gringa without a car

green line and travellin'

2008-04-11T10:39:00.001-07:00

i'm at a GIS workshop (which is neat, because it's free and will give me a sense of GIS, which is cool mapping software), and it's in el segundo, which while a bit random, is exciting because it allowed me to take the final unexplored mta rail line, the green line, normally kind of an unuseful line. mta rail system, i have conquered you. not really. but i have ridden all your lines, if ridden is a word. it took a long time but it was kind of pleasant, seeing new neighborhoods in the early morning light.

i was feeling tough for coming from so far away, but people actually came to this from oakland and the central valley, which is crazy! dudes iz here from all over, and coming from far and yon for a two day workshop. this seems crazy to me, but then, people drive for hours every day just to get to work, and i don't understand that either.

addressing reluctance for yuppies to ride transit

2008-04-10T13:09:00.000-07:00

i understand that many who are not, as tony says, raising their fist and crying "social justiiiiiiiiice" do not enjoy riding buses because there are humorous/irritating characters riding the bus also. one dude in a transit-oriented-development class went so far as to suggest a class system, which is hella lame, but he does actually ride the bus, so it clearly addresses some kind of demonstrable reaction to transit and encouraging ridership.

if we are going to get people out of their cars, we are going to need to address this issue (or make driving very very painful).

clearly one "disincentive" to riding is that often homeless folks use transit as a safe place to get out of the elements (and perhaps also get from place to place, but also for shelter). this is not such a big deal except that as they a) don't have anywhere to keep their stuff and b) don't have anywhere to take a shower, they impact the other riders with a) really big amounts of stuff and b) body odor that fears no one.

in a multi-disciplinary approach to bleeding heartedness, if we had better social services for homeless folks, e.g. showers and lockers and safe places for them to hang out so they didn't take the bus for shelter, we might be better able to convince mainstream dudes to take the bus/train?

do the test!

2008-03-17T11:39:00.000-07:00

even better than the "carcissism" posters by the MTA is this bitchin' video from city of londON (sorry i don't know how to embed non-youtube videos).

love/hate relationship

2008-03-07T15:07:00.001-08:00

oh the MTA, my relationship with thee is like to that of a lover, with moments of intense joy, followed by near-tears sense of betrayal and wondering of why you never come round anymore. yesterday i endured a painful and emotional hour-long wait for the bus home, due to an accident in westwood. no buses for an hour, then all of a sudden a burst of them, a clutch, of three 2 buses and a pacoima-bound rapid. maybe next time, my friends, you could call the other 2 buses and let them know STAY OUT OF THE ACCIDENT AREA so they could turn around earlier and not throw off the schedules of everyone along the 2 busline stretching from westwood to downtown for the next hour. this is the future, friends. let's use technology. i almost cried the last time i had to wait for the 2 at this very stop for almost an hour (after a similarly frustrating wait at the non-existent, no stop not even a stone to stand on in beverly hills moments earlier) at the end of a very very long and stressful day two weeks ago. COME MORE OFTEN, BUSES. COME MORE OFTEN.

but then this morning, i took the red line to north hollywood, and after momentary confusion (they lack about one key sign to make it really clear) found the orange line, and delightedly took it for the first time to the valley. it took less than an hour door to door, very awesome! the orange line is really pleasant to ride on as well, as its corridor is beautifully landscaped and there is no traffic. ah-the way buses should be. given their own lane! delightful! on the way back to the office, waited less than fifteen minutes for the next orange line bus, maybe ten minutes for the subway, and maybe two minutes for the one-stop trip i take on the rapid from macarthur park to the office. joyful transit riding on a beautiful sunny day. only blight was a surly white guy whose shoes were coming apart (a sure sign of poverty, i believe) who was grumbling about various things including talking crap about the cheerful latina ladies who were happily chatting and comparing jewelry in the front of the bus. why hate on friendly smiling ladies? no reason to do it. but all in all, a very pleasant transit experience. timing is obviously key in the enjoyment of transit ridership.

other small notes: a tiny black woman all in black waiting for the subway with totally overwhelming lion's mane of bouffant orange hair, a woman with a very well-mannered small dog in her lap on the bus, a latino father and young son in matching fancy clothes and slicked up fauxhawks, a painfully traffic-y bus ride from west hollywood to usc for a meeting made much more palatable by the exceeding friendliness of the driver, who seemed to know 3/4 of the regulars taking the bus, small birds making their homes above the lights at the entrance to the north hollywood stop, a dude singing loudly along to whatever parts he knew of that to which he was listening (boo).

hard out here for a cyclist

2008-02-11T13:56:00.001-08:00

forget pimps. from where i sit their "job" seems pretty easy: collect money for the services of others, whom they sass and control (and no, i didn't watch all of "hustle and flow", it grew tiresome almost immediately).

it's hard out here for a cyclist! the big city, and i doubt LA is unique in this, is a tough place to ride a bike. for that matter, rural areas are a bit tricky too, what with perhaps not having paved roads. but in the big city, you have to compete with cars for right of way, dodging monstrous potholes and glass shards and random nails and tacks.

and grumpy, grumpy aggressive drivers who operate under the delusion that cyclists are supposed to stay off the road, when in fact, we are supposed to be ON the road. not on the sidewalk. friendly west hollywood has signs along sunset to this affect, trying to teach both drivers and cyclists that bicycles are not allowed on sidewalks. a lot of accidents are caused when drivers turn into a driveway, and hit a cyclist on the sidewalk they did not expect.

but many times that i'm biking, people yell angrily, honking and cursing me from their cars because i'm in the road. or dudes whistle, which baffles me, because i honestly think they're doing it to irritate, because they look back at you to see if you flip them the bird, and seem pleased if you do (so i must stop reacting in that fashion). then i get angry and am reactionary and bike with a chip on my shoulder. i get grumpy when i get a blister on my thumb from replacing my tube because a monster pothole popped my tube. i get quite rude when bus driver's have broken bike racks and give me sass about it. it makes me sad as a designy/planny person when there is nowhere safe to lock a bike.

but then...there's the times when i'm whistling carefree down highland, feeling the sun on my back. or how it takes 25 minutes to get to work no matter what, and i don't have to navigate a parking lot. or when i'm coming home on hollywood, cackling inwardly as i pass with great ease and speed by all the party traffic. haha! eat my dirt! maybe it's the good life after all...

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back!

2008-01-31T11:22:00.000-08:00

this blog died down when we moved to SLO, as i wasn't doing a lot of alternative transitting. before i worked also at TJ's, i took the one bus route to and from work, which was good times, and so i could have a bit of transit reminiscing of my morning bus driver rose, who would sometimes wait for me, and then she retired, and the dude who replaced her, who drove like a bat out of hell through our two-stop town. interesting ridership: punk-ass white dudes with DUIs, crazies who i'm glad weren't driving, and the nice teacher being environmentally conscious. waiting for the bus on cold cold cold mornings, racing to catch the bus and falling. then after i started at TJ's i drove a tremendous amount and was sad for my wanton oil-consumption, but did enjoy the lovely countryside and the hum0rous country music on KJUG, and my friend i would pass, the llama.

but now, we're back in LA, and trying not to drive again. except to get groceries sometimes, or other tricky type things. look for stories about the 2 along the sunset strip, biking in west hollywood, and other excitement!

if you too are trying to not drive, i would love to have additional voices on here. you don't have to be a gringa, claro!

boda y blowout y broadway

2006-07-29T01:50:00.000-07:00

i got all "must do it now!" about picking up my wedding dress on the way home from work and walked (getting incredibly sweaty) from vermont and sunset to matrushka, my friendly neighborhood commie dressmakers, to get it right as they were closing. then of course i had to walk home without wrinkling it, so for a long time i fluttered it out behind me like a flag, not letting it touch the ground. but then-blessings!-a bus stopped for me, sort of in the middle of the road not at a stop, out of the kindness of the lady driver. hurrah! a skinny black man yelled "hey! where are you going to wear that?" as i hung the dress on the upper hand rail. when i told him my wedding, he congratulated me. then a very neat looking old lady started interrogating me about where the wedding was, if the dress was vintage, where i got it, who had made the dress, how much it was (she was a little shocked i think, by the price), what the groom was going to wear, how i was going to wear my hair, and, finding that it met her approval, said "i like it." just i was about to get off.

it was a fun experience. hannah arendt would have approved, i think. the ridiculous amount of driving that occurred in the lead up, occurence, and post-wedding though, was less exciting. sorry environment, for those 500 miles in a week.

in bike news, bianchi got her THIRD flat (this time a doozie giganto nail in the trickier hind wheel), right before i left on vacation and i had to carry her like 12 blocks downtown. sadly i was only recently able to get her fixed but now she has a shiny new tire and tube!

in recent transit news, i now change at broadway and fourth to get to my internship, instead of at macarthur park, which is very sad. i miss the ken mart blasting terrible pop, the orange juice lady, the friendly green and fountains of the park, the cool lighting, even the crazy shoe shiner and the "cigaro cigaro cigaro" woman. i miss all the people rushing about. pershing square stop is like, business people and homeless people. pershing square is a fake park, and the stop is hostile, inside and out.

tourism

2006-06-01T22:19:00.000-07:00

summer + LA + subway = lots of tourists.

i was riding later than usual today and was confused by the large number of people (particularly white and asian people) when it struck me-summer. in hollywood. on the public transport. ah-hah! so many tourists.

in bike news, bike wheel seems to be thwarting the tire even though alex so kindly replaced my tube. flat strikes again, this time on the way to soccer. kind soccer pal yoshua gives me a ride to a very rat pack bar so i can get picked up somewhere safe instead of the middle of a dark griffith park (lions and coyotes and rascals, oh my!).

the other day there was a panoply of crazy folks, a dessicated crack addict, a fat orange haired man in a hawaian shirt standing with his head back and mouth wide open, a woman angrily thrusting a blank piece of paper at passersby, the guy who doesn't look homeless asking for change in a french fry paper basket, wearing innapropriate shorts.

freaky friday

2006-05-17T00:26:00.000-07:00

for me and bianchi. start off biking to los feliz hills to pick up a small piece of art. alls well so far. then as i'm biking down vermont, giddy with the slope, i try and stop at a light. but unbeknownst to me, the shirt that was tied around my waist is now completely sucked in to my brake (situation), so instead of stopping gradually i stop all at once completely and i fly off my bike onto my knuckles, elbow, and inner calf. gross. so i get up, make a fuss, get myself back together, and go to my meeting and then on to work with these gnarly wounds.

it's not bianchi's fault, it's mine, so i go on the midnight ride. everything's going great until we end the ride at the echo, when i discover my wheel is flat. bummer! first flat! i have no idea how to fix it, though i am prepared with a patch kit. i manage to catch a bus immediately but it only takes me about a fourth of the way, so i walk from circus of books home, carrying bianchi. all i can say is it's a good thing bianchi's not a horse, or i don't know what i would have done.

happily people did offer to help both times, but there wasn't any real way they could.

so bianchi is on a break until i fix the flat. sorry bike week!

p.s. to route 217

2006-05-11T00:08:00.000-07:00

monday i could smell the lipstick of the woman sitting next to me on the bus bench, as i ate my cold veggie hot dog. that i could smell it meant it was SO old that it was rotten. gross.

p.p.s. the 217 is actually much much more than just enabling my undergarments for w-day. it also links me without driving to the region to which i still drive-fairfax. whole foods (both!), swingers, genghis cohen, chao krung, etc. maybe not manis, but the rest of the glory.

though that lipstick-uncool.

new route and catch-up

2006-05-10T23:57:00.000-07:00

sorry it's been awhile. i've had some interesting comments lately, and also some really pleasant interactions. weird: one guy who asked me if i was a white girl, a man who told me "to tell the nig**r to take care of the kids" (what? what?), and a creepily male dominated late night bus ride. on the nice side, a really lovely conversation with a random and very cute young black fellow who edits films, and another really lovely conversation with a very cute young black fellow at the immigrant rights march, where i got so much chain grease on my calves from walking my bike around it was too crazy.

i've been getting a lot of chain grease on my calves lately. i pretend it's rugged. but really it's just messy.

i saw a girl from bitchen at soccer yesterday; she was nice and conversational and had a cap of curls, like in stories. i devote my heart to the nice encouraging people at soccer who do not reveal their exasperation with my crapness.

next week is bike to work week on the mta!! woot!! public space avenger would be out in full excited force, except that it is also the week of our fundraiser. i will try to still bike to work every day, but will not be able to hoot around photographing and biking and subwaying as i would want to do. as i am wont to do.

cool site: bikemetro.com, which, when it works, is like mapquest for bike routes. and it tells you how many calories you're burning and how much pollution you're preventing by biking!

so my newly attempted bus route is to go from here to the grove on the 217, which, while i hate the grove, seems better ecologically than driving to glendale, beverly center (which i hate more than the grove, actually, though i'm not sure why), santa monica (the most pc consumer orgy, because it's public space), or pasadena to buy an underwear system for w-day. i must try and resist the false charms of the faked up grove. resist!

my new bike route is not really new, but rather stolen from alex and stacy, my inspiration of health. take sunset to park, then get on glendale to 1st, take flower or some such south to SAJE. woot again!

signing out. more pics soon-i have a bundle of irritatingly pretentious artsy bus shots.

sunset over beverly station

2006-04-11T16:14:00.000-07:00

sunset over beverly station
Originally uploaded by tigrejones.

an almost texas-worthy sunset.

murmurs and handouts

2006-03-29T21:44:00.000-08:00

last week, a stylish white haired man murmured to me on the elevator, asking whether my bike's frame was steel or not. a young guy with a stroller, hoping to get on the elevator, got upset with bianchi and told me to move my bike sideways, but that would have smacked and then crushed a number of people, so i said i couldn't. the young man decried me. the elevator door closed. and the white haired man quietly defended me, and murmured that the young man could have asked nicer.

tonight, an old korean woman sat on a small latino child who only took up about half his seat. so she squished him over, and then patted him brusquely, thanking him in strained english. his mom looked beningly on, scootching the child closer to her and smiling calmly at me.* after the korean woman was settled in, she started passing out "where will you go?" and "there is a better way!" tracts and pamphlets to those sitting around her, including the very young child whose seat she was sharing. "no eng-erish?" she asked. the small child looked wide eyed back. it was an interesting interaction. then as i was getting ready to get off, she smushed her arm between me and the pole to hold on, too short to grab the hanging strap. personal space is clearly not a hangup of hers :).

the bus is weird when it rans, it gets so foggy and crowded and steamy, like a greenhouse. blech! but, better than biking in the rain, which equals water being sprayed directly into my pants. nice to be more connected to the weather though.

*i have to say, i have am extremely impressed with the calmness of a lot of the latina moms i see. grandmas sitting on your kids, filthy stinky people with huge bags bumping up against you, people who are out of their mind and shouting curses, old white grandpas curmudgeonly griping and shoving at everyone. all in stride.

seen and heard

2006-03-20T19:55:00.000-08:00

on public transport last few days:

friday, a man from arizona, adrian, who used his income tax return to come visit his sister and party, asked me many questions about what i like to do in my spare time and if i go to school or have a boyfriend and if i got my clothes for free or paid for them and if i'm from la (because he has a second sense about these things) and wanted to become my best pal on the bus. i resisted because he was dry-shaving his head and face with a disposable rasor on the bus. interesting pickup technique, adrian. this is the second weirdest thing i've seen someone do; the first weirdest is the guy who was using a lighter to burn his hand.

on the subway home friday, i saw a white man asleep on four boxes of comic books, and a black man wearing a rumpled golden crown and draped in probably 20 yellow beaded necklaces, perched atop a lot of luggage bursting at the seems.

this morning on a very crowded wilshire rapid, a black drag queen with crimped hair was complaining to his protegé (who was wearing overalls with only one buckle done up, and a plaid top and pigtails) that he would never learn and thus the mentor would be stuck tutoring him forever. then he yelled "hey! hey! hey girl!" and, not being the only girl on the bus, i didn't respond until he yelled "hey girl in the green blouse!*". so i said "oh?" and then he complemented me (in much more dulcet tones) on my "very nice, really nice" (but actually super-crap) boombox that i was taking for work. well thanks!

then on my way home from the metro stop tonight i saw a woman wearing a showgirl outfit, with thigh highs, garters, a corset, and ruffled panties walking in the rain to her car. she needs a trench coat, methinks.

plus, yesterday we six going to the concert had such excellent public transport luck that we decided someone must have put out pudding for the mta gods. woohoo!

*whoah he said blouse! only my grandma says that.

and the kindness of strangers

2006-03-15T12:35:00.000-08:00

yesterday i bit it again, under entirely the same circumstances as the last (and first) time i wiped out (see below for re-post from other blog as even was pre-this blog). i even re-scrubbed the same exact place on my elbow, like in "dead men don't wear plaid" when steve martin gets shot in the same hole in his shoulder three times. and this time i totally ravaged my knee and the blood streamed down my leg on the bus. i had a heinous sinus headache and was bleeding on the bus and i was sad and whimpered. but then this nice lady subtly stuffed a packet of kleenex into my mitt and saved the day, so i could blow my gross nose and wipe up my blood, sweat and tears. she called me sweetie when she got off at her stop, and even the bus driver asked if i was OK. a lovely opposite interaction with strangers as the weird ones i talked about yesterday.

after i peel off the fancy 3M bandage i will photograph the gore for ya. yes!

from feb. 7:
it was heading back to thai town from sanmo somewhere around 3:00 am that i bit it on the streets of beverly hills, craning my head to see if the bus was coming on some under-construction pavement where the street was much lower than the sidewalk. hence the gnarly flesh wound on my elbow. i would like to be tougher about the whole thing but holy smokes does this little critter throb. ouch!

strangers without candy

2006-03-14T11:33:00.000-08:00

i find that the bike, while also a force of protection as i can bike quickly by people trying to talk to me, is sometimes a conversation piece for strangers when i'm waiting for transport. sometimes this is fun but often it's sorta weird, as kooky characters try to engage me and i don't know how to react besides being polite and then reading my harper's. once a tiny, old, impressively wild looking lady gave me a long talk about how i should get rid of some of my gears, saw off the top bar, and bike on the sidewalk because the street is too treacherous. yesterday a fellow told me it was the "best workout there is. i mean it. really." and this morning, a man with tenative english warned me that i should not "drive" my bike in the streets of macarthur park because people are crazy and don't know how to drive. of course a lady as pretty as bianchi would get lots of comments, but i'm shy and wish she could answer for herself.

S-s-s-s A-a-a-a F-f-f-f E-e-e-e T-t-t-t Y-y-y-y

2006-03-09T11:41:00.000-08:00

"SAFETY RIDE!

We can ride if we want to, but don't leave your
friends behind...

Test your safety skills, rain or shine, this Friday
with Midnight Ridazz. Don't take any chances, we
expect you to be fully prepared with helmets, flashing
lights, reflective clothing, first aid kits, condoms,
hair nets, traffic cones, fireproof shields, stun
guns, your blankie, whatever makes you feel cozy and
secure. Reckless Ridazz get no gold star."

Because if friends don't ride, their no friends of mine. We can ride, we can ride, everyone look at your pants.

why thank you

2006-03-09T11:04:00.000-08:00

yesterday i got on the elevator into the red line with my bici facing the wall. as we were about to go down a man lunged through the closing doors into the elevator, which was impressive given his size did not suggest a wicked indiana jones-type lunging ability. it was a bit impersonal of me to be standing with my face to the elevator wall but it would only be more awkward to arrange myself to face a stranger on purpose. the older man's voice boomed "you're a gorgeous chunk of girl" to the back of my head. "uh, thanks" i semi-curtsied in response, adjusting the hem of my shirt in an unexplainable tic. and that was it. he didn't have anything else he wanted to add, so it was kind of nice. just a random complement.

it makes me think about how personal a moment it can be to share an elevator with a stranger, and how that we ride in such small spaces with each other demonstrates a gut level of trust for our fellow elevator taker. like people who smoke outside and become friends, we who are too lazy or too impaired to take the escalator into the subway become bound in our reliance on the little glass box.

totally deep.

The RideArc ride for March

2006-03-01T11:08:00.000-08:00

The RideArc ride for March
Originally uploaded by tigrejones.

if you're interested! they say "ride with us as we explore the sites, sounds, and smells of one of the largest Food Provision industries in the United States and it's woven fabric into life in Los Angeles."

this is a nice ride that waits for newbies. and they capitalize in interesting places.

Painter on Blue Line

2006-02-22T15:30:00.000-08:00

Painter on Blue Line
Originally uploaded by tigrejones.

he's protecting his paint box but in a friendly intertwined fingers way. with bianchi in the corner.

transit seat collage

2006-02-22T15:28:00.000-08:00

lady in red waits for red line

2006-02-19T14:09:00.000-08:00

lady in red
Originally uploaded by tigrejones.

this fancy old lady is reason enough to love the subway, despite it's foolishness at times.

hannah arendt says "go outside!"

2006-02-17T11:18:00.000-08:00

the writer and political theorist hannah arendt, who went out with philosopher heavy heidegger, fled germany in the 1930s (she was jewish), and hung out in paris with philosopher heavy walter benjamin. she was the first female full professor at princeton and wrote "the origins of totalitarianism", "on violence" and "on revolution". a smart cookie all around, so to speak.

but she also wrote about public space, and how to have freedom we must have action, and in order for actions to be meaningful, they must be in public so that there is a "context in which individuals can encounter one another as members of a community"*. she wrote that "we first become aware of freedom or its opposite in our intercourse with others, not in the intercourse with ourselves". you won't know how to think about what you're doing and who you are if you do it alone, you must go out into public spaces and see how other people act to have a context. you might not realize you're crazy or that you're genius or totally normal and a-ok.

i like this idea and think it directly applies to taking public transport where you see a wide range of characters, from adorable kid-parent interactions to sitting next to people that smell because they don't have access to a shower to business men and gangsters and punks and fashion students etc. if i didn't take public transport, i would pretty much only see people that are like me, my six co-workers and five good friends and the people who work at whole foods and trader joes, and the bicycle gangers. i think it's healthy to be reminded of and interact with the rest of the world. so thanks, hannah arendt, for proverbially "keeping it real".

*Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy : http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/arendt.htm

inauguration

2006-02-14T12:01:00.000-08:00

of a new blog to chronicle my (mis)adventures taking public transit and biking in a city where supposedly nobody walks, the city of angels. my companion, the bianchi lugosi, and i, alongside millions of other angelenos, take the sometimes laudable, sometimes evil, MTA to our daily destinations (or bike there). this blog is titled thusly as i am often the only gringa white girl on the bus route that takes me to work.

image: mi amiga celeste con mi on the blue line