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.

Kamsahamnida

My first week back in LA after the holidays, I was really grumpy.

I had been home in New York for three great weeks: I'd seen my family, cooked up a couple of great meals, hung out with good friends, caught up with my cats, seen the premiere of Dreamgirls and, of course, had loads of blissful uninterrupted time with Jody.

All that changed the evening of Friday, January 5. I was back in LA, on my own again, and—what else?—oh yes, I had lost my glasses on the flight.

Just a pair of glasses, right?

Wrong.

They were a pair of effing expensive, magical glasses.

There are very few things in life I will actually go out and spend real money on. But Jody convinced me long ago that it's wise, especially for someone in my profession, to invest in well-made glasses that flatter me: I wear them often enough; it's important that I look and feel terrific in them.

And these glasses had been more than just some vanity pickup for me; I swear, they had gotten me jobs. I had a run of several auditions where I wore the glasses because I felt they helped create the look I was going for (all lawyer/techie/professional types), and I booked all of them.

Can a pair of glasses get you a job? I don't know, but I know that these babies seemed to be working for me.

So after moping through a few days of desolation and letting it really sink in that they weren't coming back (I called and emailed JFK, Burbank Airport, JetBlue, the car service that I took in Brooklyn and the friend that picked me up here—all to no avail), I finally set about replacing them.

First I called the Upper West Side store where I'd originally purchased them. Yes, they still had that model, and they could replace them—for $720. "Um, that price has really gone up," I said, and they replied that everything goes up, and I'd had a coupon last time. I talked them down to $660, but that was as far as they'd budge.

Grrr. I had the feeling I was paying more for the shop's Broadway address than for the glasses themselves. So I got the style name from them ("The Advocate") and set about finding a replacement pair in LA.

I started at the manufacturer's website and found that they listed all of the local stores which carried their specs: 59 locations in a 10-mile radius. And I began working my way down the list, calling the shops one by one. But nobody had them: the model was no longer in the catalog, I was told, it was an old style that was no longer à la mode. Did I want to see some other pairs? No, I did not.

After reaching about a dozen places and getting a bunch of "NOs" and one "We'll call you back," I decided to call the store's own flagship boutique. Success! They had a new shipment arriving in two days, and some "Advocate" frames would be included in it. I could get them, no problem—for only $530.

Well, $530 was certainly better than $720, so I decided to suck it up. I made plans to visit them later in the week to get the glasses fitted and ground. And hanging up the phone, I felt a little better: I'd have to shell out a bundle, but at least I had been able to find them.

And that would have been the end of it, except..... the shop that had said they'd call me back actually called me back!

I'd been a little leery of them. When they'd answered the phone it had been in what sounded like Chinese, and there had been a significant language barrier during our conversation. I'd kept saying "Advocate", and they'd thought I was saying "Avocado". So when they called back, I seriously doubted they could help me.

"We found Advocate!" the gentleman said.

Mmm hmm? "Advocate", not "Avocado"?

     Yes.

In brown?

     Yes.

In stock?

     Also yes!

And I could get the frames, lenses, anti-glare coating, the works—everything I needed—for $380! Almost half off the original New York price.

When I first drove over, I got spooked again: the shop, smack in the middle of LA's Koreatown (so that's what they were speaking!) was renting space on the ground floor of a monolithic, windowless building that clearly had originally housed some entirely different kind of business. They had strung a big tarpaulin sign to one parking lot wall to announce their store's presence. There was no English to be seen anywhere in their parking lot except for the handicapped sign:


Then there was the sign that said something like (I'm guessing here): "These parking spots for tenants of 2880 West Olympic Boulevard ONLY...Violators will be towed!"


But inside, they were incredibly nice, and incredibly professional; plus, they threw in a free eye exam, and updated my prescription. And the glasses were ready two days before they said they would be. I just picked them up on Friday.

Awesome. I've got my mojo back.

So, to Jake and Julie, and the entire staff at 1001 Optical I'd like to give a very heartfelt "thanks"; or as you would say, "kamsahamnida":




_______________________________
Had to run roadside again: the track is in use by the school during the week (duh).
2.8 miles, 31:20.

I'm Just Sayin'

I'm going to try not to have too many rants about Angelinos being in their own little worlds and on their own little islands and isolating themselves from each other, because that would just be playing to the stereotype. I mean, I'm predisposed to think that, so I must be looking for it, right?

Right.

Let me ask you, dear reader, what would you have done?

I was in the middle of what is rapidly becoming a morning ritual, which was a nice hour-long hike to the top of Mount Hollywood and back. And as I neared the parking area at the end of the hike, I crossed this kind of bridge over a crevasse, with a wall along the side. And on top of the wall, someone had carefully placed a fairly new dog collar; the kind with a breakaway closure for safety. And the breakaway was open, so it had obviously fallen off the dog it was formerly attached to.

So, clearly, someone hiking found the dog collar and wanted to "do the right thing" and put it out in the open for the owner to retrieve it, instead of leaving it on the trail where they found it.

Except...

The collar had a tag with a phone number and an email address on it, along with the name of the dog, its owner's name, and the words IF FOUND PLEASE CONTACT. Plus, it had a City of LA dog permit tag attached to it. And I'm not a rocket scientist, but maybe the dog's owner is already trying to decide how long to wait before they give up and replace everything. And maybe replacing everything will be expensive and inconvenient for the dog's owner.

Perhaps more expensive and inconvenient than pocketing the collar and making a simple phone call?

No One Here is From Here

Went to a pot-luck dinner party in Silver Lake last night, which felt wonderful, because it was actual interaction with a lot of people. And yummy food. I made a couple dozen gyoza (thanks for the recipe, Cy!).

Silver Lake is a kind of hipster/trendy-but-still-affordable nabe just east of Hollywood....kind of like Fort Greene or the LES. Granted, it may not be indicative of the LA population in general. But here's where everyone was from last night (i.e., where they grew up, or where that had spent most of their adult life before coming to LA):

• Brooklyn (Park Slope)
• Seattle
• Palm Springs
• another Seattle
• Brooklyn (Sheepshead Bay)
• "Orange County" (town never learned)
• Brooklyn again! (Fort Greene)
• San Diego
• Ohio (hello, outlier!)
• SF Bay area
• Brooklyn (Gowanus...that would be me)

Try to spot the native-born Angelino.

Oops, there isn't one.

Angelinos Are P*ssies

I spend a lot of time in LA driving. And since traffic can get bottled up anywhere, the car radio is usually tuned to KFWB News 980 ("you give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world"....just like 1010 WINS in New York).

Every, I dunno, three seconds or so, the KFWB deejays say "the Big Story™...." and then tell you what the day's Big Story™ is (see how that works?)

And what has the Big Story™ been since, like, last Tuesday?

Not the Bush Iraq speech.

Not the passing of legislation to raise the minimum wage.

Not even Apple's introduction of the iPhone.

Nope. The Big Story™ is that it's going to be FREEZING outside any minute!

You know, freezing. Generally accepted as 32°F or 0°C. The temperature at which water converts to ice. Bundle up so you don't get frostbite. Seeing your breath in the air and having your nose get runny when you step outside. FREEZING!

"Arctic temperatures are arriving tomorrow!" cautions the reporter in the field (not that LA actually has a field). "I feel like an icicle!" squeals a young girl interviewed in the street (or more likely on a sidewalk, since jaywalking tickets are actually quite common here).

Wow, I thought, I screwed up not bringing a down jacket back from New York. And I waited for the onslaught and considered buying an extra fleece or an electric blanket.

By Friday at noon, everyone I met was complaining about the frigid conditions. Bitching about the devastating temperatures. The governor was opening additional warming centers and actually declaring a state of emergency.

But for me, a funny thing happened. I noticed that it seemed kinda like autumn in New York. You know, nice football weather. I couldn't remotely see my breath. It really seemed nice and refreshing, particularly in the sun.

So finally I went online and checked the actual temperature. And it was 55 degrees.

And don't get me wrong, I'm sure it's getting colder at night (last night it got down to 38!), and I hear there's a threat to the local citrus crop.

But still. 55 degrees.

So I put on my shorts and sandals and went for a gorgeous hike on Mount Hollywood, just behind the Griffith Park Observatory. And in the space of an hour and a half, I saw five people. No lie.