The Bus Bench

MTA, reaming passengers for 27 million dollars

In New York just about everyone takes public transport. The Mayor Mike Bloomberg who is worth billions of dollars (those dollars were acquired by Bloomberg financial, innovator of real time streaming of stock market data) rides the 4,5,6.

I love it when working class people win.

In LA this is not the case. The people who mainly support the system of public transportation are in the throes of working classdom.

“I’m not working class. I live in a loft, I take public transport for fun,” my experience is the only experience Sam.

Yeah….

While there are a few people (those few are mainly on the rails not the busses) who aren’t of the poor or working classes taking public transport, the busses, which carries the most people take the working class and the poor to and from work and school.

• Approximately 275,000 people take the rails on the weekdays.
• Approximately 1,227,000 people take the bus on the weekdays.

Which line would you view as more valuable? Which line would you spend the most money on? If you’re the MTA, you would spend more money on the 275,000 people.

Yet the over 1 million of working class people who tend to ride the busses (because the trains don’t go to working class neighborhood, unless they are getting ready to rape them) are the people that the MTA goes out of it’s way to ream for cash.

Not working things out with the LADOT.
Cutting night discount fares.
Cutting peak hour discounts.
Raising the fees on day passes.
Eliminating the bi-weekly passes.

Squeezing the little bit of cash out of the people who have no cash.

Spending vast amounts of their money on the lines, which carry only 22% of their passengers.

When the economy goes to hell and the first person from Sci-Arc taking the Gold Line gets shot, do you know what’s going to happen to the MTA rail experiment? It will fail and trust me with the economy going to hell in a hand basket it’s only a matter of time before the wrong person gets caught in the crossfire. A wrong person being a white person with parents of note, whose in school and not in the porn industry (because we all know if you’re doing porn, then you had it coming,) preferably a girl of one of the more popular and "normal" Judeo-Christian faiths. Not Mormonism, because that’s kind of weird.

So in this money crunching time when people are living in tents ala Grapes of Wrath why is the MTA still providing tow service to motor vehicles. Free tow service. Free tow service at a cost of 27 million dollars annually.

The MTA spends 27 million dollars annually on a service that helps bus riders how?

The MTA has a fleet of 152 trucks to help 300,000 people (and we know this is an inflated bullshit number, but lets pretend the MTA is honest…) which is pretty much nothing, but they do this service for free, which seems like a BIG freakin waste considering the MTA is hurting so much for cash.

The MTA cares so much about the 5.5 million dollars that they lose on fare evasion, but they spend 27 million dollars annually to tow two cars.

The MTA cares so much about 5.5 million dollars that they lose on fare evasion and they are going to spend 30 million dollars to install gates at a cost of 1.1 million dollars annually to maintain and will increase MTA’s revenue by 6.6 million dollars.

That seems like bad business in my opinion, but working at the MTA isn't working, it’s welfare for the rich and incompetent.

Get a real job you welfare frauds. The good bus riders are sick of paying for you and your babies!!!!

So is your baby Tutor Saliba, going to be build those gates or are you going to make us support one of your out of state kids from a prior daddy?

by Browne

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All of the facts and figures for the MTA were compiled from the MTA website.

Mitt Romney, the Magic Mormon

Mitt Romney said he saw his dad march with Martin Luther King Jr, not in the sense that you and I see, but in a magical sense. Sort of like how in the movie Green Mile the big black guy played by Michael Clark Duncan cured the character played by Tom Hank’s penis by touching it. Not touching it like the way you and I would think one man in jail touching another man in jail’s penis might mean, but in a magical sense.

If you don’t believe in magic, then you must be a cynical bastard.

Mitt Romney explained in a 12/21 Boston Globe story by Michael Levenson, “"If you look at the literature, if you look at the dictionary, the term 'saw' includes being aware of in the sense I've described."

Oh yeah man, I totally get that. Please pass the joint.

“"It's a figure of speech and very familiar, and it's very common. And I saw my dad march with Martin Luther King. I did not see it with my own eyes, but I saw him in the sense of being aware of his participation in that great effort,” said Romney the Magical Mormon.

If you don’t believe in the Magic Mormon, the above may sound like an internet chat room explanation to an outlandish assertion. But you know I believe in magic, because I have a dream. I have a dream that one day we can all just pull anything we want out our ass and defend it by saying things like:

• In the Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition it clearly states that my definition is completely valid, of course it’s the 31st entry down, but it is there.
• I sourced this from Wikipedia.
• I’ve got this personal anecdote; when I was in the third grade this Turkish girl beat me up, so therefore all Turkish people are the anti-christ.

I have a dream that people even in vapid Southern California will stop fact checking, completely.

I have a dream that people will take everything at face value and if anyone disagrees they will be banned from all major “social” blogs and labeled a troll.

I have a dream that one day everyone will clear their minds completely and know that magic exists.

Midwestern Mormons in the 1950s and 1960s marched hand in and with African-Americans in the south and in the 1960s and 1970s Southern Baptists marched hand in hand with Chicano-Americans in the west and the internment of Japanese-Americans never happened, slavery never happened, the Chinese Exclusion Act never happened, gay people have always had civil rights, (oops not yet, back to the magic) nothing bad has ever happened, and everyone has always helped everyone else, it’s like magic.

Let magic reign over everyone, so we can be positive and nice and happy. So what if we’re stupid.

Most magic is stupid, that’s what makes it so god damn magical.

By Browne

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The quotes from Mitt Romney were taken from the 12/21 Bostom Globe story by Michael Levenson: Romney never saw father on King march

Buying your way to being OK. Fairfax district. 12/21

I have always had major issues with LACMA.

I have always felt they had way too much money to have such bad taste. LACMA is the epitome of everything that is wrong with art in Los Angeles.  Now I have another reason to hate (I guess hate means I have more than an issue, but I like talking in vague LA style.  It's fun!!) LACMA. To me all art is political. I have a problem with LACMA’s politics.

This is from the Mark Vallen’s site.

He’s rad!!!!

I guess you can buy your way to ok, at least in “fuck the little people” Los Angeles.

LACMA: The Oil Museum
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), after receiving $25 million dollars from the multinational oil company BP (British Petroleum), plans to dedicate a new entry gate and pavilion to the energy Goliath. To be christened the "BP Grand Entrance", the construction is nothing more than an edifice to big oil and the clearest example yet of the increasing corporatization of the arts in America….Click to read the juiciness…

by Browne

Green Grinches. 1st and State, 90033. 12/21

In the age of the greeney:

There are nondisposable bags, there are even days to celebrate you bringing your own bag to put the crap you buy into it. It even has an acronym: BYOBD

There are fake furs.

There are electric cars, electric bikes, and even electric scooters.

The people involved in all of these green products don’t use fur or leather, which means they care.

You are probably wondering why  I’m subtlety mocking someone who does not use animal fur or leather to power their fashion or body. The reason I’m mocking them is because green commerce makes people think that it’s ok to do shitty things.  That going 10% of the way is ok.

My friends that eat beef are fun and they aren't delusional.

If you’re going to keep running your credit card why don’t you just keep smoking and eating beef, because you’re doing maybe slightly more than that person and you're probably annoyingly self-righteous.

Do you really think eco-light bulbs make that much of a difference?

Not wearing fur is not enough. I know that’s a bummer, but it’s a symbolic gesture at best. For most of us how hard is it to not wear fur?  If I weren’t vegetarian, I’m thinking I probably still wouldn’t have a fur coat.

Let’s look at John Rockefeller. He was a major industrialist, he was a big philanthropist, but all of his money doesn’t wipe away that psychedelic sunset. The sunset in the horizon of LA is pretty cool isn’t it?  The reason it looks so pretty is because of the smog (thanks big John oil guy, thank you for Exxon and Chevron and all of the other oil companies that were birthed from your greed, oops I mean innovations) that shifts the colors. You can compare the LA sunset to certain people who are rich for nothing and are “fabulously” skinny because they do large amounts of cocaine. Yes it’s pretty from afar, but it’s not nearly so pretty when you get right up on it.

Many people may read this and get this feeling that I’m anti fun. No, I love fun. I’m not a trendy bar person, but I am a dive bar person. All of my dive bars have been taken over by people who are slumming. At night they pretend to be cool artists and have political debates about starving children in third world countries and evil Republicans. They perform these tricks while sporting $2000 tattoos and doing day gigs as producers and other entertainment type jobs that make lots of money. Owing to that and to other factors I can no longer go to my dive bar, because even though there is still graffiti it’s now just for ambiance (as are people’s Dalai Lama inspired tattoos.)

“I got this ink done after my fellowship in Kenya where I filmed the people there. They were such beautiful people. On my way back from Africa I spent some time in Tibet and really learned to appreciate their culture and uh, now I’m Buddhist. This sleeve tattoo symbolizes my transformation,” Sort of slumming artist/producer who’s never had to work shit job in his life, except the time he spent a summer during his junior year in college. He taught children in Costa Rica English. He felt that was the hardest and most rewarding thing he’d ever done.

I’m just pro reality.

The reality is that mass consumption (which if you are in fashion or movies or TV, you’re a major part of the problem) is the root cause of animal cruelty,  depleted forests, polluted air, polluted water, global warming and pretty much all of the other thing that the “green” movement is supposed to be championing against. What you do for a living (and don’t buy) is much more important than what you drive, what you put in your mouth or what you put on your nude body.

The root of all of all of the causes that people wear stickers for, raise money for, ask for donations to support; is consumerism. And you know what, I totally get that sucks.

I know that it totally sucks when you realize that the thing you believe in, in order for that thing to actually take hold you have to change your whole lifestyle. It can be a bit of a shock to the system.

I would compare it to having a baby or moving out of your parent’s house for the first time (second or third time not so shocking.) When you and your partner are going to have a baby you’ve got to change the way you do things. It’s not that you think people who aren’t going to have a baby are bad people, but if you have are having a baby, you can’t drink anymore and you can’t do drugs anymore.

You have to prepare your house for your baby.

To me that is what being green is preparing for, the birth of your eco-consciousness, but at some point the baby is going to get here. You can’t keep doing what you were doing before.

I get those people in the movement that want it to be appealing to those who “don’t get it,” but you know who is going to want a message of bullshit.

Who is going to buy the “You can do everything you did before you can just do it green” bullshit? That’s not a message. That’s not an ideal.

It is a good slogan if you want to appeal to advertisers, but it’s not a message if you want to educate and inform or if you really care. Maybe you don't. If not good luck in the whole making money thing, by pretending to give a damn.

I do admire a good hustle.

Why should anyone listen to anyone whose great idea is, “Hey you’ve just fixed a great steak, how about I just throw some green paint on that steak of yours? Isn’t that better? Isn’t that cool?”

No man, that’s not cool and you just ruined someone’s dinner. You bogarded in on someone’s meal. You cheated.  That is not how the green movement is supposed to go down. You’re supposed to invite someone to your house and show them how you do things. Fix them a proper meal, not what you think they want to eat.

No one appreciates that except maybe the ad executives.

If you want people to care about the earth you have to care about it for real. Caring about it means you have to let go of what you think other people think cool is. And in regards to cool, copying cool people will never make anyone cool, at least not for long see “Can’t Buy Me Love” circa 1987.

Caring about the earth means understanding what reality is.

No one is going to listen to anyone who can’t even tell themselves the truth.

by Browne

You don’t want to sell me no stinkin’ badges. Fu*k you MTA.

Melrose is one of my favorite destinations. I love the section of LA that I have christened in my own head Little El Salvador, I know some people want to change it back to East Hollywood or even the Bicycle District, but East Hollywood is no longer.

East Hollywood left when Latinos and Asian immigrants moved in and the hipsters grandparents moved to the San Fernando Valley and Santa Monica.

I say to the residents that moved in and made that area work. Tell the hipsters they can’t have your neighborhood back, just because it’s cool now. YOU made it cool. Finders keepers, losers weepers, that’s the scavenger’s law of neighborhoods. Haven’t those skinny jeanned vegans destroyed enough perfectly fine neighborhoods?

Tell them to go to Watts. That will be much more fun to watch. At least for me.

I like Central American food or rather the pastries in the bakeries around Melrose from Los Angeles City College to a bit past Western. I also like hats. Melrose is home to one of the two best hat stores in Los Angeles (the other one is on a lonely stretch of road in Burbank, on the wrong side, yeah, there is a wrong side to Burbank, Baron Hats on a barren street…) in general I like wasting time, and the MTA likes wasting my time.

I have two choices when going back into downtown, the 14 and the 10. After I take either of those I can either walk home or I can take an other agency’s bus, since I like wearing high heels I prefer the other agency’s bus option.

Many people like the utilitarian look when on the bus; these people usually hate the bus and their lives. I love my life and while I don’t love public transport, I feel me dressing up and looking great makes it fun for everyone else.

I like giving.

Now on several occasions I’ve taken the 14 and the 10 and put in money and asked for a transfer. The driver would then tell me, “There are no transfers.”

“So you just stole my money MTA agent,” me being not happy.

“Look, I don’t have any transfers. They didn’t give me any. Here’s 50 cent,” said the snotty bus driver, who practically throws me two quarters.

But he did throw me two quarters.

And that’s not the point, not so secret MTA agent.

If you go to trip planner it tells you how much you need to get on the bus, transfer and all. If Metro’s trip planner tells me that it will cost $1.55 to get on the MTA and then another agency bus, that’s what I should have to pay. A transfer not being available just raises the price of my bus ride not just from $1.25 to $1.55 the cost of the transfer; it raises my bus ride from $1.25 to $2.15, of course that’s a small amount, but it is an amount.

Multiply that times the amount of kids that you might have. If you don’t think it’s that big of a deal send me 90 cents. If I had to go to Melrose to work everyday that would cost me 18 dollars per month. 18 extra dollars which if I were making minimum wage would be a big deal.

If the MTA doesn’t think it’s a big deal then they should mail everyone who takes the 14 and the 10 and any other bus lines that they forget to give their drivers transfers, 18 dollars a month.

If the MTA just wants to inadvertently raise my fare, then why can’t I pay less money when I’m just going half way? Oh, if I did that, it would be called fare evasion. They would fine me 250 dollars plus community service.

I think the MTA owes me 250 dollars and some community service.

What if I were poor? What if I had just the amount? What if Amex didn’t give cash advances? What if I were in some neighborhood that didn’t have ATMs? What if it were midnight? What if I were a grandma? What if I were disabled and walking across the street to get change at 8pm in the rain was really hard and when I finally get there the asshole clerk tells me that he doesn’t break change for loser bus riders? What if that happened?!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyways I called Metro about it once and talked to Greg the supervisor who said he’d send me a token.

This was a month ago, so I guess it’s not happening.

The other day I take a trip from Melrose to downtown and again the driver tells me there are no transfers (I’ve now learned to ask first and put money in later, irritated driver and fellow passengers be damned.) And I asked him, “What’s the deal?”

He was an older Chicano guy, he peered over his sunglasses and he spoke to me as one person of color to another person of color in a ‘girrlll, I know you know,’ but I’m going to tell you straight up, “Metro wants you to buy a day pass, that’s why. They are greedy. Notice the night fare and peak hour fares are also gone.”

So the drivers on Metro while there is the infrequent asshole, because hey working with working class people, when you yourself is working class can be a bit much. You know working class people never have any money, there are lots of homeless people who get on the bus and they are kind of stinky and gross and weird. In general being a bus driver is a scary hard job. It’s like working at the post office or at the airport when a flight has been delayed for ten hours, but you don’t have bullet proof glass and you can’t take a break for ten minutes while you are allegedly searching for a package. In addition now owing to the whole greeney thing you got a bunch middle class schmucks, such as myself giving you shit and asking why is the MTA fucking them all the time.

More often than not though the MTA drivers are a great resource in regards to the bullshit that is going on with the busses.

So changes on METRO that the MTA’s Roger Snoble and Pam O’Connor have forgotten to let you know on a widespread basis.
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• Metro passes are not valid on ANY Dash as of January 1st. Not just the ones in downtown or around the Wilshire district. They are not valid on any of them. Thanks for the heads up on that MTA. I got to read that info on piece of punk rock photo copy paper on the Los Feliz Dash.

You fuckers.

• The nighttime reduced fare (which I have used) is gone. I discovered that by watching someone not being able to afford to get on the goddamn bus on Sunset one night around the Viper Room after a Mick Farren reading.
• The senior and disabled reduce fare for non-peak hours, gone. Saw a driver tell an obviously crazy (disabled) toothless (old) woman that they didn’t do that anymore. On the 14 eastbound.

So the play nice benefits that the MTA added when they hiked the bus passes from three bucks to five bucks were silently taken away.

What a bunch of duplicitous assholes.

Sell me your stinkin’ badges you damn carbones at the MTA.

By Browne

What about Wanda Coleman? Watts. 12/20

What about Wanda Coleman?

What about Wanda Coleman. The literary community of LA has forgotten a very valuable person in it’s community. A person who actually sells books to people who aren’t her students.

I don’t think she has any students.

And let us be honest, most poets that are alive sell because they teach and have their students buy their books.

Especially the poets in LA.

Most poets in LA want to be actors.

Nothing worse than an out of work actor type trying to write…

Even Hollywood won’t let that breed type for them and the bar in regards to artfulness is pretty low in La-La Land.

Wanda Coleman a LA poet who actually is from LA. She didn’t move here as a child. She is traditional urban LA.  Her mom didn’t go to Spelman. She’s not a middle class black person stealing the poor black person’s experience for fame and glory. She writes about what LA is like. She actually worked as a writer, not a model or in advertising or as an actress and happened upon it after failing at everything else. She is a writer through and through.  She is a poet that understands LA.

A Los Angeles poet who is now living in Lancaster.

Fucking Lancaster.

They throw her a bone every once in a while at the LA Times and various small events, but they throw people who haven’t dedicated their life to writing bigger bones. Why doesn’t Wanda have a column somewhere? At the LA Times, the LA Weekly, City Beat?

Everyone else from her time period has been given a mercy steady gig. Wanda is still hustling.

I assume because she didn’t play the game and kiss enough asses. Now she has been relegated to Lancaster.

I remember hearing things about Wanda before I met her.

I heard things like “She has a bad attitude. She shouldn’t demand to be called 'Dr. Coleman' since her doctorate was only honorary…” all kinds of not so nice things about her. By people who claim to be her friend. Not so nice things by people who were pretty well established in the LA poetry "community" and I use that term loosely.

If she’s a piece of shit and you’re published, why are you going out of your way to tell me fucked up things about her?

But as soon as these same people would see her when she would randomly come down to LA to pick up mail, they would kiss her ass.

No I shouldn’t say kiss her ass, but try to suck the life out of her through her ass.

Using her to say, “See we have a person of color.”

Using her to say, “We have Wanda Coleman in our crappy chapbook, she was on the same press as Bukowski.”

Using her to sell crappy poorly produced DVDs.

I’m going to bet none of these assholes paid her what she was worth, if they paid her at all.

Wanda was raised in Watts and lived for a long time in the area that is now being rechristened East Hollywood (hipster types can't live in a section of LA that is just called LA unless it's prefixed with a west or downtown, because living in LA, just LA, equals scary minorities, which isn't very hip at all) and then she moved to the Westside.

Every time people talk about LA writers, they seem to forget to bring up Wanda. At least forget to bring her up as much as they should. People outside of LA actually know who Wanda Coleman is. That is something that no other LA poet other than Bukwoski can say.

But Wanda suffers from having a reputation of being difficult, but why should she be easy? She grew up poor. In very segregated pre civil rights Los Angeles. Yes Virginia LA has and had racism. She has accomplished a lot writing wise, yet she still has to deal with jerks who feel that they are better than her. Why? Because they have a degree and she doesn't. Not understading that 45 years ago it was very hard for people of color to get degrees, jobs, lots of things, hell, it's not that easy now. I work for myself, because no one will hire me, even with a degree. So I guess in some ways racism and sexism has worked for me - insert smiley face.

• Do you know that Wanda Coleman as a little kid wouldn’t have been allowed to go to Disneyland?
• Her parents wouldn’t have been allowed to buy a house in Santa Monica. Yes liberal Santa Monica.
• That up until the 1960s people who looked like Wanda Coleman weren’t allowed to have drinks at the Biltmore’s Gallery Bar.

Her honorary degree is real and is valid, because I doubt that the average 25 plus year teaching tenured upper middle class white professor at USC, UCLA, or Stanford would have survived what Wanda has survived.

Considering everything, she's actually rather pleasant.

Maybe she should republish her work as an upper middle class white person.  It’s odd how if you are ethnic your recounting of an event is viewed as suspect by publishers.

It’s viewed as suspect by everyone.

"Browne, I think possibly you are viewing that refusal of entry into a free event as way more than what it was, it could have been a variety of things. Did you cover up that 666 tattoo on your forehead?" Browne's suspecting 'friend'.

They would probably think Wanda Coleman was trailblazing or groundbreaking if she were white or a man.

I remember the head of a writer’s organization that is run from New York (but has a LA office) who is not Latina wrote a book that seemed to be a biography about a lesbian Latina. Her CalArts ass got that thing published (and I think an award too) with a quickness and got a bunch of readings around town. Everyone thought that was ok, or at least pretended as if it were, because she is the head of an important literary organization.

We all have to pretend that mediocre people with power don’t suck in the arts, especially the literary arts.

I thought that was kind of not ok, because that’s kind of stealing someone else’s experience because their cultural experience happens to currently be popular to the mainstream media.

I think that is kind of artless. No, I’m sure that is artless.

If the book had been very good, then I wouldn’t bring it up, but it wasn’t good. It was just right place, right time, but that should have been a break for a Latina writer. Not an artless rich person, who knows how to market themselves and a product.

Maybe Wanda Coleman isn’t full of shit enough to be recognized. She needs to develop an addiction to crack and die on skid row and then maybe people will recognize her.

They would use her as “don’t let this happen to you” tale for cocky people of color types.

People like Frank Chin, who lives in Echo Park. Who for some reason is also forgotten when people say the only LA writer is Charles Bukowski.

An “acceptable” stereotype back story in writing seems to be very important, especially if you are working class or poor.

I think if you’re working class you have to have a flaw (an accepted flaw) that people can point and laugh at in order to “make it”.

We can’t let the secret out that talent has nothing to do with the crappy university system in the states. If that secret leaked out people would stop wasting money there. Fake artists who make their living teaching, stealing other people’s identities, and living off grants would have to do something, like work at the phone company or the grocery store.

By Browne

Polluted media is coming to your big city.

I usually write about my own experiences and views in regards to local Los Angeles politics, art, and culture, but sometimes when I’m pretending to work I come across something that is actually is worth commenting on a second time.

Out of the UK's Guardian:

FCC Approves New Media Ownership Rule

Tuesday December 18, 2007 9:31 PM
By JOHN DUNBAR
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Federal Communications Commission, overturning a 32-year-old ban, voted Tuesday to allow broadcasters in the nation's 20 largest media markets to also own a newspaper.
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin was joined by his two Republican colleagues in favor of the proposal, while the commission's two Democrats voted against it...

Many non-media people don’t see the big deal in regards to this.

“Who cares if the Downtown News is very positive towards real estate,” clueless in L.A.

Nothing wrong with people having a publication that is pro-real estate, but that’s not journalism, that’s public relations. There is a difference.

Journalism stands for the truth, which is why people in public relations try to get their clients editorial stories. PR people knows that the stamp of journalism means more than the stamp of a press release.

The point of media is to be an objective voice of truth. The point is not to sell a product. The point isn’t to make your friends happy. The point isn’t to make friends. The point isn't to make advertisers happy. The point isn’t even to destroy or build up anything.

The point of the media is to present an objective truth, so that people can make their own informed decisions.

Media even in it's opinion pieces are supposed to let it be known that this is an opinion, not fact. There are a whole set of rules and ethics that have to be abided by.

Being objective (and not lying) is very hard with a visual, which is why most of my news I get from members of the print media.

This development is going to blur the line even more in regards to the number three of all my biggest pet peeves, the using of journalism as a tool to promote rich guys (or gals) self interests.

There is no truth in a society without an objective media. There is no democracy without an objective media.

This is another step in destroying the media.

Clear Channel Los Angeles Times, that's just not right.

by Browne

Secret LA Parking Tip: Free Food4less Shuttle

The most sincere form of flattery is copying...

Food4less, yes Food4less. If you don’t have a car, don't want a car, you’re dark green and you want to go shopping, Food4less will take you (and all the friends you brought with you) home after you’ve done your shopping. The requirements are only that you live within a two mile radius and have bought at least 25 bucks worth of food (that’s pretty low.)

Food4less will actually drop you off at your fucking front door. As you know there are Food4lesses everywhere. And I have found the one in downtown on 6th Street actually pretty nice. I also like the homey atmosphere of the one in Boyle Heights. If your first trip to Food4Less in college caused you shock, “What I have to bag my own groceries?!!! I don't even know how to separate whites and color.” Go back and try again. They clean it now. Seriously,  but they do lock up the better moisturizer, apparently L’oreal Hydra Renewal is like crack to Food4Less aficionados.

I think this is one of the greatest environmentally friendly programs around, not just for the earth environment, but the human environment. There are people who don’t just not drive, because they are dumb or got some epiphany because of a movie.

There are some people who can’t drive owing to:

Visual Impairments
Being Old
Poverty

Oh and some bullshit (passed in 1993 not 1953) that says you have to be a citizen to drive a fucking car.

This is such a great resource and a great fine especially for my “non-driving how am I going to get home all of these apples, vodka and cheese in my bicycle basket” tooshie.

Go to Food4Less, it’s owned by Kroger foods which owns Ralphs. So if they strike again you can’t go anymore, but if there is no strike feel free to. I don’t know why Ralphs doesn’t have this nifty service. I don’t know why Trader Joe’s, with it’s hideous parking situation doesn’t have this nifty service. Every Food4Less has this service.

Call the store near you to check the hours of the free shuttle operations; it usually starts running around 12pm.

by Browne

Community Cancer. Pershing Square. 12/18

BusTard actually wanted to try to do some community building the other day…oh god.

“Let’s go to that bloggers on ice thing,” BusTard.

“Are you fucking high? How about you go and I go drink at the Biltmore,” Browne.

BusTard actually is part of humanity.

I view humanity as something interesting to mock.

So we met up at the Biltmore's Gallery Bar post BusTard’s ice skating adventure, but apparently it didn’t go well.

BusTard has huge feet. My nick name for him is scary monster. Apparently size 14s is the biggest that they go in regards to shoe sizes for ice skates. Much too small for BusTard.

How many jokes are there in the above line?

Though this did not matter since no one else was there, so sad. I know that Mother Nature’s spit hurts the delicate sensibilities of the small footed LA residents, but it was only 8:00 p.m. and it wasn’t like it was snow or real weather.

(The event started at 6:30pm, but skating was supposed to start at 7:30pm.)

I told BusTard that being a team player is a worthless exercise that leads to things such as:

1 Pulling punches
2 Obligatory boring dinners with boring people
3 Long conversations with old people
4 Having to refrain from words like- fuck, pussy, bitch, cunt, asshole, dick, bastard, gutlessasskissingtool, ballesswonder, ihateblahblah, ihateyou, ihatethatbullshittoo, pleaseshutthefuckupnoimnotkiddingimsoserious.
5 Showering in case you run into someone you know at Pete’s Café

And lots of other things that just make writing not fun. Community building and clubs turns writing into an exercise in politics. Who wants to be a politician? When you’re a politician and you cheat on your spouse everyone acts as if you’ve killed someone. When you’re an artist and you cheat on your spouse everyone is like, "Thank god, he was a real asshole."

Community building is also the faux bullshit that smears the wheel of business through governmental paperwork. They get the grassroots people on their side by inviting them to parties and giving them plaques and then those grassroots people won’t ask questions to the people who do big business' bidding, people like Jan Perry:

Jan Perry does the south side of your district even exists? I mean you spend an awful lot of time in the northern section of your district. The southern section of your district is one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Does that bother you?

(According to Angelenic Jan may have been in attendance.)

Hopefully BusTard learned his lesson and remembers for next time that community building exercises are for people who want to make connections. It has nothing to do with friends or community, at least not the benign definition of it.

By Browne

Killer Mini Coopers. Fashion District. 12/18

At the Santee Lofts they are giving away leases on a Mini-Coopers with the purchase of a loft.

Questions:

1. What is this? Is it straight news or is it a feature story? Kathryn Maese’s article reads like an advertisement. It is the Downtown News. The glorified press release for downtown real estate, but still, Jesus Christ don’t you guys have ethics? Why do you always have editorials by real estate people who buy ads in your paper or by people who provide services for real estate people who buy ads in your paper.

2.  I thought green was pretty popular now. How is it green to encourage people to have cars in downtown? The one place where the MTA does actually work with 80% accuracy.

3.Why not give away a one year metro pass? 62 dollars a month. Hey how about a five year metro pass. Heck how about an EZ transit pass which allows you to take public transport across all of LA County. 70 dollars a month.

The fact that it’s a Mini doesn’t make it better. It's not that small. A parking spot is a parking spot. This isn’t West LA and trying to force downtown to accommodate the kind of traffic West LA has by luring in people with three year leases on cars is a step backward. 

Didn’t MJW Investments see that movie An Inconvenient Truth? Didn’t the people at Downtown News? I think it was playing at the Laemmle at some point.

Maybe Downtown News has some conscious or feelings of remorse in regards to the advertisement/news story about killing the environmental with Mini Coopers. There was an editorial by a person who is a principal of a development that got LEED Gold certification.

See question one though...what the hell...

Faux proactive environmentalism by corporations is pretty clever, but corporations can’t be green.

Environmental designations that were created by other builders that go to developing overpriced condos are kind of counter productive. Expensive condos bring in consumer addicts, which are the basis for the destruction of the planet.

They also tend to bring people with Mini Coopers and other things that run on gas.

I wonder does that designation mean that you encourage people in your development to take public transport in a city such as Los Angeles that really needs people to be encouraged to do explore that, probably not.

That wouldn’t entail making money. If you can’t make green off of green what’s the point?

Getting people to move to downtown should include getting people to give up their car and to find alternative means of getting around. Not changing it into West LA, but more on that later... 

Many of the lofts are live work spaces, so what do you need a car for?

A car is for people who work 9-5 jobs and live in the suburbs, which is not what downtown LA is trying to be or maybe it is.

Browne