The Bus Bench

L.A. Times Fireworks. Burning down the fourth estate.

4th of July, 2008—Walking east along East 6th, I happened upon a man on his back. He was grinding at the undercarriage of a newspaper stand. He appeared to be adamant about getting the damn job done.

 

Sparks flew, buses passed and the heat was hot. I waited only until he took a quick break. He answered questions like a barely-paid laborer (one of the few left at the LA Times)  wishing to get out of the heat of the sun.

-BusTard

Naked Transportation. Downtown Journeys

Being a naked transportationist (carless) often my feet takes me on exciting journeys throughout the urban cement jungle that is downtown Los Angeles.

I don’t always have run-ins with the police, sometimes I meet cute boys that have great pick up lines, like “Can you spare a hug,  no, well how about a firm handshake.”

Other times I meet coffee beverages.

I have a coffee addiction. Hot coffee, cold coffee, ice blended coffee, iced coffee, chocolate covered coffee beans, I love it all!!!!

Two weekends ago, my feet took me Ralphs where the slowest barista in the world made me a mocha ice blended. It took fifteen whole minutes and I’m not sure why, but it gave me a chance to explore Ralphs, since I usually shop at Mitsuwa.

Inside Ralphs they have this thing that makes your alcohol cold within seconds, I wondered would it work with orange juice. I debated going to buy some orange juice so I could put it in the instant cold machine, but then I thought about the fact that alcohol doesn’t freeze, which made me deduce that’s probably why the machine works, so I decided against experimenting with the machine using a gallon of orange juice.

After fooling around in the alcoholic beverage section and wondering what the hell that toilet flushing sound was, I returned to the in-store Coffee Bean to find my ice blended still not made, so I decided to open up my computer and troll online.  They have free wireless at Ralphs (though no plugs, that’s a bit aggravating.) Through the corner of my eye I see three women drinking wine, they looked my age so I decided to investigate.

I need more friends with vaginas. I have never been very successful at appealing to that demographic.

After standing near them for a while, I realized that they were doing a wine tasting.

I thought that was really weird, but oh well. This is downtown this whole place is weird.

I then go back to get my ice blended, the girl behind the counter goes, “Here ma’am.”

She takes all day to make my drink and then she calls me ma’am, like I’m old. I was alot younger when I first ordered. Well maybe I was to her. There is that saying never trust anyone over 30, damn I guess I am old.

So I go back with my ice blended and ask for a glass to do some wine tasting. The wine was pretty gross and the Ralphs wine tasting staff seemed a little bit possessive of the glasses.

How do you have a wine tasting if you keep using the same glass for all of the wines?

I forgot it was Ralphs, maybe if it were Gelson's the most wonderful store in the world they would know how to do a wine tasting properly. Gelson's wouldn’t call it a wine tasting, but a wine and cheese bazaar, since it wasn’t like we were tasting it, we were drinking it.

Gelson’s would have been more creative about the whole matter.

Anyways  here’s a picture of my classy night at Ralphs.

-by Browne

Look on the bright side. Downtown LA

The Bus Bench found this great little piece of real estate walking around downtown last week.

It’s called a fresh air loft. In the 1990s, it was very common among homeless residents, but now lots of young professional have discovered the convenience of fresh air living.

For only $10,000 dollars (which is a discount of 23% and includes a gym membership at the beautiful cemented Pershing Square) you can have a full skylight, a view of the city and urban living. You’re right next door to the bus stop, I mean you’re literally right next door. You just roll out your bed and you can pop on the bus.

_______________________________________________________________________
Some facts from AFP: The US has lost jobs for six straight months.
America needs to create 100,000 jobs per month in order to absorb everyone into the labor market, last month the US lost 62,000 jobs.

Drops from 2007 in real estate prices:
LA down 23%
Orange down 23%
Riverside down 28%
San Bernardino down 30%
San Diego down 22%
Ventura down  26%

So it’s not just the Inland Empire bringing down the real estate prices…

Are we there yet? (There being a recession.)

-The Bus Bench

We don’t care if your feet hurt, my bike is worth more than you. Montgomery, oops Hollywood.

You know the whole idea of removing seats on the trains to make room for cyclists sort of bothers me.

Why does it bother me, because there are too many people who work as domestics, too many people who are handicapped and too many people who are elderly on the train.

These are people who took the train even when gas was low, because they couldn’t afford to drive (or couldn’t see well enough to drive.)

Cyclists are more and more beginning to strike me as selfish assholes. Also the idea that they tend  to try to paint themselves as "oppressed minorities" makes me want to give them figurative slaps across the face. Read this interesting exchange between me and cyclists from Midnight Ridazz on LA's Eastside.

I’m trying to be real open-minded in regards to this, but often I don’t take my bike on the train and it’s not because of METRO, but because I think it’s rude.

It’s rude to have your bike in the face of some other person riding the train if you don’t have to simply because you don’t want to lock up your bike and you don’t want to wake up a little bit earlier or leave a bit later.

If you have to ride your bike after you get off the train leave earlier. Not having a car means you have to compromise, shocking I know.

Why do cyclists’ rights seem to trump public transit riders’ rights. I think it is because cyclists tend to be a little richer, a little less vaginaey and a little less foreign.

METRO and the city should add more bike lanes.
METRO should add more bike parking.

METRO should not take away the rush hour ban on bikes. Taking away seats from people who don’t get to just ride the train from Hollywood to Downtown, but have to ride the bus from East LA or South LA for one hour, then take the train from downtown LA to Hollywood and then take the bus from Hollywood to the Westside because they work in security or childcare or in the janitorial industries just doesn’t seem fair to me.

It smacks of classicism.

Gas goes up and every wish that the middle class wants gets granted. It takes working class people 15 years to get things done it takes middle class people five minutes, which wouldn’t be a problem, but if you care about the world outside of yourself you have to think about other people.

I don’t have kids, I don’t have a blue-collar job, but still I think about the people who are in these situations. How do you get past 25 and have such a narrow view of life, maybe money makes everyone around you disappear.

The environmental movement needs to remember that all people are people. And that people outside the upper middle-income circle of people should be taken into account while brainstorming cool ideas.

I think a person who has spent all day working as a domestic deserves a seat more than guy with a bike, but maybe I’ve gone to sleep and we’re actually living in 1950s Alabama, but instead of everyone having handkerchiefs, everyone has tattoos.

by Browne

Helpful Art. Chinatown.

The Bus Bench hopped on the 83 and went to the opening of the Los Angeles Poverty Department show “Skid Row History Museum” at the Box in Chinatown.

We liked lots of things about it, such as it’s bringing poverty to the forefront in LA.’s art scene.

Since moving to downtown LA and being mistaken for one of skid row’s denizens many times (I think I may have been mistaken a few times at this event by people doing interviews with the bigger cameras, but I had my “don’t even look at me face” that evening)  it’s made me have more understanding of their plight.

The amount of African-Americans in the homeless population (from my naked eye, not actual count by me or checking of facts) is staggering. It points to something more than people not trying or crack cocaine. I’ve talked to quite a few of the men and women and more often than not they were in the arts fields.

There are a lot of musicians, singers, actor, poets, painter and writers our there on the street.

It’s a bit disturbing, since I myself am a member of the arts fields and I’m black and I do that random screaming thing.

At the LAPD (the clever acronym for the Los Angeles Poverty Department) event, there were musicians from skid row playing for the crowd.

There were pictures of its many residents, but it felt wrong in some ways.

It felt too much like upper middle class white people going to the zoo and looking at the poor animals.

That’s harsh, but from my perspective I just sat there and was annoyed. Annoyed with the pity. Annoyed at an event that everyone had out their damn camera and wanted to interview people, but no one wanted to talk to anyone.

I was annoyed at the very loud soul music coming from the various galleries on Chung King Road.

I saw working class Asian-American families peaking their heads out of their little cheap apartments (for now.)

I just thought what if working class Asian immigrants went to an upper middle class white neighborhood opened up a some galleries and had an art walk along their front lawns while playing loud 1960s soul music. I wondered what kind of scenario would go down if everyone was reversed.

I was annoyed as I saw the working class and fixed income residents of these buildings obsessed with getting the cans of the beer drinking “art connoisseurs”. I wasn’t so much annoyed at the people collecting cans, but I was annoyed that while some people have to collect cans to live in Los Angeles others can look at pictures of homeless people, take pictures of it, blog about and feel really good about themselves as if they’ve done something.

Am I saying that the LAPD is doing a bad thing? Nope, but I am saying it felt unreal, inauthentic and an idea hatched in some desperate, “this could probably get funding” session.

But great art and great things have come out of much more insincere endeavors.

By Browne

Emerald City on the LA Times is dead.

The blog editor Tony Pierce says, but this is a good thing....

My irritation in regards to this on various levels will make this post brief, but that's some total bullshit.

A blog about the LA green movement from the ground floor. At times it was a little too Sex in the City meets Green Peace, but god damnit it we need all types. And I thought Siel was doing an excellent job as well as Damian and the others talking about taking the bus, riding your bike and at least thinking before you open your wallet.

I'm not of the party of buy your way green, but newbies need someone and she was really good for that and had a nice wide reaching appeal.

Love you Siel.  You Rock.

Ok well that's the only link I had from the LA Times good that I can unlink that now...

So now I will only be linking Siel's main site. GREEN LA GIRL.

Browne

Speaking MTA- Reallocate means cancelled. We changed the meaning of that word while we were making military time standard in Los Angeles subways.

We at the Bus Bench were on our way to the LA Eastside's get together to get free veggie tacos and realized two things.

1.The 37 bus doesn’t exist at 5th and Olive or rather the 37 turns into the 14 a bit before 5th and Olive.

Which wouldn’t be so much a problem (no it actually was a big problem because we were trying to find the 37 bus stop and walked really far and we were actually quite fucking pissed, because as everyone knows yesterday was insanely hot, but we got more pissed about it not running at all than we were about not having the bus stops clearly marked,) but thanks to ENHANCED SERVICE .

2. The 14 bus no longer runs on the weekends (heck it may not run at night anymore. I'm still interpreting metro speak.The language of the future.)

OK according to METRO customer service (which is about reliable as FOX NEWS) it totally does, but I sure as hell didn't see it on Sunday and I'll be going out there again this evening to see if it does in fact still run or the 14 was just doing one of it's vanishing acts and trying to keep it's status as the worst running busline to the westside....

3. El Chavo is not a 63 year old man.

Ok that was three, but that third one is off topic....

According to the nifty detailed guide that wasn’t put out until June 29, on what looks like really cheap paper in DIY fashion  the day the services changed (the general enhanced service guide was put out speaking a bit vaguely of enhancements was put out weeks ago.)

The 14 services will be reallocated to the 714.

And the 714 midday services are going to be enhanced. The 714 doesn’t run on the weekends and since those services aren’t going to be enhanced that means what exactly?

What exactly does that mean for those of you that take Beverly to the Westside via the 14 on the weekends?

It means your ass has to find a new route, because the 14 has been cancelled (maybe.)

“I was waiting for a long time,” patron.
“It’s cancelled,” me.
“But this guide doesn’t say it was cancelled,” patron.
“Metro thinks you’re too stupid to notice, because it’s not unusual to wait for the 14 bus for hours right?” me.
“That’s not right. Now I will have to take the 16 or the 10 and walk very far,” patron.

Why couldn’t Metro say the 14 was cancelled? What’s up the code speak of reallocation and enhanced.

These are from the same people who work with people who say things like urban when they mean cosmopolitan, but instead of saying cancelled they say reallocation?

Do you know what duplicitous asshole means METRO? If this d-word is too large for you how about you just focus on the a-word.

How hard it to say the 14 is going away on the weekends.

How hard would it have been to put a sign out there?

How hard would it have been to put a sign at the bus stop?

How hard would it have been to notify the drivers?

How hard would it have been to put some signs up at the bus stop?

How hard would have it have been to update your fucking website?

I guess too busy having meetings to actually deal with things such as customers.

By Browne

Los Angeles Meter Maids Appropriate Newspaper Stands

One has to wonder how it is that a public agency hell-bent on aggravating its denizens, then pushing for punitive measures that imply that its revenue collectors are better than the people from which the agency robs (which even L.A. councilmember Tony Cardenas clearly acknowledged in a tax-payer-funded party: "We certainly do appreciate you as our revenue enhancers in this great city," said Councilman Tony Cardenas, who addressed the group over a lunch of sandwiches and potato salad."), and then is suddenly slow in observing a case that is filmed of one of its own officers attempting to assault a downtown resident (case pending, but soon to explode publicly), deems it necessary to padlock one of its little red bags to a newspaper kiosk.

Were one to decide to employ a metermaid-mobile for some private use, what would be the retribution? I ask because when one is even implied to have made aggravated moves toward a meter maid, one is immediately arrested. But if a metermaid attempts to run down a pedestrian with a car, then exits the car to finish the job, then head metermaid Jimmy Price is slow—to state the least—with having his boys pursue an investigation. To be sure, the hubris associated with the meter maid agency is one that needs to be checked.

What do you have to state about that, Jimmy? No, wait—save it for the judge.

-BusTard