The Bus Bench

Danny Weizmann

The brilliant Danny Weizmann was back in Los Angeles after who knows how many years after not really being in Los Angeles.

He was for many years in New York, and now he lives in Israel. And if you have any knowledge of punk rock, fanzines, early alternative literature and Los Angeles spoken word, then you should know Danny Weizmann.

Here is a quick run-down: one of the first L.A. Weekly writers, one of the first punk fanzine publishers in Los Angeles (a few years after Flipside started in 1977, but 1981 was only the beginning of the end, anyhow), an early writer for Flipside (R.I.P. 1977-1999) one of the first to break away from the Beats bullshit (a boys' club of inheritance-enriched mama's boys, to be sure) and a writer whose work continues to impress.

If you are fortunate enough to possess—or at least have heard—one or both of his New Alliance albums (one of three record labels owned by former Black Flag founder, song-writer and guitarist Gregg Ginn), then surely you know what I mean. If not, I urge you to get a copy of at least one of them: "The Wet Dog Shakes" and "Hollywoodland."

In the meantime, enjoy this brief excerpt from the Golden River Concrete Gothic's inaugural event, where Mr. Weizmann did a rare performance. (Sorry for the dark video; the lighting was rather poor.)

 

 

Skid Row Shakedown

When it comes to creative ways of wasting money, Los Angeles is a damn good contender. The hypocrisy of jaywalking cops on Skid Row (where thousands of jay-walking tickets have been handed out for the sake of eliminating the population), blocking traffic to pick up a sheet of cardboard, and loitering for no other reason than that they can, seems to be no big deal. Meantime, the buses are always breaking down (but when was the last time one witnessed a police car being towed?), the potholes are rampant (despite Tony V's ceremonial tamping down of just one of them!) and the whole street system continues to atrophy (the Bureau of Street Services' charter is no more than mere words on a Web site).

 

 

Why I now take the MTA 14. Pershing Square. 2/2

I have clients all over the city, while I sometimes have them come to my studio or we meet at a midway point at times I go to them. One day on the 10 MTA bus this happened.

I’m running to catch the 10 and the bus driver stops.

“You almost missed me,” driver.
“Yes, thanks for waiting,” me.

As the journey goes on he gets more and more chatty.

“I used to be in the military, then I worked for the DMV, then I retired and now I work here,” driver.

I debate in my head should I continue this conversation, its nice to talk to people in La La land the place where no one talks to you, but something about this guy. I don’t know I got a real, “I’m nutty in the bad way….”

Against my better judgment I continued the conversation, “Well why do you work for the MTA if you retired,” me.

“Because I have eight kids,” driver.

He looks a bit older, no he looks really old, so I’m like… “How old are your kids?”

And he tells me their ages and then he goes into a story of his mail order wife from the West Indies.

“She’s pretty young, she looks about your age, how old are you?”

So I’m thinking oh lord, dude is trying to pick up on me…why does this always happen? Why can’t someone not crazy try to pick up on me. I  would of course tell them I am engaged and he’s not really into the swinger thing anymore...

“I’m 29,” me.

Now at this point I wanted to move my seat, but he was turning around while he was talking to me. I mean he stopped the bus several times to finish thoughts and things. I wanted to say, “Hey dude, I have somewhere to go, and this is real uncomfortable, I don’t want to be mean to you, but me and you, never going to happen.”

But I didn’t. I just sat there.

“Yeah I’m divorcing her, she was unfaithful,” bus driver.

I’m thinking I bet she was unfaithful, you end up married to the modern equivalent of Mister from the Color Purple, only older and with less cash AND he wants you to pop out babies every nine months.

“Do you have any kids,” bus driver.

“No I don’t. I have a boyfriend, I’m engaged…” me.

“You live with your boyfriend?” bus driver.

“Yeah, I do live with him,” me.

“That’s no good. That’s a sin,” bus driver.

Oh I get it. It’s a sin for me to live with my boyfriend, but it’s not a sin to essentially buy someone and pretty much make them a slave by continuing to impregnate them, though you know they have no way to support themselves other than to stay with you and let you fuck them whenever you want. That’s completely cool. That's godlike, but I’m a sinner.

“So why are you divorcing her, she was unfaithful?” me.

“Because see, she didn’t want to have no more babies, so she wanted me to start wearing a condom and I didn’t want to, I’m a minister. I have sex to procreate as god intended, having sex with a condom does not feel good. You can’t feel anything,” bus driver.

“Ok,” me.

In case you didn't catch that, unfaithful meant not letting him fuck her without a condom.

“I haven’t had sex in six months, so are you and your boyfriend getting married soon,” bus driver.

“We’re getting married next week,” me.

“Yeah so she took my babies and left and got on the county. I gave her everything and she wants to leave me. I make a lot of money. I have retirement from the military, I get SSI, I’m about to retire from this job. I make seven thousand dollars a month, so what’s your name,” bus driver.

“My name is Marie and this is my stop, see you later,” me.

by Browne Molyneux

*I changed some aspects of the story, because I don't want people to get fired, but this shit actually happened.

Dead Escalator Report 16: 31 Jan 2008

The escalator teeth remain unmoving but the dentists were finally forced to make long overdue house calls.

We would flatter ourselves to think that the sudden flurry of MTActivity has anything to do with our month-long campaign of cataloguing the MTA's systemic ineptness. It were one of our deeper MTA moles what told us that an OSHA ERT engineer was due out to have a gander at the Red Line stations sundry people conveyances.

Moreover, Hillary and Obama are in town, which further explains the flurry of work as well as what will be (and has been) happening along Skid Row streets regarding helicopters, bulldozers, dumptrucks and LAPD street closings.

In the meantime, here are a fair handful of dead escalators as well as what was happening to try and perhaps fool the OSHA engineer:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dead Escalator Report 15: 30 Jan 2008

One stop, two dead escalators. Were I an MTA accountant, that would mean that 200% of straphangers were not paying their fares!

Then again, as everyone is still napping after yesterday's big transit summit (what else might one expect, after 20 years of negligence, which was in turn some 25 years after having handed Detroit the reins of public transit policy, and only the politicians turning up?), why should I hit up more than one station when I can document two dead escalators at one, do some MTA math, and proclaim a breakdown of 325%?

 

-BusTard

Dead Escalator Report 14: 29 Jan 2008

The "down" escalator at Pershing Square north has been dead for three days, and the best the MTA can do is put up a few yellow cones. Throughout the Red Line, water is seeping through in volumes that might prompt lawsuits, and the "All-Day Public Transit Hearing" seems to have generated little fanfare. 

 

Then there was the Sunset-Vermont stop, where a few tens of thousands of dollars worth of large flat-screen monitors have been installed to tell people what the scrolling LEDs and static, printed signs already offer. But teh MTA seems unable to spend a few dollars locking the escalator switches, which appears to be why the escalators are always down (according to MTA personnel on the platform).

 

Then there was this one in the middle. There is always a broken-down escalator at Westlake-MacArthur Park. No one at the MTA will offer why. Why?

 

-BusTard

Dead Escalator Report 13: 26 Jan 2008

Long week. Little time to keep up with the broad incompetence of the MTA, even within the small sphere of Westlake to Pershing Square. But I try, and were I not trying at other things, I woulda been at the big Transit do thrown by Wendy Greuel.

Ah, well.

Here is Saturday's one dead escalator captured within the three brief stops on Saturday.

 

 

Too stupid to pay for train fare. . .

Does MTA mean More Tepid Arseholes? Or is it that nobody walks in L.A.? In any case, one must wonder why, for all the blather about the 5% of fares not collected by the MTA, and the $100 million required to collect the petite amount of cash, the MTA seems to have no oversight of the highly priced L.A. sheriffs helping the infrequent ignoramus pay for the $1.25 train fare to somewhere, well, not entirely stupid. (The behaviour of these boys at 7uth and Fig—where this was filmed—is markedly different that, say, most anywhere along the Blue Line, especially where the Green Line intersects.)

 

Damn good thing that the seemingly complex but nevertheless easy Metro fare machines of the murder capitol of the U.S. are not installed in Los Angeles:

 

Meantime, in the real city, there are folk who manage to make way from one train car to another while in motion and without getting killed. (In Los Angeles, the doors between trains are locked owing to the Los Angeles MTA believing that its straphangers are too stupid to not negotiate the travelway between cars; should there be a chemical attack one can rest assured that death is imminent.)

 

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MTA Continues to Waste Money. . .

. . . on Redundant and Useless Giant TV Screens.

What the hell is wrong with the MTA? There is already in place a scrolling LED alert system that tells straphangers—when the MTA employs it competently, which is rare—about the endless deficiencies of the trains, broken lifts and dead escalators. Yet the inept agency led by Roger Snoble, Pam O'Connor and a Keyston Cop-like crew of cretins continues to put up giant plasma flat-screen monitors in the subway stations.

 

On Friday and Saturday, 25 and 26 January, I managed to record a slew of new screens being installed in two stations.

 

 

 

In DC and NYC—where the metro transit works far better in most every way (despite the setbacks; but all things things considered both systems are vastly superior to the joke that is the Los Angeles MTA)—they use the scrolling LED screens to great effect. Here are examples (Pam, Roger and fellow cretins, please take note):

 

 

In New York, there is even a bit of typographic fun that is unheard of in L.A.