How sweet is this? On Monday, LA DOT started a public beta for receiving live tracking information of your friendly neighborhood DASH service. If you go to http://dtdash.com on your computer or phone, LADOT has provided four equally convenient ways for you to get your bus information: 1) you can live track your downtown DASH using Google Maps; 2) for the minimalists, you can simply use drop down menus to plug in your route and stop to get expected arrival times; 3) for those of us without Internet-equipped phones, call (213) 785-3858 and navigate the phone menu to hear arrival information; and 4) for those of us who don’t like talking to machines, but don’t mind texting one, figure out your stop number, and send a text to dtdash[stop number] to 414111.
Now, if we can get this set up for the MTA, that would be awesome.
Since I began my adventures in public transportation earlier this year, I have seen a lot of rude, inappropriate and often strange behavior from my fellow carbon-based life forms. I have seen people carelessly put their shoes on bus seats. I have seen someone leave a half-eaten sandwich on the floor of the train. I have seen a perfectly nice looking middle-aged woman forcibly push her way to the front of a line of people boarding a bus, just to be the first one on. I have shared personal space with people emitting body odors that would make a mortician gag. Yes my friends, I have been to hell and back and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.
While annoying, I have grown to accept many of these acts of humanness as part of the deal when taking public transportation. Still, when I see something like today’s featured Metro rider, I can’t help but make a public mockery of it.
Today, while making my connection to the Metro Red Line, I sat across from this girl who was plucking her eyebrows. Maybe some of you think this is OK, but let me tell you, YOU ARE WRONG. Some personal grooming is acceptable on public transportation I would say. Like powdering your nose or putting on lipstick. However, anything involving body hair is an absolute disgusting DON’T. You wouldn’t shave your armpits on the bus, would you? Would she? I don’t know. Fortunately, I made my connection before I had to find out.
The 8.5-minute short (the last 2-plus minutes of which are the credits) centers around a Midnight Ridazz-esque group night ride featuring Jared Leto and his band pedaling along with a purported group of actual Ridazz — I say “purported” because individual close-ups reveal them all to be far too sullenly sans FUN as they journey glumly in the dark across and under the requisite downtown locations such as the 6th Street Bridge, the Second Street tunnel, and Grand Street. Seriously: Why so serious?
But everything’s great eye candy and otherwise going mostly awesome and only threatening to be hugely overwrought and ultra-serious like the song until the video’s director, Bartholomew Cubbins, decides to have a paid-actor/stuntperson get fatally creamed on his bike by a motorist near Pershing Square. Then, while everyone stands dumbly around by the body like powered-down replicants, poor Cubbins couldn’t help but trot out a hornless unicorn galloping in slo-mo up a dark street. Of course, with a visual like that the dead ridah can’t help but awaken refreshed from his unplanned road nap, and just get up on his undamaged bike to ride away.
After that there’s more of Leto singing, then a critical mass-style “circle of death” at an ironically traffic-less intersection. Then all the still way-too-bummed cyclists start wailing like a giant gruff chorus along with Leto until they magically arrive at the Santa Monica Pier where they disappear. Fade to black.
Your mileage may vary from my curmudgeonly take.
PS. If the embed’s dead up there, here’s the video’s URL:
I exited my dentist’s Miracle Mile office not long after 10 a.m. this morning confronted by the absolute beauty of the day — its comfortable crystal clarity prevented me from beelining it on my bike to work. So I took the long way to Westchester. Instead of heading south to Culver City, I cut through Beverly Hills got up onto Santa Monica Boulevard and rolled that thoroughfare all the way to its end where I paused to enjoy the breathtaking views from the palisades before cranking it south along a near-barren beach bikepath to Venice and its pier from which I observed sea lions and dolphins before snapping the above shot of the solitary surfer surveying his vast empire.
Glorious days like this are enough to bring a tear to my eye.
On November 14, 15 and 16, locals will have the opportunity to check out Nissan’s first ever zero-emissions electric car, the LEAF. This will be the first public unveiling of the LEAF in North America. You can check it out this weekend at the following locations:
Nissan's New Electric Car Debuts in LA this Weekend
November 14, 2009 10am – 9pm
Third Street Promenade
1351 3rd Street Promenade
Santa Monica, CA
November 15, 2009 11am – 8pm
Americana at Brand
233 S. Brand Blvd.
Glendale, CA
November 16, 2009 9am – 5pm
University Southern California
3501 Trousdale Parkway
Los Angeles, CA
According to Nissan, the LEAF handles and accelerates like a V6 and has a top speed of up to 90mph. It will have an average range of 100 miles per charge and the battery will charge in 4-8 hours on a 220V home charging unit. At quick-charge stations, it will charge to 80% in about 26 minutes. Although Nissan has not released exact information on pricing, they say that they are “targeting a price in the range of other typical family sedans.” The LEAF will be on the road in some states in 2010, with mass-production beginning in 2012.
To attend one of the unveiling events this weekend, register on their website here.
The photographer “Discarted” has gone done it again and threatened national security by violating the laws of the MTA and taking photos of the Los Angeles subway system that he could very likely end up selling to Al Qaeda. Seems perfectly reasonable that he be detained by LA Sheriffs, right?
Except that there is no rule prohibiting public photography in Los Angeles subway systems. And any detainment would require a reasonable suspicion of the subject having committed a crime… which may have occurred, but the only unusual activity the Sheriff ever cites is Discarted’s act of taking photos.
After handcuffing Discarted, the sheriff doing most of the talking, Officer Richard Gylfie, is heard threating threatening to put him the FBI’s “hit list” and will be flagged and detained before boarding planes, trains, or other forms of transportation where an ID is checked. And why? Apparently for not shivering in fear to Gylfie’s demands to tell him why he’s taking photos… or maybe I’m missing something.
As if it needs repeating, photography is allowed in public spaces, including the subway system. Its a shame that the same people who we pay to enforce our laws are blatantly ignorant of this, and instead abuse the power that we bestow upon them to harass and intimidate.
Matt Schrader spent a few months talking to people about the street cleaning policy in LA – both the people who are in charge of it and the people effected by it. Turns out you are much more likely to get a ticket then you are to actually have your street swept.
If you get a ticket for parking in a no-parking-because-of-street-sweeping zone, and they don’t ever bother to sweet the street, should that ticket be void?
A crystal clear case of driver vs biker road rage? Last year, city prosecutors filed criminal charges against physician Christopher Thompson for deliberately braking hard in front of two cyclists on a narrow stretch of Mandeville Canyon. After a three-week trial, the jurors came back with convictions in hand: Dr. Thompson was found guilty of, among other charges, assault with a deadly weapon and mayhem. According to the prosecutors:
… Thompson stopped his car after passing the two cyclists and shouting at them to ride single-file. One cyclist ran face-first into the rear windshield of the doctor’s red Infiniti, breaking his front teeth and nose, and leaving his face scarred. The other was sent hurtling to the sidewalk and suffered a separated shoulder.
Thompson told the response officer that the cyclists flipped him off, so he hit the brakes “to teach them a lesson.” Thompson’s version is decidedly more benign: he says he pulled over to take a photo of the riders and thought he had left them enough room to get around his car. Which one sounds more likely?
Two lessons spring to mind. First, statements you make after an accident can be used for and against you in court, so talk to anyone at your emotionally-charged peril. And second, don’t effing use your car as a weapon to “teach” someone a lesson. No apples for you.
It’s Wizard-of-Oz windy out there. Debris is flying through the air, and traffic lights are out all over town. Take that stretch of Corbin near my office in Chatsworth, for instance: no working traffic lights there. No sirree. What does LAFD tell us? What you already know, I’m sure:
With the possibility of downed power lines causing local power outages, drivers should use extreme caution when approaching darkened traffic signals. Whether driving on a main thoroughfare or a side street, motorists should treat all non-functioning traffic signals as a four way stop.
Pretty simple right? Sadly no. What would be a minor inconvenience in most cities is a mini-death-race-2000 in the Valley. If only anyone here knew how to treat a four-way stop, but they don’t. There are two possible approaches in the San Fernando Valley: 1.Muscle your way through with speed and aggression, or 2.Sit timidly at the light for far too long until the people behind you honk at you.
Seriously, at all five of the intersections with blackened traffic signals that I passed through tonight, anarchy reigned. The nearest thing I could figure is that Valley drivers only know how to deal with a traffic signal that is out when there is a white-gloved cop to wave cars through. Barring that, they just pretend there is a cop there and somewhat randomly drive through in spurts under the safety-in-numbers theory of traffic. So, in the interests of my own personal well being as well as the safety of all of my fellow Angelenos, I offer you the rules of the road. Please read if you are uncertain. This has been a public service announcement.
Oh, man. I had all these plans to leave the Westside to meet a few folks and try out CorkBar’s Test Kitchen Tuesdays special (tonight’s $2 test kitchen plate: braised oxtail with parsley risotto) and then I came across this. The LA Times helpfully warns us that the convergence of normal rush hour traffic, the Lakers’ season opener at Staples Center, and the premiere of the Michael Jackson movie This Is It at LA Live likely will result in a nightmare for anyone headed in the general vicinity of downtown tonight. Shucks. To CorkBar, I’ll have to say what I’ve been saying to people more and more often lately: maybe next week. Maybe.
I Will, I Will Mock You Verdell Wilson OK, igetrad. You win. No contest. igetrad red line a few years back. saw a dude with his shirt pulled up under his chin furiously picking away at scabs... girlvaughn Flossing. seriously. So disgusting. Also – agree with nail clippers. The sound of it makes me gag.
