Saturday Update and Critical Mass

No one reads this blog yet. I have made no effort to advertise this thing in any way. So I guess it's just for me until I get my act together.

Anyway, for the future people who may one day read this: here is my Saturday update.

I thought I did really well at my audition on Thursday, but since I have not gotten a call I can only assume I did not get the part. Ah, the life of an actor. I am no longer torn up about rejection. There will be many, many other auditions. In college I used to get really steamed when I got a callback, did really well, and then got on the cast list as an "ensemble" role. It was almost worse than not getting a role at all. You know that term "there are no small roles, only small actors?" Well, we all know there are small roles. And some of them are slap in the face small I-can't-even-steal-the-scene roles. C'mon people, we all know it's true.

College was only a year ago, but this real world stuff is so much different. There are thousands of auditions at my fingertips rather than five for the whole year. I have gotten a few student film parts and I am trying to build a reel, and get extra work for SAG vouchers. I have only recently started doing the extra work. It finally hit me that, hey, I should probably get into SAG. In due time, in due time.

Last night, Mike informed me that there was a Critical Mass bike ride about to start. Neither Mike nor I have done a Critical Mass before. I was skeptical because all you hear about is people getting tickets and getting arrested at those rides, and alienating motorists which in turn makes it even worse for cyclists. I was apprehensive about going, but then I walked to Ralph's and I saw all the riders gathering at the Wilshire/Western station (we live two blocks from the Wilshire/Western metro station). They had some music going and looked sort of renegade. Seeing all those people getting excited about being on bikes is what ultimately made me decide to go. So I reported back to Mike that we should go to Critical Mass. He said that he was hoping I'd say no. I wondered why he suggested it if he was hoping I'd say no. Mike is an avid cyclist, more so than me, he was a bike messenger in New York City (and plans to be again), and he's the one who got me into cycling in the first place. We both dislike driving. After some teeth-pulling I got him to begrudgingly come with me. We biked the two blocks over to Wilshire and Western and joined the pack, which was much larger than before. We both seemed uneasy. Mike said, "I don't want to have to talk about bikes." A lot of these hipster bike folks like to talk about bikes, bike parts, bike style, and Mike isn't into that. He was also really worried about getting a ticket or something from the cops. He has gotten a ticket before, when he was by himself on his bike, for riding against traffic. He got it dismissed, however, because he proved to the court that the reason he went against traffic was because they closed off one side of the street for construction. Los Angeles is ridiculous in that way. I won't go off on that tangent.

About 10 minutes after we got to Wilshire/Western, the ride began. I have to say it was really well organized. All the horror stories about Critical Mass were quickly put to rest, at least with this one. I guess maybe it wasn't as packed as usual. We rode down Wilshire to Crenshaw, then down to Olympic, San Vicente, and stopped at a Ralph's. I don't know why we stopped at a Ralph's, I guess to buy beer? But we were there for almost half an hour. Mike called it the Tour-de-Ralph's, which I thought was clever. Finally we got going again, and we rode downtown, through downtown, back to Wilshire, and then to MacArthur Park. Then we stopped at MacArthur park, I guess for another "party session" of some kind. Mike and I were kind of hungry so we stayed there for ten minutes and decided to ride home because we didn't know how long they were gonna hang out in the park for.

I don't know where the ride goes to, or if it ended there or at Wilshire/Western, or if it goes on to the night, no idea. Like I said we didn't talk to anyone. The riding was fun but I could deal without the stopping. I guess if you were drunk and had all your friends that part would be fun. We don't have any cycling friends, though. I guess we should make some. But I was surprised by the organization of it. At every light some cyclists would guard and look-out. It was nice. I like group rides, so much safer than if you were alone.

Anyway, now it is Saturday, I have to head to the gym and then go to the track to run, but other than that I am free as a bird. Have a nice Labor Day weekend!

Car-Bike Politico

My oh my. Cars, or people in them. Which is worse?

Surely Joe Blow isn't a bad guy. Certainly Jane Doe is just trying to get to where she needs to go like everybody else. Both of these people probably have loving families, a good education (though in Los Angeles there is a good chance that isn't true--but anyway, on with my anecdote), they might be young and reckless from time to time, or they might be old and doze off...surely not a crime? But we give these people cars, we enable them to be responsible for something huge, something fast, something heavy, something that could kill, something we civilians really don't know much about.

Cars, cars, cars. I don't know anything about cars. I mean how it actually works, mechanically. All those parts, etcetera. That's why most of us get ripped off by the mechanic. So why should I be allowed to drive one? I press the gas and it goes. I press it harder and it goes fast. Sometimes I change the radio station or put on the A/C, for a moment taking my attention off the road. Once or twice I have even talked on my cell phone while driving.

Why should I? Why do they let me? Why does anyone allow every Tom, Dick, and Harry to be responsible for a car? Sure, it's illegal to drive drunk, it's illegal in most places to talk on your cell phone while driving, but that's not gonna stop a drunk person from getting in the car. No alarm is gonna go off if drunkie opens his car door to get in. The car isn't gonna be like, "Sorry, Joe, you're too drunk, I am not going to unlock for you." It's only illegal when the person gets caught, and generally after a major accident where someone is already in the hospital or dead. It's all after the fact, but it doesn't stop stupidity while driving from occurring.

We all know, "yes, cars can kill you," but it's a far removed knowing. It's the kind of "it won't happen to me" sort of knowing. Your mind knows it but your heart really doesn't until it happens to you. Now I have never been in a car accident, but I have been hit while on my bike, thank God I didn't get hurt and the guy was going slow, but being outside of the car really opens your eyes to how big and scary they actually are. They're loud, the draft sucks you in a little if they pass at high speed, of course when you're in the car you're sitting in a nice plushy seat with the A/C going and maybe some of your favorite tunes, and one ton of steel encasing you to drown it all out. You don't even realize how loud and scary they are. They are very jarring if they pass too close. The car industry has really made out with this invention, let me tell you. Inside the car it is quiet, outside the car it is loud and deadly. But keep the inside as comfortable as possible and nobody will ever realize they are driving a deadly machine.

Commuting by bike has really heightened my awareness of the road, both as a cyclist and a motorist. Now, whenever I drive, I slow down when I see a cyclist and wait until it is safe to pass, and pass them wide. I don't squeeze them out of the lane, or speed up as I pass as if "getting it over with" will be safer for them, because it isn't. Some motorists actually believe that if they speed up as they pass you that somehow that's better for you. I check behind me to see if a cyclist is coming before I open my car door. I don't swing the car door open. I don't creep up constantly while making a right hand turn, edging into the pedestrians with my 'vroom vroom' sound.

Last night I was riding my bike home on my way back from an audition, and someone in an SUV sped up to pass me and then stopped right in front of me. I had to stop. I almost cycled right into the back of his car! I couldn't pass him because he had a huge SUV practically sticking into the left lane and throngs of cars were in that lane. If I tried to go they probably would have honked up a storm or hit me out of road rage. So I had to dismount my bike, get onto the sidewalk, and pass his car that way. He was parked in a loading zone. Apparently he just got out to talk to somebody on the sidewalk at a restaurant. Why would anyone speed up to pass someone and then one second later pull right in front of them and park? It's because the cyclist is psychologically invisible to most motorists. To the motorist, only other large cars moving at high speeds are worth noting. Mainly because that's 90 percent of what they see when they are on the road, other traffic. They see the person on the bicycle, but it doesn't stick. They think once they pass the cyclist or the pedestrian that said person is no longer there. It's selective car-memory.

I am going radical here. In a smaller surburban setting, the car is fine. There is rarely traffic and the risk of accidents is lower. In small backwater towns, like in certain areas in West Virginia, for instance, you can drive for miles and not see another car. There, people need their pickups, their SUV's, their tractors, to carry cargo and transport themselves. But in a city? In a city, there is no excuse. In a city, the car is an expression of the utmost human laziness and carelessness. It pollutes, it kills, it fosters arrogance and stupidity. And yet we continue to drive them.

And thus begins my very first "blog."

I have decided to start keeping a journal. I do not want to call it a "blog," only because I don't like the word. Also, this is less of a weblog than it is a journal or notes on things I find interesting, especially in cycling culture, if there is indeed a "culture." Upon further evaluation, there is not so much a cycling culture as there is a culture of people who misunderstand the bicycle, the cyclist, or any other form of transportation that doesn't involve a car. This culture is called Car Culture, and, as it seems to me here in the United States, it is the only culture that exists.

Perhaps I am being too radical. My mother would call me completely crazy for saying this about cars; actually, she has. But her opinion only furthers my resolve, because it proves to me just how brainwashed we are by the motor vehicle. Giving up your car? Gasp! But, we NEED cars!

Firstly, I would like to bring to the attention of anyone reading this (which is nobody yet, because I have never told anybody about this journal or posted it anywhere, but maybe I will in the future) about the book "Carchitecture: When the Car and the City Collide" by Jonathan Bell. You can pick it up at the library if you want to take a look at it, that is where I first saw it. Upon perusing this book, I was shocked, even though I see it all day every day around me, at how much architecture and pavement and structure is solely given to, or given up, in lieu of the car.

The first sentence of this book begins, "We are simultaneously at one with our cars and at odds with the automobile." I was pretty hooked from that first sentence, and needless to say the book grabbed me for a few hours after that. The author is objective in his representation of the automobile; its symbol of freedom, the harsh reality of sitting in traffic, its integration in and dominance of the urban fabric, not to mention the danger it poses to pedestrians (and other drivers, or human beings in general).

Think about it. Every time you see a drive-thru, a strip mall, a Burger King, KFC or McDonald's, et al, with drive-thrus, all of that exists because of the car. All the ugliness, all the in-between rural towns (also called "passing through" towns) turned wastelands of parking lots is because of the car. If we didn't have the car, we wouldn't really need fast food, or on-the-go food. We wouldn't need the drive thru. We wouldn't have strip malls that are basically just giant parking lots. We wouldn't have any highways or freeways or streets that human beings are not allowed to walk in lest they be mowed down by a car.

Of course, Jonathan Bell was a lot more objective than I. I suppose I am one of the few people who feels crushed by the car's overwhelming presence, especially as a single occupancy vehicle. What is the most effective way to move fifty people? One bus, one subway car, or fifty cars occupying a half mile of square footage? It's disturbing to me. I did not used to be this way until I started actually having to drive regularly, and then turned to cycling as an alternative.

I, like all people, grew up not really thinking of the car as anything else but an inevitable presence. You ride in one when you'r a kid, you ride in your friend's parent's car, and you think nothing of it. I got my license (though I always hated driving because I didn't want to die), and my parents acted as though fear of death while driving was some kind of irrational fear. The old mantra "everybody does it" somehow was meant to absolve the car from being dangerous. I was not afraid to be in a car while I was not driving, in fact I thought nothing of it, I just didn't want the cause of my own death or the death of others to be something that occurred when I was behind the wheel. Is that too much to ask? More often than not, when it comes to driving, we are forced to do something we don't want to do.

Except, sadly, most people don't mind doing it.

It is interesting to me that the population is so duped by these monstrous and dangerous vehicles that not once has "going green" or "decreasing your carbon footprint" involved giving up your car. Instead it's "Go Green: Buy Another Car" in the form of a hybrid or a Mini Cooper. The very mention of living car-free and using transportation money to build a system of sustainable bullet trains, bike ways, and other alternative and safer transportation instead of building more roads and highways that will invariably get clogged sooner or later (If you build it, they will come) is unthinkable to our population. We would rather purchase a new vehicle that only gets moderately better gas milage than our old one, and send the old one to a landfill, or wherever cars go. Furthermore, car accidents account for more than 42,000 deaths in this country per year alone and about 1.2 million worldwide. Many more are injured. One plane crashes, kills 200 people, and it's all over the news, there are investigations to find out what went wrong. A car kills someone and it's traffic. One strain of bacteria from a food processing plant that kills 4 people makes front page news and gets everyone throwing out all their meat or lettuce or whatever caused it. It's okay to kill someone in a car accident if you weren't drinking. It's truly disgusting. Not that I am downplaying the people who have died from botulism or strains of bacteria from food, or those who have died in plane crashes, but those are isolated incidents that happen to 0.0001 percent of the population, meanwhile you dance with death every time you get in the car and don't even care about it!

Maybe I am biased. I grew up half in Florida and half in New York City. I got my license in Florida but never owned a car or really drove. Right after I got my license my family moved to Manhattan and I was absolved from being tied down to a car. Suddenly, it was freedom. I never needed a car. When people say the car means personal freedom and going where you want when you want and giving that up would mean giving up personal freedom to choose, I have to laugh. I was riding the subway wherever I wanted. I never needed to rely on parents or anyone to give me a ride, or pay my insurance, and all the other responsibilities, or rather, hindrances that come with a car. I could go wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted without relying on a 1,000 pound vehicle to get me there. I was in Brooklyn, in Manhattan, in Queens, wherever I wanted to be 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I never had to ask for gas money or insurance money or beg my parents to buy me a car. THAT my friends, is freedom.

Besides, it was more of a burden to own a car in the city than to not have one at all. My mother eventually got rid of our car in NEw York because its entire existence was basically being moved from one side to the other on street cleaning days.

After high school, I went to college in Washington, DC. I did not own a car the entire four years I was there. DC is a small city, and they have a good metro system. Most of my friends there didn't have cars either. Again, it was more of a hindrance than a convenience to have one on campus. You had to pay 350 to park it on campus, and then if you actually drove anywhere it was like trying to park in NYC when you got there: meters, no parking, etc. Plus no one drove because then they couldn't drink if we went out. 

My memory of cars is of useless, pointless, expensive hindrances and wastes. They take up time, and you get punished relentlessly for owning one in a city, via parking tickets and the like.

After college I moved to Los Angeles, and I have been here for one year. As the fates would have it my career has taken me here. 

I had to buy a car.

The dealer was pushy, the car was expensive; why do we pay thousands of dollars for these things? I am thinking of moving back to New York. It may seem like a silly reason, but the reliance on a vehicle out here is absolutely suffocating. It has made me cry on occasion. It is a total deal breaker and I miss the freedom of the New York City subway. 

Gas is now 4 dollars a gallon. My insurance is kind of high because I never owned a car before. My monthly payments are draining me. I had to get the window fixed once because it no longer rolled down. I have to bring it in for oil changes. I have to find parking on the street. I have gotten six parking tickets. Why am I a slave to an inanimate object? How can other people just accept this? Do people enjoy this in their life? Either it's apathy or worn out acceptance, or people are insane and they actually enjoy driving? I don't know. 

I can't even rant enough about it. I could write a dissertation. I can also point out how Los Angeles messed up royally with their urban planning. I take the metro when I can, which amounts to about once or twice a month because it doesn't go anywhere you need to go. They have FOUR subway lines. Are they serious? Do they not know LA takes up 42 square miles? Does everyone have their heads in the sand, here? What is going on?

Sometimes I don't even want to leave the house to go somewhere because I don't want to just sit there in my car.

I started riding my bike, almost religiously. 

I love riding my bike. However, drivers hate cyclists. It makes me nauseous that people would rather kill you than have you delay them for ten seconds. 

This lifestyle of car culture is not sustainable.

I will leave the car/cyclist discussion for another day. In the meantime, enjoy this video of a bunch of cyclists on the 405, one of the most clogged freeways in the country, right here in Los Angeles: