These are tough times and even the LAPD knows it. At least, that is what I imagine may have prompted the cruiser in the far right lane to not see what my camera caught last week as the guy with the stack of pallets wheeled uninterrupted to one of the pallet recyclers on Alameda Street:
-BusTard
One wonders what the hell is going on in downtown Los Angeles, what with the LAPD targeting jaywalkers and the occasional private motorist even as Metro busses run reds while the LAPD stands by and watches. I have previously commented extensively about this problem—especially the policy that LAPD has on NOT citing Metro busses for running red lights—so I will just post two videos taken during rush hour on Friday, 10 October 2008 in downtown L.A. to illustrate the problem.
Continue reading "Lazy LAPD and the Busses Running Reds—Again" »
Earlier this week, the Daily News (L.A., not NYC) published an opinion piece wherein was stated the fact that some Metro drivers speak on their cell phones while driving. I and others to whom I have talked have witnessed such irresponsible behaviour, but after reading about it in a local daily, I decided to post this video from earlier this year.
Continue reading "Metro Driver Drives While On Cell Phone" »
It was a long week of research, this. In the end, a couple of us weary BusBenchers elected to sit down, down some drinks and watch a video of a Los Angeles-based illustrator whose work I have long admired. (I was unaware of the video until I found it at the main branch of the public library.) Titled "In Smog and Thunder: The Great War of The Californias," it is a low-budget albeit sharply produced documentary—replete with brilliant narrative that mocks most every aspect of California life in L.A. and 'Frisco—exhibiting Sandow Birk's voluminous cache of paintings of the same name.
Continue reading "What Will It Take To Get Folk To Take Mass Transit?" »
For many years I have noticed that Metro busses run red lights with impunity. Neither LAPD nor any other police agency appears to have jurisdiction over Metro, as I have never seen a bus stopped nor cited.
What about the children? Metro implies that grave injury and even death can result from running red lights:
more after the transfer. . .
Continue reading "Rapids Run Red Lights—but do the LAPD and Sheriff care?" »
A MTA 204 passenger's injuries were called slight by the LAPD. A bullet coming near you and glass shattering and hitting you is only a slight inconvenience.
If we're going to use the LAPD's definition of levels of injuries, being hit with a butt of a knife twice is practically no injuries. I think a criminal almost causing no injuries is probably not that dangerous. Not dangerous enough to risk the life of the passengers on the 204.
Would officers had fired into a school yard or a parking lot with personal vehicles?
A photo taken by BusTard outside the Children's Hospital (in the vicinity the shooting took place) two hours before the shooting. Every parents' nightmare combined in one shot. Your teenage daughter having sex and your little sick kid getting shot.
MORE AFTER THE TRANSFER
Continue reading "The LA I know and love and hate is coming back!!!" »
On the way to Home Depot last Saturday, 07 June 2008, Browne and I observed the Los Angeles coroner exiting the MacArthur Park Red Line station. he was pulling off his white rubber gloves. No photographers (save us) were there, nor were any press. The L.A. Times managed a couplea grafs about it in the Sunday edition.
Photos and videos after the jump. . .
Los Angeles, CA- Crime has recently declared a crime by the L.A. City Council.
Criminals are asked to take their activities elsewhere, where crime is not a crime.
Although the BB Gun Boy of the Olde Bank District made his appearance nearly two weeks ago at the Hayward on 6th and Spring (across from my olde publishing office at the Valuta; it is now SB Lofts), I had to put up these photos and videos. Belated, yes, but interesting. Two people were handcuffed and several blocks were locked down owing to shots fired within the hotel. Riot police, the mobile LAPD station (parked on 5th and Main beneath the Rosslyn) and quite a bit of traffic congestion. (And I realise it was a starter pistol; that night, however, I heard LAPD talking about it being a BB gun, and that is what I called the suspect.)
Two nights earlier and two blocks east on 6th Street in Skid Row (which is a little less affluent than the Olde Bank District), a man was murdered. Two LAPD cars were on the scene, one short block was cordoned off, and the coroner took his sweet time getting to the body.I suppose Skid Row does not deserve a small army of LAPD when a bum gets knifed to death.
-BusTard
Thursday, 22 May 2008 on 6th near San Pedro: a man knifed to death
in front of one of the missions gets this for pestering the LAPD with his untimely death.
This was one of the suspects. 6th and Broadway.
The road flares at 6th and Broadway.
A dreadful pun, to be sure, but not nearly as dreadful as the mess of downtown traffic and subway screw-ups that marked the 2008 L.A. Marathon.
Last weekend there was the L.A. Marathon. It is an event that much of the rest of the world knows occurs round this time annually. Then there is Metro, the City Council, the meter maids and most anyone associated with "keeping L.A. moving," or whatever the bullshit motto of the meter maids might be. Then again, the L.A. Marathon has been an annual event for approximately as long as the "city" of Los Angeles has been bereft of a comprehensive transit plan.
Here are some videos from last Sunday, above ground and below, that is sure to prompt anyone who has lived in a real city to ask: "What the hell is wrong with the morons charged with running what alleges to be the second largest city in the United States?"
From Tony V (who alleges to be the mayor), to City Transportation Chair Wendy Greuel (whose questionable constituency in Sunland-Tujunga is beneath anything I have witnessed
in the hinterlands of Tennessee), to the outrageously evasive Metro CEO Roger Snoble, to the insincerity of LACMTA (Metro) Chair Pam O'Connor, to everyone else directly involved at the top, there is such a huge hole in accountability, competence, finances and above all, sincerityâI will be frank: EVERY one on the MTA board is a flat-out liar and cheatâthat it is no wonder that this so-called city is such a bleeding mess. Even when a potential world-class event is planned, Metro and its associate idiots are not on hand to let it be a damn mess. One might see it on the news, however, so I spent the day documenting that which would not be were Metro, the L.A. city council, et al, not concerned with adultery, covering up drunken wives' wrecks and junkets to Australia.
-BusTard
The Bus Bench’s roots are in Social Ecology.
The Bus Bench takes a satirical and editorial approach to dealing with the issue of mobility in Los Angeles. The emphasis of The Bus Bench is public transportation, but we also discuss class, race, gender and Downtown Los Angeles.
In commenting on The Bus Bench we do not mind if your opinion differs than that of an opinion of a writer on a particular post. We welcome discourse. We only ask that you be respectful. Do not be violent with your words.
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The Bus Bench is doing an art project on January 10th in collaboration with The Loft Gallery's Post-Post Apocalypse exhibit in San Pedro and we need a car to murder.
Are you ready to release yourself from the chain of car ownership? Do you want it documented?
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RANDALL (BusTard) FLEMING has spent two decades working in most every facet of publishing. A former magazine publisher (Angry Thoreauan, 1987-2001), he has also contributed to a great many books, periodicals and newspapers in Los Angeles and New York: New York Post, Brooklyn Spectator, Discover Hollywood!, Ben Is Dead, Flipside, Los Feliz Ledger, Sabotage in The American Workplace (Pressure Drop Press), Notes From the Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture (Verso), and several of the Unreinforced Masonry Studio books about Los Angeles.
Art Gonzo was raised in Los Angeles. He is a visual artist. He has seen a bus. When not at The Bus Bench he is a contributor at LA Eastside.
A Valley-born Los Angeleno, Simon Ganz only recently returned from the liberal enclaves of Northern California where he, to his surprise, found himself more than happy living without a car. Now back in his hometown with only a political science major to show for his journey, he is of course constantly unemployed and hoping to join/start/follow a movement to create better transit for everyone in Los Angeles.
Rogelio Gomez is a public transit rider and an avid cyclist. He blogs at My Daily Ride when he's not sharing his adventures on The Bus Bench.
Sirinya Tritipeskul is a graduate student studying to become a transportation planner at UCLA. She writes on The Bus Bench about living car-free on the Westside. Her own blog, The Valley Girl Planner (in training), is a tribute to her Valley Girl roots and her travels around the Los Angeles area.
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