion never happened--as our recently passed prophet Baudrillard said of the Gulf War--it's that the denial brings jubilation.

Hey Mr. President, thank you so much for not laying waste to a country so I can continue to drive my...
"Aaaaaaaah! Aaaaaaaah!"
A woman wails in agony as flames spew from a three car wreck. A man, shirt soaked with blood, crawls on the ground.
"Mon sac! Mon sac est Hermes!"

Playtime

2007-03-20T18:48:00.000-07:00

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Remorse of Orestes (1862)

"Shwu shwu shwu shwu baaaaAAAAAh," the sound is between the raspberry lip imitation of a Harley and a crow squawk. Clapping hands add to the improvisation.

In the late '80s I saw Maria Joao vocalize her sparkling guts out to a small crowd in a Chicago loft. She would jump from a tender melody of scratches and hisses to blasting a note of operatic dimensions--the call of Eumenides must be heard.

"BeeAch BeeAch zzzzz Bzzzz eyoyoyoyoy yip yip hsssss," the sharp and constant changes rattle the ears of the riders, but most resist turning around.

We play the avoidance game, like an opposite polarized magnet, our heads repelled by the back of the bus.

But today there is an accompanying ballet.

Short blonde hair, dressed in a hooded winter jacket, grey sweatpants with black stripe, torn at the calf, and battered running shoes spotted by white paint, he squats on the seat in front of me, sticking one leg out and then the other, like a Russian folk dancer. He turns toward me, still squatting on his seat. Now I am too close to the stage.

One spring afternoon, while my friend and I eat lunch on a bench around 77th and 5th Avenue, a group of elementary school children pour off buses from a private Hebrew school. They surround us, staring with wide eyes as if we were the latest edition to the Central Park Zoo.

The dancer becomes a track and fielder as he moves off the seat into the aisle covered with tootsie roll wrappers and begins doing long thrusts, preparing for a sprint. Next, he's a surfer, balancing the bus as it swerves from lane to lane.

Most ignore the show, but one guy with a bundle of papers and pen in his hand turns around and stares.

The avant-garde ensemble in the back continues--vocals, clapping, knee slapping and window rapping--going silent at points but rising back to mad cacophony again.

The audience is getting restless--as if they intended to see Beauty and the Beast and stepped into Avenue Q by mistake. A few begin shooting annoyed glances at the entertainers.

Now Andy Irons has become Alexander Popov, squatting with his hands pointed forward about to launch himself. He turns one way, then the other, checking out his competition. When the bus screeches to a stop, he uses the momentum to launch forward.

"Sorry buddy," he says after bumping a rider huddled in the clam position, his recognition of others suddenly breaking the fourth wall.

It's my stop. As I move toward the back door, I finally look at the back-seat performers. Laminated name tags adorn their chests.

The Dream Life

2007-03-14T10:38:00.000-07:00

The brilliance of David Lynch's Inland Empire is found in its unveiling the maggot life of movie stardom.

The Hollywood gloss--tummy tucked, muscle molded, Versace clad icons pouring out of stretch limos for red carpet premiers--becomes indistinguishable from the Hollywood real--sidewalks puddled with urine and laden with cardboard blankets.

When a small intestine ripped from an old man's stomach with a pitchfork in The Hills Have Eyes 3 evokes roaring laughter, we know the viciousness of our city's attack on residents of L.A.'s contemporary Hooverville--skid row.

This viciousness reflects the sentiment of tourists and Angelenos alike scurrying past lepers of The Boulevard with fear of long grime filled fingernails gripping styrofoam coffee cups.

As the 217 pulls up to the corner of Hollywood and Highland, frustrated by a 20 minute wait, a mass of some 30 bodies rush the door. By the time I get on, the bus is packed with standing riders all the way back, but one seat in the second row rests empty.

She has her head slumped completely forward and mumbles softly as I sit down. The kids behind me laugh. The object of aversion is a tree of lightening reds--from maroon skirt, to pink Victoria Secret sweatshirt to ruddy salmon face topped by tangled blonde hair.

Passenger dread no doubt comes less from her appearance than her swaying and strange voicings--she must be ill. I feel unease myself until the bus comes to a sudden stop and her head slams hard against the seat in front. Startled, she quickly sits up straight.

Some of us get nightmares when we go to sleep, others when we wake up.

Patience

2007-03-07T11:08:00.000-08:00

"Can you help me?" A woman in her 80s, her body a series of well chewed toothpicks somehow glued together is trying to pull upright with a leash an old chocolate lab lying on the grass. "Come on Sam, Come on," She was saying.
I look down at sad charming eyes and greying snout.
"My dog isn't moving."

As I approach his tail starts to wag, and he looks up in hope. I lean down and start giving his hips a deep massage.

It is 4:30 in the afternoon and I am headed to Target. I have to go home, change and be in Northridge by 7, but I have plenty of time. My Target store is but a 15 minute bus ride to Woodland Hills.

His fur is greasy and dandruff, or the doggy equivalent--skin scab remainder--sticks to my fingers.
"Oh he loves that!"
"What a sweetheart," I give him more rubs.

"He's the best. I know he's very old, but I can't let him go. We take care of each other."

After a few minutes of love, I stand up.
"Bye Sam. It was nice meeting you."

Walking on, I turn back occasionally. She is still tugging at his collar, trying to pull him up.

I realize that, while they appreciated the greeting, I had not helped.
I shout back, "Do you want me to lift him?"
"Oh, could you? He would really love that!"

I walk back to the dog, still cemented to the ground.
Gently, I hug his stomach and lift, as the woman continues to pull on his collar.
His wobbly back legs seem ready to fold, then, like a precariously balanced easel, he nearly falls over. I hold on as he slowly moves his legs.
"Thank you so much. He'll be ok now."

It doesn't look like it. His back legs are crisscrossed, and they seem to just drag along as he pulls forward in the front, with her help.
"We're ok. Thank you so much."

I walk away, looking back frequently. "Come on. Come on," she continues to coax him along.

I arrive at the bus stop about 4:45. A half dozen people are waiting. At this time on a weekday, a bus is scheduled to come at least every 7 minutes. Knowing I have to be back at my house by 6, I start getting a little anxious when 5 rolls around. 5:05, 5:10, 5:15. That's it! I turn around and head back home.

It is getting dark as I pass the little plot of grass where my old friend lay. The warmth of a dog smile rises from crumpled oak twigs.

The Beauty of Grunge

2007-02-28T09:17:00.000-08:00

There must be fifty people waiting to board King County Metro route 194 express from SeaTac to downtown Seattle. It's an articulated bus, but with the luggage and overloaded backpacks, it's still gonna be a squeeze.

As I step on a woman with a large wheeled upright stands near the front asking, "Does anybody have change for a ten?"
I now recognize the wisdom of bringing small bills.
"I might." This forces me to quickly find a seat since I am dragging a large duffle and shoulder bag myself. So I slide next to a woman who has taken one and a half seats with an overflowing cotton bag.
"Do you have enough space?" She asks.
I'm not sure if she is being sarcastic, but I reply, "Yes, thanks."

As I dig through my bags to find the cache of small bills, another man--a Somali immigrant who drives one of those electric motor carts shuttling the elderly and disabled from one terminal to the next--has already given her a dollar.

Just gives her a dollar? Where are we...Seattle?

I finally dig out my bills and discover that, yes indeed, I have change for a ten.
"Ma'am, would you like me to break a ten, so you can repay that man?"
"Yes I would."
I change her ten. She turns around and pays the man, who smiles shyly.
"We're all here to help one another."

The fare on this express bus, which takes about a half hour to arrive downtown, is 1.25. I can't think of a better bargain for airport transportation. Once you arrive downtown, don't worry about getting around since the bus is actually free.

Wow, what a concept! Actually encourage riding the bus and getting out of the car by keeping fares low...Hmmm who doesn't understand that--oh yeah, the LA Times and MTA.

Almost 1/3 of Seattle residents commute without a car. That's twice as many as in Los Angeles, and it's actually quite a beautiful city to live in as well.

The thing is that for Seattleites riding the bus is almost a source of pride. In contrast to Angelenos, who have a shocked and worried look when I tell them I ride the bus...

A twenty something once asked me,"Isn't it dangerous for women...especially good looking women?"
I thought, "Uh, I don't want to push you to more rhinoplasty, but..."
I said, "Yes, attractive women do ride the bus."
She looked doubtful.

Perhaps she is picturing the grungy looking women who reside in Seattle, with their NorthFace waterproof jackets and hiking shoes--women who get their exercise from walking the steep inclines of the city rather than the steep inclines of the latest thousand dollar elliptical trainers--micro greenhouse gas generators--in front of TVs showing Al Gore's post Oscar interview--these Angelenos thinking, "Damn, I wish he was president."

"Here we are now
Entertain us"
-Nirvana

Nascar Nature

2007-02-22T08:39:00.000-08:00

The following is a letter I sent to National Public Radio:

Listening to the February 18 Weekend Edition Sunday, Arlynda Boyer's description of Dale Earnhardt conveying the essence of bodhicitta strained deeply my own buddha nature.

This is like saying Ronald McDonald conveys bodhicitta--sure he has a kindly demeanor and people feel happy in his presence--he even gives millions for families of chronically ill children. But he is also the smiling face behind enormous suffering, only one small part of which is to inspire addiction in children leading to skyrocketing rates of obesity and diabetes.

NASCAR embodies the antithesis of Buddhist compassion for all living things. It generates divisive triumphalism and negates interbeing. It teaches children to delight in the massive plunder of our planet brought on by the automobile.

Coastlines and wilderness, ecosystems on which millions of animal and plant species depend, are poisoned by the oil drilling, metal mining and chemical manufacturing that feed the speeding monstrosity worshipped at the asphalt temple.

Earnhardt may indeed have shown a humility and even a love towards others uncommon to sports celebrities--moments of the divine found in us all--but why not look for bodhicitta in a woman who rides the bus three hours each day so she can live with her daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren in a one bedroom East L.A. flat and dust furniture in a Westlake Village office park. This life of less means her smile reflected in the bus window blesses us all.

valenTimes mess

2007-02-12T17:24:00.000-08:00

Steve Lopez of the L.A. Times sparked a blaze of suggestions for what to do about traffic in this city of sigalerts. In response to city plans to explore possibilities for the expo line, Lopez invited readers to have their say and over 600 responded.

Reading through the suggestions, what is striking is how often there is a blame the other guy attitude: "What if every car on the road maintained two car lengths in front so that others could easily merge on and off the freeways?", "Make it illegal to circumvent traffic by using an exit lane and merging back in at the last moment," "Require drivers to follow the laws and keep to the right except when passing. Drivers in the left lane impede traffic cutting down efficient use of the highway"--it's as if all we need to do is send everybody to driving school for rumbling bumpkins.

On the other hand, even among people whose knowledge of buses is likely being annoyed when they are stuck behind them, a large number recognize the need to improve public transit. A few even recognize the fast and inexpensive solution of bus only lanes, proposed by the BRU several years back. One writer suggests, "Make Sepulveda Blvd. through the Sepulveda Pass a bus only throughway during peak traffic periods with no private vehicle access unless you are a resident or carpooling."

Meanwhile, in a January 26 editorial, the LA Times calls for higher fares and reduced service! Why don't they just call for a tax break to coal plants that increase emissions? They must be living in the other dimension that string theorists hypothesize, where traffic in L.A. is no more a problem then ice cream on the face of your three year old niece. Just lick it off.

Why not go to the MTA, 1 Gateway Plaza, on Valentines Day, February 14, and give the board members a message at a special meeting on fare hikes. L.A. needs more bus service not less! No fare hikes!

We love you but this is L.A. not Mister Roger's Neighborhood. Wash your face.

Auto Crimes

2007-02-08T07:48:00.000-08:00

"What gives a torque wrench its power?"
I'm still on the plane. Two San Gabriel Valley guys in their twenties sit next to me talking cars.
"What?"
"You know, how does it get its power?"
"It doesn't have any more power than a regular wrench," he says with condescension.
There's a clear hierarchy in this relationship--the master of auto and his wide-eyed apprentice.
"Oh, I mean how does it work."
"It's just like a regular socket wrench except you can set how tight you want it to tighten, and it slips when it gets to the desired tightness."
"Oh"

I tune out as they continue talking about the merits of different tire treads, mufflers and cooling systems, and then my ears perk up again.

"Do you think I'd lose my license if I got caught doing 140 in a 70
zone?" asks the apprentice.
"Hell no," says the master.
"Oh."
"I was once caught going 127 in a 50, and I didn't lose my license." He chuckles.
The apprentice laughs lightly, "yeah?"
"So, I mean that's, lets see, that's more than twice the speed limit, that's like, that's like two and a half times the speed limit. And if I didn't lose my license for that then, you know, 140 in a 70, no way, because, you know, that's only twice the speed limit, you wouldn't lose it for that."
The apprentice nods at the wisdom.
"Yeah that's my highest 127 in a 50. Damn that cost me a bundle. Shit, I'm gonna lose my license for sure next time."

Siphoning the rebel rage expressed here is the top selling Playstation 2 game, Grand Theft Auto, a triumphal combination of high velocity and pillage.

And since the February 2 release of the IPCC report, who can describe this rage as anything but a rage to pillage?

And who now can doubt the need to make private automobility exponentially more expensive?

This week the EU proposed legislation requiring new cars to reduce emissions by 18%, likely increasing vehicle price and adding to the already high cost of driving in Europe, where gas taxes are typically 3 times what they are in the U.S.

Once again Europe is way ahead of us.
On the other hand, while they have Paris, we have Paris, Las Vegas.

Suck it Up

2007-02-01T06:31:00.000-08:00

(image from www.babyminestore.com)

...and the snow came.

I was in the cities for a week and we had rain but no snow, until
the day I was to leave. One would think that of all airports
MSP would be well prepared for a little snow, but we were
delayed 2 hours. No big deal except that I was making a connection
in Phoenix and that plane was long gone by the time I had
arrived.

Oh that's not a problem, the helpful person at the counter said,
we can guarantee you a flight in two days. In two days??
I asked to be put on the wait list for the last flight to
LAX. Well sure you can try, there are only 50 people
waiting ahead of you.

I thought fast. Next to the LAX flight I noticed a flight to
Ontario. The wait list was small, but I would have to give
up my space on the LAX list. I gambled, and I was the last
person on the list to get on. How I get to the valley from Ontario,
I do not care--at least Im not stuck in Phoenix for two days.

As you can imagine everyone on the plane is relieved. The high
tensions untensed. But that doesn't stop the jackasses from coming
out of the woods.

If you're not in first class, the exit row is the best seat
in the plane, with the luxury of extra leg space. The only
burden is listening to a series of short questions from the
flight attendant about your ability to assist in an emergency.
But some men in their early thirties are dumber then a corn
tassel.

The guy in the window seat across from me is yaking on his
cell and the flight attendant politely but firmly asks if he
could take a minute to answer a few questions. He ignores her
and keeps rambling away. She looks at him with annoyance and
says, "we can wait." He does not move his cell from his ear but
stops talking and looks back at her as if he was in junior
high school and his English teacher just threatened to
send him to the principal's office.

This attitude isn't unusual. It is the same "the world is here
to serve me" air found among drivers on the streets and freeways of LA.
Their cell phones are their binkies--when not stuck to the mouth,
the face of these toddlers scrunches up and elephant tears foretell
a screech of elephant rage. Their leather interiored Tundras are
strollers--"push me mommy push me, I don't want to walk, WAAAAH!"

After the flight attendant gives her short talk, binkie boy says both
to his neighbor and his cell,
"Someone's a little pissy today!"
They all laugh like frat boys who just did twenty beer bongs, went on
Riddler's Revenge and puked on everyone so the ride had to be closed
for a 15 minute spray down.

The techno-bubble propels the cyclical vomiting syndrome
it attempts to shield.

Upside down hometown

2007-01-23T07:45:00.000-08:00

Happy new year!
Where have you been the last month?
My dear friends--those who may be reading from across the globe.
Well, I thought I deserved a bit of a vacation.

Anyway, let me begin with my trip to the Twin Cities,
MSP, Minnesota for the holidays.
My mother now lives in exurbia, a place called Rosemount.
She had lived in St. Paul my whole 40 years, but she got
married, and well things change. For a few years now my dad's
been living in Mendota Heights, first ring 'burbia
and the advantage of the most beautiful river view
on the drive to downtown St. Paul.

This drive down Lilydale Road made me see the poetry
of the Minnesota landscape with fresh eyes.
I was struck again as I crossed the Minnesota River south
of the cities.

I always considered the landscape of
Minnesota to be boring, especially in comparison
to the drama of mountains and ocean on the West Coast.
But if anything could change my mind about this beauty,
it was a fanstastic exhibit of photographs by Jim Brandenburg at the
Bell Museum, not of the forested landscape bordering
the rivers, but the prairie lands to the south that extend southwest to Oklahoma.

Driving around the cities (as we natives like to call them),
I was also struck by how narrow many of the streets and highways
were. Of course, everyone complains about the traffic, and there
were a few rush hour jams, but I could still get from Rosemount
to downtown Minneapolis in under 45 minutes during rush hour.

What is shocking about Minnexurbia is how beauty and ugliness are
so closely intertwined. One minute you will be driving down a
a road adjacent nothing but forest and grassland, until you
turn into a two year old development of pseudo neo-traditionalism--
front porches and the garage in front? A lame effort at melding
ideas of Duany Plater-Zyberk and satisfying the retiree market.

Even worse, down the road in "the big city"
(what is this Eagan or Apple Valley?) you have
a series of big box stores with chain restaurant islands dabbed here
and there amid the parking lot oceans. The roads here are
8 lanes wide with appropriate left hand turn signals at major
intersections--pedestrian traffic might as well be a crime.

My stepfather ran into a deer with his minivan the other
night. Mom said the animal was able to crawl to the other side
of the road, but the sheriff later had to go back and shoot it.
My dad just purchased some property north of the
cities so he could have some shooting land. He grew up on a farm,
but he hadn't been hunting since his college days in
Iowa City over forty years ago. What's going on here?

My Minnesota has turned upside down.
The snow on the ground was almost completely melted during the
40 degree average temps we had over the course of the week I was
there. Until the day my plane left and the storm came...

Wheel in the Sky

2006-12-20T09:04:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it's hard to predict what will trigger the high pitched squeal of a pig about to have its neck sliced open coming from the throat of a six year old girl. Of course its always an accumulation: a long day in the car without a proper nap, a tummy ache from too much pop and cookies, can't find Barbie's purple princess dress... but the breakdown came when once again her pesky 3 year old sister and brother showed wills of their own.

The perfect gift, I thought. The well-meaning uncle always wants to give something good for them. A wooden train would be something I could give all three. It would encourage cooperative creativity, requiring them to share and kill the "that's my toy" demon.

At first they are all very excited, but then the building begins. The great thing about this set is its ease of assembly. The track pieces can be fit together in any direction, up or down. This means it can be shaped in many ways, so the twins begin snapping pieces together randomly and setting out the little buildings and railroad workers.
"Stop!"
"What's wrong?"
"We have to make it like on the box!"
"But look, it works this way too." I push the little train along the parts of track already assembled.
"Nooo! I want to make it like the box!"

And there it is. The avalanche begins. She starts kicking apart the little scene the twins had assembled. The rhythm of the three high pitched cries remind me of the legendary 1980s punk band Flipper. "Sex Bomb Baby Yeah!"

Our mayor is a bit like the well meaning uncle, believing he has the perfect gift in the form of a Wilshire Ave subway to the sea. He is even more like my niece, dreaming of how perfect the train looks like on the box, not wanting to start building anything else that might work--like bus only lanes--because it doesn't match his rail set in the sky.

Meanwhile us riders on the ground wallow in dawdling. Like the other evening, it took me nearly 45 minutes to go 2 miles south from Hollywood to Beverly. Dear dreamer, this isn't some obscure corner in the middle of the Valley. This is Hollywood and Highland--the closest L.A. has to a Times Square!

Once again only Journey will suffice:
Ive been trying to make it home
Got to make it before too long
I cant take this very much longer
Im stranded in the sleet and rain
Dont think Im ever gonna make it home again
The mornin sun is risin
Its kissing the day

Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin
I dont know where Ill be tomorrow
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin

And that is my Holiday Gift to you--The Mad Bus Rider will be on Vacation for the next two weeks.
Happy New Year!

Paradise Now

2006-12-11T10:27:00.000-08:00

Easily the most popular destination in the Valley and one of the most popular in all of L.A. is Universal City. From my first trip to California in '76 I still remember the mechanical shark attacking our tram and thinking, even as an eleven-year-old, how fake Jaws looked up close. More frightening was the hyper-real avalanche of five foot high stones that "accidentally" fell when an earthquake struck--the hills really shook!--until they bounced silently on the road and I realized they were foam.

That night I'm not sure where Dad parked the '67 Winnebago trailer and golden brown Dodge Van we packed with ten kids, but a five mile venture to the northeast on the Hollywood freeway would have encountered what made the Valley a Shangri La for the workaday Joe not part of the entertainment world.

In the 1970s Panorama City was still the booming Levittown of the West, with the San Gabriel Mountains as majestic backdrop, set on curving streets, glorious 3 bedroom tract homes, astro turf perfect front lawns, and American built cars in every driveway--perhaps even my Presbyterian Minister Grandfather's standard: the Impala, built just down the street at the GM plant adjacent the Southern Pacific tracks that border Van Nuys to the south.The plant closed in 1992 and six years later a shopping mall emerged on its site calling itself "The Plant". One supposes the name is meant to evoke images of old time industry much like Cannery Row in Monterey or Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco remade former warehouses and factories into popular tourist shopping districts. But whereas one could call these places classic simulations-- reconstructing the past minus its drudgery, pain and class conflict--"The Plant" reconstructs nothing but another hideous big-box mall.Based on appearance, "The Plant" might refer to the Palm Tree that sprouts up randomly amid a sea of parking spaces. Yet across the street is the anti-simulation: an abandoned ten acre facility reminds visitors of the 5000 lost jobs and the general deindustrialization that cracked and crumbled the backyard pooled paradise no less than the Northridge quake of 1994.On the always overcrowded 233, passage underneath the tracks marks ones arrival into this old "New City", and on arrival back to grade level, above a row of bulldozers, opposite "the Plant", a billboard proclaims "hundreds of great places to hang out in L.A.", as if asking "so what the hell are you doing here?"

Attachment

2006-12-04T09:07:00.000-08:00

A woman in her 60s is looking at a brochure on face injections. Before and after photographs reveal wrinkles and less wrinkles around closed mouths. From her purse, she removes a tiny booklet with smiling sun on the cover and glances at the Bible verses inside.

In the 1930s the De Beers diamond cartel with the marketing brilliance of N.W. Ayer transformed an abundant colorless stone into a mandatory overpriced engagement ecstasy for young Americans. In the 1960s De Beers hired J. Walter Thompson to internationalize the delirium. Greatest success came in Japan where attaching diamonds to 'modern western values' meant every 'progressive' Japanese couple now dreamed of yen-laden sparkles.

Throughout most of the twentieth century few consumers knew the savage conditions under which mostly African diamond miners slaved. However, in the 1990s the role of diamonds in funding wars in Angola, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia led to campaigns demanding a stop to the cartel's complicity. Despite an agreement reached in 2003 to end bloodshed by the rock, human rights groups say promises have gone unfulfilled.

Regardless, as shown in a searing photo essay from Foreign Policy Magazine, miners continue to work in harsh environments and suffer destitution in fulfilling the romantic fantasy of a waitress at TGIF's in Simi Valley, whose boyfriend, a bartender there, just charged 3 and 1/2 grand on his Capital One MasterCard that he'll attempt to pay back at 13.9% over the next five years.

Diamonds are hardly the only attachment that funds violence and cruelty. The mining of coltan, which reached peak prices from 2000 to 2002, assisted the diamond in funding the Congo wars, where over 3 million died. More recently, despite the peace agreement of 2003, cassiterite has been extracted under threat of mutilation and torture by resource starved rebel armies in the northeast.

From coltan is processed tantalum, a powder essential to the manufacture of featherweight capacitors found in most cellphones. Likewise cassiterite, which is seen as an environmentally friendly alternative to lead, is used to solder the elaborate micro electronic components that bring wireless connectivity to life.

The woman looks over at me. "Cellphone?"
I look at her quizzically.
"Cellphone?" She asks again.
I shake my head.
My emptiness chills me. Then I think, "What if it rings?"

As we pass the Catholic Church at White Oak and Ventura the two young men on the back seat cross themselves. The woman sees them and smiles.

Street Vermin

2006-11-26T16:14:00.000-08:00

Clunk!
What the hell was that?
Where are we?
Somewhere around Cedar Lake or is it Lake of the Isles?
The twisting streets roll from one to the other and the multistory Georgian revival and craftsman homes blur together. We are lost.
It is a late fall Saturday night in 1982, and we are drunken teenagers looking for a party.
Was it from frustration or thrill that Ryan was driving too fast?
The street curved left, his parents Honda didn't quite. We hit the curb.

We get out of the car.
"Shit!" Sam's laughing. "Check that out!"
The hub cap is crumpled and the wheel seems crooked.
Ryan thinks quickly.
"Let's find another Honda. We'll just switch the hubcaps."
Sam laughs. "Yeah, let's fuckin' do it!"
We find another Honda, and Ryan pops it off with a crowbar.
Somehow they wrestle it on to the broken wheel.
We take off.
SssskkkkaaSssskkkkaaSssskkkkaa...
It didn't do anything.
That car was wrecked...a broken axle.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving achieved their greatest lobbying success in 1984 when the National Minimum Drinking Age Act forced every state to change their drinking age to 21, but is it the liquor that kills or the car?

We have a cultural design problem. Alcohol is a central part of U.S. culture, and our cities do not permit us to go out drinking without also driving. Why don't groups that spend millions promoting "the designated driver" advocate better public transportation and urban design with the same fervor?

Drunk or sober at 16 we were all speed demons. We took any chance we had to make our tires screech. The likelihood of a teen driver bending metal must be near 100%. While local news obsesses about the dangers of ghetto youth, the violent urges of suburban kids are allowed to wreak havoc on the highways.

T.W. Adorno writes,"Which driver is not tempted, merely by the power of his engine, to wipe out the vermin of the street, pedestrians, children and cyclists."

In other words, the callousness of the NRA's dogma "Gun's don't kill people, people kill people," is equally sick if applied to automobiles.

George Weller may have hit the gas, but his 1992 Buick Le Sabre killed 10 people.

Thanksgiving 2006

2006-11-20T08:30:00.000-08:00

For the Sunday before Thanksgiving I was asked by my pastor to speak briefly to our congregation on what I was thankful for. This is what I said:

Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark,
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks.

These lyrics by the Neville brothers honor the famous seamstress from Montgomery Alabama who defied the violence of Jim Crow and inspired a struggle for civil rights that continues to this day.

I hear the soaring vocals of Mahalia Jackson wash over me whenever I consider the courage of heroes like Parks, Dr. King, James Lawson, John Lewis, Fannie Lou Hamer...

And I am equally moved when I think of the thousands who often go unnoticed in their work for social justice.

One of these is Hee Pok "Grandma" Kim who learned her activism as a child aiding the Korean resistance to Japanese occupation and now in her 80s organizes fellow immigrants to demand the transit bureaucracy improve the deplorable conditions faced by the mostly working class people of color who ride the bus in L.A.

When I hear Christians say a million dollar home in the Encino hills with a collection of Porsches in the garage is a sign of God's blessing I am somewhat confused. It is true that everything we have is a gift from God, but shouldn't we see the truly blessed as those who have the strength to abandon material possessions--like the followers of Jesus--and give their lives over to serving the poor, the weak, the oppressed?

I don't have the gifts of a Parks or a Kim, but their resolve, and those who share their thread of the divine keep the dream flashing, pushing the divine within me to change the world.
And this is what I am thankful for.

Loft Living

2006-11-13T09:19:00.000-08:00

Skip a life completely.

I have reached my seat and the bus door is closed.
"She's Coming!"
A woman with a cane is persistently limping down the sidewalk.
The bus pulls away.
"SHE'S COMING!!" the man shouts again.
The bus stops, and the woman steps on.
"I know we're in a hurry," the man comments.
"Safety is the MTA's number one concern." He looks back at the woman sitting behind him and shakes her hand. "Am I right?"
At the next stop several people get on.
"Step on up and find your seat. We're in a hurry," he says.

Stuff it in a cup.

I've seen this guy before. The commentator. He calls all the stops with the flourish of a streetcar conductor of old. "Victory Boulevard, transfer here for line 164."
When the bus is crowded he calls, "Let'em on, Let'em on! Move to the back!"
As people move off-"Watch your step. Don't forget your belongings."

She said, Money is like us in time,

In between messages, he engages in conversations with his neighbors. They must be one way conversations, but he is such a great performer--leaning in close, eyes engaged--it looks like talk between intimate friends.

It lies, but can't stand up.

These bizarre Augenblicken of public closeness remind me of a stoned moment from the summer of '88 sitting on the roof of a loft in downtown Minneapolis. At the top of our voices we sang Lou Reed lyrics to yuppies walking in and out of a Sports Bar.

Down for you is up.

Competing to see who could hold the longest note, that night I had the lungs of an elephant.

Linger AAAAHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH....ooooon!!!!!

The response from below was mixed. Most smiled and waved, but one guy, in an apparent effort to defend his ladyfriend from the serenade of strangers, looked up and shouted, "Shut the fuck up you Faggots!"
In our euphoria, we took this as encouragement. After all this was Minneapolis, where the night before we had visited the Disneyland of Gay Bars, "The 90s", which, on floor one, had both a male strip club and a disco, floor two, a piano bar, and floor three, a drag show.
"We love you too, Cutie!"

your pale blue eyes.

Begin the Diversions

2006-11-05T08:29:00.000-08:00

Heading south on Reseda at 2:15 on a weekday afternoon it is not unusual to hit a clog, but today is different. It's like we're waiting in line for American Idol try outs. What's the delay? Twenty minutes and four blocks later we find out. They are resurfacing a stretch of Reseda between Roscoe and Saticoy, so the two lanes of southbound traffic have to be diverted onto one of the northbound lanes. The Roscoe stop is on the south corner, but the driver lets people off on the north before merging to the left. On the south corner, a half dozen people wait, unsure what to do since the street in front of them has been torn up and blocked off from traffic. In other words, the bus can no longer pull up to the curb, so where will it stop? As the light turns green and the bus finally heads south into the northbound lane they find out--the bus just drives on by as they wave their hands hopelessly in the air.

Not surprisingly, at any given time there are over a dozen major resurfacing projects taking place on the streets of Los Angeles. The Bureau of Street Services has an annual budget over 170 million. Most of this budget comes out of general revenues collected on all city residents, whether they own cars or not. This makes sense since streets are vital to urban infrastructure. Only the most hard core libertarian would argue local streets be privately funded--each person choosing whether to surface in front of their house or not, making driving to the grocery store a bumpy adventure constantly moving from asphalt to gravel to dirt to cobblestone.

In Europe, mass transit was early on recognized as an equally important part of the transportation network that required publicly funding. By contrast, in the U.S. it was considered a private business which not only should be self-sustaining but also taxed, helping to fund the construction of roads. This logic, not--once again it must be emphasized--a GM conspiracy, is largely responsible for the collapse of public transportation in U.S. cities, including L.A.

This does not mean the auto lobby was without influence on public policy. One of their biggest victories was convincing both states and the federal government to create highway trust funds. These funds created out of gas taxes and other auto related fees were dedicated solely to the construction of highways helping to create the fantastic "freeway" systems that dominate cities. States created constitutional amendments prohibiting the diversion of these funds to anything but highways. This sounds reasonable until you realize that cars have to eventually leave the highway and go on local streets, paid for by local municipalities. In the 1970s cities recognized the need for public transportation, and a small slice of highway funds began being diverted to mass transit, but by then the damage had been done.

Non-divertability is still a bad idea, so I am opposing proposition 1A, which extends the restrictions on California's highway fund. Yes, it is now called the "transportation fund", and a sliver goes to mass transit, but the problem with non-divertability is it gives the illusion that car drivers are paying their way. As has been pointed out, gas taxes would have to be at least twice as high to cover not just the cost of local streets but also police and emergency services that keep drivers from killing one another any more than they already do.

On the other hand, to redress the legacy of transit neglect, non-divertability might be a good idea. No money should be diverted to building highway lanes until all California cities have fast and convenient public transportation.

Madaboutla's proposition recommendations:
State:
1a no
1b no---more highway lanes/more smog.
1c yes--I'm not a big supporter of state bond measures, a way to redistribute wealth to Wall Street elites, but housing is in more of a crisis than transportation.
1d no--of course we need money for education facilities, but progressive taxation, not bonds is the answer.
1e no--isn't flood control precisely the cause of ecological disaster?
83 no--even victims rights groups oppose this malicious measure.
84 yes--more bonds, but this flood control measure has a conservation focus.
85 no--sure children should let their parents know if they're in trouble, unless their parents are the trouble.
86 yes--higher cigarette prices, fewer deaths.
87 yes--higher gas prices, fewer deaths.
88 no--a new kind of regressive tax.
89 yes--public campaign financing is a start.
90 no--"property rights"=land theft.
City:
H yes--affordable housing bonds.
J yes--what the heck?
R yes--term limits are bad but lobbying limits are good.

Smashing Pumpkins

2006-10-27T09:28:00.000-07:00

(Image from www.snoopy.com)

You may wonder where in the world my blog was last week. Well I was visiting the fascinating city of Arlington, Texas where my Great Aunt was celebrating her 90th birthday. Arlington's fame comes from it being home to the original Six Flags theme park, the Texas Rangers' Ameriquest Field, and the future stadium for "God's Team" the Dallas Cowboys. It's also the largest city in the U.S.--360,000--without a public transportation system.

Congressman Joe Barton, whose district includes Arlington, you may remember is the Energy and Commerce Committee Chair that played the role of organ grinder monkey leashed to his oil company owners at the "hockey stick" hearing in July. He's also responsible for 2005's Gasoline for America's Security Act that doled out money by the billions to his patrons in the petrobiz.

All these subsidies make the claim by Marketplace commentator David Frum that the free market will efficiently supply our energy needs similar to claiming the Great Pumpkin will deliver toys to all the good boys and girls waiting in the pumpkin patch--you might as well try trick or treating in Bel Air.

Joe Barton--whose middle name is Linus!--is clearly a blockhead with a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and M.S. in Industrial Administration who seems to think spreading toxic waste is like giving out candy on Halloween. Still those who attribute car dependency to corporate conspiracy live in the same comic book universe as those who believe the CIA was behind 9/11. In several hilarious columns Alexander Cockburn takes on these loonies who pester him with details "proving" that the government planned the whole pyrotechnic slaughter.

What's dangerous about conspiracy theories is not that they are always wrong--after all, Hoover and his cronies at the FBI did conspire to undermine civil rights by infiltrating groups like the Black Panthers with agents that provoked violence and disillusion in the movement. The problem is that focusing on the Machiavellian power of a few hides the complicity of the majority in maintaining the status quo. If it was simply a matter of exposing the manipulations of corrupt "Princes", then politics would not require the difficult work of organizing diverse coalitions through democratic dialogue.

The sad fact is that the lack of public transit in Arlington has little to do with the power of Chevron or GM, whose plant in Arlington assembles Chevy Tahoes and Cadillac Escalades. Instead the mostly white middle class residents three times rejected proposals to bring buses to their streets because they did not want their neighborhoods full of poor people. It's just like when you were seven and thought goblins were responsible for egging your house and smashing your pumpkins that late October night. Later you found out it was the high school kid down the block named Billy.

Master and Commander

2006-10-14T15:29:00.000-07:00

The manufacture of automobile tires is a complex process. Natural rubber is still frequently used, harvested mostly in Southeast Asia, but synthetic rubber is also common, constructed from a variety of petrochemicals such as polybutadiene and isobutylene. Actually, tires often combine multiple chemicals to find the right balance of elasticity and strength. In addition to the rubbers, their curing process requires a complex mix of carbon, silica, sulphur, and other chemicals that only a team of research scientists could perfect.

So where do these chemicals come from? Increasingly they come from China, where, for example Eliokem now produces Wingstay L phenolic antioxidant in Ningbo, China. Meanwhile Bridgestone has built four tire plants directly in China--Tianjin, Wuxi, Huizhou and Shenyang--might as well be close to the source.

This is all quite interesting because according to Germany's Der Spiegel, China is now "the world's toxic waste dump." On November 13 of last year a petro-chemical plant exploded in the city of Jilin, killing five and forcing water to be cut off to the 4.6 million people living in the city of Harbin. Der Spiegel writes, "According to official statistics, 350 Chinese die each day in industrial accidents, but the unofficial figure is likely to be much higher."

More recently, the Los Angeles Times did a story on Huashui, China where thousands of villagers battled police in April of last year while protesting the devastation of their farm land by local chemical factories. Many protesters remain in jail, but the factories were removed--at least for the time being.

This all came to mind the other day when a woman yapping on her cell phone nearly rolled me over in her Lincoln Navigator while I tried to cross Ventura Blvd--and yes I did have the green. On the Navigator website one sees the 50,000$ monstrosity in the middle of a desert completely paved with cement blocks, with cirrus cloud streaked sky above and mountains in the distance. Perhaps this endless driveway is what the commander of this boat dreams of inside tinted glass, surrounded by "premium leather and American walnut burl wood" trim, listening to soft rock on the "Soundmark® THX™ Certified Audio/Navigation System", comforted by a "Dual-zone Electronic Automatic Temperature Control (EATC)", consuming gas at 13 mpg.

Just like that other Navigator, whose venture of mass murder and pillage was honored with a federal holiday last week, dreamed that nothing but empty sea separated him from the wealth of East Asia. His calculations were a little off, but over 500 years later, progress has finally reached there anyway. The economic miracle now flows through China, like the dead fish flowing down the Songhua river. (image from bbc.co.uk)

Outhousestanding

2006-10-07T16:16:00.000-07:00

Currently advertisements throughout L.A. proclaim "Metro has been named Outstanding Transportation System by the APTA. It's nothing less than L.A. deserves."

This is much like mom saying in the 1950s her uncle had the finest outhouse in rural Tennessee when everyone she knew in her Illinois town had flush toilets by then. "Metro" may be outstanding, but it is still merely a string of wood planks with a whole cut into it with a stinking mess of feces and urine in a pit below.

Saying a public transportation system is "Outstanding" in the U.S. is like saying that eight year old boy I saw doing some traditional Polish dance last Sunday in Verdugo Park was "Outstanding." Sure, the serious look on his face while he awkwardly bumped into his dancing partner was very cute. But since they are merely a group of eight year old kids who practiced for an hour six Saturday's in a row--except for Suzie who was sick one day and Kevin who was crying uncontrollably that one morning because daddy put cinnamon and sugar on his toast, and even though he wanted it on, HE wanted to put it on himself--one is impressed they even remember to twirl when they are supposed to twirl. But it's really nothing like going to see the professionals of Podhale.

The public transportation systems of European cities are flush toilets next to the piss poor service we have in the U.S. New York is somewhat of an exception--there are plenty of places where the subway smells like piss, but at least you can get from the Bronx to Coney Island in under an hour. By contrast, when I went to see those kids perform at the Unity Festival, it took me over two hours to get from Encino to Glendale, approximately the same distance.

And last Friday, in mid afternoon, at the corner of Wilshire and Vermont, I waited 15 minutes before squeezing onto an overloaded "Rapid" bus, which then took twenty minutes to arrive at USC, a distance of exactly 2.5 miles. Metro celebrates the Rapid Bus as a prime reason they received the APTA award, but for actual bus riders, the "Rapid" is a sad joke. As I have discussed, it is often just as slow as the regular bus because it has to manage the same traffic jams as every other vehicle that crawls up and down Vermont or Wilshire or Ventura. And as I have also mentioned before, the solution would be cheap and fast: bus-only lanes on these thoroughfares.

Instead our Mayor and the propogandists behind this ad campaign--who don't actually ride the bus but love looking at statistics saying the Rapid is 25% faster than the regular bus--sure and this is 25% slower than that fourteen year old girl on her one speed beach cruiser--are calling for billions to be spent on extending the rail network. Let's say in twenty years our Mayor's dream is realized, and two rail lines to Santa Monica are completed, it would still take me 20 bleeping minutes to go 2.5 miles south on Vermont!

Mayors love to fantasize about future monuments to their reign, in the meantime people who live in the present get stuck in a barn with manure a half-foot deep. That's why the Bus Riders Union needs people who know a crap hole when they see it to show up October 17 and demand a halt to all rail projects until a true rapid bus system is built. And while we are at it we should demand future board meetings be held outside with a port-o-potty standing behind each of the board of directors seats. Its nothing less than L.A. deserves.

Teenage Troubles

2006-10-02T08:24:00.000-07:00

In high school I was a skinny awkward misfit who sat at the lunch table with the other oddballs with no social life. Perhaps this is why I am uneasy with the rush of high school kids who pack the bus around 2:30 in the afternoon. Suddenly I'm transported back 25 years and kids are slugging me in the stomach until I pass out and wake up staring at the nurses office ceiling, becoming the school's source of laughter for the next month. Harris and Klebold were hardly the first to fantasize about wasting those who ostracized them. Fortunately, punk rock was more my style than semi-automatic weapons.

Riding the Ventura Rapid line back from Target we stop at Winnetka Ave with over fifty Taft High students squirming to get on. At the back door waiting to get off are a teenage girl wearing Sony closed headphones in black jeans and t-shirt and a younger boy talking into his cell phone. The back door does not open, but they just stand their as the Taft students push their way onto the bus. I suppose they recognize the busdriver is busy managing the crowd and has forgotten to open the back door to let them out. After a minute or so, the two of them start looking anxiously towards the front of the bus. Finally, the boy says somewhat weakly "back door," but the door doesn't open.

All the students are now on and the driver shuts the front door. The bus is packed with chattering high schoolers, many with their cell phones in one ear, seamlessly integrating conversations through real and wireless space. The bus begins to pull away. "Back door!" The boy has apparently lost his patience. The bus stops for a moment, but only until the light turns green, when it starts off again. The girl begins knocking on the door's window. Once again, the bus stops--but the driver's just waiting for a car to pass so he can merge into the center lane. We fly on. The boy waves his hands hopelessly, "what the...?" The girl just stares silently outside the door and the rest of the bus seems oblivious. The next stop is Reseda--a long two and a half miles.

Ah, the humiliations of youth. But it will all be over soon. In a few years she'll have her Associate's in Phlebotomy and earn 30,000 a year drawing blood in a Valley lab. And he'll pull down 12 an hour re-shelving dog-eared books and magazines deposited by dawdlers at the Hollywood Border's--or at least the one in Glendale.

LA vs NYC II

2006-09-25T09:24:00.000-07:00

I recently bought a book called Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles by Jonathan Gold. There are many problems with this book, but I want to focus on one: below the title it states "the indispensable eats guide to America's most diverse food city." Los Angeles is America's most diverse food city? I don't know why I should expect a book cover to be any more truthful than those idiotic milk ads, which claim cow's milk--one of the most dangerous products of industrial agriculture--is actually good for you, leading the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine to file a complaint with the FTC. But the claim of "the most" about any city always bothers me, and its worse when it comes to some vague category like cuisine diversity. Now if it was something like "tallest building in the U.S." or "largest indoor shopping mall", this is a little easier to measure, but what does "most diverse food city" mean?

Most likely it is based on the idea that L.A. is the most diverse city. But L.A. is hardly the only city to make this claim. Of course, the question is how do you define diversity? Based on research conducted by The Civil Rights Project of Harvard, Time Magazine declared Sacramento America's "most diverse city." Reading the article you discover by "most diverse" they mean "most integrated." Nearby Oakland also describes itself as "America's most diverse city" because "More than 125 languages and dialects are spoken." Oh, but wait a second, according to the New York State Comptroller 138 languages are spoken in the Borough of Queens alone. Another definition is found at the Skyscraper City forum, where I found a list of cities with the smallest "majority group," putting Waipo Acres, Hawaii at the top. Even my home town of St. Paul brags of having the most "balanced" diversity because, although it is majority white, it has significant numbers of African Americans, Latino/as, Asians and Native Americans.

So lets presume the publishers do not mean simply that L.A. is the most diverse city but that it just has the most diverse food. And here their argument is probably based on the size of the immigrant population. Woops, once again it depends on what you mean. If you mean the percentage of foreign born in a city's population, Miami wins easily, followed by Santa Ana and then L.A. But if you mean counties--which is what the book must mean since many of its entries are in places like East L.A. or Pasadena--then once again, after Miami, our old friend Queens is back, followed by Hudson, New Jersey, then Kings--that is Brooklyn--then San Francisco, and finally L.A. comes in at number six. If we take 2005 data and compare Los Angeles County to the city of New York it is pretty close. 36.6% of New York is foreign born, 36% of L.A. So L.A. and NYC are roughly the same--except there is a factor missing here. L.A.'s immigrant population is over 50% Latino/a, and that Latino/a population is over 80% Mexican. By contrast New York's top three immigrant groups are Dominicans, Chinese and Jamaicans and only Dominicans are more than 10% of all immigrants-about 14%.

My point is not simply to once again dismiss any challenge by L.A. to NYC's status as the center of the cultural universe--well it kind of is. But even if L.A. did have near the diversity of New York, experiencing that diversity is like trying to eat ice cream with your fingers. You can do it, but after a while the sticky mess starts driving you mad. Sure there is great Chinese in Monterey Park and Ethiopian on South Fairfax, but getting from here to there is a sticky situation. In New York, the subway is your ice cream scoop. Better yet, let your legs be your spoon. On a single stroll you move from stores and restaurants catering to Greeks, Indians and Ecuadorians. Yes, I'm sure that Uzbeki place on La Brea and Sunset is "very authentic," but who wants to drive from the West Valley at rush hour and then dump another 5 bucks on valet parking--and they say you have to be rich to live in New York. No, I think I'll just pick up a pint of Baba Ganoush at my local Persian deli, go home and watch Huell Howser eat some Macapuno at famous Fosselman's in Alhambra.

Million Dollar Tween Critic

2006-09-18T08:18:00.000-07:00

I'm waiting for the blue line at Artesia Blvd and a kid around thirteen is hopping about the platform.

"What's up?" He says while running his hand up and down the station sign.

I try to focus on my book. In general, I'm not quite comfortable talking to strange kids. Too often they act like me when I was there age--any conversation is an opportunity to make a joke at your expense. Besides, his question seems more of a distraction for him, something to do while playing on the platform, rather than a serious attempt to engage in a conversation.

"What's up?" He says again, this time more clearly directed at me.

"Not much. What are you doing today?"

"We're going to a movie." I then notice he is with his mother who looks over and smiles at me from a bench.

"What movie are you going to see?"

"Idlewild."

"That's funny. I haven't even heard of that movie."

"Hollywood movies are crap."

"Huh?" His bluntness takes me by surprise.

"They are almost always about the problems of rich white people, and when they do present stories about the poor, its through the windshield of their Porsche Cayennes. Take 'Million Dollar Baby' for example."

"Didn't that win best picture?"

"Exactly. The industry loves movies that appear to sympathize with the poor, as long as the poor meet their bourgeois standards."

"What do you mean?" I'm a little shocked by his language.

"That film is so awful not because it's packed with clichés and extreme sentimentality but because it perpetuates a malicious division between the deserving and undeserving poor. Hillary Swank's character works hard at a low wage job and saves every penny. She embodies the Reaganite dream of how the poor can become rich if only they have the proper discipline. In contrast, her mother and sister are scheming welfare cheats who want something for nothing."

"Really?" I am becoming more impressed with this kid.

"Even though the women in this film are white, the welfare mom is a stereotype that emerged only in the 1960s when black women challenged the discrimination that prevented them from receiving the same benefits that went to whites. In other words, it is a profoundly racist stereotype that ultimately led to the vicious welfare reform law passed by a Republican Congress and signed by President Clinton, which forced mother's to find work without providing child care or health insurance. Of course the bourgeois media has celebrated the 'success' of this law in getting former welfare recipients into the workforce, meanwhile the poverty rate is static, the number of uninsured continues to increase and homelessness among families is at crisis levels--probably because the mothers couldn't find work and faced the reality of 'Temporary Assistance.'"

"Wow!"

"Not surprisingly, this film shows a complete ignorance of welfare policy and depicts the women actually turning down a free house because they might lose government benefits. When I saw that scene I didn't know whether to laugh or scream 'What is this, Vanilla Sky II?' Oh and by the way, did you notice how they suggested the female champion, who was black, always won by cheating? That film was flat out racist."

"Kenny." His mother begins to walk over. "Stop bothering that man."

"Oh, he's not bothering me." Kenny goes back to running around the platform. "Beautiful day."

"Sure is." She waves her arm in a fan like motion. "It's finally started to cool off a bit."

"Yep. Finally."

"Oh here's our train. Have a nice day."

"You too." I see her rush over to take Kenny's hand. He gives me a smile and waves goodbye as they step through the sliding doors.

Sugar-Free Marketeers

2006-09-11T08:36:00.000-07:00

Splenda/Sucralose

The fantasy of the free marketeers is the fantasy of Splenda. The popular artificial sweetener, said to be 600 times sweeter than table sugar, is made from mixing chlorine with raffinose, a sugar derived from various vegetables. As with saccharine and aspartame, it is often combined with other potions/poisons, in an attempt to cover a soapy aftertaste--sweeteners such as acesulfame-k, salts like sodium ferulate. They never quite work but over time that aftertaste seems natural, and people begin to crave it.

A recent study by the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think-tank, found "Traffic delays will increase 65 percent and the number of congested lane-miles on urban roads will rise by 50 percent over the next 25 years." Fortunately, they say, the solution is cheap. Simply spend $533 billion to widen highways and don't waste any more money on public transit. The author of the study, David T. Hartgen, a Professional Engineer and Professor of Transportation Studies at UNC Charlotte, has done extensive research to show that widening highways is more effective than public transit projects in reducing traffic congestion. Why? Because people love cars and don't use public transit. Of course, he means white middle class people, but still his "reasoning" has a certain space cadet logic. Just like food engineers might achieve the right balance of sweetness by adding a few milligrams here or there of this or that powder, transportation engineers will be able to create a smooth flow of traffic by just adding a few lanes of traffic here and there--and the chemical aftertaste of neocolonialism and dead fish will dissappear.

Iraq is hardly the only place where blood is shed to keep our cars running. In the Niger Delta, 1000 people are killed each year, violence that western oil companies accept as part of doing business in the region, and while the region brings enormous wealth to these companies, most people who live there are destitute.

Meanwhile, a United Nations study found there are now over 150 ocean dead zones, where the lack of oxygen prohibits the survival of fish and other creatures. These zones are created by global warming and land based run off, including tailpipe pollutants, which is why author David Helvarg lists reducing automobile trips as one of the top 50 Ways to Save the Oceans.

Perhaps one should not expect a transportation engineer to care about geopolitics or ocean health, but one should expect an interest in numbers, and there have been numerous studies showing the cost of supporting cars is much higher than the expense of building roads, which are only partially covered by gas tax revenues.

Let's just take the highway patrol for example. The 2006-2007 budget for the California Highway Patrol is over 1.5 billion. Imagine how much more it will be if we simply continue to "accommodate" the growth of automobile usage. But maybe these anti-government activists would prefer we stop funding this bloated institution that restricts our freedom to race the roads, and we could just let the blood spill until highways are covered with a faint pink film, much like the color of my Splenda flavored cherry popsicles.

The City of Sin

2006-09-04T09:58:00.000-07:00

When you take the bus, you also walk. And walking you actually might meet someone you know. You also meet the homeless, although in So Cal they are usually panhandling at freeway exits with cardboard signs saying "homeless veteran, please help". Even panhandling here has drive-thru. Still, it is often pedestrians, the fellow poor, that are most generous. They know it could be them on the street, and they can stop and visit after dropping a dollar in the cup.

Another hundred degree day in the valley, and I just missed the bus, arriving at the other side of the street, a guy I know to be one of the sidewalk donors, is about to cross.
"Hey Ed, what's up?"
"Hey man, what's goin' on?"
"Nothing, where you headed?"
"Just getting something from the store. Hey, you know we're moving to Vegas?"
"Really? You find a job there?"
"Nah, Its just too expensive here, and Meena can't find any work."

According to a Center for Housing Policy study measuring the median wage against the median cost of rent, Los Angeles continues to be one of the least affordable cities to live in. This is not likely to change much despite recent passage of a bill that would raise California's minimum wage to 8 dollars an hour by January 2008.

Let's say you can find a Van Nuys Studio for 800 with bad AC and roach scat in the cupboards. After deductions you bring home maybe 1200 a month. That leaves you with 400. Even for a healthy guy like you, that's about the cost of health insurance, so if, while running to catch the 573 commuter express taking you to the coffee shop in Westwood, where you work but can't afford to live, you slice your ankle on a rusty muffler clamp shot from the street by the tire of a jock rocket ripping by at 65, but you avoid the doctor until the pain of walking on your purplish puss filled limb is too much, and you go to the hospital, where you are billed 700 dollars for treatment plus meds, well then, welcome to Vegas.

"So you got family there?"
"Yeah, I gotta brother and Meena's daughter lives there."
"Aw, that's great. Hey, and you'll have weather like this all the time!"
"Yeah..." He looks off at the intersection blankly.
"I'm just joking ya man!" I swipe at his shoulder with a fist.
He smiles and gives me a quick shake.
Just then an old Chevrolet sputters to the stop in the middle of the intersection. Ed runs to help.
After it won't budge he yells, "You gotta put it in neutral!"
Me and another guy run out to help push the sun faded beater to the curb. The seven man pit crew jumps over the wall and goes into action. They change tires, fill it with gas and push Jimmie Johnson back onto the track, and he goes on to win the UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400.

Torn and Frayed

2006-08-28T11:09:00.000-07:00

"What school?" The man at the bus stop is talking to me. Apparently he overheard my cell phone discussion of fall semester's return.
"CSUN."
"Northridge, heh. You know the stadium there, close to Devonshire and Zelzah? We carved our names into this big oak tree back in '76, but they cut it down."
"Oh."
"Yeah. I ran cross country for Granada Hills High School under Coach Godfrey. He was tough, man. He really worked you, but he was good. They won 16 city championships."
"Oh Wow! So did you go to the state championship?"
"Some guys went, but you know that costs money. I didn't have the dough to go." He rubs his fingers together indicating "no bills."
"Ah, I see."

Looking at him now, despite his age and the fact that he is dragging the last puffs from a cigarette butt, you could see the long distance runner in him. In fact, he likely covered the same distance today, only now he did it with an overstuffed canvas backpack and bedroll tied atop, causing him to lean slightly forward. This meant he could not reach the speed of his youth, but he was in a different category of competition these days.

A layer of grime, commonly found on outdoor furniture in the city of smog, covered him from his long graying hair to his frayed sneakers. A long bushy beard reminded me of John Muir. Here he was trekking through San Fernando Valley, just as Muir had trekked through Yosemite, telling the world of its beauty. His skin, where exposed, was wrinkled and red from the sun. Living on the street had made him deeply attuned to L.A. design trends: his jeans had wide torn holes to expose his lobster like kneecaps.

Back in the 1950s, when young people began wearing blue jeans, it was to show solidarity with the struggling worker, so one wonders if the current fashion of wearing ripped jeans shows solidarity with the struggling street person. Maybe if these kids met this friendly conservationist of the twenty first century, he would inspire them by his creative fight for urban sustainability. The tear that rips across the denim thigh could signal the desire to tear apart the concrete that now kills the Los Angeles River. Reviving this waterway, a long battle engaged in by Friends of the Los Angeles River, would be a small but vital part of returning wilderness to San Fernando Valley. Another would be to have Jennifer Anniston, born in Sherman Oaks, return to the valley, and take her Chip and Peppers for a walk.

corn pops

2006-08-21T09:32:00.000-07:00

One day when dad was a farmboy in southeastern Iowa, he noticed a big owl was falling silently into the chicken pen, piercing its claws into the necks of White Leghorns and Rhode Island Reds and snatching them for lunch. So he takes a chicken carcass and sets up a simple cage trap. When the owl went to grab the flesh, the cage would fall on it. As planned, the next day dad finds the big bird knocking its wings hopelessly inside the cage wires. Carefully, dad lifts up the cage and knocks the bird on its head with a big rock. Proud as a boy coming home with straight A's on his report card, he runs to tell grandma.

"Ma! I caught that owl that was stealin' our chickens. Come and see!"

"What? No. I don't want to see that."

Undeterred, dad decides to bring the dead owl to the door for grandma to see. But when he returns to where he left it, the cage is missing. That was one strong owl. Apparently it had only been knocked unconscious and had crawled off with the cage. Fortunately, it couldn't crawl far, so dad finds it and this time knocks the big head really hard 'til that owl is good and dead. He ties a rope around its neck and drags it to the door to show grandma.

"Ma! Look, I have the owl right outside the door!"

Grandma, a small but tough woman, daughter of Swedish immigrants, is scornful.

"What'd you do that for? Huh? What'd you go and kill that owl for?"

"But," dad says defensively, "it was killin' our chickens!"

There aren't too many wild birds left in Iowa, which is now the most industrialized state in the nation. This artificial landscape, revealed by Michael Pollan in his book The Omnivore's Dilemma, emerged from the systematic destruction of biodiversity and the creation of processed food's Hiroshima: corn fields.

The environmental disaster called Iowa came to mind when I recently learned of the new trend among Silver Lake hipsters to have classic Mercedes converted to run on biofuel. The enthusiasm for biofuel cars emerges from the same junior high school reasoning responsible for the electric and hybrid vehicle cultists. Perhaps the myth of the frontier farmer transforming the wilderness into fertile land through individual smarts and effort runs so deep that recognizing ecological interconnectivity would spark anomic suicide in numbers unmatched since Jonestown--and people just don't yearn for Kool-Aid like they used to.

Of course, "pioneer" is just another word for "genocide" and until you grow and process corn based fuel in your back yard using nothing but sunlight, it is NOT "eco-friendly".

Pedal to the Mettle

2006-08-13T09:48:00.000-07:00

I used to be a bike rider. In Tempe I discovered biking in hundred degree heat was better than getting broiled by the sun at bus stops with little shade.

Monterey was a great biking city. I lived several miles from the nearest laundromat, so I would bike with a duffle bag full of dirty clothes balanced precariously on my front handle bars. The funny looks I received were compensated by the sights and sounds of sea lions found on the path between the wharf and Cannery Row. This path was the same one I rode on the way to the Pacific Grove Trader Joe's--up a mile long hill with at points a 40 degree incline. In the lowest gear of my rusted 3 speed a whining sound made me fear busting the bottom bracket, so I'd hop off and walk it up the steepest points. On the way down I tried to remember to tighten the little bolt on my pedal brake that stopped my foot from spinning free, being dragged to the asphalt, multiple broken digits and torn skin, as I pressed back trying to slow my jet like decline.

But now I walk to Trader Joe's just a few blocks down the street and bike riders annoy me.

They don't annoy me when they are in the street, but too often they buzz by me on the sidewalk--like just now at the Sepulveda and Ventura bus stop a guy with a black motorcycle helmet on a mountain bike. Why is he on the sidewalk? Because biking down a busy street like Ventura requires a certain madness. A madness of youth, like that of my cousin who I remember hitting a hundred as we drove a shortcut to the Quad Cities in his '70 Chevelle SS--a two lane road with one lane gravel and the other paved, so that coming and going we used the same lane and expected to avoid head-on collision by noticing the faint shine of headlights rising over the next hill.

Youth today have no problem launching their bikes down a half dozen stairs without helmet, but they fear biking down the side of Ventura like a serial killer. Which in a way it is since over 800 bicyclists are killed by cars each year.

Not all bike riders are kids looking to be the next the next Kevin Robinson. In fact, many are dishwashers and construction workers pedaling on Huffy's with squeaky chains in their aprons and steel toe boots because biking is even cheaper than the bus.

The answer to the clash of the carless--pedestrian vs. bicyclist--is of course bike lanes. But this is no San Francisco where a Critical Mass of bike riders began demanding the right to street space back in the early nineties with monthly rides where hundreds pedaled unpredictably through the streets, causing motorists heads to turn red with frustration until steam whistled out of their ears. The movement spread to cities across the country, and this month--Friday, August 25--bikers can help remind the world of the crime called Katrina, by hitting the streets for its anniversary.

L.A. has a few pedaling protesters. A group called CICLE fights for the bicyclists right to the road, and there are monthly rides in downtown, West L.A., Pasadena and Santa Monica--although notably none in the Valley. But the weakness of these rides reveals this city's dirty truth: it survives on nicotine fumes pumping through the lungs. Bike lanes would be putting filters on our Pall Malls, and what's the point if I can't taste the smoke?

O Superman

2006-08-07T09:53:00.000-07:00

Superman, the man of steel, is in his seventies and living in Reseda, where I saw him get on the bus the other day. He's a little smaller than you might guess, about 5'6", and his skin sags somewhat. But his calves are still well defined, indicating the strength of his superhero days.

He's abandoned the Clark Kent disguise of a suit and tie journalist for the casual look of a retiree. He wears a white pocket T-shirt with a pullover tied around his waist and maroon hiking shorts. On his head is a baseball cap with a red bill, and on top of the cap is a white winter stocking hat. One might think this an unusual choice in the Valley heat, but perhaps it provides special protection for aliens. On the hat is a series of numbers written with a marker, a code that only secret agents understand.

Most other-worldly are his dark glasses. They appear to be the same horn rimmed frames of the past, but they are completely covered with tiny pieces of cellophane tape. It's as if he began to repair them at the corners or the nose bridge--as one often sees--and just kept layering piece after piece until he had transformed his frames into a mosaic by the most skilled of Italian artisans.

(Detail of arch mosaic from the mausoleum of Galla Placida, Ravenna from Furman University Classics Department.)

After sitting down he takes a rolled up plastic grocery bag from his pocket. Carefully, he opens it up to reveal a rectangle of aluminum foil. What? Is Superman selling crack? He unfolds the foil and inside is a row of neatly stacked coins. He thinks it over, chooses a few coins, places them back in their stacks, and chooses again. He folds back the foil, rolls it into the plastic bag and puts it back in his pocket. Finally, he slowly walks to the front and pays his fare.

Allan Kaprow, who passed away in April, introduced the concept of "Happenings" in the late 1950s. In distinguishing Avant Garde Lifelike Art from Artlike Art he wrote:

Avantgarde lifelike art is not nearly as serious as avantgarde artlike art. Often it is quite humorous. It isn't very interested in the great Western tradition either, since it tends to mix things up: body with mind, individual with people in general, civilization with nature, and so on.
--"The Real Experiment." Artforum 22: 4 (1983)

Superman always had an important role in the genealogy of performance art. One finds him in "Shoot" by Chris Burden, the flying flesh of Stelarc and of course the music of Laurie Anderson. In his golden age of the 1940s Superman boisterously fought metropolitan moral decline in a cape and blue tights with his farm boy values. He leveled "slums" so they could be replaced by decent housing--thus echoing the Federal Housing Acts of the 1930s and 40s. In the end these Acts reflected the powerful and racist interests of the National Association of Real Estate Boards, which preferred federally subsidized white home ownership in the suburbs to urban housing for the benefit of all.

Superman's sadness at these failures is evident. But there is quiet poetry in the mystery of his contemporary performance.

Speed Kills

2006-07-31T09:30:00.001-07:00

Someone stole my moped. A 2005 Tomos ST, it had less than 200 miles on it. I was too greedy for speed.

I bought my first moped last summer. A 1986 Tomos "Golden Bullet," it ran great. On a level road I could hit 35 mph, but I got tired of putt-putting up hills at under 15. So in April I traded in for more torque.

It was great for bopping about the Valley when I needed to get somewhere fast although I had to endure horns blaring from frantic Wiley Coyotes enraged at me for once again foiling their attempts to catch the Roadrunner. Equally common, I provided a source for male bonding ridicule. One time while riding down Victory in Woodland Hills, two guys with long hair and tobacco stained teeth pulled beside me in a Chevy Suburban with jacked up struts and Raiders miscellany in every window.
"Hey You!"
I try to ignore them as they laugh.
"Hey you! Where you from West Hollywood? How fast does that go? Wanna race?"
"This gets a hundred miles a gallon. How much does it cost you to fill up?" I ask.
"At least we can afford it!" He replies.
"It doesn't look like it." I later think to reply. L'occasion perdu. For a couple of potheads, they sure had quick wits.

Riding a moped in L.A. gathers almost as much scorn as riding the bus. In European cities where Mini Coopers crawl through crowded streets averaging under 30, a moped is a jack russell terrier weaving through an agility course. In U.S. cities, designed for young men in their F150s to barrel by at 55, that jack russell is just hoping to escape being the next clump of flesh and fur, turning to dust in the crevice of a curb.

For a brief time in the 1970s, when the cost of gas first took a spike, there was a moped craze and multiple makers to choose from. Today most people confuse mopeds with scooters, and the only maker left in the U.S. is Tomos.

Since then urban flight became suburban flight, as every American family sought its divine right to a mowable lawn, and commuting to the new developments in exurbia became a three hour tour.

No I don't plan on buying a new one. The thief sent me a clear message: stick to the bus. More importantly, I didn't have comprehensive insurance, and I can't spare one month's rent.

Meth Mouth

2006-07-24T09:35:00.001-07:00

Woodland Hills hit a record 119 degrees on Saturday, and I was there. The 150 Ventura line broke down at Corbin.
"Can't go any further." The driver says casually. "It overheated."
"What if you let it rest and try again?" asks a woman in her 70s.
"Well, do you want to wait an hour?"

Ironically, I was waiting for the 750 express but hopped on the 150 because it came first. Now I am five blocks from the nearest express stop at Winnetka. I step out into the full sun, and as I walk there I feel strangely fine. This isn't so bad. But when I arrive at the bus shelter and sit down, my forehead becomes a fountain of sweat. I look down to see a dark circle spreading from my belly as if I've caught shrapnel in the gut.

Meanwhile, due to storm caused power outages, the Southern Illinois district of John Shimkus slogs in the heat without even a fan to cut the steam, making a comment by his colleague on the House Energy and Commerce Committee tragicomic. After a hearing on the so-called "hockey stick" increase in global temperature, Michael Burgess, representative for suburban Dallas states, "It's false to presume that a consensus today - exists today where the human activity has been proven to cause global warming, and that's the crux of this hearing. I would point out that simply turning off the electrical generation plants that provide the air conditioning back in my district would not be a viable option."

One wonders how the native people survived for thousands of years without electricity and millions in the global south continue to live without it. If these white people can't handle the climate, why don't they go back to where they came from?

The equivalent of a bad SNL sketch, chaired by oil company consultant/stooge Joe Barton, the hearing brought in a statistician to question the minutiae of mathematical methodology that created a particular graph. Of course, the committee failed to invite the author of the report being questioned since lively debate is a threat to evangelocracy.

Not surprisingly, the oil sucking pundnuts have leaped on this statistician and started peddling his study as a way to keep humping the earth dry. These "rocks for jocks" flunkies ignore the broader point the study makes that the overall claims of global warming theorists are quite on target. One felt somewhat sad for this number cruncher Wegman from George Mason University when Representative Jan Schakowsky asked him a question about the role of carbon dioxide in warming the atmosphere:

Prof. WEGMAN: Carbon dioxide is heavier than air. Where it sits in the atmospheric profile, I don't know. I'm not an atmospheric scientist to know that. But presumably, if the atmospheric - if the carbon dioxide is close to the surface of the earth, it's not reflecting a lot of infrared back.

Representative JAN SCHAKOWSKY (Democrat, Illinois): But you're not clearly qualified to...

Prof. WEGMAN: No, of course not.

Rep. SCHAKOWSKY: ...comment on that.

Still Barton smiled triumphantly like a proud parent who just saw his son mumble through an elementary school performance of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

These guys have the minds of meth dealers, the drug of choice in rural Republican heartland--electric power pushers--telling addicts they have a beautiful smile as they watch their teeth rot to black.

(Frontline map of meth's spread across the U.S.)

On the way back from Target, all the breakdowns transform what normally would be at most an hour long trip into an afternoon Journey, whose 1981 hit became an anthem for the 2005 World Series Champion White Sox:
"Just a small town girl, livin in a lonely world
She took the midnight train goin anywhere...
Dont stop believin
Hold on to the feelin
Yaaaaa!"

The Heat is On

2006-07-17T09:10:00.000-07:00

"Sprawl is good." That's the essence of Robert Bruegmann's July 9 editorial in the L.A. Times, justly ridiculed by fellow valley blogger Andrew. Yet Bruegmann's assessment of L.A. history is dead on. Drivers universally embraced plans for a freeway city, imagining it would transform their cars into personal jet planes. It is no coincidence the Jetsons emerged when Interstate construction was at its peak.

(Image from Van Eaton Galleries)

Back in '99 when I lived in a deep frier called Tempe, Arizona, I saw Bruegmann speak at the Phoenix Public Library--an architectural jewel amid a downtown of shattered forty ouncers and crushed potato chip bags. Jaws dropped in the audience of architecture students, as if they had come to church and heard a sermon explaining how Jesus taught "Greed is good" and "If your enemy slaps you, kick him back hard in the balls."

His slideshow contrasted postwar housing in Europe--drab modernist apartment buildings--with postwar housing in the United States--single family homes with attached garages. The point was simple: sprawl is good because any normal person would choose postwar U.S.A. If you could choose between a McDonald's "premium" chicken salad and an Outback Steakhouse Steak, naturally you would choose the steak.

Americans love their beef, even if it means our flabby beef eating bodies consume more than a third of the world's resources and per capita more than three times the global average. Of course the apartment living losers in NYC, the ones who somehow survive outside suburbatopia, are not responsible for this piggishness. As pointed out in the beautifully photographed new series from PBS, design e2, the dense transit dominated city makes its residents the skinflints of America.

I was reminded of this recently as temperatures in the valley topped 100, causing peak rates of consumption and scattered blackouts in the L.A. area. I wondered how we lived without air conditioning? So I try. By using a thermometer measuring indoor and outdoor temperature, I keep track of when it is warmer inside than out and vice versa. In the morning, as soon as I notice the temperature is warmer outside, I shut all windows and close all the blinds. At night, when the temperature becomes cooler outside, I open all the windows and turn on the fan, repeating the process each day.

Of course, the real alternative to cranking the AC is relaxing in the park under the canopy of trees or having an espresso at the local café--but that sounds so European--why don't we just grab a Frappuccino® and head down to Zuma in your new Honda Element?
--Yeah, just like in that TV ad, man those chicks are hot!
--Yeah, just like the baby chicks dad fed the hogs when Tyson killed the independent chicken farmer and raising fryers became an economic loss.
--What?
--Yeah, just like that.

Rule 3

2006-07-12T06:30:00.000-07:00

Pay attention to the ring of the stop signal. Once someone has pulled the cord, the signal will not sound if pulled again. Usually the sign above the windshield will say "stop requested," but sometimes this is broken. If you are really worried about missing your stop, politely ask the driver, "Has the next stop been rung?", and if s/he says no, gently pull the cord.

Above all, if the bell does not ring after you have pulled the cord, do not pull harder and harder. It doesn't help!

What a sad sight it is to see everyone from a spiky haired punk to a 70 year old women with groceries on her lap jerking the cable as if it's an emergency brake and we are hopelessly barreling toward a fireworks factory.

This is why you occasionally reach to pull the cable only to grasp air--like the Southern Steelhead Trout drained of its habitat by our suburban lifestyle--a signal cable can only take so much abuse before it dies.

Don't panic, recalling skills honed on the playground playing TV tag, dive to the other side of the bus and with your long finger give the cable a quick tug. Or if you are out of shape from too many years of drive through moments, just ask someone on the other side of the bus to do it for you.

Tigger

2006-07-06T09:30:00.002-07:00

"If I was married to her I would slit my throat." He draws his hand dramatically across his neck, apparently referring to a homeless woman resting at the bus shelter. The redheaded man is sitting behind the driver with one arm stretched across the seats as I step on the bus. He seems engaged in a conversation with other passengers, but I quickly realize it is more the performance of a bad stand-up comic, with an audience that squirms and grimaces rather than laughs.

As I head to a seat near the back, he continues his routine, accented by rough voicings that might be chuckles. He peers over his mirror shades as if challenging the voyeurs to respond. A green bandana, spike leather wrist band, mustache, ample tattoos inside a muscle shirt give the appearance of a Harley man, but he probably can't afford a bike.

A grizzly bear Straight Outta Van Nuys, abandoned when Busch Gardens closed in '79, he now survives on the fumes from the brewery and dull sexist remarks that remind him of his manliness.

At the stoplight he suddenly turns and starts pointing at people in cars. He chortles and holds both arms high with the peace sign--or more like the classic Nixon victory wave--triumphing over those poor schmucks in their Landrovers with surround sound and leather seats. His disc player may be scarred but his earphones work and at least he can look down at you and stick out his tongue.

The electricity running through his limbs won't allow him to stay in one place. He moves about the bus eventually settling down in the seat directly in front of me. His shirt is frayed to near nothing, but I decipher "House of Pain" above a series of tour cities and dates. The tattoos might have been done by an equally hopped up friend after the dates. One reads "Rock N Roller" as if he looked down at the beer soaked floor, saw a chewed up pen and asked someone to scribble on his shoulder to remind him what he was. Another is some sort of animal wrapped in a spider web. Is it a tiger or perhaps a tigger, Straight Outta Winnie the Pooh?

He pulls the cord for the Noble Av stop, gets up and snaps the door open. Walking down the street with his chest thrust out, Matthew McConaughey's brother heads out to meet his fans.

Traffic Jamming

2006-06-30T08:55:00.000-07:00

Before I owned a car I once took the bus from Encino to Eagle Rock to meet a friend visiting from out of town. It took me over two hours. But the real problem is returning at night. Because buses travel so infrequently, you can be left waiting at a dark corner for the amount of time it would take you to get home by car. So if I am going somewhere that requires several connections and I plan to be out late, I now surrender to the freeway sludge.

You might be surprised to learn that my 93 Geo Prizm gets 38 mpg on the freeway. My co-parasites on the road hate me for this. They don't hate me because I get better mileage than their brand new Maximas, after all, how could they know what kind of mileage I get? They hate the way I drive in order to get that mileage. The secret to high mileage is no complicated mechanical formula-yes you can get a tune-up, (I haven't had one since I've owned my car), yes you can keep your tires inflated properly (I never check mine)--the secret is simply to drive slowly.

Next time you are in a traffic jam try an experiment. See how far you can drive without hitting your brakes. I tried this on my way to Eagle Rock yesterday. The key of course is to leave plenty of space between you and the car in front of you. It means going much slower than the cars surrounding you with their pattern of speeding up and braking. What happens? You start hearing this continual banging of horns, demanding you close the gap. The mass of oil leeches can't recognize that traffic jams are a product of simply driving too fast and not permitting enough space between cars.

Freeway drivers, like internet porn addicts, lose all ability to reason in their need to jack off in a hurry.

It is very stressful to have people honking, speeding by and giving you dirty looks. So I think: What if I put my emergency blinkers on? Drivers might stop grousing if they think car problems explain why I am driving so slowly. It works great! The world wasters, gaining the temporary thrill of a 4 year old beating daddy in a race only to fall on the sidewalk and start balling uncontrollably, drive around me only looking at me to ask "Why is this old beater still on the road?"

However, after a short while I hear the blare of a bullhorn, "Turn your hazards off or pull off at the next exit." I look in my mirror and see a big tow truck behind me. I had noticed it before, but now I realized it was following me, probably waiting to give me a tow. I consider following his order, but he doesn't have his lights flashing. What's he gonna do-arrest me? I ignore him, and he finally speeds past with the rest.

When I finally get to the Harvey Drive Exit, I am proud to say that in an hour of continuous stop and go traffic, I only touched the brakes once, merging at the 134/5 intersection. I've always been the competitive type. Maybe I should enter the Dakar 2007.

Art of the Shade

2006-06-25T09:03:00.000-07:00

June 21 was the summer solstice, meaning the sun is the highest it gets in the sky. When the sun is strong, a strange performance emerges at the bus stop, where bodies hide in any piece of shade to be found. The sign from a gas station, a telephone poll, a tall bush might shield two if it is wide enough, but be prepared to endure the smell of cooked urine. Sometimes you will arrive at a bus stop and think no one is waiting until the bus starts coming down the street and a half dozen people emerge from the shadows. Of course, it can be risky if you are stationed too far from the stop or in a place without a clear view of the approaching bus, you might get passed by.

At a few of the larger intersections one finds a bus shelter, although it seems quite random. Why on one side of the street but not the other? These shelters are a temporary home for the silent men with long white beards and toes breaking through the edges of grey sneakers. Not only do they shield already pruned faces from the sun, they are a place to rest legs and arms from the continual pushing of broken shopping carts and lugging of multiple duffle bags. Hiking with all that one needs hitched to the back may be romantic to a 25 year old traveling through Europe, but when you're nearing 60 and hiking is your full time job--with no days off--it's just not that much fun anymore.

The bus driver is occasionally frustrated by these hard working Americans taking a coffee break. The bus slows to a stop, but when the man in the shade doesn't move, it quickly accelerates. On the other hand, often the driver will glance at the figures with stained sweat pants and unwashed hair and cruise right past them--as if they are Duane Hanson sculptures that no longer fool him. Of course, sometimes these sculptures are actually waiting for the bus, and as we fly by an angry shout of "hey!" comes at us.
"Did you hear something?"
"Nah, just the screech of tires."
"But that man waving his hand in the air."
"Oh that, that's one of those Trompe-l'œil's. They've got'em all over L.A. now. Pretty realistic huh."
"Yep, pretty realistic."

LA vs SF

2006-06-23T09:36:00.000-07:00

The NoCal/SoCal rivalry is epitomized by the battle between San Francisco and Los Angeles. I know people who have lived in the Bay Area for over a decade and have never been south of Monterey. San Francisco partisans will disparage everything about L.A., claiming it is ugly and lacks "true" culture. Angelinos attitude toward S.F.? Too expensive.

But the comparison really makes no sense. San Francisco, which is sometimes called a "real" city like New York is tiny by comparison. It has less than half the land area of Queens for example and about a third of that borough's population. To compare it to L.A., which covers about ten times more land and has more than 4 times the population, makes even less sense. Instead, it might be better to compare the metro region of San Francisco with the city of Los Angeles.

According to the somewhat arbitrary formulation of "Metropolitan Statistical Areas" (MSA) by the U.S. census, S.F. is grouped along with Berkeley and Oakland making it the 12th largest metropolitan region. But why not throw in San Jose whose metro area is directly south? The city of San Jose is actually bigger than San Francisco, so perhaps San Francisco should be considered part of San Jose's metro area which is currently ranked only 30. I know several people who do the San Jose-S.F. commute going one way or the other. And for lucky transit riders Caltrain now has express service that connects the cities. Of course, relatively few people use the service since transit ridership in the San Jose area is much less than in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a region five notches below it in population size.

Linking San Francisco MSA to San Jose MSA is not even close to the population of the Los Angeles MSA. However, it is only slightly larger than the population of the city of L.A. Throw in Glendale, Santa Monica and a few others and you've got a match. But San Fransicans may not like being connected to their larger neighbor to the south. San Jose is Kraft Cheddar next to San Francisco's grass fed fromage de chevre, and that indistinguishable mass of industry "parks" along 101--Sunnyvale, Menlo Park, Belmont--Oh where am I now? The headquarters of Flexnel?--is Velveeta, great for melting on top of your next Tuna and Macaroni Hotdish.

The Love Boat

2006-06-21T08:05:00.000-07:00

It must be close to midnight on the 150 heading back from Universal City Station. There are maybe six people on the bus. A woman in her forties unsure where to get off sits next to the driver and keeps asking, "Is this it? Is this it?" A young guy in the back listens to headphones. A professionally dressed man talks on his cellphone. Yes one does see businessmen from time to time amid the teenagers, elderly and mass of L.A. service workers who survive by wiping the smudge from plastic windows.

The professional gets off and the bus picks up speed. As there are few people waiting at this time of night, only stop lights slow us down. This is what makes riding the bus at night fun. The bad part is the long wait since it runs so infrequently, but once you are on, it really flies.

Suddenly, an Isuzu Trooper--or some other little SUV--starts honking and driving erratically in front of us. Someone in the car seems to be shouting at the bus. The Trooper stops in front of the bus and a guy jumps out of the passenger side of the car waving and shouting at us. He seems to want the bus to stop. The bus slows down for a moment, but then accelerates around the Trooper. He can't just stop in the middle of the block!

Wow, we're hitting a nice speed now, but here comes that Trooper back up on our side. Hmm, maybe they want to race? This is exciting, but it seems a bit unfair. The bus is fast but not that fast. The Trooper burns rubber and gets a block ahead of us now. Someone gets out of the car and stands by the bus stop. The bus arrives and opens its door. It's the professional, and he is very distressed. "I left my organizer on the bus, did anybody turn in a small black case?" The driver shakes his head no. He comes to the back of the bus where he was sitting but it's not there. In anguish he shouts "Oh Shiii.."
"Is this yours?" The kid with the headphones asks.
"Yeah!"
"I wasn't taking it. I was just looking for who it belonged to."
"Oh thanks man. This had everything in it!"
He thanks the driver and gets off the bus.

Mystery, drag racing and one more life saved from a tragic fall. It's L.A.'s new thrill ride that tourists from across the world are longing to experience for themselves. Come on Board! Captain Stubing welcomes you!

The Message

2006-06-19T08:29:00.001-07:00

Walking back from the Sherman Oaks Trader Joe's, which is at the very inconvenient corner of Riverside and Hazeltine, I notice a couple people waiting for the 96 heading back to Ventura Blvd. Normally I would not bother waiting for a bus that only runs once an hour on the weekends, but the pair waiting indicates the bus must be coming soon. I ask the elderly woman with a walker and the teenage boy, who for some reason is sitting on the ground, when the bus is supposed to come. The woman tells me with a sigh that it was supposed to arrive 15 minutes ago. Well, I think, that must mean it will be here fairly soon, so rather than walk in the hot sun all the way back down Van Nuys Blvd, it will certainly be worth the wait.

Sure enough only a couple minutes later the bus arrives. I had assumed that the walker belonged to the woman, but as they get up I realize it is the boy's. He raises himself on the aluminum legs and moves toward the bus door, but then the woman takes the walker from him. In order to get onto the bus, it seems he has to crawl on his arms and drag his legs behind. I suppose the driver could have used the lift, but for the old bus they use for this route the lift is in the back and requires a very elaborate process to operate. And sometimes it just doesn't work. So everybody involved probably thought it would be faster and easier to just have him crawl.

For a moment I am transported back to High School and the old buses we rode. I remember how there was a separate bus for the "handicapped kids." It took a special route that stopped right in front of their houses and had a lift for those in wheelchairs. This bus must be from about that time period, the early 1980s, maybe older. It is a "Blue Bird", which I recall was the name of the orange-yellow buses we used to ride. The dark green seats are benches that sit in rows all the way back, and the mirror over the windshield is the same rectangular one kids would hide from after they threw a piece of bologna at your head. It makes a loud grinding noise as we take off.
Image from turbosquid.com

When "The Message" came out in '82, C- students memorized every one of those 90 something lines and shouted them in unison from the back of the bus...

"It was plain to see that your life was lost
You was cold and your body swung back and forth
But now your eyes sing the sad sad song
Of how you lived so fast and died so young

Its like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder
How I keep from going under"

Who Killed The Electric Car?

2006-06-17T10:29:00.000-07:00

I don't care.

If you haven't heard there is a new movie with this title coming out. Last week on NOW with David Broncaccio they interviewed the director, and I wanted to throw cottage cheese with walnuts at the TV. Everything this guy said came out of the imaginary world of Hollywoodland. The stars of his film are wealthy entertainment personalities driving highly subsidized concept vehicles. In one scene they conduct a mock funeral for their EV1s, and as one woman spoke tears welled up in her eyes. It could have been a scene from the new Pixar film Cars. And these EV1 owners are like the audience for that film, living in an upside-down childlike world, where objects become humans that love and care for one another, go to the drive-in movies and screw in the backseat of the...?

These guys are the worst of the GM conspiracy theorists and Prius Progressives combined. "GM and the oil companies destroyed our vehicles so we couldn't save the world." In fact they interview a guy, with a photo of crushed trolleys in the background, who rehashes the old myth about why there are no more trolleys in L.A. and thus why the transit here sucks. But isn't this a contradiction? How can you both love your cars and then say, "Oh, but if they still had that trolley system from the 1930s, I'd be riding it for sure." Pardon me, we do have that system, but instead of trolleys we have buses, which are much more convenient than those trolleys ever were. Give it a try some time, and see what you think.

"But my electric car had zero emission!" There really is an appalling lack of scientific understanding in the U.S. No wonder a majority of Americans don't believe the theory of evolution. Look, unless your car is run by solar panels, it is not zero emission. And this also would assume all the energy that went into the production of your solar car was created via sustainable sources. This is highly unlikely. And, despite what those ads for the mining companies that sponsor Gwen Ifill's Washington Week might say, the raw materials that went into the production of your vehicle were NOT attained in ways that leave the earth with pristine and beautiful wildlife habitats. But I've already talked about this.

As this handy grid from the State of California shows, less than 11% of our electricity comes from renewable sources. So when you plug in your car every hundred miles or so, you are mostly burning natural gas, which by the way is what most of the MTA buses use. But the second largest contributor to your so-called clean car is the very dirty coal.

Mining is the second most dangerous job in the United States. This year already 47 have died. So when you see those EV1 owners marching in mock sadness, just close your eyes, hold your breath and imagine you are being buried in coal dust. And as you fade into unconsciousness let the sweet voice of Owen Wilson, playing Lightning McQueen, say to you "Don't worry, its all just a cartoon."

Angel on the Corner

2006-06-15T09:50:00.000-07:00

I'm at the corner of Roscoe and Balboa, in the borderworld adjacent the Van Nuys Airport. Is this Reseda, North Hills, Northridge, Lake Balboa? The last of these I've never heard used but found it on a "community" map of Los Angeles. Why I am here is another pointless exploration of Valley neighborhoods. In order to get here I had to wait almost an hour for the 236 at the Balboa Orange line stop. The people who were waiting with me had waited two hours. And on my way back from this borderworld I waited 45 minutes for the 240 at Roscoe and Reseda, a bus that should be at most a 20 minute wait.

But right now I'm at the corner of Roscoe and Balboa. There is one other guy waiting with me and we do the normal exchange about schedules and time, wondering when the next bus will arrive. Soon a third man approaches and begins looking through the garbage can for recyclables and maybe something resalable or edible as well. It's not a strange sight. As a bus rider--as a resident of the city, someone digging through the garbage is like a pigeon squashed on the road, I will look the other way for a moment, but after a while it just blurs into the concrete background.

The man waiting with me looked just as much the hardened urbanite, but he had some strange superpower that enabled him to maintain what Tibetan Buddhist's call "nying je", a critical sensitivity toward the suffering of others. He walks over to the man digging through the garbage, gives him a couple dollars and tells him to get something to eat. While seeing a man digging for aluminum cans didn't shock me, seeing this man walk up and a give a man a couple dollars who hadn't even asked was like seeing a dead pigeon pick itself up and fly away.

"You hate to see that." The man said to me. "People going through garbage looking for food."
"Yeah. It's crazy."
Soon we are talking about the politics of homelessness and what a sad country we live in where people live in billion dollar palaces right next to those who sleep on sidewalks.

What most impresses me is that this guy is probably not that far from living on the streets himself. He is just scraping by from one job to the next like most bus riders. He tells me about the band he plays in and gives me a sticker. I give him a dollar and say "take this for the sticker."
"What man? Naah, you dont have to pay for it!"
"Hey man, I feel guilty." I smile. "You're out their spreading the wealth, so I gotta spread it a little too!"
"Alright, thanks man." He smiles back.

His band is called Maintain, and they play R&B and Soul. The website on the sticker www.maintainmusic.com is no longer there, so I'm not sure if they still exist or if they have disappeared into the former band firmament, which would not be surprising since one of their band members is inhabited by an angel.

The "GM Conspiracy"

2006-06-13T09:14:00.000-07:00

When I tell people that I take the bus in L.A. the first thing I often hear is "Did you know that GM bought up all the streetcars in L.A. and replaced them with buses so that people would buy cars?"
"No I didn't know. Because it didn't happen!"
It appears to be easier to blame social change on the conspiracy of a big corporation rather than the blind desires of everyday people. It certainly makes for a better movie, because you don't want to leave the theater feeling like you or your ancestors are the true criminals.

But that's history: a history of crimes committed by the majority to fulfill perverse desires for mobility.

Let's be clear:
GM, Firestone, Standard Oil and other companies did have stock in National City Lines which replaced streetcars with buses in L.A., and GM was even convicted of anti-trust violations for their involvement in the company. But their crime was not choosing to replace trolleys with buses, which most cities including L.A. were doing long before National City Lines came along, rather it was supplying the system with exclusively GM products. It's called a no-bid contract--our government does it all the time.

Those who believe the conspiracy romanticize the age of the trolleys, thinking that they must have been so much better than our "horrible" buses of today. But Angelenos of the past looked at buses and thought "they must be so much better than the horrible streetcars of today." Buses could maneuver around traffic rather than get stuck behind pesky automobiles. They would be quiet and smooth, not screechy and bumpy. And they could easily change their route if a detour was required. How wonderful the bus must have seemed from the perspective of a streetcar rider!

Of course, there was also this little thing called the automobile that supposedly was forced down people's throats by GM and nobody would have used if they hadn't destroyed the streetcars. I hate to tell you this, but the tooth fairy was your mother. People in the 20s and 30s saw cars as much like the coming of the Savior himself to remove all ills from the world. And streetcars were an ugly sign of the sinful past that blocked the way toward goodness. At least buses didn't destroy the streets with their dangerous tracks.

Here Walter Benjamin's Thesis IX from the Philosophy of History is appropriate:
"A Klee painting named 'Angelus Novus' shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we percieve a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; its has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress."

Paul Klee "Angelus Novus"

The "third place" experience

2006-06-11T09:45:00.000-07:00

I exit the Orange Line at Laurel Canyon in North Hollywood and get ready to take the 230. Noticing a couple men sitting on the bench, I ask if they know when the next bus is supposed to come. They shake their heads no, and look at me curiously. I take out my large system map, which shows all the routes in L.A. county and lists their frequency.
"Are you a tourist?"
"No. This is just a map of all the bus routes."
"Where are you going?"
"Oh, I'm just going someplace north of here."
I didn't want to say I was going to a church rummage sale in Sun Valley. It sounded odd when I thought about it--going on such an elaborate excursion to check out a rummage sale listed in Penny Saver. But I wanted to see what Sun Valley was like.
"Do you want to buy a map of the stars?"
"Um, no that's ok." I become curious. "So how much are your maps?"
"A hundred dollars." At first I think he is serious.
"Wow, who do you have on there?"
"Whoever you want. Anjelina Jolie, Ashley Simpson, Cameron Diaz..."
"Is there anybody that lives in the valley."
"Yeah Yeah sure. Shaq has a home down in Sherman Oaks and Kobe has a home in Encino."
"Shaq still has a home here?"
"Oh yeah. These guys you know they have so many homes."
"A hundred dollars huh. Wow."
"Nah, I don't have any maps." He laughs.
I laugh with him. Then a man comes up to ask me for money.
"I really need to get something to eat."
"Sorry Man, I don't have any change. Why don't you ask that guy." I point to the guy who was joking with me.
"No. I know him. He doesn't have any money."
"Oh, sorry." I then realize these guys aren't waiting for the bus. They're just resting. The bus benches are their version of Starbucks, what the brilliant marketers behind that coffee chain call a "third place"--neither work nor home but a place "in between" to relax and chat with your neighbors.
Of course, these guys wouldn't be in Starbucks too long before customers began complaining that the "third place" experience was being interrupted by people from "the last place" anybody wants to be: the streets.

When I get to Sun Valley, I'm disappointed. The rummage sale is a couple tables with odd toys and children's clothing. I casually walk by as if headed somewhere else. It looks like there is a mall on the corner with a Mervyn's in it. Maybe they have polo shirts on sale.

Prius Progressives

2006-06-09T09:29:00.000-07:00

There used to be something called "limousine liberals." Now we have "prius progressives." After toasting their willingness to do something for the environment with an organic wine purchased at Whole Foods, last year they successfully lobbied the California legislature to create a special decal that allows hybrid vehicles to drive in HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lanes.

The equivalent of the smily face button during the 70s--a time of U.S. sponsored war crimes, recession and presidential travesty--the hybrid decal points to how car drivers live in a fairyland disconnected from the excrement they produce. It's as if the only natural resource consumed by cars is a highly refined bundle of biological waste, the collection of which often devastates an ecosystem. Cars also consume metals, rubber, glass and plastic made from raw materials that are abstracted in ways that bring wealth to global elites and destroy the lives of native populations. The example of the "World's Biggest Mine" operated by Freeport in West Papau shows how hard it is to scrub the blood from our modern technology.

"Prius progressives" heap scorn on smog spewing junkers, but they are responsible for perpetuating auto-normativity, while driving something that costs only a little less than a Lexus. The Prius is actually engineered to get better mileage in city driving than on the highway, and for half the price you can buy a Toyota Yaris, which gets over 40 mpg on the highway. If I had the money this is what I would buy. And when I first step in to breathe deeply that "new car smell", I would get high from the slight scent of dead flesh emanating from the dashboard. . . remembering that modernity is nothing but cannibalism by another name.

A trip to Norwalk III

2006-06-07T08:57:00.001-07:00

After doing my research, I decide to take the 62 bus rather than transfering twice to get back downtown. It may take slightly longer than the trains, but this allows me to get more reading done, and I always like taking new routes. The 62 runs through the former industrial boomtowns of Downey and Commerce. In response to deindustrialization, both cities have converted former factory sites into shopping malls. In Downey a Boeing plant became Downey Landing, and in Commerce a tire factory became Citadel Outlets.

At times we travel next to I-5 and actually pass some of the cars caught in traffic. The route follows Telegraph Ave, which is a fast road. I'm feeling rather happy about my choice until the bus engine stops. Immediately I think, "another breakdown." And I can't even see the downtown skyline through the smog, so this would be a long walk. But the bus starts up, and we begin moving again, although as the bus takes off I notice a loud groaning I hadn't heard before.

I am soon back absorbed in my book until somewhere around Alameda and 6th the bus stops again, and this time everybody starts getting off the bus. I get off as well, and start asking fellow riders what happened. They look at me blankly. Nobody seems to care, it's just the routine breakdown. One man tells me angrily "Ask the bus driver!" Asking a bus rider why the bus broke down is like asking a teenager why he has pimples: it just adds to his humiliation about something he can do nothing about.

I begin to walk, at least now I am only a mile or so from downtown, but a man calls me. "Hey you! Another bus is coming!" I run back. Actually there are two buses, and I am just in time for the second, which has plenty of space since most of the abandoned already are on the first. Another assist from a random rider saves the day.

A trip to Norwalk II

2006-06-05T10:48:00.000-07:00

I had just transfered three times and was waiting at the Norwalk green line station for the local Norwalk bus. I walk to the only bus I see and ask the driver, "Do you know where the County..."
"You want number 4"

I wait about 10 minutes for the bus to arrive and then it's off to downtown Norwalk. It's a sad little city, with the look of Irvine or Thousand Oaks but no money. I arrive at the Civic Center on the corner of Norwalk Boulevard and Imperial Highway. It's a mix of fences, construction sites and strip malls. Somewhat out of place is a large green space with a sculpture of children playing in front of a fountain. It evokes a past when kids played freely outside of parent supervision. This time no longer exists, not so much because of parent paranoia about sexual criminals--although this exists--but because of the danger presented by automobile dominated streets.

Many claim to know the sign of the devil. It's found in the index and pinky finger rising together, the number 666, the pentagram, the crescent moon, Pan and other signs associated with the Masons.

But the true sign of the devil is the 32 lane intersection. An intersection where at every turn the pedestrian has 8 lanes to cross and must wait 4 signal cycles before walking--left turn lane signals and green lights one way, left turn signals and green lights the other way. The young and spry can make it across before the light turn's red, but the elderly are lucky to make it half way across before having to wait another cycle as cars speed by.

Collective outrage greeted the arrest of an 82 year old woman trying to cross Foothill Boulevard in the valley, but no-one pointed out the satanic cult of transportation engineering responsible for this woman's fate. It is this cult, which thrives on the Angelinos auto-eroticism, that created the 32 lane intersection and 50 mph speed limit on pedestrian shared streets--devices meant to make driving safe and walking like getting your toenails manicured by a chewing pig.

A trip to Norwalk

2006-06-03T08:31:00.000-07:00

I had never heard of Norwalk until I decided to file a small claims suit. That's a separate story--about my car and a car wash. Yes, I do have a car. It's a 1993 Geo Prizm , and I use it for trips beyond L.A. county. While you can get anywhere fairly easily within the county, our regional system stinks. Again, I have to do the sad comparison to the East Coast. On the DC to Boston corridor the trains run frequently and on time. In California, expect a delay of an hour.

Norwalk's major attraction is the County Recorder's office. Hopeful entrepreneurs travel from across the county to register their businesses. Couples enter the matrimonial bureaucracy. And future performers on Judge Judy do research for their cases.

I take the orange line to the red line to the blue line to the green line--every color except the yellow. At the green line station there is a big bee sculpture by Meg Cranston, a reference to the Shoshonean name for the area as well as the contemporary "industrious" commuters.

According to the artist:

"For this project I wanted to convey a sense of history but also to reflect modern times. I chose bees as an emblem for Norwalk because they are linked with the area's earliest population. Like many of the commuters who use the station on their way to work, worker bees are industrious, peaceful, productive, and contribute to our survival (through cross-pollination). Bees also have exemplary social instincts—bee colonies are much like families.

As an artist I am interested in craftsmanship and I wanted to maintain the sense of a homemade object. I tried to give the bees a joyful attitude—to make them bright and fun. Something that would provide a smile to people both going to work and coming home.”
(Quoted at L.A. MTA Art Site.)

The danger of this careless mixing of "history" and "modern times" should be evident. First, the absurd desire to "bring a smile to the worker bee" mimics hopeless attempts to pacify the already weary urban fighter. Second, celebrating the "industrious" insect not only falls blindly into the criminal hierarchical logic of modern business theory, which many years ago Donna Haraway brilliantly linked to sociobiology, it also makes no sense in a post-fordist economy where the struggle to find and maintain a job is more important than the struggle on the job.

A more obvious problem: where are the honey bees? Isn't this the very definition of Simulacrum? The copy has replaced the real. The relationship of the native Shoshonean to the honey bee evokes a romantic vision of sustainability. In contemporary L.A., the buzz of an actual bee evokes a fear of getting stung. I've seen two hundred pound men run like preschoolers at the sight of a couple bees hovering around a squashed soda cup.

This is why the struggle to save the farm in south L.A. is so important. This farm provides just a tiny reminder that, despite our ruthless attempts to hide it, we are connected to the earth.

Corn syrup is bad for the world.

Delay on the Way to Burbank

2006-06-01T09:20:00.000-07:00

"How long have you been waiting?" This is a question I ask to get a sense of when the next bus will arrive. Timetables are pointless on streets like Ventura where traffic makes keeping a schedule sisyphusian. Anyway, during the day the bus usually comes at least every ten minutes.

"About ten minutes," he says, obviously frustrated. "I have to be in Burbank by 3." Right now it's about 2, and we're at Ventura and De Soto. There's no way he's going to make it, I think.

"Why don't you take the Orange Line? You could get to North Hollywood pretty fast and then take a bus from there."

"No, No. That won't work." He lights a cigarette and leans on his cane. "See, I've got it figured out."

"Oh," I nod. He looks to be in his sixties. Perhaps he plans to transfer to the 96 at Van Nuys, which would be one less transfer, but I still think he would have a better chance taking the orange line.

"I have to meet my niece and her daughter at the train there."

"Oh."

We are waiting at the stop for the 750 Rapid, but I see that the local is coming, so I start walking toward the stop for the 150, about 20 yards to the East. (If the local ever comes before the express, its best to hop on the local--better to be riding than waiting.)

The man with the cane appears to follow me, so when the bus doors open, I delay getting on. The driver looks at me angrily. "What are you doing? Are you coming or not?!"

I step on and gesture at the man walking with his cane, "I think there is a man who..."

The door shuts behind me, and the bus shoots off. "He wasn't at the stop. We can't wait."

I look back at the man waving his arm hopelessly. I sit down with guilt on my shoulders. What could I have done?

What could I have done?

LA vs NYC

2006-05-30T09:54:00.000-07:00

Most people who compare Los Angeles to New York follow two clichés: New Yorkers think L.A. is nothing but one big suburb while Angelenos brag about their weather. Both perspectives are silly. Most of L.A. is closer to Queens or Brooklyn than a typical post-war suburb--in terms of density although not in terms of architecture--and very few days in New York are too cold to take a long stroll through Central Park.

The first serious comparison to be made between the two cities should revolve around live music, and in this regard, unfortunately, New York wins easily. It's not so much that the music is better in New York or that there is more to choose from--although the latter is probably true--it's that the access to it in New York is so much easier.

Whenever I go to New York the first thing I do is find a newstand and buy a copy of Time Out magazine. The magazine has beautifully organized listings of everything that is going on in New York. Most importantly the cover charge is clearly displayed after every entry and free or very cheap gigs are easy to find. To save the space required for repeating addresses for each listing, venues are listed with addresses in a separate section, and next to the addresses are the nearest subway stops.

This magazine has versions for London, Chicago and New York but not for L.A. When I have complained about the lack of a Time Out L.A., Angelinos tell me you can find the same thing in L.A. Weekly or even better on the L.A. Weekly website. Well yes, and I could get the listings free in New York by picking up a Village Voice rather than paying 3 dollars or whatever it is for TONY, and I could buy Robusta rather than Arabica coffee beans, but personally I don't like the taste of cardboard. As for the "convenience" of the web, the LA Weekly site is the definition of design chaos.

But even if there was a clean, easy-to-browse website, why would I want to spend any more time on the computer? I'm sitting with my hands on the keys for eight or more hours a day, so it's nice to lay back on my couch and browse a magazine occasionally.

I still haven't mentioned the most bizarre element of TONY's listings from an L.A. perspective: listing nearby subway stops. Someone taking public transportation to go out in L.A. sounds as reasonable as taking George Jetson's flying car, but taking the subway to a New York club is the norm.

And after you leave the club, the most wonderful surprise awaits you back in the subway where musicians play anything from classical flute to steel drum. In L.A there are a few places that sanction street musicians--3rd street promenade or Venice Boardwalk--but there just isn't the natural audience created by people waiting for a train.

Last Spring, while waiting for a south bound 6 train at 59th street, I heard an extraordinary musician playing the log drum on the northbound side. Typically subway performers stop playing when the train arrives with its rattling din. But this drummer seemed to play with the rattle, maintaining an intricate rhythm similar to a minimalist piece by Steve Reich. Mesmerized, I let several trains pass by, then decide to cross over and buy a CD from him. I stand listening, ready to him pay him when he stops. He keeps playing, keeping an incredible pace. After perhaps 15 minutes he stops. I ask if I can buy a CD. He looks surprised. "Oh you should have interrupted me!" he smiles. "I didn't want to interrupt you." "Oh, thanks so much!"

His name is William Ruiz. I wonder if he will come to L.A. I would definitely take the bus and see him.

"I Need Work"

2006-05-28T09:42:00.000-07:00

I saw this man while waiting for the 760 at Ventura and Sepulveda. His small suitcase and white plastic bag wrapped to a luggage carrier stood at the corner. As cars arrived at the stop light he would walk into the street look directly at the people stopping in their Escalades or Acura TLs and gesture to his sign, underlining with his hands "INEED WORK TODAY."

When the light turns green, the cars speed off and he takes a seat in the shade. I walk over and ask if I can take his picture.
"What for?"
"To post on the Internet"
"Do you think I could find work that way?"
"I don't know, maybe."
"I really need work. I need a place to stay tonight, so I have to get some money to pay for a room tonight."
"How long have you been on the street?"
"25 years. But I have to find a place to stay tonight. I got bit by something and I need to rent a room. Do you know anybody who needs some work done?"
"No, I'm sorry." He has his work gloves in hand, but it is hard for me to picture this man of perhaps seventy lifting drywall or pulling weeds.
I give him a couple dollars.
"If you know someone who needs work. I really need some work."
I give him a sad nod and head over to step on the bus.

The Solution

2006-05-26T09:41:00.000-07:00

(Image of Curitiba from www.trekearth.com)

The solution to L.A traffic is absurdly easy and inexpensive: bus-only traffic lanes on major corridors and freeways. The best way to get people out of their cars and on the bus is to make riding the bus faster than driving. Right now, even on the freeway, you can be stuck going under 15 miles per hour at almost any time of the day. If buses are allowed to zip past this traffic, you can bet more people will want to be a passenger.

The first step is to create exclusive lanes for the dozen or so rapid bus lines. These lines run down major corridors such as Ventura, Wilshire and Vermont and stop only at major intersections. Although they are meant to be "express," during peak traffic times they are no faster than regular bus lines. A bus only lane on Wilshire might mean traveling from Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade to Downtown L.A. in under a half hour.

Yes, of course this would make traffic worse for car drivers, but that's the point. Make traffic worse for the car and better for the bus and people will choose the bus.

Perhaps the problem with this plan is precisely its simplicity. It does not have the glamour of a rail system that our mayor is so high on. But it is a couple billion dollars cheaper, and it could be implemented in a few months rather than a few years.

This is not a new idea. A lot of press has been given to Curitiba, Brazil with its extensive bus system that acts like an above ground subway system. But many cities in the U.S. and Europe use exclusive bus lanes. 15 years ago when I lived in the medium sized city of Clermont-Ferrand in France, they used exclusive lanes, multi-part buses, and bus stations much like light rail stations.

Last Fall the Bus Riders Union initiated a campaign to create the bus-only lanes on major thoroughfares. What happened? The city council would not even allow lanes on a small portion of Wilshire. Apparently, businesses along Wilshire are concerned it would push customers to areas where there is more street parking. They have a point. Lanes must be created on all corridors in order to be fair to all businesses. On the other hand, parking in most L.A. shopping districts is ridiculous, so it might actually encourage people to shop more on Wilshire!

Don't get me wrong. I appreciate our Mayor's enthusiasm for mass transit, and I don't discount the value of an inspirational vision. Once exclusive lanes are created for buses, they could over time be replaced by light rail. Even Clermont-Ferrand, a city of less than 140,000, where Michelin Tires is the principle industry, now has an electric tram!

Stinky fingers of a single hand

2006-05-24T08:55:00.000-07:00

It's after 10 in the evening and the bus has only seven or so riders. The pungent smell of an unwashed body extends throughout the bus.

As inhabitants of the 21st century "developed" world, we are made neurotic about smell. We expect our environments to be free of stink. The stink of others disturbs us most. Over the course of the past 100 years technology has worked to eliminate body smell. Hair removal and aluminum chlorohydrate have created sweatless cyborgs. Most importantly, we glory in the ability to shower at least twice a day. When we don't think anyone is looking, we occasionally take a sniff at our own armpits because we can't even stand our own stink.

Of course, there is a big difference between the smell of fresh sweat from a recently exercising body--a smell which can be appealing and sensual--and the smell of a body that has not bathed for a month. And this body most likely has spent that month carrying a person's entire possessions from one neighborhood to the next.

When traveling by plane you do not expect someone's odor will make you reach for that little blue bag in the seat pocket. Common courtesy, otherwise known as modern discipline, means we brush our teeth and bathe before flying, and we expect our neighbor to do the same. On the bus, one can expect the kid in front of you to be eating sour cream potato chips for breakfast and the woman next to you to have splashed herself with perfume from the 99 cent store.

Unlike filth, which I can avoid by focusing on the pages of a book or moving to another part of the bus, the only way to avoid smell is to plug my nose. And even if I was willing to call attention to myself in this way, I would still feel sick from the feeling I was breathing parasites . It requires intense meditation skills to transform the stench of a cow barn to the fragrance of a pine forest. I'm not there yet.

A man with a very dirty long beard sits across from me. He is sprawled out, perhaps falling asleep, but his eyes are open. The woman next to him leans over and takes a whiff. Is he the source of the smell? I can't tell from her face. It is often hard to tell the source, and she doesn't change her seat. The man doesn't seem to notice, or he doesn't care. We're all family. My unwiped ass is your unwiped ass.

Rule 2

2006-05-22T09:19:00.000-07:00

When the bus is crowded, unless you are elderly, disabled or with young children, move to the back of the bus. There are two things that prevent people from moving all the way back: fear of the people back there--don't worry, although we look like monsters, we're friendly monsters--and fear of not being able to escape when the bus arrives at your stop. Here's the trick: prepare yourself a few stops before your stop by moving slowly toward the exit. If you say firmly "excuse me", a path will be cleared. DO NOT hang out by the back door. The back door rider, usually a young guy who likes to spread his legs, is the scourge of the rapid bus. Unless you are about to step off, move out of the way!

Singing on the Bus

2006-05-20T09:52:00.000-07:00

We have a talker on the bus. Actually he is a talker and a singer. When I sit down across from him he starts singing very loudly some top 40 hit I recognize but cannot name. Is it Janet Jackson? At first I assume he is singing along to something. It's not uncommon to see young guys rapping loudly to the hip-hop or "alternative" music of a digital player. It's the performance of mini-masculinity. But his ears contain no headphones. The song is in his head.

He actually has a nice voice. The woman sitting next to me laughs. "Hey, we've got someone for American Idol." I remain silent and bury myself in a magazine. As an L.A. bus rider, I take the New York subway approach: avoid eye contact and create an invisible wall around yourself. But in New York you feel protected by the mass ridership--a commonness felt across the city.

He stops singing and starts talking. The first topic seems to be string theory. "You see, any moment we could pass a gap in the time space continuum---Ok, see, right NOW, It could happen right NOW." Talkers scare, annoy and fascinate me. While other riders laugh or give them dirty looks, I have come to recognize that they often say quite profound and troubling things. Indeed, they are the vulgar unconscious voice of the city.

"The xanax has really helped. Yes, I feel much better now. Yes, they say I'm doing much better now. Yes, oh yes." I sneak a glance at him. His battered sneakers move rhythmically to the internal song. A white guy in his thirties with a couple weeks growth of a dirty blond beard--the scraggly beard of a young Bob Dylan, he starts singing something from Highway 61 Revisited. It's a tough song, so he mumbles through some of the lyrics.

My attention slowly shifts to some teenagers on the back of the bus. "So I smoked a bowl with her, and then she says do you want some crack." The talker turns around. "Yeah Man, that's some crazy shit!" The mocked becomes the mocker. They all get off at the next stop. My shoulders relax. I look up and stare at the now empty seat. There's no need to hide anymore.

Not a "real" city?

2006-05-17T07:26:00.000-07:00

One of the most annoying things I hear said about L.A. is that it is not a "real" city, and one of the frequent claims made to support this statement is that nobody takes public transportation here. Of course, these people have never taken the bus, because the reality is that buses are stuffed like my sinuses during allergy season.

It might seem surprising that the most crowded buses are actually the ones that run most frequently. If one wants a seat riding down Ventura Blvd, it's better to take the 150/240, which runs every ten minutes during peak times, than the 750 Rapid, which runs every six minutes and makes fewer stops. People would rather stand and be moving than sit and wait.

The Orange Line, which just started running across the valley last fall, is packed even on Saturdays when the freeways are supposedly clear. More than once there was simply not enough room, and riders had to wait for the next bus. Of course, if you are aggressive enough, there is always enough space. One time, the entrance was blocked with teenagers and their bmx bikes (the ability of people to bring their bikes on the MTA doesn't help the crowding). I crawled my way past them, using the moves I learned on the New York Subways and before that pushing my way to the front of the stage when I used to see punk bands in my youth. As I shoved past him, one of these kids slugs me in the back. "Is that all you've got? I've had worse from my six year old niece."

"My car exploded in a fire."

2006-05-15T07:25:00.000-07:00

A man on the Reseda Bus tells everybody that his car exploded in a fire. This happens occasionally on the bus. You find some people who just love to talk to strangers. Thats what riding the bus is all about isn't it? The opportunity to commune with anonymous others?

He wonders if people saw it on the news.

"I had all of my possessions, everything I owned in that car. So I had to go downtown, to one of the missions. It's CRAZY down there. If you've been down there--MAN--some of those people are really crazy!"

Of course, many of the bus riders would say this about him, but I know what he means, because yes I have been down there. It's a homeless ghetto. Thousands of people live on the streets. They live in tents patched with garbage bags. They wander the streets drinking coffee and eating stale donuts dumped outside a Winchells. Some mumble, some scream and a few are so strung out they tear at their clothes as if in a straight jacket.

There is a popular myth that deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill is a major cause of homelessness, but most patients of mental hospitals had left before 1975, ten years before the boom in homelessness. You do not have to read Foucault to realize that the category "mentally ill" is an easy way to devalue the homeless and create a blinder to their experience. Imagine the psychological strain on the most "sane" of individuals after living on the street for a week. I know people who start acting weird if they miss even one night of sleep.

Los Angeles has 90,000 homeless. That's more than the entire population Santa Barbara. Many live in their car, until it explodes, and then they lose everything.