The Bus Bench

Friday Night Rides: Cocktail Mass.

This Friday, 21 Nov, Metro experiments with late night Red Line service—and the Bus bench plans to be on board!

Join Browne, BusTard and other daring, soon-to-be merry straphangers as they go bar-hopping on the Red Line. We'll be going around downtown but are starting at Traxx bar at Union Station at 10:30 p.m. We'll be heading out from there around 11:30 p.m.

They'll be disguises and cocktails.

 

There will be time enough to stumble back home, as the Red Line will be running until 3 a.m.

Wrong Way Main Street

Earlier in the week, while dining at the wonderful Pete's Cafe, we watched yet another driver go the wrong way on Main Street. While this such a scenario is often quickly rectified, this driver insisted on continuing the wrong way. For once, it were a damn good thing that a couple of otherwise annoying off-duty cops were on hand (for a small film project) to make the driver stop (no small feat, as the cops' comments make clear) and eventually turn round.

-BusTard

Late Night Video Runs All Day on Metro!

Metro's social experiment—funded by many private (and at least one not so privately funded) enterprises is set to start next weekend. The Bus Bench is excited, and will be announcing a Red Line Bar-hopping party later this weekend. (No sheriffs allowed, natch!) We will be starting in Hollywood and making our way downtown to Redwood Bar & Grill with stops along the way.

This morning, we noticed that Metro appears to be equally excited—so much so as to repeatedly announce the wonderful new development in L.A. mass transit. To wit:

-BusTard

Two Boots Pizza Soon to Open in L.A.

Two Boots is eventually to open a joint in L.A. What is Two Boots? Well, lemme tell ya: it ain't just pizza. In LES (on E. 2nd), the basement served as a small cinema house and there is a video rental; along with the pizza it was one of my favourite hang-outs.

In last week's LA Weekly, there was a relatively inconspicuous advert (on page 40) with a picture of Andy Kaufman (or Jim Carey as Andy Kaufman) as a fat, aging lounge singer. The copy stated only "Tony Clifton is Coming" and the Web site. Sure enough, it was my beloved pizza joint.

But where in L.A. will Two Boots land? Your guess is as good as mine. I hope it will be somewhere in downtown.

I wish I had more than the video below, but as I have long found the glass-walled bathroom fascinating, well, that is all I have on hand. (Btw, that's 2nd Street that from which the looky-loo is looking)

-BusTard

Halloween 2008

Despite the explosion of sales in sex-styled costumes and leaping liquor sales, Halloween for me this year was a relatively sedentary event. I spent several hours on busses and trains attending errands, a few hours reading and then a bit of time with Brown walking round the various areas of a curiously quiet downtown Los Angeles. But there were a number of remarkable moments throughout the day.

Organic To Go—GONE!

Another downtown business (Rite Aid on 7th and Los Angeles is closing in November; more on that as well as a local paper's desperate attempt to downplay the closing in a later post) has closed down. Organic To Go, which was on 5th in the Gas Company building, recently moved out. I have yet to see anything about this latest downtown closure.

-BusTard

Will Detour be Detoured?

UPDATE: I spoke this afternoon with Goldenvoice event producer Phil Blaine—a downtown resident, I might add—and he stated that with the coöperation of the Secret Service, LAPD, LAFD and Clinton's people, the two events should pose no problems to the attendees. Clinton's fund-raiser will take place from 6 p.m. until 7:30 p.m. and will have reserved parking as well as offer egress in Harlem Place (the alley between the Edison and the cigar/art shoppe) whereas the main gate of Detour—half a block away—will not interfere with the Edison soiree. The security perimeter for Clinton will not intrude on Detour.

The Detour Fest will be this weekend, and Browne and I will once again be marching proudly and unpaid through the gates because, well, it's a street festival and we already paid when the taxman had his hand out.

Or so we hope. . .

Black Monday prompts Blue Metro

As there is neither a recession nor a depression, then it follows that tits and ass, drugs and death, wrong and right, AIN'T. Or so Metro implies, as this single slice of the debauchery to follow clearly illustrates:

Bus Bench Service Alerts. Sept 25. There is a public transportation day? Wow.

____________________________________________________________________________
MTA wants safety improvements, oh...I thought the NTSB had been asking for those since 2005.
Bottleneck/ Sept 25

McCain is a bit negative on public transportation.
Art Voice/ Sept 25

Israel celebrated public transit day on Tuesday. Hey why don't we have one of those?
Israel Ministry of the Environment/ Sept 24

Is LA ready for bike sharing? The negative side of me says no.
Streetsblog/ Sept 24

Eat late in downtown LA. It's one of the few places that has reliable 24 hour public transit service, depending on where you live. We also have that cab thing.
Angelenic/ Sept 25

compiled and edited by Browne Molyneux

Drunken Goats Storm Bunker Hill

In what appears to be a bi-centennial event, Bunker Hill was once again sheared of its foliage.