The Bus Bench

Gold Line. I don't think Metro has undercover cops. 12/15

   On the Gold Line yesterday on my way from one bar on my way to another bar, no that’s not it, I was actually on my way home from a bar a woman comes on the train.

   I would say crazy woman, but I think saying a crazy woman on the Metro at 11pm is kind of a redundant statement. Sane people don’t take public transport at night, at least not in Los Angeles. I mean there is pretty much a 50% chance that anyone on the Metro is crazy and after 10pm it increases with every passing half hour.

   The woman gets on the train and I know I’m going to have a problem, mainly owing to my friends.

   I suffer from a disease called NLPCB which is nonthreatening looking person of color burden, when you look just enough ethnic to be called a racial slur, but not ethnic enough to be scary enough to prevent someone from actually saying it to your face.

   I completely understand that black woman that goes off on everyone in line. She's rad. I wish I could put the fear of god in people by just staring at them. I wonder did she learn that from being fucked with too much...I wonder how much more has to happen before I get that stare.

   Anyways I'm an easy target. I don't know how to do the stare. What happens is a lot of times I get to experience the crazy kind of real obvious “racism” from homeless people who are white, though I’ve experienced this from a wide variety of ethnicities, but mainly white almost homeless drug addict type people get pretty bold when I’m by myself or appear to be by myself.

   “You black bitch. You stole my job you BLACK BITCH!!!! Fuck affirmative action. I’ll fucking kill you…” it’s usually in real muffled tones and the black usually sounds like “brack” and the “kill” sounds like “spill,” when you’re drunk, toothless, and homeless you tend to lose the ability to pronounce words.

   Usually I can just ignore them or walk away and the situation just goes away, but if I’m with friends who are also white it becomes an uncomfortable situation.

   Ok so back to crazy lady. She gets on the train and looks directly at me and starts saying,

  “I hate brack people. I hate bwack people. I hate blick people. You stupid brwack females…”

   I’m like fuck, because I know this is going to turn into a really stupid conversation about race and me and my feelings with my friends and I truly don’t fucking care. No, it’s not like I look forward to these kinds of incidents, but spending my entire existence in LA around Hollywood and Downtown. I get called a racial slur on a weekly basis, in various languages (and the vast majority of the time I haven't even opened my mouth.) I’m very used to the homeless angry white person blaming me for his homelessness and screaming at me.  99.9% of the time they aren’t going to do anything and the thing is this:

   They are homeless I’m not, so what the fuck do I care that some crazy homeless person is yelling at me.

   I know on TV and the movies it’s always this really traumatic event when people call a black person a nigger, but it is not that traumatic.

   It just makes you tired.

   Mean comments by people who live on the street have never bothered me, pretend nice comments by people who live in houses, that bothers me a lot more, but that’s a totally different post.

   It’s a horrible feeling when you’re forced to have a conversation about homeless angry white guy with your liberal white friends who make fun of Armenians and how Asian people drive, but now get very self righteous and want to stand up for you against the crazy white homeless person.

   Arguing with crazy people is never a good idea and people who have no control over your life calling you fucked up names isn’t racism, that’s just assholism.

   I mean if the homeless guy killed me and chopped up my body, the cops never bothered to look into what happened and a blurb about it was mentioned in the homicide blog on the LA Times. Then that would be racism. Asshole toothless homeless guy calling me a black bitch, not racism.

   It is uncomfortable, I have to admit that.

   I wish sometimes I were a guy. Then people would be too scared to say anything to me. They would walk across the street when they saw me coming. They would not try to sit too close to me on the bus. They would leave me the fuck alone, but then the cops might shoot me because I fit some random description.

   I guess we all have our crosses to bear.

by Browne

Bomp KOs Creem. Burbank 12/15.

Got a hold of the Crèem book and after reviewing that and the Bomp book, the Bomp retrospective vastly superior.  The Bomp book was shockingly superior, especially considering Creem was put out by HarperCollins and Bomp was put out by Ammo.

Who the hell are Ammo?

Well they are pretty awesome, at least in regards to this book.

That book is fucking beautiful.

I’m not a music person. I could care less about it. I also am pro east coast, so I say this with much “oh fuck man” that Bomp is a better book.

Creem is full of pictures and bullshit. I mean Creem had so many great people, but wow, it was very fluffy. The book is very Tiger Beat fluffy.

“Hold on, Creem was not Tiger Beat. Creem was Eric Clapton and Tiger Beat was Leif Garret,” BusTard the crusty old bastard.

Keep in mind I do not know about music. I’m 29 years old (info on my dirty 30 party coming shortly) and I have no idea what Creem was supposed to be. I’m saying what it looks like it was. If you read the retrospective, Creem seemed pretty weak, possibly they should have gotten some better editors. I think people like me were editing that book, maybe not like me, because I would never be stupid enough to try to edit a music book about the 1970s. Creem reminded me of a hardbound teen magazine, but with people who are old.

Now Bomp you get a true retrospective of the era. Or what it ideally was like. The book felt gritty and filled with information, the musicians were secondary. It was the writing and the production that made that magazine great.

It’s been nearly 30 years ago. You would think that Creem would get that their audience is now sober and nearing retirement.

Now I don’t know if that’s how it was during the actual era, but if you read both retrospectives Mick Farren and Suzy Shaw with the Bomp book have honored the past in a much more respectful and cooler way.

Bomp with it’s copies of the mimeographs of the magazine and copies of the proof pages, it is very artful. The Bomp book is also casebound with fucking beautiful paper, not that vanished shit. I hate varnished paper.

Varnish is for books you masturbate with.

The meat of the magazine is splayed out in it’s all hand drawn hideous glory. It’s a beautiful book. Bomp is a beautiful and a substantial book.

For a person like me who doesn’t care about music, it was quite entertaining.

Another music book for non-music, but appreciate the art of it people:

Fucked Up + Photocopied

I have to go drink my enhanced brandy.

Browne

Punk rock writers. West Hollywood. 12/13

In New York during a release party and signing for a retrospective of the rock magazine Creem a fight broke out. People came to blows. People who have books on Harper Collins came to actual blows and afterwards people defended the adult men who came to blows by denouncing the offending party (which depends on whose side you are on, who is offensive and who is not) by attacking their manhood.

That is punk rock right there.

The above are the many reasons I love New York people. Even in the day of chatrooms and blogs and angry 3am emails they will actually take the time to come down and kick your ass in person.

Fuck success.

Fuck money.

Fuck doing jail time.

If your big mouth and cocky attitude wrote a check for an ass kicking a New Yorker regardless of financial status or success will definitely cash that fucker. And they will do that shit in public.

Will a fight ever break out at a LA book signing? Nope, reason being is that most LA writers are gutless ass kissers. Even the badass ones aren’t really badass. They are simply wearing a costume. Like people who dye their hair green from a hair dye they bought at Hot Topic in the mall.

Who goes to the mall anymore?

If you go to the mall how can you be anti-establishment? Dyeing your hair green isn’t even anti-establishment anymore.

Mick Farren is in the wrong city. He wrote for Bomp. The LA version of Creem. I understand that LA has great weather, but I think Mick Farren should have gone to New York. There is no one here to fight with. Of course the women are better looking, Detroit is a harsh place, but in LA the above scenario will never happen.  There is no one that will jump up in the audience and go, “You’re a fucking liar,” or “That shit didn’t happen,” or “What the fuck is this?”

In LA no one will ever say that to anyone that is doing a reading, a concert, an art show because the reason people are at events in Los Angeles isn’t because they appreciate anyone’s work, but to network and kiss ass. Not that they don’t do that in New York, but that’s not the main purpose.

In New York they have an opera. In New York they have an opera that they don’t have to give away almost free tickets, to get people to show up. People care about things other than TV and fighting with idiots online.

Fights are to be done in person.

In New York they have magazines and newspapers, lots of them. Not just one major and two weeklies and glossy shittily produced adwells pretending to be magazines. In New York they’ve got several dailies, dozens of weeklies, and plenty of ‘zines. They have a culture of writing and it shows in the writing and the spirit of the writers.

Writing is a craft that is respected on the east coast.

Maybe the east coast is where the gods are. Maybe the reason that people in LA are such chicken shit, is because they know that they can’t survive just on their words or art alone.

Mick Farren (he’s “punk rock”, but not punk rock, but in spirit, “punk rock”) gave an interesting anecdote at West Hollywood bookstore (a store which needs to fucking have their reading in the annex and not in the cramped front with SIX chairs, what the fuck!!! they used to have eight, but they had to put some cheesy Chronicle Playboy books in the last row. Chronicles you're not Taschen, please stop, seriously you're not helping the print world at all...)  last night about a writer who loved Keith Richards. He paraphrased that this one particular writer (he gave the name, but I can’t remember it exactly), was doing the whole “I know Keith he is my best friend blah, blah, blah…”

One day Keith invited his “best friend” to his house and he put out a giant line of heroin, he took half and gave his “best friend” the other. His “best friend” ended up waking up three days later in the hospital.

I guess the moral to that story is if you want to party with the gods, build up a better tolerance to hard street drugs…or maybe not.

by Browne

A Moveable Bench

My apologies to that glorified fisherman, Hemingway, for the pinched title.

This continues to be such a travesty that I just had to prove how an impromptu move or two might occur within a few seconds. (In the central "city," where the top speed is somewhere between stop and glacial, I can only imagine the havoc what could be wrecked were a madman to take the perpetually unbolted bus bench at 5th and Hill out to do true damage. . . )

 

MoveableBench

     

-BusTard

 

Lower GI of the Gold Line in Boyle Heights

I get up with New York, which means that even the sun squints wearily at my already sweaty presence when its lazy ass creeps over the cornfields that are the flyover zone.

As such, I tend to be on hand when other folk feel they are working without scrutiny. . .

       

-BusTard

Quickly posted Question on Pam's "Chat" Strangely Eliminated

The second "monthly" MTA Chat occurred today, with Pam O'Connor cyber-smiling as she dodged the hard questions and downplayed (and possibly disappeared) those that got through.

Along with twelve hard questions that demand answers (yet will no doubt not even receive canned PR-speak), I asked a very simple one:

"Pam,
As a straphanger in New York and Los Angeles for many years, I am intimately familiar with both systems. (I might add that while NYC is called metro, most folk still recognise it as three agencies: the BMT, IND and IRT.)
Anyhow, the mayor of New York, Mike Bloomberg, rides the east side line (4,5,6) to work (Brooklyn Bridge station) at City Hall in lower Manhattan. Which train or bus do you take to work at One Gateway Plaza?"

Answer:                

I don't "work at Metro...it's a part time policy making position.  But I have several options to get downtown LA.  For me the #10 Big Blue Bus works best if I'm going directly.  But, depending on my path of travel I can take the Metro Wilshire Rapid downtown and take the DASH, or Metro Rapid to subway...and Dash to get around central LA!

Happy Holidays everyone....next live chat is Jan 23 at noon!

Pam from Santa Monica"

(below, PDF transcripts; target in 10% red):

 

She answered, but as a newsman who knows the import of the word "if" and "can," it was not difficult to divine that she does not use public transit. Remember what "is" is?

Of more importance is the question below and why it was only on-screen for a few seconds. (I managed to capture while recording—via PDF—during every refresh.)

"Question: Pam: I view MTA's recent decsion to add turnstiles as an
anti-sustainability decision. Why? Because 5% shrinkage is pretty
common in business revenue plans, the cost of the turn-stile
improvements is truly unknown, and it's likely that many of the 'cheaters'
are working poor trying to keep food on the table. I realize that ridership
contributes only 1/3 of your revenue, but beyond revenue generation,
could you help me understand the rationale for the board's decision?
Thanks. Meredith from Silver Lake"

Answer:
"Merideth...Fare evasion costs Metro over $5 1/2 million a year . It also
costs an additional $7 million a year to hire fare inspectors. These are
really big amounts of money. Recovering fares helps Metro maintain and
expand service for everyone. I know that the economy is struggling now
but paying for a service rendered is not a rich or poor issue. And Metro
has a program called "Immediate Needs" to assist the working poor."

(below, PDF transcripts; target in 10% red):

I find it highly suspect that this question and "answer" remained for no more than a few seconds.

As such, I have one more question, Pam: what the hell happened, AND WHY?

I am not the only one bitching about the obvious bullshit.

-BusTard

 

12 Questions for Pam O’Connor at 12 p.m. on 12 December 2007:

1)    In October, when you hosted the first MTA Live Chat, you promised that it would be held monthly. It is now December and it only now are you hosting the second one. What happened?

2)    A few years ago, during an incident that resulted in the arrest of an MTA driver (of a W/B #4 line) who attempted to run me over on Sunset Blvd in Silver Lake—she swerved across two full lanes of traffic as well as into the bike lane to try and run me into the parked cars along the north side—I learned from the LAPD Metro officers in whose car I rode all the way into Santa Monica, that the LAPD has been given explicit instructions to not stop MTA drivers who run red lights. Why is this?

3)    Why did the MTA take down the small monitors in the Blue Line section of the 7th/Fig Metro station? Why were all the downtown to mid-Wilshire stations recently outfitted with several sets of 42”-wide flat-screen HD screens that offer no more information than what is already available on signs that are posted throughout all the subway stations? Who is the contractor? How much did this endeavour cost? And why not offer some real-time information on them?

4)    Many MTA drivers have blatantly stated that the reason they do not have a sufficient supply of inter-agency transfers is because the MTA wants to “encourage” riders to purchase day passes. Please explain.

5)    Now that the MTA has formally realized its mistake in the way fares are collected on the subway, why is it going to waste tens of millions of dollars in an attempt to collect approximately $6 million in allegedly lost fares? If money is so tight, why the recent installation of flat screens? (see #3)

6)    What is the percentage of MTA employees who travel in private-owned vehicles (POVs)? I have learned that the vast majority of MTA employees—especially upper management—do not take the bus and are not very adept at understanding the manner of the straphanger’s collective behaviour. Why is there not a program to encourage employees of the MTA to indulge their own product?

7)    Indicative of the wasteful fashion of MTA route-engineering is the shuttle #620 in Boyle Heights. Nearly no one rides it, yet it is one of the new, relatively large buses. Why is this not a DASH-sized bus, or even one of the older buses (such as the smaller one on the 96 line into Griffith Park) when so many lines tend to be overcrowded? (Two examples of high-volume, poorly serviced routes are the 33/333 along Venice Blvd and the 90/91 between downtown and Sunland-Tujunga.)

8)    What happened to the timing device via telephone, when folk would ring up to enquire of a bus schedule from a live operator? Now, one might be on the phone anywhere from five to 15 minutes, but the lack of announcement makes it frustrating. It is ALWAYS a long wait, but it was not so long ago that there was at least an “approximate wait time” announced.

9)    Many years ago, when the MTA was the RTD, there was a printed set of promises that included a straphanger to a free ride if the bus was more than 30 minutes late. These days, even a bus 30 minutes late—which is supposed to be called in so that stranded straphangers can have a clue to why they have been abandoned—seems to elicit ignorance from MTA operators and supervisors. What happened to the aforementioned promise and why is it that, with respect to the latter, no one seems to know anything when a bus fails to arrive let alone much else that they should know?

10)     Why is Transit TV so damned loud in the morning, as well as programmed to get very loud, very quickly, as the bus takes off from each stop? (I have approximately 40 videos of this annoying aspect of TransitTV.)

11)     In the Metro Advertising Guidelines, there is this set of rules:
"Advertising may not be displayed if it’s content contains images, copy or concepts that actively denigrate public transportation."
If this is so, why is it that in the past Auto Trader has advertised (with the phrase, “or, take the bus” and that TransitTV is frequently promoting car ownership? (I have a picture of the former and several videos of the latter.)

12)     For all the “night life” promotion the MTA peddles, why is it that the subways stop running at midnight?

Check after 1 p.m. today for comments on Pam's "chat."

Bus Bench Bullshit

 

We at TheBusBench.com wonder why there tend to be so many bus benches where so few straphangers gather, and why so few—if any!—are to be found where more buses than can be counted tend to stop constantly.

BusBenchBullshitMONTAGE
Video sent by shametrainla

 

Aisle of Misfit Drinks

What usta be Pick 'n Save is now Big Lots, but I never became acclimated to call it "Big Lots." I still call it Pick 'n Save. (The photos at the top of the page are from an incident whereby the Pic 'n Save employees chased the shoplifter out onto 7th Street then south on Broadway; I took the photos in the mid-1990s.)

Anyway, one thing has remained the same: the bizarre aisles of apparently failed drinks. In the mid-1990s there were primarily juices; in the late '90s it was odd coffee concoctions. Now it appears to be poorly conceived sports and energy drinks.

LAFD Santa at Grand Central

The last time I was at Grand Central Market and the firetrucks came, Angels Flight had experienced a wreck.

This time, there was no such calamity, just Santa Claus:

-BusTard