MetroRiderLA

We’ve all heard it a hundred times. From friends to co-workers to the old lady that walks her dog in front of your building and smokes three packs of Virginia Slims a day. “Stay off the freeways.” This of course sounds disheartening to a freeway centric city yet it’s a mantra many LAites live by. When traveling to the West Side from Hollywood for one of my first jobs in LA I was told by a barista (I was trying to meet people and frequented coffee shops though I dislike the taste of the stuff) that the best way to get there was avoiding the 101 altogether, despite the fact the 101 was two blocks from where I lived.

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Atwater MetroRider Miles of MilesThink is wondering why LA Live is so forgetful of the Blue Line. Come on LA, get with the program already. In fact, it’s something we should all be quite annoyed by. For all the hype LA Live is getting I’ve yet to really see any promotions on how the 1st Blue Line stop at Pico/Chick Hearn is about a 2 minute walk from all the events. Not to mention, the Red line at 7th/Metro is a mere 12 minute walk. Oh wait… people in LA hate to walk, sometimes I forget that. Now I’ve yet to hit up the LA Live area but I’ve heard it’s pretty much a Downtown Disney in an urban environment rather than the swamps of Orlando. However, I welcome it with open arms–even though I missed Video Games Live last weekend–and hope they start opening their own arms to the many transit options in the area rather than promote the amount of parking they undoubtedly stocked up on.

Somehow this took an hour to occur and since not every MetroRider got a chance to join in on this farely useless effort here is how it went.

A preview (note this was actually chosen as one of the questions to be answered):

Billie: Not sure if my message got through. My husband is a software engineering consultant. He has worked for Toyota in Torrance, Yahoo in Burbank, etc. There is absolutely no reason that employees who are engaged in similar work need to be on the road. He works in silence in a cubicle all day long with occasional meetings. Corporations should team up with Starbucks or someone, create hub centers with cubicles and web cams and ease the traffic that is affecting us all. It’s a moral imperative.

Enjoy the useless (and edited) fun of it all.

Metro means well. For the most part at least. I think they try to make the experience the best it can be in a city that doesn’t truly support public transit. Hell, even with the absurd wait times and busses featured on a 12 minute map that never show up, I still love it and would never go back to the nightmare that is owning a 2 ton steel bodied money pit, and no I’m not talking about Aahhhnaold. (tee hee)

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For the last 6 or so months I’ve been noticing an interesting accumulation of mulch along the Chandler Blvd right of way, now known as the Chandler Blvd Bikeway. It starts way west, but I’m just talking about the part just east of both the Red line and Orange line Noho stations and extends to Mariposa (just west of Burbank Town Center). My girlfriend lives off of Chandler so I’ve been watching its development on my walk/bike from the train station for some time now. She’s lived there her whole life and tells me that it used to just be abandoned railroad tracks and dirt piles that she and her sisters would jump their bikes off of. This of course all makes sense because even if I don’t know the exacts of where and when these tracks were in use, its common knowledge that such abandoned tracks exist all over Los Angeles.

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“Yes? No? Well Marty’s driving if you want to go.”

Ahhhhh, the workplace.  The best place for contemplating murdilation. And the best place to grow a wonderful plant of contempt for hypocritical assholes that just can’t get enough of driving and terribly bland rice in sour cream filled burritos.

The above convo is something wonderful that happens nearly everyday at my workplace. Another convo that happens everyday at my workplace is complaining about traffic and the absurd parking situation that is going downstairs in the parking garage.  Now I’m lucky enough to avoid that nonsense entirely because I don’t drive to work but I’ve been down there and man, shit’s absurd.  Three levels of double and triple parked nonsense. If I were forced to drive I’d be pissed off as well. However, these idiots aren’t forced to drive and even with my constant talk of how easy it would be for them to just bus it to work they choose to drive anyway and spend the 15 minutes it takes to get out of the parking garage every time they want to leave.  So their complaints are of course met with mockery from me and I’m no longer invited to lunches.
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