Browne and the magic felt button, bike-trailer, big cat bag and vegan chicken salad.

I was one my way to get some fruit and vegetables, because I had this idea to go raw.

Having never eaten meat my whole life I can’t just go vegan, I already did that. I have to think of more creative ways to waste time on bourgeois neuroses. Owing to Facebook I was introduced to raw food .  I have of course already heard of it, I go to Cru in Silver Lake (MTA 2 and 4,) but the idea of making it myself seemed a bit time consuming. I am currently on my planned two years ago, but hadn’t yet taken vacation, so I decided to take stock of all the things that could kill me.

I decided that cooking my vegetables might be killing me.

This I know in my head is completely insane, but once I get on something, I can take it pretty far.

So I wake up and decide I’m going to a Farmer’s Market. I find one through the nifty LA Times Farmer’s Market finder.

A Farmer’s Market was taking place right outside City Hall (Red Line Civic Center and lots of busses 76, 70 are just a couple.)  City Hall is only one bus ride away from my house and close to Little Tokyo, which is where I bank.

I have decided to only buy items with cash, because that way I won’t spend as much money. This of course never works out.

So at my bank in Little Tokyo I deposit my check. And take out some cash. It was a check I had been holding for about two weeks. I have no idea why I don’t deposit my checks right away. This is a bad habit, especially in this economy. One day I’m going to cash a check and it will be no good.

Though I left my credit card, I still had my debit/credit card (because why go through the trouble of talking to a person when you can just use the machine, even though I had a five minute conversation with the teller inside the completely empty bank, because I needed a pen) and you know Little Tokyo has all of those cute stores, with all the cute stuff and if you know me you will know I love cute stuff.

I found this awesome big circle cat bag and while I know my whole point of leaving my house was to get fruits and vegetables and to maybe find a dehydrator and vitamixer at one of those discount “we sell everything” stores that they have downtown, but I thought to myself, “This bag is awesome. I could carry all kinds of things in this bag, including my laptop, fruit, vegetables, a vitamixer and most importantly it’s super cute!”

To me if you are on alt transit person, its good advertising to look as fabulous as you can, because who wants to take public transit if the only people who take it look like they just popped up from a trash can?

So  I bought big circle cat Totoro (thanks Gary)bag. I transfer my little purse that I got at a free clothing swap at a person who makes pet urns  house (yes, seriously, pet urns for your dead pet's ashes and they are very nice) to my new cute big circle cat bag. The first person I see at the City Hall’s Farmer’s Market is a guy who is selling Chicken Salad.  He goes, “Do you want some?” I tell him, “No, I’m vegetarian.” And he goes, “The chicken is soy.” And I go, “Well that’s nice, but I’m also vegan,” and he says the mayo is soy based. And I go, “Hey dude, why didn’t you just tell me that?” And then he explains he wants people to try it and when most people hear vegan they run.

I decided to take a bite.

Oh my god it was good and I was thinking in my head, “God damn (though I felt guilty about the God damn part, because later I found out that he was a Seventh Day Adventist,)”  because I had to buy this vegan chicken salad now.  I had to have BusTard try it, so I gave vegan chicken salad guy five bucks to have a bit to take home.

Go to the site. Very good food for people with American style diets and they even have some recipes.

I’m still on the look out for vegetables and I thought in my head, not another thing will I buy, not another thing will I purchase that is not on my list and then I run into Kat. Kat runs a Handmade Store on a Bike. I had to go over and ask her what was up.

She told me that all of the things she made (I purchased a vegan button from her) were handmade from recycled products, but her real passion is getting the message out on bike trailers, which she’ll get for you and help you connect and even bring it to your house for 130 bucks. That is very reasonable.

Look at the picture and all of the stuff she carries. She is a little over five feet tall, so she is a little woman.

She tried to tell me the benefits of her getting you the trailer even though making a trailer might cost 40 bucks.

I told her to stop talking and I explained: “Nobody wants to make this. It’s a waste of time and effort if you do something else with your life. No one wants to spend their weekends making a bike-trailer.”

She laughed, but you know I’m serious. The "make it yourself" thing in regards to transportation is a little bit of bs if you do have a intense day gig and an artful passion that is beyond riding your bike , it is very silly and really how do people make money in a capitalist system if we refuse to pay people who do this kind of stuff?

I’ll happily pay you to fix my bike.
I’ll happily buy a bike that’s already in good working condition from you.
I’ll happily buy art, crafts, clothing that’s made by an individual.

I have no problem paying creative people for their art or paying craftspeople for their labor and I think if we don’t pay people, the little people, then we’ll have to buy crap from corporations.

The economy works by money exchanging hands and I am more than happy to have my money go to the hands of friends or small mom and pop operations, besides I don’t have cable or a car I have a little extra, which gives me the time to think about what I will spend my money on. What you spend your money on is the most political action you can make.

Anyways I never did find fruit or vegetables, but I did get this great bag, met a nice person, and had some insanely tasty vegan chicken salad (which I didn’t share with BusTard, because-when-I-got-home-he-was-sleep,-so-I-decided-to-eat-it-all.)

My coins did make me a little richer.

by Browne Molyneux

 
A figurative picture of me and my purse standing at a bus stop in the rain.

Comments

[Gary Kavanagh]

As an animation nerd I have to point out that the character on that bag is in fact not a cat, but a fictional creature known as Totoro, from the popular Japanese animated film My Neighbor Totoro by Hayao Miyazaki.

Here is an image so you can see what he looks like not in bag form.
http://apike.ca/images/anime/totoro/totoro-tree.jpg

[browne]

Oh wow. That cartoon character looks funny and creepy at the same time. The bag is very good though, because it's a circle, but then goes in at the top just like the cartoon, it's just huge enough without being too huge.

I am getting old. This reminds me of the time my poetry teacher in college found the lyrics to Oasis' Wonderwall, someone had written them down and he was going on about how it was some great poetry it was and we all just started laughing and he was asked us what was the problem. We then all sung the song to this great poetry. My poetry teacher was quite pissed that he was not nearly as hip as he thought he was...lol...

[soledadenmasa]

Gary beat me to it. It's Totoro! Here's a picture of the only cat in the movie. http://www.nutsidea.net/wombats/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/catbus_totoro.jpg

[browne]

The cat is a bus. Cool.

[Rosemary]

OMG. I think this is my favorite Bus Bench post so far!

I wait FOREVER to cash checks too. I'm not sure why...

The whole raw food idea intrigues/scares the heck out of me. I could never fully commit as I'm a lover of all things meat (esp. bbq) but I find raw food prep so fascinating!

Agree that one should always look lovely while cruising metro. I make it a point to and feel awful when I don't. One of the best compliments I've received in recent memory was "You should be in a metro ad." Aw, shucks! But, truth be told, much lovelier, much hipper and much more fashionable people than me (ummm...Browne!) ride buses, trains etc.

Super cute Totoro bag-my current fave bag (a big one, thankfully!) is a clothing swap score.

And yes, I'd much rather pay an artsy individual to make something creative for me-they're professionals! Their goods will turn out waaay better than the botched wreck I'd come up with. In all likelihood, any bike trailer of my own creation would spontaneously combust.