The Bus Bench

Please welcome Ms. Sirinya Tritipeskul a Westsider!!

I started The Bus Bench as a satirical figurative and literal look at LA and public transit, while I wanted this blog to be entertaining I also wanted it to be a resource.

I expanded it to include other L.A. bred writers. Except for BusTard who was bred in the UK and the dirty South. The Bus Bench wanted to include writers  who live or are familiar with different aspects of alt transportation and LA life as well as from (or are familiar)  different neighborhoods:

The South side and avid cyclists: Rogelio.
The Valley: Simon.
The SGV and Eastside: Art
Hollywood (Silver Lake, Los Feliz and Echo Park) and downtown: Me!!!
The OC, downtown and anywhere, where punk rock, rocked: BusTard

One perspective is boring, even if it's your own perspective. Who knows everything?

But something was missing. The Westside. The Westside is a part of L.A. and it's a pretty big part of L.A. How can you have a blog about transit in L.A. and never talk about the Westside. BusTard is banned from going west of LaBrea and I am a Hollywood bred girl. I never frequented the Westside*. Peer pressure encouraged me to never visit the Westside. Even when I went to college in Brentwood, I never hung out there.  Consequently anything I would say about the Westside transit wise, would be from some odd poseur perspective. Why should I cut and paste or interpret someone else's opinion? I can just link that person. But I kept hope alive and then I got an email from Sirinya.

A valley girl alt transportationist that's into urban planning living on the Westside.

Please welcome aboard Sirinya our newest Bus Bencher and Westsider.

We look forward to reading your posts.

-Browne, Editor The Bus Bench

*The Westside vs the Eastside debate is a long ongoing saga in LA. Technically Hollywood to a true Eastsider (communities east of the LA River, Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights...)  would be considered the Westside, but when I am referring to Westside I'm referring to communities in the 310. If you are not an Angeleno and want to visit this debate go here.

It's very complicated or not so complicated, but it involves race, class status, ownership, neighborhoods and community pride.

Bus Bench Service Alerts. August 28

A pedestrian. The lovely Jean Seberg. People were mean so she went away.
Lots more photos like this at: If Charlie Parker was a gunslinger there would be a whole lot of dead copy cats.
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News from around the earth centric view of the world.

The safety of stuff is more valuable than the safety of you if you ride the bus in Los Feliz.
LA Times/ August 28

Studies say congestion pricing won’t hurt the poor. And studies never lie. The Bell Curve that was right on. I don't even know how I'm writing right now.
LA Times/ August 26

Did you go to the Heya/SiteLA party last Friday it was covered in a marketing magazine: “It gives us a better idea of how to communicate with young people," said Geralyn Yoza, national manager, brand strategy for Toyota. "The goal is to build HEYA up as a vibrant community."
Brandweek/ August 27

We can keep trees alive while we use them as tools for our amusement.
Ecogeek/August 27

Trashy alternative fuels.
Ecogeek/ August 27

Complied and edited by Browne Molyneux

The Bus Bench related, not so transit related

I've lived in three different places in the last twelve months, which is good for me, but not so good for my computer.

During my move from Boyle Heights my computer was killed in a horrible car accident (cars are bad) and I was forced to share a computer with my boy. Do you know how annoying that is? Boys play video games. Video games like War Craft. Boys don't get that my time on-line is more important than a pretend video game war.

I wanted to get the perfect computer, preferably a laptop. Preferably a PC (my boy has an apple, no need to be redundant with computer platforms.) I wanted something cheap. I wanted something light enough for me to carry (I can't carry the same amount comfortably as a guy that is 180, tech people sometimes seem to not get that.) I did want something used, but people who sell used things don't get the whole "it's not new" concept and charge too much. I then found the Asus.

It's cheap. It's little. It's not heavy (I hated taking the G4 out, it was heavy it hurt my shoulder.) The Asus looks like a toy. It's Hello Kitty cute!!!! Hello Kitty is the most cute anything can get. But it's so far shaping up to be a kick ass computer.

The Asus is slightly bigger than a clutch purse. And very sticker friendly.

What does this mean for The Bus Bench? Lots more posting. I can now post outside of my house and outside of the four block ratio of my home (because the G4 is too heavy to carry farther.) I can be that annoying person who blogs live to tell you things you don't need to know, things like how the person next to me on the MTA 720 is picking his nose (and it's so small, nose picker wouldn't even know it.)

This blog also has a built in camera. Imagine the things The Bus Bench can do now.

Grosses bises,

Browne, Editor

Wattsup

So a couple of days ago I read a neighborhood breakdown about Watts at LAist, which rightfully recieved a lot of flack. Personally I give the author "anti" some props, I welcome the cross cultural transactions that may occur when white (or non watts locals) intermingle in a community ostracized from general society and secured as a concentration of poverty for decades. As a muralist and community worker in South LA I have spent too much time simply explaining to kids that white or middle class people are not green skinned aliens filled with hatred towards them, a bit of positive interaction, in my personal experience, seems to undermine this prevailing sentiment (which is played out in reverse in enclaves of wealth as well). So good for "anti", he gets an offering of my personal hood pass (a joint of some good kush and my street cred) if he's ever willing to take it up and I have the time.  One thing that bothered me, during the response to angry comments was this:  but i dont see any other blog going to Watts even to just take ONE picture

If this is so then the blogging world is fucken lame and I must change this. Like many other aspects of proffessional american society, it seems as if the folks actually living the experience are left out of the picture:  barrio planning is the new big thing but god forbid any consulting firms hire too many planners from the barrio, movies and music from the ghetto are cool but 95% of any film crew are hipster whiteboys from orinda with coifish tattoo sleeves, and the bulk of blogs about the barrio are from white kids riding their bikes through the hood as if they deserve a medal of honor for doing so. Fucken bullshit.  The truth is these ghetto people/minorities are still seen as threatening to whatever pathetic establishment mentality folks still assume holds the earth under their feet together, but in reality these mud people ARE the goddamned ground from which they stand on and hold their balance. A lot of folks make up excuses about "technical training or capacity" , but if you set up a world class studio or planning program (or whatever) in Compton or El Sereno that shit would churn out products beyond the whiteboy asslicking junk that spews from our institutions to this day. The entire rich and generally blue blood anglo movie/music/art/hipster scene is now based on these priveleged proffessionally trained brats trying to be "kitschy" by living the poor hard ass life that millions of people exist in any day. But I digress....

So anyways, I work a lot in Watts and my family has a deep history in the area. I am not from there, I am from Boyle Heights and Eastlos, but I understand the shared struggle of having to hop fences when a house party gets shot up, or the humiliation of gangsters putting their hand in your pockets and there is not a damn thing you can do about it because no one is around or the bus driver is acting as if it aint happening. Those kind of insider perspectives are needed now, so I will give it.

Both of my grandparents first came to Watts during the 1930s, as the life of indian-mexicans in the southwest US did not provide much beyond being an outdoor maid to gabachos. From what I heard, Watts back then was pretty ethnically mixed, and many of the areas that abut rivers or are now housing projects used to be dilapidated shantytowns that were purposely razed in the 1940s/50s as part of urban slum clearance programs (the same happened to my old hood called the "flats" in Boyle Hts.). Sometime around the 1950s both sides of my mom's family "moved on up to the eastlos side" to the flatas, where many of them still live today.

One thing I love about Watts is it's layered history and artistic depth. When I drive through the area I either hear my abuela's old Mingus albums (which she used to see in jazz clubs on central, back when cops would set up road blocks to stop whites from entering, luckily she was brown) or that west coast beat origin anthem whose name I forgot ever since my Thump Old Skool Volume 8 cassette died years ago. You know the one, with the beat and chorus remade by Zapp years late in "more bounce to the ounce" and whose beat is the background to about 1/5th or all gangster rap songs ever made, it goes: "Califonia knows how to party, Califonia knows how to parrtay. In the citeeee of LA, in the citeee of good ol Watts, In the citeee, city of Compton, they pop lockin.....So rough, so tough, out heeeere baby, so rough, so tough, out heeere baby". Okay, so I'll stop being cheesy, I feel like one of the annoying mecko parque hipsters that I abhor now, but if anyone knows the song name or can send it to me I'd be thankful for days

The bulk of these photos were taken by me for an urban planning project I did on public housing, so they are kind of crappy. But my limited experiences with this area or the past decade has manifested several good stories.  The first time I went to a party in this area my homie monk was shot (RIP) by guys from Florencia while pissing in an alley behind the party, it wasnt their hood but they were looking for a victim.  In the ensuing chaos, no police showed up and a consortium of black and brown local gangsters got him to killa king hospital just in time to die. But I dont want to stereotype the area, we were shaved headed teens at a cholo houseparty thrown by gangsters, and my homeboy got caught by their enemies. Life sucks sometimes. On the flip side, I used to drop off one of one of the kids helping us with some murals in the Imperial Courts PJs, and I met many locals in the parking lots. I always had between $2-500 and never got robbed or even tripped on because they were all cool with me, even though the bullshit media claims blacks and mexicans hate each other round here. Totally false, this area is ground zero (beyond Duarte and Compton) for black-brown mixed race families, I even have some mixed cousins who lived nearby on Homes Avenue, that was the greatest barbecue EVER!

This area is also home to several interracial (or once) neighborhoods that defy the whole black/brown hateration stereotype, Namely Grape Street (13 and crips). It is also home to a vibrant music scene that has existed since the jazz era and now comes alive in rappers like glasses malone and jrocc. You can also find old folks playing checkers and dominoes at nearby watkins county park (of whom I made several friends and all about the community history and "sons of watts" genre, props to lewis from defiance street), little girls selling homemade perfume, and about 10,000 kids playing in front yard or communal sprinklers on any day when it gets above 84 degrees. Watts is a great place to live if you dont enthrall yourself in all the negatives, and is truly the exemplification of close knit community of folks who are truly proud of their neighborhhod. I remember being seriously inspired with the "no one will fix it unless we do from within" doctrine of reverand Rodney down by 103rd, which resonates in my head to this day.

And yeah, my camera sucks and some of the shots are from within my carucha. Call me a poser to my face and see how quick I drop you, I'm still a project kid leva (Aliso Village, y que?). This is just a taste of my trove of pics of the area.

You can find out more on Watts by getting off the blue line at Rosa Parks station and walking north along Wilmington, Comtpon or Mona your damn self. Hope you enjoyed!

by Art

Did someone cut off your fingers? Downtown. 11/24

167 people got their cars impounded on Thanksgiving. Two got arrested for drunk driving. The Sheriff had a check point up in Moreno Valley at 3pm.

Yes at three fucking pm in the afternoon.

Cops know where to find drunk people. Cops know where to find people who are going to visit their families, so asshole cops decided that Thanksgiving would be a good time to enforce the “you must have a driver’s license to drive a car” rule, because driving without a license sober is going to kill someone.

I shouldn't just call cops the assholes, because this wasn't their idea. They take orders from a higher authority.

Business and policians that fuck them.

The government thinks catching people on a national holiday on their way to visit family is an ok thing to do. I wonder how are they going to blame China for this?

On CBS no one is saying what the ethnicity of the people were who got their cars impounded, but I’m going to take a guess. Who would drive around completely sober without a valid driver’s license? You can’t get a license unless you can prove that you’re a citizen, so I’m guessing probably a Latino person.

Any comment from the peanut gallery of the blogosphere on this, hell NO!!!

Rather complain about bullshit that doesn’t matter like TV shows, striking assholes, things that happened forty years ago, and where does Filipinotown begin and end.

There was a time when the LA Weekly was thought to be the worse thing to happen to the LA indy media. The LA Weekly being bought by New Times not the worse thing that has happened to the LA indy media.

At least the people at the LA Weekly have an opinion and they get paid money. Writing is an actual job morons in the blogosphere who don’t use punctuation and happily write for free because some exploiting asshole linked you.

The irony is that the blogsphere going on and on about the WGA strike when they are half of the reason that writers in the print media are getting paid less and less and less.

Oh, but print media doesn't write for TV.

Blogs are way in front of the corporate media in regards to the worse thing to happen to the LA indy media. A bunch of morons who stand in a circle jerk and try to be positive all the fucking time. And no one steps on anyone else’s toes. One group covers the purple people, one group covers the grey people, one group covers the marside, one group covers the venusside and no one talks bad about anyone else. Segregated bullshit. That's what the blogsphere is. The black bloggers, the latino bloggers, the white bloggers, the gay bloggers, the working class bloggers, the rich bloggers, the asian bloggers the straight bloggers, it's fucking sickening. It's like South Africa in 1990. Every group has their section and no one has a problem with it and everyone stays pretty much in their own section.

Yeah then it's the big gigantic toilet of a blog that links all the little pieces of turds together.

No one calls anyone on their bullshit, because that’s bad form. That’s being a troll.

Having an opinion is not being a team player and goddmanit don’t talk about a blogger’s post, because they aren’t getting paid, though their words are surrounded by ads.

Why should I listen to an idiot who will write for free for someone else who is getting money?

So now what we have in the electronic media is a bunch of gigantic (and mini) electronic adwells that focus on happy talk or maybe some serious talk, but not too serious, because we don’t want to be a downer.

Also by talking shit you might risk confrontation.

Don't want to be too immigrant rights or too much of a feminist or too ethnic or too white or too conservative or too liberal or too anything, that might turn someone off.

What if you talk about a gallery and then you see that gallery owner at the art walk or make a complaint about a government official and you see that person at the Aloud series or you bump into the businessman you complained about at the Old Bank DVD movie rental place.

That might be uncomfortable. You might not get invited to that very cool party next week.

You’re just writing for fun. Fuck the people.

Bloggers are like a wetdream has come to life for advertising agencies, because most bloggers (the ones in particular who have no editorial credentials) have no integrity. All you have to do is send them a press release and some swag and they will write about you.

If you're a gov't agency just send them a plaque and you'll never have to worry about bad blog press again on any agenda items you may have.

What happened to journalists? What happened to the editorial media? What happened to the people who had opinions on fucked up stuff that’s happening right NOW? Are they dead? Are they in Paris?

Have they been bought by the marketing companies that own these blogs, so they are no longer allowed to speak?

167 people got their lives taken away from them because they happened to be born Latino and not in the US. Is that a crime? How can you be born the wrong thing? And how can no one have a problem with it? All you have to do is type about it.

How can you take away someone’s life, because they don’t have the proper paperwork? The paperwork they would have had until in 1993 Pete Wilson the biggest dick Governor of  California since Reagan (who closed all the public mental health hospitals and made skidrow the lovely place it is today)  took away the right of people to have driver’s licenses who didn’t have the “proper” paperwork to be in this country.

Notice Reagan’s building on the NW corner of skidrow. At least it is ugly.

People don’t seem to remember to reference history and to apply it to right now. The past impacts people’s lives right now in a real way.  Segregation, the internment camps, the Bracero program and other mistakes in California history still have great impacts on what happens today, but you know people used to say something about inequities.

There used to be a liberal media, a liberal media that didn’t fuck politicians and party with business men, but  now we just have underpaid and (NONPAID) publicists.

Browne

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All of those who think that “They aren’t citizens, so blah, blah, blah…” Keep this in mind, when the police gets rid of all of the “undesirables” they are going to have to pick a new group of undesirables and that new group of undesirable may be you.

Speaking up only for people who “look” like you is dangerous to your Civil Rights.

"Honk if You Love Open Space"?

Over on some blog that is too concerned with white-washing the reality of this dinky, two-bit town's cretinous core, we could not help but read, bug-eyed, the hypocrisy of some wanna-be west-siders acting arty in their laughable attempt to be green. A comment was posted, but we do not expect it to be there when our drunk collective arse comes to, sometime Saturday night, so we decided—as is the tradition by our asshole team leader, whose journeyman status harkens back two full decades in New York and Los Angeles publishing—to slap that shit on our own decrepit vehicle.

http://www.blogdowntown.com/blog/2879#comments

Surely this is a joke, right? Did Margaret Cho divorce Rev. Al because he has resurrected the L.A. Cacophony Society?

L.A. remains a laughing stock of any real metropolis—size does not matter, despite the sprawl of these sixty, seventy or too many more suburbs in search of a city; as such, eLAy will never be a cosmopolitan spot owing to the collective demeanour such as what Mr. Fuentes so eagerly offers above. And any real PR firm will be on the receiving end of two to a few grand for such "organic" PR. (I know, having worked with Priority, Delicious Vinyl, Atlantic and EMI Records/Music for some sixteen years, as a free agent.)

The harrowing irony of "Honk if you love open space" is simply astounding. Why not get your McAss out of your McHybrid, and make public transportation viable? Or work to get bicycle lanes created? Or make the wreck of wasted space, Pershing Square, something more than its most defining icon: a quarter-million-dollar public toilet that barely operates properly? (Pershing Square is the way it is today for no other reason than it used to be the town square; the activity of such a public space frightened the powers that-be and so the space underwent several changes to disabuse the once-popular notion that it could be a centre for speaking up. Just try walking on what passes for grass there, if you wanna find out where your tax dollars are being wasted.)

I may well have made a mistake to come back out here. Instead of wasting my time bitching about obvious hypocrisy, I could have taken the 1 uptown to 116th, walked through the gates and languished—with a good book, of course, or maybe just a fat flask of single malt scotch—under the trees on the east side (where the Wi-Fi works best, just inside the little wire "fence") of Columbia's quad, or some other green open space. (Or, as it is now the weekend, gone downtown from there to The Park for a car-free, HONK-free day near the Reservoir, or down to the round Orchard at Houston, to enjoy that which the hicks in this two-bit shanty-town cannot seem to do: STOP DRIVING CARS and START MAKING A DIFFERENCE.

Do I really have to belabour the bleeding obvious? If you have to "honk if you love open space," you contribute directly to the paucity of it as well as the ugliness of what is left in southern CA.

I can only imagine that if some bums pushed an Ag[gro]bin—from what usta be Skid Row—into a parking space in front of Meléndrez there on Olive, and put out a sign that said, "Honk if you think I give a fuck about your open space," the "greenanistas" would be seeing red.

In the end, there would be just another parking space taken up, temporarily, and vacated in a more violent fashion when one of the Melendrez Sisters called the cops.

When I lived on 9th and C, and went uptown to 110th (for the express desire to wander through The Park to 59th), even my New York gait of seven MPH (a lazy gait, that; be sure to check your rear view mirrors when my Brooklyn boot-leather gets going) is average yet requires some TWO HOURS. I spent many years in Downtown L.A. long before the lofties arrived (can anyone tell name the unique aspect of the olde post office at 5th and Spring, down the street from the Valuta —where KOMA, Feral House, Transparency and Angry Thoreauan were housed?) and it were no more than a quick juant up to Temple, then back to the office, then on down to the little cafe where Spring split, and if I wanted to start to stretch my legs, down to Washington Blvd. I was back to my own space in an hour. I imagine I passed a few "parks" by any Los Asseleno's defintion, not to mention some self-serving architects narrow perspective of "open space."

-BusTard

http://www.transportationalternatives.org/
http://www.nycsr.org/

Why don't you drive? Los Feliz. 8/24.

People often ask me Browne (pronounced Brown,) “Why don’t you drive? You used to drive?” And thanks to movie stars like Ed and media moguls like Rupert Murdoch I have a stock answer, “Because I care about the environment.”

I’m going to be honest. While I do care about the environment (kind of) those hippie freaks totally bug. Those slumming, hyphen using, tofu eating, bought their dreads at Purple Circle people irritate me. And the ones that try to be make green hip, they’re even more annoying. The hip green people remind me of Christian rock bands. I don’t want them to annoy me. I tried to hang with them, but just can’t do it. They drive me bloody crazy. I’m a metropolitan girl that takes public transport. I’m not a greeny. I like bars and having a good time. I don’t eat meat, but that’s just so I can stay skinny. I also don’t like bugs or cats. I’m so for bringing that DTT back, because if I get bed bugs, I’m so going to kill myself. And don’t let me start on those cyclist people, especially the ones in biker shorts.

Do you really need all of the gear?  And if you’re fat, I’m seriously not getting it.

The reason I take the bus is because the gov’t sort of forced me to do it by taking away with my driver’s license. I was pulled over by the cops and then…hey no reason to go into the gory details, but my license is gone, gone, gone, gone. It totally sucks. I then had to start bussing it, I was cabbing it, but that was getting kind of pricey.

After taking the bus and realizing how much it sucked ASS, I decided along with friends who also had run-ins with the police (or trees) and now no longer drove, that we should use our art backgrounds and reformed partying ways to imitate-life-imitating-art-imitating-life.

The police is better than Jesus in getting you go to reexamine your life. Maybe Jesus and the police are the same person the way God and Jesus are the same person, kind of.

Would that make Chief Bratton or Sheriff Baca God?

(If God is Chief Bratton, then it's good to know that he uses Typepad to blog, since that's what I use.)

Are we with an organization? Heck no. We hate organizations. Speaking for myself personally, I hate clubs. I join them just to see what interesting thing I can do to get thrown out.

Have you noticed club type people go out of their way to be polite no matter how classless you are? They always want to give you a chance, but yet they don’t. You could take crap on the table at one of their meetings and give them a sob story and they’ll try to work things out.

I can’t stand people like that, so no, we’re not any group-affiliated. We’re not even going to go to any transportation group like things, because the people in groups are so psyched to let you know about that crap. We’ll link those people for you, but don’t worry about us coming to a meeting or giving you detailed facts about a meeting, because we don’t care.

We’re simply about showing what’s going on. Not picking a side. Not changing the system, but exhibiting public transport, L.A., and life outside the lines for your and our enjoyment.

This is a public service announcement from the publisher of ShameTrain L.A.

Miss Browne Molyneux