The Bus Bench

Instead of making the Gold Line Eastside Extension safe, they made this creepy video and started a blog.

This video dissolves Metro (and former CEO Roger "half-ass" Snoble) of any responsibility. Why install barriers or arms when you can make a you tube video. Put the onus on the community not on Metro. I guess Metro thought this would be more eco. Why waste money on the Eastside when the Westside is much more west.

Browne

Graffiti is Bad but Vulgar Words Makes Us MONEY!!

This is a bus stop across the street from Union Station. From this bus stop you can  connect to the Metrolink, Gold Line, Red Line, Amtrak as well as busses and expresses that go all over the city.

Notice to the LA Sentinel, putting racial slurs in headlines is offensive.

 
You're not OK, Dr. Carr

Dear LA Sentinel,

There was a time I thought you were a great resource for Los Angeles’ African-American community and then I started reading your paper. In reading your paper I was introduced to the frightening Dr. Firpo Carr and I have to ask you why?

I should have cut you off a long time ago.  I should have cut you off when you published that interview between Dr. Firpo Carr and Dr. Caillean McMahon. You know the one where he kept referring to Dr. Caillean McMahon who is a woman as “sir.”

That wasn’t cute. That was childish. That was ignorant.

I should have cut you off when you allowed Dr. Firpo Carr to use the bible and your paper to spread his hate of gay people around to the black community, over and over and over again.

I should have cut you off when your editors Simmonds and Miller did that bs interview with Metro/Expo in October after Damien Goodmon who is on the ground floor told you exactly what was up.

But now I am truly done with you.

On March 12, I open up the paper and I see this:

"Chinafrica": Slave Masters With Slanted Eyes?

Of course this is penned by Dr. Firpo Carr.

What the hell is that? Is the LA Sentinel so out of touch that they don't know that "slanted" is a highly offensive racial slur to people of Asian descent? It is highly offensive to me. My god it is 2009.

Why does the LA Sentinel who I know would freak the hell out if any other  (middle of the road politically) media outlet had put a racial slur against people of African descent in it’s headline in order to talk about their displeasure with an African country, feel that this is ok? This is not ok. This is the complete opposite of ok.

Dr. Firpo Carr is highly offensive and you the LA Sentinel are complicit for giving him a forum to spread his vomit.

This world isn’t small anymore. The LA Sentinel is a pretty big paper and this is not acceptable in a paper that is viewed as the voice for mainstream black LA.

Your editors should be ashamed that they let this disgustingness go to print.

Racism and homophobia aren’t ok, even if the person wearing the boots was once the person who got stomped on.

Get rid of Dr. Carr and I’ll come back, though you probably don’t care, but if that’s what the LA Sentinel supports, then I don’t care either.

Thoroughly disgusted,
Browne Molyneux

 

If He Is Alive, Will He Vote to Renew Metro's Contract with Sheriff?

Just over a week ago, a man was beaten and left for dead on the Blue Line's Pacific platform. The downtown Long Beach platform, which is supposedly overseen by the L.A. County Sheriff, is one of many Blue Line platforms obviously neglected by the deputies.

L.A. Sheriff deputy allows ADA violation (Pershing Square)

This summer, my interest in the significant presence of L.A. County Sheriff's deputies at pershing Square was piqued when I observed a terse conversation between a deputy and a frustrated, wheel-chair bound Metro patron. The deputy appeared to be annoyed that he had to answer to a person regarding the blocked passageway—the vehicle blocking it being a Metro contractor's vehicle.

Metro Sheriffs to Transit Advocate: "Your First Amendment Rights Are Not in Service"

What happens when a well-recognised transit advocate waiting to buy a newspaper is physically threatened by Metro sheriffs that gather daily at Pershing Square Red Line station? Libelous and unfounded accusations of terrorism as well as intimidation, unwarranted arrest and all manner of implicit threats to one's future liberties and life, followed by constant accusations of creating scandal for scandal's sake. My protests of being unlawfully detained were met with the phrase, "Tell it to the judge." The day's motif is sure to be best appreciated in the final video of this post's Twin Towers/County Jail misadventure, which satirically addresses a few of the very topics that the hired guns of Metro's Transit Security Bureau alleges in a fashion too serious to forget.

Lazy LAPD and the Busses Running Reds—Again

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.

Metro Library Begins On-line Archive

Metro Librarians Matthew Barrett, and Russell Wong, (and their admirable staff: Jim Walker, Historian/Archivist; William Bolanos, Intern/Circulation; Linda Ngov, Intern/Archives; and Bridgette Sanchez, Intern/Archives) have embarked on a massive project: "building a Web 2.0 resource for opening up public access to Metro’s extensive archive collection of transportation photographs, 20,000+ photos spanning 1873 to the present." It is sure to be a great undertaking. Judging from what is already available at the Los Angeles Transportation Blog, I am looking forward to the project as it develops.

Have a look at it here.

-BusTard

Get Yer Butt to BusCon!

We missed this year's event, but there is always next year!

Metro Driver Drives While On Cell Phone

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.

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:

Parker Center Blood Donor Drive Distraction

Last Wednesday, while on my way to Parker Center for my 10 a.m. appointment to be bled for Metrolink's miasma, I came across Bernie Parks and Gloria Molina holding a PR event. As Browne supports both folk speaking, I stopped for a moment to record the event.

What Will It Take To Get Folk To Take Mass Transit?

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.

Help indie Bitch Magazine to stay alive!!!

Off topic, but on topic as a feminist in the print world one of our beloved team members of the print world needs help.

Spread the word. Donate. Unfortunately (or fortunately maybe lots of people are giving) their website has crashed, but here is a video of their plea. We lost Clamor, we can't lose another one.

Here's their address: Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture 4930 NE 29th Ave Portland, OR 97211

Here's their website when it comes back on line: www.bitchmagazine.org

Here's their myspace page: Bitch Myspace