German
Spanish
French
Italian
Portuguese
Japanese
Korean
Russian
ChineseThis is our Los Angeles
For myself, a recent transplant from Phoenix via New York by way of Boston, I’d had a great deal of trepidation about being car-free in Los Angeles. I mean, what’s the first thing Zonis think of when they think of their distant cousin, six hours to the west? Cars and crime!
But let me tell you, there’s nothing like getting on the Rapid 720 at the 3rd Street Promenade after a long day on the coast, relaxing and listening to music from Santa Monica to Beverly Hills (shameless plug: these earbuds, though expensive, are God’s gift to LA MetroRiders - they block TransitTV, and with the black ones, you don’t even scream “iPod!”), only to top it off by chatting with all sorts of great people from Beverly Hills to Koreatown. No parking fees at Santa Monica, no huge line to get out of the lots, no frustrated “where’d we park again?” or the like, but just a comfortable, 45 minute trip from Santa Monica to K-town. That’s quite good, given Saturday night traffic.
Point is, after all of the [seemingly endless chain of] people who have told me in the last week “oh you’ll never last long here without a car,” this just proved it all - this is our LA too, and not only is it entirely possible to live here without a car, sometimes I wonder if I’ll find myself telling people “oh you’ll never last long here with a car. When, even in Los Angeles, the car-free culture can be so comfortable and simple, you know that this is our city too, no matter all of the nay-sayers.
Photo by myself, hosted by Facebook.
Discussion
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
Great post Aaron. Glad to hear that the transition is going well and that the Los Angeles Public Tranist Lifestyle is working out for you! You just painted a great little picture of that in your post.
I’m on the bus right now. Just hopped from a 14 to a 217 without a minute of wait. So far so good and reading your story makes appreciate it all even more. Even if I’m negative from time to time riding is always better it seems than driving. Stories like that always prove it. And hey. I even caught the tail end of the planet x episode I had been watching so intently on the 14. Now that’s luck!