Westward Ho!

Shameless Self-Promotion

Yesterday Green LA Girl ran a Q & A with me as part of its weekly series about car-free female bloggers in Los Angeles. It's a great series and I encourage you all to check out the other entries as well:

Kenya
Kristina
Browne
Kathryn
Enci
Paula

It's noteworthy that all of these females (including me) do not have children. Unfortunately this is not representative of a sizable segment of transit riders in L.A. -- the mothers who rely on Metro to get their children around. A few posters have noted this; I hope we get to hear from the car-free parents out there soon. Another thing I've noticed: the overwhelming number of bicyclists in the series. I'm not one. I support riders' rights and want cities and suburbs to plan for bikes in their circulation elements, but I occasionally worry that the alternative transportation community is too bike-centrist in its collective voice and its commentary. Not everyone who's car-free is a rogue culture-jammer on a fixie. (To be fair, not every cyclist is one, either.)

quick shout-out from NYC before returning to L.A.

I've been hanging out back at home for the past week and a half. Interesting trip -- I only ended up seeing my parents for a little under a week because they jaunted off on some retiree-friendly cruise to Paris. The rest of the time I got to have their Brooklyn Heights apartment to myself, provided I'd take care of the cat.

The cat's name is Kerouac. I sort of cringe when I tell people that these days, because we got him when I was in high school, and it's SUCH a perfect name for the family pet of a pretentious high-school bookworm. He was absolutely tiny when we brought him home from the adoption shelter; he was shy, but he loved to run around and climb all over the furniture and appliances. Now he's about 17 in human years.

He's been slowing down for sure; however I've noticed a difference in him from the way he is now and how he was when I was last home in October for my grandmother's funeral. In October, he could still jump onto the bed, onto the couch... now he has trouble and sometimes gives up if he can't figure out a graceful way to do it. Also he seems depressed. I give him food, change his litter, give him the same amount of affection and attention as in the past, but he cries a lot. I haven't gotten much sleep because his cries wake me up. This is what people tell me raising an infant is like. I'll pass for now. But I love the hell out of Kerouac, and having just lost one family member, it would devastate me to lose another and worry that I hadn't been there for him. So, dander allergies be darned, I'm doing what I can.

Anyway, on this trip home I felt very cloistered. Every day it was either pouring rain or near/below the freezing mark. Sure, I saw friends, I rode the subway and the bus, I walked around midtown Manhattan in a gloppy storm with a wind-gnarled USC umbrella overhead, I had pizza and root beer at Totonno's in Coney Island. We had a girls' night out at Vinegar Hill House, chugging BYOB wine and savoring tender, thymey chicken served in a hot cast-iron skillet. But I stayed home more than I went out, and in doing so, I realized I wasn't missing a heck of a lot. New York is New York. It ebbs and flows, and I was here when the Lower East Side was a shantytown, and I was here for the spend-til-you-puke Sex and the City era, and I've been through the shitty recessions before and here's another one. It's always New York though; plus ça change. Los Angeles, for all its differences from New York, has so many of the same things that make the latter city great -- movies movies movies, a steady stream of touring bands and local dudes, an insane food scene fueled by unrivaled diversity and melting-pot cross-cultural contamination, a more-or-less liberal attitude that sometimes successfully degreases the squeaky wheels of conservatism.

There wasn't much that I thought I needed to do while I was here in New York. I even ride the subway when I'm in L.A., so it wasn't a huge sigh of relief -- just another grudging acknowledgement that NYC's system is comprehensive and well-coordinated while L.A.'s is in its infancy. And NYC's MTA is broke.

Off to bed with me. I think.

OMG have I not posted since February?

Sorry, sorry, I know. At first I just didn't have much to blog about, then I was having login trouble so I assumed my account had expired or something. But now I'm up and running again, here in my apartment on an unseasonably cool Saturday morning, twiddling my thumbs while a plumber does some work in the kitchen. (Also I've been posting at Facebook and Flickr, so at least some of you know I haven't fallen off the face of the earth.)

NWS Spam

After the Virginia Tech shootings last April, my university set up an emergency alert system, where students could receive up-to-the-minute campuswide notifications via e-mail, text message, pager. I signed up and set my preferences for e-mail and texts. Didn't receive anything for several months and honestly forgot that it existed.

Cut to: our recent winter storms. Our trusty National Weather Service has been on the case, sending out regular announcements about flash flood watches, wind advisories, some containing cryptic subject lines reading "URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE." We got a lot of these, even during the more clement days where we could actually leave the house without an umbrella or a heavy coat. I got so bombarded that I had to cancel the txt msg notifications -- as much as I dig my "Radar Love" ringtone, I don't need to hear it every two minutes, unless there's someone really cool on the other side. I hope I don't miss out on any actual emergencies, but I can access my e-mail through my phone, so I should be covered.

This morning I searched my Gmail account (where I get my school mail forwarded) for "USC Information," the name of the service that's been sending us NWS messages. I may have deleted some and forgotten, but my inbox shows that I've received a whopping 57 of these alerts since January 25.

Here's one I just got, with the sage advice that I shouldn't go swimming in February.

National Weather Service reports/updated High Surf Advisory for the Los Angeles area.

...HIGH SURF ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 3 PM PST THIS AFTERNOON... A HIGH SURF ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 3 PM PST THIS AFTERNOON. SURF RANGING FROM 8 TO 12 FEET WITH OCCASIONAL SETS TO 14 FEET WILL AFFECT WEST AND NORTHWEST FACING BEACHES TODAY. SURF WILL SLOWLY SUBSIDE LATE IN THE DAY. A HIGH SURF ADVISORY MEANS THAT HIGH SURF WILL AFFECT BEACHES IN THE ADVISORY AREA...PRODUCING RIP CURRENTS AND LOCALIZED BEACH EROSION. ALL PERSONS SHOULD BE AWARE OF THE RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH WATER RELATED ACTIVITIES AND USE EXTREME CAUTION WHEN ENTERING THE OCEAN. WHEN IN DOUBT...JUST STAY OUT. WHEN VISITING THE SHORELINE NEVER TURN YOUR BACK ON THE OCEAN.

Sent by USC TrojansAlert to Weather 7 am - 7 pm (e-mail accounts, pagers, cell phones) through USC Trojans Alert

You received this message because you registered on USC Trojans Alert.  To update your account go to https://trojansalert.usc.edu/myhome.php

OH HAI.

Have no internet access at home right now -- still waiting for (now rescheduled) Time Warner installation. Am checking in periodically wherever there's a connection available.

Recovering this morning from awes wknd at Fuck Yeah Fest IV, which really surpassed my expectations all around -- it was one of the most well-organized festivals I've ever been to, and it was obvious a shit-ton of work and thought and experience went into putting it together. Good to see so much energy there -- with the exception of a few indiepoppers, it was like a full-on 2-day hardcore/noise show, with super-talented bands that actually got the audience to carry the crowd-surfing singers (this never happens back in jaded NYC). Cool to see drug-outlaw Don Bolles in attendance too. :-)

I didn't take any pictures or video but everyone else did, so if you need to perv on the Pissed Jeans singer's love handles, keep checking Flickr and Youtube.

Goings On

No, I haven't given up on this blog. It's been a packed summer, and it's turning into a packed autumn, but I promise to post more regularly. This week I'm in the middle of moving... from my sublet in Silver Lake to a full-time crash pad two miles away in Thai Town ("Los Feliz Adjacent"). I love the neighborhood, warts and all. It has so much potential, and yet with the tremendous renter population, it's important to keep the property values low so the people living there can afford to stay there. Eventually, though, the gentrified development along the bookending Red Line stations will move inward, which I think is the idea -- TOD nodes as catalysts for further revitalization. And the gleaming megastructures of the Kaiser campus/Church of Sc13n+0106y are mere blocks away.

Aside: One of the songwriting greats and all-around weirdos of the past century just left us. Rest in peace, Lee Hazlewood. I've been listening to you all day.

Checking In

Posting from the LAPL's Echo Park branch, a nice newish building with good air conditioning and free wifi (and plenty of outlets). I like that on the desk where the public computers are, there's -- somewhat inexplicably -- a stack of Environmental Impact Reports, with a yellow label reading "Environmental Impact Reports" right above them. They look lonely. I should read them sometime. Surely I can't be the only planning/development geek in this part of the woods. Especially with Silver Lake being the modernist-architecture capital of L.A.

Speaking of architecture, I feel guilty for not having followed the ArchNewsNow list quite so regularly lately. A friend alerted me to the results of this AIA America's Favorite Architecture poll. Some interesting choices, some not so much. I'm a little unnerved that the once-reviled Twin Towers are in there -- is this contrarianism, revisionist history, nostalgia, or all of the above? With all due respect to the people in the buildings on 9/11, those towers were a blight on an otherwise grand skyline. Nicest surprise on the list: NYC's Apple Soho store. Good to see the Gamble House represented too.

Feliz Aniversário!

I moved to Los Angeles a year ago today. I hope the next 12 months will be as awesome as the first.

I haven't been online much lately because I don't have net access in my summer sublet (except for some very spotty leeched wireless). At the moment I'm parked in the Down Beat Cafe on Alvarado off Sunset, but I'll have to move soon because my laptop battery is losing power.

Catch you later,
Jody

Various and Sundry

My first year (well, my first two semesters) of grad school is over, and I'm still recuperating. Here lies Westward Ho, who blames Cedd Moses for her early demise, particularly these past few nights.

Thursday ended at Seven Grand, Moses' great new whiskey bar. I love its small size and its quiet, private feel. It's on the second floor with an open-air deck out back that faces an eerie-looking vacant office building. The DJ right on the floor reminded me of bars back home in NYC, where DJs are much more part of the nightlife even in spite of New York's weird cabaret laws. I danced, sloppily, to the sloppy country & western cover of Dylan's "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" that this guy was spinning.

Seven Grand is sited where one of the original Clifton's locations used to stand, but that's not all, according to one blogdowntown commenter:

The beautiful building Seven Grand is in was originally built as the corporate headquarters, manufacturing center and flagship store of Brock Jewelry which at the time was the nations largest jeweler. Celebrity customers included Mary Pickford. Brock Jewelry company seems to have gone under sometime during the Great Depression. Sure, Clifford Clinton came along later, basterdised the architecture, and thew a cafeteria on the first floor, Clifton's offices on the third, bakery on the fourth, and a "Soupeasy" in the basement. Clinton traveled the world as a missionary and the soup easy which sat just three floor below his feet was not going to be spared of his true love Jesus Christ. Alas the "Soupeasy" featured a life sized diorama which took up an entire room and included a very large effigy of Christ himself. If they wanted to eat the homeless were apparently forced to hit a button at which point in time a speaker in the Jesus effigy would play and a recording of Cliford Clinton pretending to be Jesus Christ demanding the individual to pray with the bizzare effigy before they were allowed to proceed to the free soup and bread. My point in all this? I think we should refere to the building as the Brock Jewelry Building rather than the "old Clifton's Silver Spoon building" as everyone does.

After Friday's big banquet at the San Antonio Winery (more on that in a bit), a bunch of us carpooled over to Cedd Moses Watering Hole #2, the Golden Gopher. I drank Maker's Mark Manhattans and played Galaga (badly) and Ms. Pac-Man (excellently). Then we stumbled through the downtown night and danced to the Punky Reggae Party at La Cita.

I don't have much to say on the San Antonio Winery itself -- it was nice enough, although for our banquet they only provided Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, my two least-favorite kinds of wine. It is in a pretty inaccessible location, way down an obscure street called Lamar off N. Main, in that gnarly industrial/Cornfields/L.A. River part of the city between Chinatown and Lincoln Heights. I tried to walk there from Union Station and got lost, because I kept going up Spring instead of Main, and had to step over lots of broken glass and outrun a couple of guard dogs (in high heels). I did get to walk past Nick's, which was closed.

APA '07

The nor'easter is in full swing -- with wind, rain, and ice bearing down on Philadelphia, and conference attendees who've been promised a most "walkable" city are lining up in droves to catch a taxi five blocks back to their hotel. I just left early because my toasty room at the Sheraton suddenly seemed very inviting; I nearly fell asleep in the comforting darkness of a convention center screening room where an Ed Bacon film festival was going on (mostly his 1983 ULI documentaries), having dosed myself up on Robitussin a few hours prior. I bought a t-shirt before I took off.

Conference is going OK; the highlight so far was RFK Jr.'s keynote address, crucifying the Bush administration and all the corporate polluters that Dubya hired to run the various federal environmental offices (run them into the ground, that is). Kennedy is very clear on who his enemies are and he's not afraid to name names. Frankly, I worry for his safety.

Over the past few days I've been gravitating towards the transportation/infrastructure sessions, including panels on airports, bus shelters, short-haul rail travel across megaregions, and sidewalk building and maintenance. There's been a nice assortment of of planning books on sale -- some of which I'll make a mental note to look for used on Amazon, although I did order a copy of a former professor's book through the on-site APA display.

We've been eating well too: last night was a reception where the Yuengling and Tastykakes flowed freely, and on Friday night we had great Senegalese food near the Penn campus. Thumbs way up on the Reading Terminal Market -- which, incidentally, is across from the erstwhile Reading Railroad station, now the convention center.