The Car Thing, Part I: Driving

It's not an understatement to say that you can spend more than a third of any given day in LA just getting from one place to another. As has often been said, people here really do live in their cars, to some degree. They choose their peronal islands carefully—probably more carefully than anywhere else—because one's vehicle is such an extension of oneself here.

Most aparment/house rental ads mention on- or off-street parking way up top—even though parking is not an issue in most LA neighborhoods—because having your own personal spot is another status thing, like having a balcony in New York. A protected spot is especially important, despite the lack of snow (and therefore the lack of salt which might rust a car out...the most the weather here can hurt your car is to rain on it for a few hours). And people wash their cars all the time. Obsessively. Like, weekly. In fact, as my friend Alan pointed out to me a couple of months ago (hi, Alan!), Sheryl Crow's breakout song All I Wanna Do Is Have Some Fun contained a set of lyrics about this phenomenon:

We are drinking beer at noon on Tuesday
In a bar that faces a giant car wash
The good people of the world are washing their cars
On their lunch break, hosing and scrubbing
As best they can in skirts in suits
They drive their shiny Datsuns and Buicks
Back to the phone company, the record store too...

So, yeah, LA people are into their cars.

You might think that such an auto-centric culture would be a nightmare to actually drive in.

You'd be mistaken.

Don't get me wrong: driving here can really suck sometimes, and traffic is always a hot topic in the news.

But for a group of people who spend so much time in their cars, LA drivers are surprisingly courteous. Perhaps it's because they spend so much time in their cars. They don't want the hassle. There's no hurry. They know that on one day getting from point A to point B can take 10 minutes, and the following day at the exact same time, it can take 25. And they are resigned to that. In fact, because they're in (on?) their own personal island, they might even embrace the extra time a little sometimes.

So unlike NYC, where it's all urgent, and driving is like a big video game in which the goal is to shoot the gap between those two taxis a block ahead of you while ignoring anything as ridiculous as lane markings, LA has a California-mellow vibe to it.

Things Angelino drivers regularly do and don't do:

• They don't block the box at congested intersections


• If you're trying to make a left turn across a backed-up row of idling traffic, they leave a space for you to do so. In fact, even if no one is waiting to do so, idlers in a line of cars will often leave a space in front of strip mall/supermarket driveways In case someone comes along who might want to make that turn. In some areas, the words "Keep Clear" are painted on the street to encourage this. Drivers actually heed the words


• If you're trying to leave a driveway to make a right turn, and traffic is whizzing by and you've kind of got an obstructed view, and you're afraid to pull out for fear of getting mashed, approaching LA drivers who see you will actually brake suddenly, stop, and wave you in to take a place in front of them. I'm not kidding; this happens to me practically every day


• If someone is parallel parking and blocking traffic from getting further down the street, no one honks; they'll patiently wait for the person to finish, even if that person is a bad parker and takes five minutes of pulling in and out and repositioning to complete the job


• Merging onto a busy highway? Most Angelinos will slow down and let you get into the flow of traffic in front of them


• If someone is not turning right on red, despite the fact that they're allowed to, no one honks at them to urge them to do so; they just wait


• At 4-way STOP intersections, there's generally a contest to see who can go last. Everyone waves everyone else through. Usually there are a lot of smiles and gracious nods of heads in these situations.


• No honking if you spaced out for a moment and didn't notice the light had changed. It'll be a good ten seconds before someone taps their horn briefly. In the words of a comedienne (I forget who, maybe Ellen DeGeneres?) whom I heard years ago, it's the horn equivalent of saying "Ahem" instead of "WAKE UP YOU STUPID JACKASS!". When in New York, I sometimes beep my horn in the latter way. Out here, I've become a throat-clearer.

There are surely more examples, but you get my point.

The one exception to the whole "mellow driving" thing is Sundays. I guess maybe Sunday is "go see your relatives in Whittier day" or something, because starting about 10:30am, every major road in town is clogged with big cars full of people. And on these days, all the courtesies get thrown out the window, and driving becomes a ferocious, competitive blood sport.

Makes me homesick.