MetroRiderLA

[tags]metroriderla, gear, gadgets, transit, los angeles[/tags]

Gear is the newest posting category here on MetroRiderLA. Gear articles will be focused on the products that you’re going to want and need for the Los Angeles Public Transit Lifestyle. Think engadget, Gizmodo, or Uncrate, but for the transit crowd. Gadgets, apparel, books, toys, any product that aides or compliments the public transit lifestyle here in LA.

For example, the book review for “How To Live Well Without Owning A Car” is in the Gear category because it’s a product you can purchase that directly relates to the lifestyle we are promoting.

[tags]car free, uncar, chris balish, book review[/tags]

Last October I told you all about a book called “How To Live Well Without Owning A Car” by Chris Balish. Well I finally got around to reading it and now I’m going to tell you about it as promised.

“How To Live Well Without Owning A Car” is a practical guide to converting to a car-free lifestyle. I emphasize practical because the book more than anything else emphasizes logical and reasonable explanations on the whys and the hows of dumping your car and surviving (happily in fact) without it. There’s not a lot of theoretical mumbo-jumbo, emotional appeals, or political rhetoric to get you sidetracked - just straight up common sense (however contrary that sense is to common culture). In addition to being a practical guide, it’s also a very personal guide to becoming car-free. Countless anecdotes from real people across the country (and across demographics), each with their own unique car-free lifestyle, are presented throughout the book allowing the skeptical or fearful to find a story close enough to their own to prove that it can be done. This book is also about personal finance, because in many ways it’s a book about saving money (akin to “The Millionaire Next Door”) by ridding your life of unnecessary costs. Balish sets out to convince us that by going car-free we can “avoid the gas pump, cut expenses, reduce debt, and simply your life”, does his book do the job?

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[tags]culver city, allied model trains, model trains[/tags]

LA Observed reports that Culver City’s Allied Model Trains, “the largest train store ever built,” has been sold and it is moving out of its current store to another space across the street. The store closes in May and promises to reopen in July.

Store owner Allan Drucker posted a letter on Allied’s web site and entices model railroaders with sale prices of 30 percent to 80 percent off.

Allied is open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday through Saturday. It is located at 4411 Sepulveda Boulevard, Culver City. Transit access is available via Culver CityBus lines 6 (weekday and weekend schedules) and 7.