A hitchhikers guide to the Metro Gold Line Eastside Extension grand opening

Photo by Yours Truly. This and other photos can be seen on the MetroRiderLA Flickr pool.

The opening of an urban rail line is truly a cause for celebration, especially in Los Angeles — the city that’s a blonde joke come to life.

November 15, 2009, marks a time when L.A. could celebrate that in more than 5 years of construction, the hard hats managed to build a rail line from downtown L.A. a whole six miles east, with almost two miles built in a tunnel intentionally. The Gold Line continues beyond Union Station to East Los Angeles. It will travel along East First Street in Boyle Heights, then zag to Fourth Street in East Los Angeles.

In 20 years of rail (and busway) openings, two things have proven as certain as the sun rising in the East and two and two adding to four:

1. These events are a lot of fun and the festive atmosphere brings out tens, if not hundreds, of thousands
2. Angelenos, generally speaking, are insufferably petulant and are less mentally sharp than a zombie on Quaaludes.

Both of these self-evident truths will be on full display November 15 as the Gold Line Eastside Extension makes for its public debut.

In the process of making maps for the DASH restructuring series, I have been inundated by curious and credulous MetroReaders or their friends and/or unindicted co-conspirators asking me on what we can look forward to on opening weekend. Which is really strange, because I try hard to hide my e-mail addresses and generally try to avoid any contact with you outside of the comments here.

Yet with great knowledge comes great responsibility. Your Metro Yoda will answer some of the questions to help MetroReaders along their way on their public transit Jedi-hood. And with great science fiction references comes a great tribute and thank you to one of the masters of the genre, the late, great Douglas Adams. Without you, the title to this blog post and your witty, easily imitable writing style would not have made this effort possible (in the case of the title) or even relevant (in the case of the writing style).

Q. Where does the line run?

A. This segment of the Gold Line will run between Union Station and a platform on Atlantic Boulevard where Fourth Street and Beverly Boulevard fork.

Q. Segment? You mean there are going to be two of them? As you know, I am from L.A. and get on the Purple Line train every day when I want to go to Hollywood. Don’t judge me. I went to the public schools here.

A. Too much information. What’s your question?

Q. Oh, right. There will be trains going to Pasadena and to East L.A. That’s like so totally confusing and junk. I’ve already been to Pasadena. How can I be sure I can get the East L.A. train on the first try?

A. Well, on opening day Sunday, trains will in effect run as two separate lines. All passengers will be let out at Union Station and have to wait in line for the East L.A.-bound train. Stand at the end of it to ride the train.

Q. People are going to wait in line just to ride a train?

A. Well, there will also be festivities planned at four stations: East Los Angeles Civic Center, Mariachi Plaza, Little Tokyo and Union Station. Each station will have a different musical theme and have vendors serving up food. Metro posted the details. These will be from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Q. This sounds like there are going to be a lot of people.

A. Count on it. When the Gold Line opened to Pasadena in 2003, by midday lines grew so long there had been waits of up to 4 hours to ride.

Q. Are you serious? Four hours waiting to ride a train? Metro is like totally incompetent.

A. You won’t be like totally stranded. In 2003, when Metro saw that the lines had grown that long, it had dispatched several buses to emulate the Gold Line and take passengers back to their originating locations. If things get like that, Metro may likely do that again. If it doesn’t, keep in mind that you can take parallel bus lines between both ends: Line 68 runs along Cesar Chavez Avenue, Line 31 runs along First Street, Montebello Bus Line 40 runs along Fourth Street and Line 18 and Line 720 run along Whittier Boulevard. The closest buses to the station are lines 31 and 40.

Q. That’s all?

A. Well, LADOT has three DASH lines that connect with the Gold Line. Note, though, that the one line reaching the Eastside stations — Boyle Heights/East Los Angeles — does not operate Sundays. The other two, Lincoln Heights/Chinatown and Highland Park/Eagle Rock, are accessible on the older Pasadena segment north of Union Station.

Two other smaller systems you might want to keep in mind are Monterey Park Spirit and East Los Angeles’ El Sol Shuttle. Monterey Park Spirit does not run directly to the Gold Line yet, and it won’t operate on Sunday, but it does serve East Los Angeles College.

East L.A.’s system does run on Sundays, and in fact is expanding hours in anticipation of the Gold Line operation. The buses will run as late as 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. El Sol has three bidirectional loops that meet at the Dionicio Ramirez Transit Plaza next to the East L.A. Civic Center station.

Q. There’s got to be more to do in East L.A. than just riding buses, right?

A. No question. One of the niches the Gold Line is quickly evolving into is a foodie train. East First Street in Boyle Heights is lined with dozens of establishments to sate your gastronomic rapacity. One of the stalwarts is La Serenata de Garibaldi, which has been a longtime attraction for city officials and other bigwigs from the west bank of the Los Angeles River. With its solid reputation and already high profile, it is likely to become the Gold Line equivalent of what Langer’s is to the subway.

There’s variety aplenty along First, but don’t ride the Gold Line just to eat Mexican food. You wouldn’t take a plane to any spot in the U.S. and say you’d like to try some American food when you land, would you? Similarly, Mexico is a vast country that has distinct culinary dishes. Many of the restaurants will have the state or region name — Jalisco, Oaxaca, D.F. or Mexico City, etc. There’s also variety in the restaurants, split between the Serenata sit-down places where meals are about $10-$20 a person, and the hole-in-the-wall taco and torta joints.

Then, of course, in downtown, you have Little Tokyo. Immediately near the station you have Senor Fish, the Weiland Brewery and Cuba Central. If you feel Little Tokyo should have food selections that would be commonly associated with Big Tokyo, the sushi bars and Japanese sit-down restaurants can be found on First and Second Streets west of Central Avenue, and stretching for another three to four blocks. One place definitely worth a look is the Mikawaya Bakery. The downtown institution has delicious pastries, but the confection-eating world would know it for its popular Mochi ice cream.

For some other help mapping out what the Eastside has in store, look at what the people of the Eastside L.A. blog have in store. Even the sages of First and Spring streets are now calling the area cool.

Q. Man, this place sounds so cool. I might actually want to live here. How do I go about gentrifying the neighborhood?

A. Gentrification is a dynamic process, but one that can be heartbreaking for the people who are gradually being pushed out from the neighborhood they helped to create. On the one hand, it is a wonderful process that this often maligned part of Los Angeles will now become better integrated to the whole. On the other hand, it only takes a few hipsters to lounge around the place and wear out their welcome by jacking up the prices for everyone else.

Most of the people who never lived or worked in the Eastside, or only went through here on the many freeways corraling the neighborhoods, only know the neighborhood from the crime or “education noir” stories in the media. Those, or Edward James Olmos movies. These give an exotic, other-worldly feel to neighborhoods that also have a great sense of normalcy.

Notice how taking transit and dense, walkable neighborhoods have become “green,” “socially conscious,” “hip” or any number of dozens of other personal lifestyle tropes? The Eastside has been doing that for generations, and for no other reason than it was natural, authentic and even necessary. It didn’t take any major planning initiative. It was just people doing what they needed to do to live their lives. Mixed with with the unfortunate strip malls are stretches of First (and a lot of Cesar Chavez) where the storefronts are close to the sidewalk and the shops fulfill affordable human needs (bakeries, laundries, tax preparation, etc.)

The key theme is that a place like this was able to happen in spite of the community beyond the L.A. River, not because of it. Moving in here would leave the buildings, and maybe some of the businesses who can now charge gringo prices, but it’s done at the expense of uprooting the social community that built the physical community. Then what do you have? Larchmont. A pedestrian-oriented boutique boulevard that everyone drives to and is filled with 90% of the same chain stores they can find within 2 miles of their home.

In closing, I should tell you that if you’re not living in Boyle Heights or East L.A. now, you’ve already missed the gentrification train. What’s the demarcation line for living in a cool transit neighborhood? This is not etched in stone, but past practice has suggested that you have to move in one year before construction on a transit project is finished. So if you moved in (or plan to move in) to the Eastside after July 2008, you’re not a pioneer, you’re a scenester.

Q. Why are we still building rail lines? Rail is racist, you know.

A. An individual in a yellow shirt slipped me this answer, along with a small hardbound pocket-sized book that says “Chairman Mann’s Little Red Book of Transit Activism.” It’s only 45 pages, but each page just tells the reader to answer every question with “Rail is racist” and repeat until the skeptic or opponent comes around to the correct way of thinking.

Let’s accept your premise. Los Angeles County has a unique way of expressing its racism.

First, voters are faced with a proposition that outlines a dedicated amount to rail construction, transit operations and local return to cities. When Los Angeles County poses this question to voters, they acquiesce to racism by allocating money to rail projects. Not once. Not twice. Three times! Then, when rail lines are built, Metro is culturally insensitive by routing lines through low-income, minority areas with a markedly high usage of public transportation. First comes the guideways, then come stations that allow these neighborhoods a portal into rail. Then riders are charged the same exact fare as buses. Despite a socially just effort to stop racism and regain … umm, bus seats … a vanguard organization speaking in the name of minorities everywhere nearly doubled the bus fleet yet was still angry over the fact that Metro didn’t halting all rail and bourgeois bus services. Worse, these rail services, once established, encroached upon buses by adding to ridership.

If anything, this reinforces the premise that Los Angeles is too stupid to do anything right. The correct way to practice racism is to disinvest in public transportation. Detroit and the bigger cities of Alabama did it correctly.

Q. I could see how the Eastside warrants a rail line, but why did Metro cheap out on building the line as a subway?

A. Two words: Zev Yaroslavsky. Besides the three transportation sales taxes L.A. county voters approved, county voters were also fed up over Metro’s legacy of corruption and incompetence that was in a degree not seen in advanced Western civilization. I could hit the point home by going into hyperbole, but I won’t. The 1990s marked two things: subway construction and a general backlash against the subway. In a project that was envisioned never to breach the $1 billion mark, it orbited that amount several times over. And we are still paying bonds for another two decades or so. The low point came, or rather was exposed, when a sinkhole swallowed a portion of Hollywood. Voters passed Proposition A in 1998, by a two-to-one margin. Including in the Eastside.

The effect was to ban tunneling by not allowing local sales taxes to be spent on it.

Gloria Molina, who has been clearly studying Minnesota Rep. Michelle Bachmann in style and substance of public communication, is simultaneously taking credit for bringing the Gold Line to East Los Angeles and pouring water on the line at the same time. This is the same Gloria Molina who authorized every contract and change order to build the line as it stands.

Molina faced the choice of either accepting light rail for her district, or holding out at least 10 years until Measure R passed and then establishing the present corridor in the pecking order of projects to be funded. She had a choice more than a decade ago to take the Gold Line or hold out hope for a subway that would be built in 10 … 20 … 30 … more ??? years.

It’s either throw the Gold Line party now or throw the subway party for your grandkids’ grandkids. We chose to party now and let our offspring worry about the hangover.

Q. I recently decided to become a hipster. I want to know if the Eastside Gold Line is right for my needs. The other rail lines have so far failed to accommodate my lifestyle. One, they don’t go to Silver Lake. B, trains don’t run the most important time of the day: last call. How will the Gold Line change in this regard?

A. One and B? Kid, get your parallels down first before criticizing transit operations planning. No, the Gold Line will not help you live a 24-hour lifestyle. If you can fit your life around the other 21 hours that the train operates (generally, 4 a.m. to 1 a.m.), more power to you.

And I’m with you on the Silver Lake point. Not because I want to go there any more than I have to. Hipsters are best taken in small doses and short exposure, like psychedelics or radon. You might want to talk with the fellas at The Transit Coalition to see if they’re willing to raise their Silver Line concept up the proverbial flagpole again.

Q. Advocacy groups? Good grief. Metro is teh suck. The only people who like Metro are employees who are paid to like them. They are tools anyway. Why don’t you tell the truth that public transit sucks, L.A. sucks, and life sucks?

A. I got stuck for 20 minutes trying to parse that third sentence, then spent another 10 trying to decipher “teh”. Folks, no need to do research. It’s blogspeak for the word “the”.

Anyway, public transit has its good, bad and ugly moments. Especially in L.A. If you’re the type that has no need for that rotgut good crap, I highly recommend The Bus Bench and L.A. Metro Mole, two of the best hater sites on the Web. The are always correct in their observations, and the thoughts reflected on the Web pages reflect the viewpoints of all riders.

We at MetroRiderLA choose an alternative style of presentation because no writer here could ever match The Bus Bench or the Mole. We think our style is a different niche to fill in the blogosphere. In reality, though, we just don’t really have the heart and conviction behind what we write. That’s just between us.

Look at Fred Camino, the founder of this site. He, and former Los Angeles Times journalist Steve Hymon, decided there was no point fighting the machine and became a part of it. They both contribute to The Source, Metro’s stab at social networking.

Call them tools if you want, but one saving grace of Camino and Hymon … if Metro is willing to cut them a check, they did a lot better than most of us.

Q. I’m a honky. I don’t know Those People outside of limited contact with them in a domestic capacity on the Westside. What are they like, really?

A. There’s no way to answer this without someone getting offended but … in many respects, the Eastside community is unusual in the way other groups are unusual if they work, shop, send their children to school, attend church, listen to music, have a beer with their friends or throw parties.

With that said, you can cut the twee “Those People” crap in a feeble attempt to be inoffensive. The Eastside is predominantly a community of residents of Mexican and some Central American origin. The terms Hispanic and Latino are used, but there is even wide debate in and out of the community on whether these are appropriate. That’s not the debate here, though. The terms can be used unless the person feels an aversion to those terms.

If you’re still unsure of what kind of impression to make and what to call someone, ask them their name. That’s usually a safe bet.

If you’re too self-conscious about leaving your comfort zone, just stay in it. The Eastside will get along fine without you.

Believe it or not, I had to throw away about three dozens of questions on this same topic. This was the one that was fit to print here. The rest looked like a ransom note pasted together from Curbed LA comments. That leaves me with one last question.

Q. A billion dollars and Metro can’t even run the trains faster than 15 miles per hour between Union Station and Little Tokyo?

A. Yes, folks. Marmion Way gave birth to an ugly offspring. It’s the flyover spanning US-101, where the train travels in a serpentine from the back of Union Station to Alameda Street. Marmion Way is also the reason why everyone stopped riding the Gold Line because this stretch is too slow.

It happened again, and a dry-run cab video made during pre-revenue testing suggests Union Station to Little Tokyo will be three to four excruciatingly slow minutes of your life that you’ll never be able to get back.

By L.A. logic, you are better off sticking to your car, which can go from Union Station to Little Tokyo … in about 3-4 minutes as well.

In closing, let me pass on to you a little-known mathematical rule that has helped make decisions easier and more rational in life.

It’s called the Inverse Law of Time Conservation.

The more valuable you perceive your time as worth, the less valuable it actually is.

Deep, huh? Have a safe and happy Gold Line celebration.

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boyle heights • east L.A. • east los angeles • gold line • gold line eastside extension • los angeles • noobs