No entity without identity

By Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters
June 28th, 2009 @ 7:50 PM Commentary, Driving, Fun, Music, West Side
bumps-vs-humps

Bumps versus humps

Since I arrived in Los Angeles, and to my lovely Fairfax District, I have noticed a gesture toward block-by-block neighborhood autonomy. It is apparently the perogative of each residential block to decide whether it wishes to be a “bump street” or a “hump street”. There is nuance to this decision; for although there is no distinction in the physical form of the traffic regulation elements, the semantic distinction is dizzy with moral and aesthetic nuance.

Those of us on hump streets scoff at the crude vulgarity of the bumpsters. Sure they can regulate traffic speeds, but they just lack the refined tastes, the cultural cache of speed humps. One gets a sense of mismatch about them, something like when some Hollywood poseur on Melrose wanders onto West Hollywood’s stylish Melrose Avenue, and looks so garishly out of place.humps-on-roadAs I’ve told readers, before arriving at this realm of distinction, I was a foolish East Coast intellectual, who frankly knew nothing of humps at all. We lived in a world of bumps in Massachusetts. Fortunately, I found a musical introduction to LA culture before my arrival, although the meaning only unfolded with residency. If you can see this, then you might need a Flash Player upgrade or you need to install Flash Player if it's missing. Get Flash Player from Adobe.

Thanks go out to Willard Van Orman Quine, and his Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (1969), for assistance with the title of this essay.

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  5. Why Does No One in the Valley Understand 4-Way Stops?

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6 Comments so far

  1. forcor on June 28th, 2009 @ 9:26 pm

    I was in Mobile, Alabama a few years ago and noted that the signs there read "Speed Lumps".

    Still on the lookout for "Speed Mumps".


  2. EL CHAVO! (elchavo) on June 28th, 2009 @ 10:44 pm

    Fairfax District? Man, that so two years ago!
    http://laeastside.com/2009/06/how-it-begins-renaming-a-neighborhood/


  3. Verdell Wilson (missrftc) on June 29th, 2009 @ 10:03 am

    Humps signs always make me start singing, "WHY DON’T WE DO IT IN THE ROAD?"


  4. rollerzz on June 29th, 2009 @ 10:44 am

    I believe the term in some parts of the world is "sleeping policeman".


  5. Burns! (burns) on June 29th, 2009 @ 12:17 pm

    I wrote something about this back in March, though I clearly wasn’t as thoughtful or eloquent.
    http://la.metblogs.com/2009/03/25/icme-caution/


  6. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters (lotle) on June 29th, 2009 @ 12:21 pm

    Sorry I hadn’t noticed your prior art, Burns! I would have referenced it. Happily, the magic Wordpress software figured out the connection, and attached a link at bottom.

    I had thought of mentioning the possibility of "lumps"… and of making some bad joke about metastasis. I somehow refrained (until just now).



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