MetroRiderLA

Izzy Skenazy was 9 years old when he first rode the subway. The above video is the aftermath. The below is the exclusive journal entry from the day of his legendary voyage, as well as the tumultuous days that followed. A fictional account by Tyke Johnson.

I have a map because my mom gave me one. It’s huge. A tri-folder type to which I have no use. But it was apart of the requirements for me taking this trip. I told her I had already memorized the subway system but she’s my mom and moms are cautious. So I put it in my bag and forgot about it. She then handed me twenty dollars and an MTA card. The twenty was a “just in case” fund and I took it to mean, just in case I came across a WIRED magazine and Red Bull at the newsstands. I did.

Before I finally got away from her in the handbags area of Bloomingdales she asked me to clean my room when I got home. I laughed a little. She said she was serious. I said I would and I got the hell outta there.

I hate the smell of Bloomingdales. I hate the smell of department stores, the handbag area is almost as bad as the perfume area, but in case my poor nostrils had naively started believing in a God, I had to pass through that section on my way out. A hell only three hundred different fragrances—glassy and sweet, wooden and sour—could produce, finalizing my verdict on the omnipresent.

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Image courtesy of xero79.

The dust has settled from the Dodgers historic reunion with the Los Angeles Coliseum this past weekend. Over 115,000 people showed up for this game, and many of them were hoping that the mass transit alternatives offered by both Metro and the Dodgers would spare them the parking and traffic nightmare they’ve grown accustomed to at Dodgers games. According to the L.A. Times, 35,000 people showed up at Dodger Stadium hoping to take advantage of the shuttles to the Coliseum provided by the Dodgers. Unfortunately, the shuttles turned out to be a colossal failure. Apparently most of the shuttles were just that, smaller van-like buses that could hold a very limited amount of passengers, and according to people who were there, the whole process was very chaotic and unorganized. Some fans were still stranded at Dodger Stadium while the game had been going on for an hour some six miles away. These people will likely never attempt to go to a baseball game without a car ever again.

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‘Twas the night before Metro

Orange Line began

and all trough my body

I had goosebumps and chills

in anticipation of my very first ride.

I had been thinking

about that very moment

for the last couple of years

ever since I heard

the busway was coming my way.

I can still remember

when I would ride my bike

even drive a car

parallel to the busway

the old right of way.

Just dreaming and waiting

for the day to arrive.

And when they started testing

with no passengers yet

I would stand in awe near the stations

just watching the artics go by.

But alas! The day had arrived

five in the morning

I was ready to board

from Winnetka Station

to NOHO and back.

This feeling of anticipation

I cannot describe

unless you’re a MetroRider

you can’t comprehend.

I’m just waiting

and anticipating

the Gold Line extension

out to East L. A.

Come late 2009

God willing

I’ll sure to be there!!!

© Rogelio Gómez

Who says you need a car to buy and plant a Mexican dwarf lime tree?

I’m terrible to go shopping with. I like to wander. I have no problem being at a grocery store for a half an hour to leave with nothing but bread and a twelve pack.

I’m a phase kind of person. I live through ideas that may last only an afternoon. Public transit lifestyle and advocacy might be the only thing in my life not based on phase theory. This Sunday I was in such a phase. This Sunday I was going to garden, and by God, I was going to do it car free.

Now this isn’t all that new really. I’ve been through this phase before and on such days I spend a couple hours at Home Depot spending more money on the items to make/plant than the item/plant will ever yield. Recently was a compost pile and making it, albeit fun, will in no way produce the amount of fertilizer equal to its relatively meager cost. Not to mention I don’t go through all that much fertilizer. The same can now be said about the Mexican dwarf lime tree I decided to buy yesterday.

To move this along—when I stepped up to the register I had in total: a 25lb bag of manure, a 25 lb bag of potting soil, a gigantic black plastic pot, a lime tree that stood about 3 feet tall and had thorns, as well as 2 succulents (the reason for the trip), a lavender plant, and spider killer.

The pretty black girl in her orange apron, after talking about how cold she was and giving me the eye (probably not), was blown away that I was taking the subway from MacArthur Park back downtown with all this stuff. I assured her it was no big deal and that it was worth it to not have to drive. She summed up the point of MetroRiderLA in 7 words by questioning where I was from because “that’s not what people do in LA.” I gave her a smile and she gave me a good luck.
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It’s not uncommon to see expressions of bewilderment on the faces of others when you tell them you live a Transit Oriented Life, especially in Los Angeles. People will assume you have run into a major financial crisis, lost your vehicle to accident or crime, got caught driving under the influence, or that you’ve just gone batshit crazy. After reassuring them that everything’s okay and that you indeed came to the decision through personal choice and reasoned logic, not faulty wiring or Acts of God, your auto-addicted friend is likely to wonder what possible logical reasons there could be for you to make such a choice. Ben W. over at the Seattle Transit Blog faced this very question, and decided to put an end to the confusion by listing five benchmarks that set him on his way from car-dependent to car-free.

Here’s what did it for him:

1. Using transit to get to work
2. The ease that Google Transit provides when planning transit trips
3. Taking part in Seattle’s One Less Car Challenge.
4. Finding out about Flexcar (now Zipcar) and becoming a member.
5. Taking transit to someplace new.

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Looks like MetroRiderLA has a double dose of Zipcar fun for you today. First Tyke’s story about dumping his Zipcar membership, and now my story about Zipping around in multiple Zipcars this weekend.

It may not be as initially shocking as “2 Girls, 1 Cup” but spending a weekend doing a lot of driving leaves me feeling the same: a little queasy, sad at the current state of the world, and asking myself “why the hell would anyone do that?”.

Before this holiday weekend, I had only taken out a Zipcar once since Flexcar became Zipcar and made a big poopy mess out of the whole L.A. car sharing scene. Due to the top secret political nature of that Zipcar outing, I never wrote about it. Luckily for all of you, this weekend offered me not just one, but two opportunities to take out a Zipcar and move about this city the way you’re supposed to: behind the wheel of your very own personal automobile. Vrooooom!

It all began innocently enough, my lady friend was flying into LAX and I was planning on hopping on a Flyaway and meeting her there as I would usually do. Unfortunately, her flight was coming in quite “late”, 11:30pm, and I feared that if I took the Flyaway, upon returning to Union Station, our trusty subway system would no longer be in service. Knowing that she would be accompanied by some heavy ass baggage and a healthy dose of travel exhaustion, I knew a 2.5 mile walk home from Union Station was nothing either of us were interested in. Nor were we interested in transferring to some stinkin’ dirty bus. I thought about the possibility of taking a taxi from Union Station, but the prospect of spending $15 to go 2.5 miles, plus the cost of the Flyaway, just didn’t sit well with me. It was too much money for too much inconvenience. So it was time to turn to the ultimate tool in modern luxurious ultra convenience: the personal automobile. Vrooooom!!

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