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.

I burst out into the freedom of 59th Street. I can smell Central Park flood down Lexington Ave as I turn north. I think about walking up to the park to check out some of the babes lying out but it’s still cold so they’re probably all in sweaters. Still, sweater meat isn’t all that bad to gander at. After all, the internet at home won’t be working till the end of the week at the earliest. I hate cable companies almost as much as Bloomingdales.

After begging my mom for a month to let me ride the subway home by myself it’d be pretty insane to screw it up by getting home late. And what excuse could I use? Sorry mom, the Italians are out and you know how big those girls can get. Wouldn’t fly. So I trust my imagination will not let down later and I venture down to the subway, bringing the smell of Central Park with me as far as the fare gates.

The fare gates look like they’re from some old horror movie, like they were once used for torture. To the guy next to me who can’t seem to get his card to work I’m sure it is torture. I pity him. Probably forty years old and still can’t work a turnstile. How is that even possible I wonder? Probably doesn’t have any money on it but is somehow too dense to see that the reader’s telling him he’s empty. Or worse, he refuses to swipe it not backwards. Oh well, he’ll figure it out, or he’ll ask the attendant for help. Though he doesn’t even look interested in the adequately measured blonde standing on tip toes at his window so I doubt this man will have much luck getting any sympathy or help.

As expected and I’ve been saying for months, the subway is a piece of cake. I’m standing on the platform and listening to the sounds of people, of express trains, of high heels and violins. I give a dollar to the young student. He’s playing something I recognize but I can never remember song names or lyrics. My mom can remember the name of every song we hear on the radio. My friends can do the same. I haven’t a clue. My contribution is always the same. “Yah yah, that one. It goes like this right?”

My train arrives and I hop on with the rest of the millions. Just as I told my mom, and thankfully she finally agreed, I would go unnoticed and be just fine. Not a person pays me any mind. They’re reading and sleeping and daydreaming. I’m looking at the digital display of upcoming stops. I don’t see where people get off saying the subway is dirty. This train is as clean as my room and most certainly cleaner than the streets up above. I could do without the guy to my left rubbing his shirtless body with a newspaper but he doesn’t smell anywhere near as bad as the perfume section so I welcome the new fragrance to try and kill the last remnants of designer eau de toilette.

I’m able to grab a seat when a large group gets off in the 80’s and I join the rest of the daydreamers. I have a few tests coming up and I vow to bring my study guides with me the next time I ride. Until then though, looking out the windows at the passing signal lights and southbound trains will do just fine.

The bus ride is equally uneventful—aside from stepping in some assholes gum right before I get on— and I’m home before my mom. As was the deal, I sell out my natural revolutionary will and start to clean my room. Most of my clothes can be pushed in the closet or under my bed and since it’ll be dark soon my mom probably won’t give it too thorough of an investigation.

Just as I close the closet door I hear my mom downstairs. She throws her bag on the table like she does every day. She has a lot of metal dangly things hanging from it and it echoes off the vaulted kitchen ceiling. I head down to her and she asks about my train ride.

“Piece of cake, just like I said.”

“And your room?”

“I invite you to dine on the floor.”

Sometime later

My mom wrote an article about me riding the subway by myself. People are up in arms about it and we’re going to be on the Today Show because of it. I was interviewed by some old guy that looked a lot like the idiot that couldn’t figure out how to work his MTA card. He asked me one asinine question after another as if I had just been off at war. Now I have to shower. A car service, a stupid Lincoln Town car, is on its way to pick up my mom and I. I said we should take the subway but the TV show people said we had to get picked up. I guess they forgot we live in New York City.

After the show

People are so fkn retarded.

‘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.

But luck was not at all what I needed. What I needed was much more real, much more tangible. What I needed was Jose Gomez.

I made it all the way to Bonnie Brea with my balancing act and though doing quite well, still not in pain, I needed a quick re-adjustment of the weight. That’s when my new friend, and dare I say, colleague, came over to grab the lime tree as it was about to fall in my face. I’m paranoid about losing my eyes so he came at just the right time for the lime tree, if you recall, has thorns. I thanked him and he offered to help. Not being a complete moron, I added in my head how much cash I had with me and upon figuring that it was sufficient, I said yes.

As we walked I told him I was taking the train to which he raved about and just to pwn the blinded-by-racist-leader-Mann, BRU, I asked which he liked better, trains or busses? He of course gave a resounding endorsement for trains and wished there were more. Jose became pretty much my favorite person in the world at that point. He solidified that position when I offered him ten dollars to carry the plant with me downtown and drop it off at my apartment. Again, a resounding yes.

As we descended he was happy to point out he had a Metro pass already because some time ago he had got caught without one and had to pay a fine and therefore hasn’t traveled without a ticket since. Now that he’d unknowingly backed my anti BRU and anti fare gates stance I knew I had to write about ol’ Jose Gomez of El Salvador here at MetroRiderLA.

The rest of the trip continued to be pretty great. On the platform we talked, me through broken Spanish, he through broken English, about the best way to plant the tree. Another man then came up and put his two cents in, though it was all in Spanish so his advice was only half received. We also talked about his family still in El Salvador of which he hadn’t seen in fourteen years and though not anywhere near the same, how my family was in Chicago. Later, when talking of his experience in the United States, he corrected me when I said the US was “bueno y mal” by pointing out that El Salvador is much worse and that many people here don’t realize how good we have it. By this time we had got off at 7th/Metro and were walking to my apartment and seeing that I was spending my afternoon planting an unnecessary fruit tree, hiring a laborer to help me without a second thought, he had hit the obvious nail on the head. This of course wasn’t much of a realization for me but it’s still good to hear from time to time to wake us up from the nostalgic funk of how bad America “is” and how great other places “are.” Jose Gomez was a wise man indeed.

When we finally made it to my place I told him I was going to write about him on the Internet. He was pretty impressed by this idea and proud to hear he’d live on forever, and not to dampen the mood, I refrained from telling him it wasn’t for the LA Times. Though I should have for MetroRiderLA is a billion times better.

I then handed Jose his earnings, a crisp ten spot, and we shook hands. I thanked him again and he said the same, then turned and left. It had all worked out; my eyes never got poked to death by lime tree thorns and my forearms were the strongest they’d ever been, there was no need to go to the gym that evening. My only regret was that I didn’t have more cash on me to pay Jose to help me with the tree and share in an afternoon cervesa. Of course, that regret is nothing at all compared to the regret I would’ve had if I had driven and never met Jose Gomez of El Salvador at all.

“Gold Line, Pasadena” Image Courtesy of Nevin.

I leave the house five minutes just before

the scheduled time the bus is set to arrive.

I got my pass, schedules and the map

within my pocket just waiting to board and go.

It’s one more minute

I see it down the street.

It’s right on schedule, not often

but this time has managed to arrive within the slotted time.

I board and grab a book

I’ll read along until I get

to the transfer point so I can get

the Blue Line and then the Red.

I love the Metro if you can’t tell

and try to speak about it to other people

you could say it, I guess

I try my best for them to use it and convert.

© Rogelio Gomez

The Taj Mahal gets romantic today. Photo courtesy of Metro.

Metro is celebrating the February 14th holiday by lighting up the Metro Headquarters Building  (aka the “Taj Mahal”) with a heart on all four sides. You can see the luminous ode to love today from 6pm – 10pm if you’re in the Downtown area.  MetroPhotographers, grab your sweethearts and make sure to capture this adorable architectural gesture on digital emulsion and share it with us on the MetroRiderLA Flickr Pool.

Taking your significant other to see lights on a building, no matter the shape they produce, does not a Valentine’s Day make.  However, is it even possible to have a Transit Oriented Valentine’s Day in Los Angeles without the day ending in a nasty break-up?  Does a Metro Bus really set the mood for love?  Is a 4-car Red Line train entering a dark tunnel a clear enough euphemism for the physical act of love without being so overt as to offend? Does the number of cars a train has even matter?  Or has your car-free lifestyle left you riding solo?  We all just want someone to sit with us on the bus, if only to avoid having that vagabond with personal odor issues take the seat next to you.

In the spirit of the holiday, I’d like for everyone to upload their favorite romantic Transit Oriented Picture on to the MetroRiderLA Flickr Pool so that we can prove that a car-free life isn’t a love-free life!  Plus it will be really cute… even cuter than Metro’s glowing heart building.  You can check out my contribution right here, adorable isn’t it?  So, please, if you’ve got a picture (and I know you do) of you and your significant other riding the bus, rails, or just being transit oriented in general, share it with us.  Just keep it PG please, ya freaks.  And then tell us your Transit Oriented Plans for this Valentine’s Day!

The last thought ran on too long, and the transition to this thought about politics is therefore not that fluid. A young almanac is precocious enough to discuss politics, and has a surprisingly vivid memory of events dating back to the terrible toddler years. The year 2008 offers unique reflection not of the more timely prior year, but an eight-year epoch of monumental importance. The Year in Transit uses this opportunity to write history’s first draft.

Don’t worry. The predictions are here, as usual. The introduction is longer than in year’s past, because 2008 offers a time of unmitigated spleen-venting that comes along, well every four years. That’s just too long to wait.

The citizens of the United States of America, some by choice, the rest by fiat of the Supreme Court, took an eight-year voyage on the scenic road to hell that began on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in the eleventh month in November, 2000 anno domini. We did not witness the smooth transition of the executive branch for another month, but we eyewitness the pointlessness of the electorate in the process of continuing the chain of succession.

The person who emerged from this dung pile was one George W. Bush, a fortunate son of an aristocratic clan whose pedigree distracted the population from what merit he has performed to warrant elevation to the presidency. And eight years has shown past performance is indicative of future results. With the life he was endowed, George Bush the Lesser became the political, heck the social, equivalent of what is known in sports as a choke artist. The Americans were expecting mediocrity but received a failure spectacular in quantifiable space and time.

Catastrophic is too charitable to describe the administration under Bush the Lesser. The man whose intellectual means came nowhere close to his financial means allowed the most sociopathic, malignant elements of his political party unparalleled power to put ideology into political action, typically with disastrous consequences. His corporate kindred spirits plundered the treasury. Worst of all, he desired a war purely for reasons of vanity and is unaffected by the financial, tactical and human toll his wars have affected.

These eight years have been marked by the worst leadership not just in American history, but the history of civilization.

How can we, as Americans, reconcile this past administration with a remedy and an improvement to our collective lot?

This introduction has already run too long, so the answer, my friends, is blowing at the bottom of the Year in Transit. Without further ado, other than the pimpage for previous editions of, here is 2008: The Year in Transit.

The Year in Transit archives are maintained on the web site of The Transit Coalition. All editions are available here. They are also simulcast on the Usenet group la.transportation. Now, the entree is served. Bon appetit.

• The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority board passes a moratorium preventing planners from holding any more scoping meetings in 2008. Riders are too fatigued from having to go to all the meetings in the last quarter of last year.
• The Inland Empire, reeling from massive foreclosures, comes up with a novel way to maintain fare revenue in light of declining tax revenues. Both Omnitrans and Riverside Transit Agency will allow riders to transport crystal meth made in the region to travel for an extra quarter, as long as the drugs are sealed and not within the riders’ systems.
• The Sprinter opening on January 13 features a christening of the first train of the day and an exorcism for the board members who surely must have been under demonic influence when they approved building this joke of a line.
• Metro stands by its decision to install fare gates after the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department only offers the alternative of “enhanced fare collection techniques.”
• RobDawg’s tenure as a signed MetroRiderLA contributor lasts for exactly one post. He repeats the phrase “transit math” 2,164 times, and he resigns in frustration when all the comments ask “What?”
• Damien Goodmon declines a job offer and a $250,000 compensation package to become the executive director of an upstart Cheviot Hills transit advocacy organization, Concern Trolls for a Safer, Better Expo Line.
• The American Public Transportation Association does not want to see transit oriented development go by the wayside as the housing market continues its downward spiral. It teams up with developers to offer a free home with the purchase of a lifetime bus pass.
• Metro and Santa Monica’s Big Blue Bus come to an agreement to run a single service along Pico Boulevard in time for the December shake-up. Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Burke worries that the change would subsequently close the Crackton Turnaround, which would result in closed businesses and lost jobs at the nearby Midtown Shopping Center. Her last-minute meddling preserves the routes as they are today.
• Gold Coast Transit must make massive service cuts after the Ventura County Transit Commission fines the agency for false advertisement, since there has not been any significant quantity of gold found on Ventura County shores in recorded history. Also, other Ventura County transit agencies frown upon systems whose acronyms cannot be played in Scrabble.
• For his activism against a subway with no funding or formal plan for construction, County Supervisor Mike Antonovich thankfully resigns his post to take a position with a certain presidential candidate’s campaign to stop a similar unfunded and unplanned NAFTA Highway.
• Per the request of Fred Camino, the name of that presidential candidate shall not be mentioned on MetroRiderLA for fear that the candidate’s followers will get too excited about seeing his name in blogs and make the comments section look like Exposition Park when the Raiders played home games.
• The Orange County Transportation Authority earns $1 million for naming its bus rapid transit lines Bravo from the cable station of the same name. The channel will pony up another $500,000 if OCTA can make the BRT lines as gay as the TV programming.
• Monorail fans have their faith strengthened in the gadgetbahn’s viability after Disneyland puts the latest generation of vehicle into active service. When Disney said the vehicles are powered by fairy dust and youthful imagination, the monorailists take the comment literally and proclaim them to be superior fuels to electricity.
• L.A. Sniper Alan Mittelstaedt introduces a new video blog on the Los Angeles City Beat web site. The segment, entitled “Strop’d”, is based on the hit television show “Punk’d” and has the Sniper videotaping himself smacking politicians and journalists upside the head with a leather strop anytime they say or write anything asinine about public transit.
• Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa allots two of his three appointments to the Metro board to the Southern California Transit Advocates’ Kymberleigh Richards and The Transit Coalition’s Bart Reed. The triumph for transit users is short lived, as a minor argument makes the boardroom look like a session of the Taiwanese parliament.

There you have it, 2008: The Year in Transit, in all its glory.

In closing, the rant from the introduction resumes now that the rich, meaty goodness of this satire hoagie has sated the hunger of knowledge. The question posed was something akin to, “Where do we go from here?” Behold, the Year in Transit voter guide.

The best, most informed vote for the 2008 election is not for the candidate that is the most capable, charismatic, moral or even courageous. Rather, the ballot should be cast for the candidate you hate the most and want to see fail. The George W. Bush era produced disasters that started under his tenure but will have repercussions for years, even generations, to come. By and large, our fates are going to be determined by forces stronger, smarter and more determined than our society can bear. And, as of this writing, the 2008 campaign has a good chance of producing either a woman or an African American as the Democratic candidate in November. Should one of these candidates win, their trailblazing will be less remembered than the wave of policy disasters that will chew up and digest their candidacies. Americans are nothing if not judgmental, and if the first woman or African American leaves the office in disgrace, the failure will haunt all future female and black candidates because of the experiences of the first.

The next four years and beyond have our nation cruising along the pothole-scarred road to hell in our Hummers, talking on our cell phones, when the road narrows to a frayed tightrope hanging above an abyss. All human knowledge, and most Vegas odds-makers, say that falling or the frayed wire breaking is a lock. The point is now not to stand behind the odds-beater, but to elect a person you would watch enjoying fail. The Germans call this “schadenfreude.”

This has the most downbeat, callous Year in Transit ever compiled. It’s overabundant in pessimism and dark humor. Something we can use, especially since 2007 saw the passing of two grand masters of this genre, writer Kurt Vonnegut and director Ingmar Bergman. The Year in Transit closes in dedication to these greats.

Peace, y’all.

With all this talk about the Westside alignment, some heated, some humorous I feel that a great disservice is being made to the many fine residents of this city. And I’m not talking about the “obvious” crime element getting speedy and timely access to Los Angeles’ upper gay echelon to do their misdeeds, nor is it our children’s and baby’s safety (like it is elsewhere, lolz) or environmental racism (again like it actually is elsewhere, lolz 2x). But something a great deal more important. Something far more drastic of an oversight than imaginable.

I’m talking about why the Westside connector Hollywood/Highland extension plans have no inclusion of the hot dog eatery, Pink’s. After all, as we learned from Bernard Parks’ obsession with making the Aqua line called the Expo line after Exposition Park, the Los Angeles landscape is never changing and such things as businesses and parks last forever. Hence the designation of the Pink line going directly too Pink’s hot dogs makes perfect sense. Where it should go after that is anybody’s guess, maybe shoot east to Saddle Ranch and down to Canter’s after that. But that’s all for later, for now, lets just get the “Subway to Pink’s” built. We all know the “Subway to the Sea” is a hapless adventure with little guaranteed rider ship. Where as Pink’s, the rider ship is proven. Have you seen the line outside that place? That’s nearly a train car full already. And as the slogan proves, build it and they will come.

And though I don’t think it’s entirely necessary, for their service to this city—as in finally giving us a good reason to extend the subway—is already enough, Pink’s could even give a tiny percentage of their boosted revenue back to Metro. Maybe create a Pink’s fund that pays for a Melrose/La Brea stop rotating art exhibit with themes just as FUN as Pink’s hot dog names. One month could be an ode to Rosie O’Donnell, the next to Lord of the Rings. Just think of all the culture we’d be bringing to this city if we just brought this city a much-needed “Subway to Pink’s” to begin with. NYC, London, Tokyo, Paris, wouldn’t know what hit them when they got a load of Los Angeles’ cultural offerings.

In the end, what I care about most, and I’m sure what we all care about most, is what’s best for this city. What’s best for our children and what’s best for our friends visiting that want an “only in LA” cheap eat. And the only way to do that is to build the “Subway to Pink’s.” For did we not name Washington DC after Washington? Los Angeles after the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim? Then why would we not name the Pink line after that actually good and not at all terribly overpriced and underwhelming hot dog establishment, Pink’s? After all, a line down La Brea would be just as underwhelming.

Aside from weekly street cleaning, parking is a complete nightmare. Credit Flickr my f_cking photos’.

There are a lot of things in this world that I’ve regretted. That I try to forget from my past. Events I would rather have not partaken in. Ideas I should have never let come to pass (but his sister was just so hot). And in the end the only thing you can do is be positive and try to learn from all of your past mistakes so that such things don’t happen again. Whoever spoke at your high school graduation probably said it; followed by an evening of intoxication at some stranger’s house you might have sat next to in Marine Biology. Whose carpet got ruined and mother’s votive candles got stolen, and the next day I learned I never need that many votive candles lit at once again.

Such was the case this morning as I was walking to the bus stop. I hadn’t got intoxicated the night before or anything like that, but when I saw some guy from my building running out the front door in flip flops, sweats, an old long sleeve t-shirt and hair awry, that old sinking feeling of a blemished past came racing back. Like an ex-junkie stepping around a chalk lipped maniac talking to a broken pay phone, my god, I thought, that used to be me. That used to be me waking up an hour ahead of my alarm and scurrying out to the street to add change to the meter so I could rush back to my comforter confines to rest for another forty-five minutes. Only to repeat it again so I could get a shower in soon after. Though I usually wore a hat to block some of the light and because I had a slight thing for this Armenian “entertainer” that was always coming back from the gym no matter what time I was coming or going.

However, the worse times were the ones without such silver change. The truly bad times, continuing with the junkie analogy, were probably akin to when he decided crack was so necessary he placed things in his mouth he wished he hadn’t (per Bob Saget in “Half Baked”). Those were the times I had to drive my stupid car around for fifteen minutes to find a different spot on the safe side of the street because of street cleaning. Oh the torture it all was. Twice a week for three years I partook in this absurd game of drudgery. Monday morning after Monday morning and Tuesday morning too if I got extra unlucky and didn’t get home early enough to find a safe spot again. And it was all because I was convinced, like the junkie and his crank, I absolutely needed a car. That I couldn’t live without it.

Live without a car? In LA? Impossible!

But alas, it is possible. It’s all so very possible. In fact it’s not only possible, it’s probably the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Returning an accidentally purchased wired Xbox360 controller to Best Buy is harder and it’s still at my place a year later. All you have to do, and this is really it, is get on a bus. That’s it. I know, I know. Absurd right? Returning a controller you’ll never use is much easier than converting to public transit. But it’s not. It’s not even close. Converting to public transit takes absolutely no effort. Alls you do is walk to your closest bus stop and, wait for it, get on. The bus will actually come to you! You don’t even need to hail it down and beat out other people to get the ride like a taxi. In fact, it’ll take your girlfriend, boyfriend, brother, mother, grandfather, and your squatter room mate from college who refuses to get a job because he thinks he’s the next Wes Anderson too. That’s right, it’ll take everyone you know and more. In fact, it’ll take lots of strangers too and instead of running around looking for a spot frustrated and tired, fighting the girl next door to you for the last remaining spot, you’ll be riding next to her and learning that it’s she who’s cooking and making the hallway smell so good on Wednesday nights. And not only that, but you’re invited because she always cooks too much!

So if you’re that person above. If you’re waking up twice, even once a week so you can drive your car around in a monotony paralleled only by the dull hum of a florescent light, now’s your chance to act. Now’s your chance to see if maybe this whole public transit idea isn’t so bad after all. Now’s your chance to meet your neighbors, meet and see all of LA the way it should be seen. Amongst it and within it. With a book. With a friend. With both. Stressfree and smiling and with a whole bunch of extra money and knowledge that things really can be better in this city. Things can really be everything we want them to be if we all just jump on board. Trains are coming. I swear they really are. And busses aren’t as bad as your co-workers say. They’re better than you can imagine.

And if you’re still not sure, if you’re still so addicted to your car, just think about what delicacies you’re missing out on every Wednesday night.

Pork chops are always strapped for cash, good thing Metro now takes debit cards. Credit Flickr jesusskateboarding.com

Didn’t dress up this year? Didn’t get a pillowcase and beg for candy only to be let down by an apple? Didn’t think, you know what, I’m going as an ironic icon from the early ’90s? Answer no to all of these? If so then I hope you at least decided to ride around on Metro’s pride and joy Red Line last night because boy oh boy was that a site to see.

As we’ve all been accustomed to by living the public transit life, the Red Line, though packed to near capacity during peak hours, nights are usually much more docile. Nights greet our beloved subway with a calm hand and soothing massage. She’s (our subway’s, like boats, female) not working all that hard and is allowed to cruise through the serene LA underground in comfort. Sure, some guy might be eating sunflowers and spitting the shells out on the seat next him, and a group of kids might be swinging around on her hand rails like strippers, but for the most part, she’s got it made in the shade. However, most nights are not Halloween nights. Cuz on Halloween nights, bitch has gotta work.

Since I spent the entire weekend in a costumed stupor I decided to take last night off and just ride around to see all the debauchery through sober lenses rather than a cloud of alcohol and wigs. I knew there were crazy old good times happening in Hollywood so I decided why not go there first, and I was right. I got all I could truly ask for and Metro gave me a front seat to it all.

At first, when going down the escalators to 7th/Metro station, I feared that I might be let down by it all. That everyone would be doing their normal insane routine of driving to the party so they could drive drunk on the way home. Because hell, driving drunk in bumper-to-bumper traffic isn’t really driving drunk, right? However, when I reached the final descent to the platform such fears were quickly dashed away for below me was a sea of strangers. An entire platform, and I mean from end to end, was full of every type of person you could think of dressed as every type of thing you could think of. It was awesome and chaotic and frenzied and fun all at once and I immediately regretted letting a friend borrow my camera over the weekend. There were at least five announcements in five minutes to stay behind the “black line” and one announcement threatening an arrest of someone for doing god knows what. It felt like a weird government experiment on which costumes provoked the most insanity and therefore would be banned the following the year.

At 9:42pm the train rolled on in with screams of joy from the Wizard of Oz crew and the hoard boarded fanatically. Wisely, Metro kept all the train cars on after rush hour so I was able to grab a seat in one of the last ones before the hoard, who couldn’t fit in the middle cars, came rushing on.

Next to me sat down, what I gathered from the gray ears and poorly drawn on whiskers, a rabbit, if not at least some sort of woodland creature whose breasts showed signs of falling out. When she asked me why I wasn’t dressed up I safely avoided her perks and answered with the kind of eye contact they teach at a Tony Robbins convention. She still seemed bummed so I let her know that her costume was great, which was obviously what she was looking for from me, and we spoke no more. All around were kids dressed as superheroes and cheerleaders and teens dressed as, what still seems to be one of the most re-created face make-up jobs ever, the Crow. Parents held tightly to their mini Draculas while everyone else tried to avoid gawking at the beautiful and busty Latina dressed as a Playboy bunny. Most, including myself and two Scientologists (curses! we have something in common), failed.

Finally we arrived at the biggest destination spot, Hollywood and Highland. Leaving the train took some effort for the bunny rabbit girl next to me was fighting with her Jack the Pumpkin King boyfriend, but with a bit of extra shoving everyone successfully made it off. (Wtf? It’s like we’re in NYC?) Blocking the escalator was a woman screaming at everyone for being rude. And though her 200+ lb girth and witch’s hat were intimidating, it did nothing to scare off the mass of goblins, hot dogs, nurses, cowboys, cowgirls, apes, and my favorite of the night, each member of Guns’ and Roses. But where was Bucket Head, I wondered?

Atop Hollywood and Highland was the same insanity only louder because of the millions of car horns going off and fanatics preaching the bible, which could’ve just been a really good costume. Cross and hellfire and all! Hollywood was truly alive. All the usual performers were out there, which didn’t make any sense to me seeing as there were now a handful of Darth Vaders, Spidermen, Marilyn Monroes, and an endless number of Jack Sparrows mingling about. I would assume that of all nights for the regulars to take off, it should most definitely be Halloween. But they were all out there as usual and Shrek seemed to be getting the most attention.

The night passed like this for some time and after visiting a friend, getting some food down the road at Scooby’s, I realized it was nearly 12:45am and the last train heading east was at 1:02. So I headed back and descended casually down the escalators with the last of the late night stragglers. Ahead of me was a girl dressed as Eve, meaning she went as Naked, and her destitute squaw girl friend too poor to pay for fabric, though the boots seemed to be quite expensive. Needless to say I enjoyed the escalator ride more than I’ve enjoyed any escalator ride ever I’d say—though there was that one time—and the slew of guys hooting and hollering them out had never enjoyed buying a Metro ticket so much in their lives I’m sure either. But the two girls and their two less than hollered at friends were fearless and no amount of calls hindered their monumental Metro sex appeal and even if it had, right passed the ticket machines were two LA Sheriff’s posting up for just such an occasion. It wasn’t necessary, these two girls were more intimidating than anyone I’d seen all night, but it’s always nice to have that reassurance.

The platform was full again and the fun times continued and I wished I had dressed up after all. But watching it I was content all the same. A costume and light and sex show for a mere $2.50. That’s cheaper than Amsterdam. Halloween by way of Metro truly is the answer. Aside from all the drunk driving and traffic and expensive parking, it’s just so much more fun to experience the thousands upon thousands doing the same. Now just imagine if we had that Pink line to WeHo going.

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.

So I listened to the aspiring actor/writer/director/model and took all surface streets. And after several tests against this theory I learned that he and all the rest that preached this were right. “Staying off the freeways” was in deed the fastest way for me to traverse this insane city. Therefore, no matter the distance I had to go I avoided the freeways entirely and couldn’t believe that anyone took them within the city limits at all.

It became an adventure trying to skip from street to street, from neighborhood to neighborhood. Memorizing which streets had lights that crossed main roads and which had the ever-unfortunate stop sign. Which streets had speed humps or bumps and which had street parking that nearly blocked the entire street so that only one direction could go at a time and if you weren’t going that direction you were effed for five to ten minutes because like all of LA, the cars never stop coming. (I’m talking about pretty much any street in the square of Fairfax, Third, La Brea and Fountain).

But as much as I tried to enjoy this zigzagging of the city it grew tiresome and commuting became the nightmare that everyone talked about. Sadly this occurred within the first two months and an unknown uncle didn’t die and leave me an estate so I had to continue on this fruitless journey twice a day everyday. That is until the day I decided to say, “Screw this nonsense, I’m taking the bus.”

However, seeing as this all occurred before my adoption of the public transit lifestyle (going on a year and a half now) I believed that all the old theories and practices were true. That driving between certain hours was best, this direction was best, these streets were best— “take fountain, you gotta take fountain”— was all nonsense. It was all just ways to feel enlightened as a driver, ways to form camaraderie, rather than what it really was— the ultimate state of denial. Millions of drivers, myself being equally guilty at the time, forming this absurd pact with each other based on absolutely nothing. Talking of traffic as a certain point of pride rather than the future demise to this great city. And what’s worse, it has hardly changed. I still hear people saying the same things I knew to be false at the time yet repeated it in truth so that the conversation wouldn’t end on what I had just ordered for lunch. So that we could all believe, and maniacally so, that it’s what made us truly from Los Angeles.

And now riding on the BBB 10 from downtown to Santa Monica I’ve realized that even the oldest mantra, even the most repeated insider info in LA’s illustrious history is false. That “stay off the freeways” was just as absurd as saying “stay on the freeways” and “build more freeways.” Because in all actuality none of the traffic myths based on the private auto are true anymore. That it’s all just that, myth.

Our prosperous future can’t rest on the building and widening of more freeways or one-way designations of our surface streets. Yellow lined pavement will have nothing to do with it at all, unless those yellow lines mark the designation on where the tunnel west is going. Where the track paralleling the 405 is going. And where the LAX and Westside alignment are going.

Last night I got a ride home from work with a friend. It was 8pm. Ahead of us was the BBB 7 and after some zigging to Olympic, the MTA 28, both of which we couldn’t catch. Traffic was supposed to be cleared, was supposed to be better; after all it was after rush hour. The night before I was on those busses we couldn’t catch and I watched the same cars I saw last night— the same cars from the night before that and the morning before that. And back here on the 10 heading west, at an all-new hour, I see them all again. Cars traveling bumper-to-bumper full of anger and annoyance wishing there was a better solution than just, “take fountain, you gotta take fountain.”