Who is Rick Santorum?

I just heard that Rick Santorum is running for president, and that he was once a U.S. Senator.

Who is Rick Santorum

What really grinds my gears: Larry Mantle's shows on the economy

It is hard, sometimes, to stop myself from bashing my radio in when listening to public radio these days.

One day, Larry Mantle on KPCC is talking with economic experts about how terrible it is that Americans are in debt up to their eyeballs. The host and his guests talk about saving money, holding back on big purchases, and frugality.

The next day, Larry has a different batch of experts on complaining that our economy needs more consumer spending. We need our broke consumers to go even deeper in to debt to keep this machine chugging along. The host and guests then consume the better part of an hour discussing how we can, and should, goose more money out of people in America.

I wonder, if you do this enough do you counter the effects of each show? Is it a Ying-Yang thing? Is it willful distraction of the listening public?

Quick thought before I head down to #OccupyLA

We used to have a park in LA that was the place to be for people that wanted to spout opinions and ideology. But we turned it into a cement tombstone called Pershing Square. LAPD's HQ was going to be a central park until Jan Perry fought to make it Buck Rogers Gulag of the 21st Century. Democracy needs a commons, the people have made one. #occupyla

This is how I roll

IMAG0218.jpg, a photo by ubrayj02 on Flickr.

IMAG0218.jpg

This is how I drop off bikes and other stuff I sell through Flying Pigeon LA's online shop.

Overcoming bicycle based myopia a key to future CicLAvia success

I participated in the 2nd CicLAvia this past April 10, 2011 with my daughter and my wife. It was a really good time, a beautiful day, and it revived all that love for Los Angeles that I had during the first CicLAvia last October.

This was the first time our 3-year old daughter had a chance to ride her bike in the street. The magic of that moment was ruined by CicLAvia participants on their bicycles riding by us on the left and right (while we were on the right hand shoulder of the street) going, frankly, too darn fast.

I've spent a lot of time (like a lot of internet connected people have) the past few days reading others' stories, comments, and watching videos of the event.

A common thread in many of these accounts is the disappointment of parents with small kids, pedestrians trying to take in the event on foot, and anyone else that ran afoul of the "bicycle freeway" people - with some being told, "Get on the sidewalk!". Many bicycle-bound participants complained of "congestion" along the route, due to "choke points" where the police and transportation officers stopped bicyclists in order for motorists to cross the course.

CicLAvia is not, and should not, be about an exclusive bicycle right-of-way. It is a perversion of the spirit of CicLAvia that the entire course is turned over to the fastest mode on the road.

As big as the attendance was, I saw no children actively playing in the street, there were no soccer balls being kicked around, no hop scotch, nor jump rope being played in road. I saw no chalk drawings, I saw very few pedestrians in the road. I did see a lot of pedestrians frustrated trying to cross a street flooded with bicyclists, many of whom used the day to see just how fast they could go on a street emptied of cars.

Let's get this day right, Los Angeles!

All the talk online of moving "slower traffic" off to one side of the road, of "choke points" and "congestion" comes from a paradigm that views the right of way as little more than a sewer pipe for the movement of people. This is the paradigm that CicLAvia stands in opposition to, quite directly. Bicycles, and alternative transportation, are a part of this - but they are not the only thing that matters in this re-envisioning of our streets.


If anything, there need to be more "choke points" along the route. "Traffic" (what a laugh - where are you people rushing to anyway for Christ's sake!) needs to be converted back into "people". There need to be stages in the road, chicanes, roped off play areas, lounges, bands, vendors on the route and in the street that prevent high-speed bicycle through traffic from dominating the day.

We are all so used to the "turds in a shit pipe" mentality of road use, that even when the roads are re-opened to different modes of transport and different ideas of how the streets should be used, we revert back to our "turd" mentality - complete with pseudo-safety talk (really just euphemisms for getting slower modes out of the way), bullshit about congestion, and a blindness to all that we miss when we focus only on going, going, going on a day designed to exactly the opposite.

The next CicLAvia I am not going to succumb to the speeding cyclists along the route, some of whom yelled out, "Faster, faster!" to me as we slowly guided our daughter up to an intersection where (surprise!) we were all stopped at the same light for a few minutes. No, this is not your day to blast around on your bike poo-pooing others not as fast as you. I get quite enough of that every day when I ride my bike in the road from motorists. I am going to intentionally go slow at the next CicLAvia, and I hope you'll join me.

FIDM Fail at MyFigueroa meeting on February 8, 2011

The hosts of the MyFigueroa meeting on February 8, 2011, the lords of flash and glitter that run the Fashion Institute of Design and Marketing (FIDM), left us wanting a bit more humane security and bike parking polict. FIDM is a bad place for a meeting like this. We (me, my wife, our 3 year old daughter) arrived on our bicycles and were promptly directed into a darkened park to find "bike parking" next to a shifting group of men in an unlit corner. That is to say, there is no secure bike parking at FIDM. We parked in front of the school next to a street tree on Grand. Once we were parked, our daughter let us know she had to pee.

The FIDM security guards wanted us to "sign-in" (at the CRA's "Contact me later" table to get a sticker with our first name on it) before letting us wait for the elevator to the 5th floor, where we could then let our 3-year old pee. These guys must not have any kids of their own, because when a little kid tells me she has to pee I don't make her wait 15 minutes, then wait for an elevator to the 5th floor , and expect her to hunt for a bathroom in a building her parents aren't familiar with. I show her mom or dad the nearest bathroom right away. Then again, I am not one of the three well dressed security guards at FIDM that evening.

My daughter peed in her pants on the ground floor. Luckily, we had spare clothes - but you can imagine how much seething rage had to bottled up because our daughter's bladder represented a security risk to these goons at the gate.

Your building is secure FIDM, but your public image is not - you are jerks. Why did the CRA use this space for their event anyway?

FIDM sent one of their tuition collecting Velociraptors to the event to invite us all to their ground floor museum of costume design. A round of applause for you FIDM Fashion Velociraptor. Is there a bathroom in that museum? Do you think a small girl could use it instead of being forced to piss herself in your foyer?

LA Bike Plan - best looking pile of horse shit I've seen in a long time

Well, the day is nigh. The LA Bike Plan is going to begin another round of stupid kabuki public hearings, this time in the more able and bike-friendly confines of the City Planning Commission (a big commission I assure you).

I just downloaded a few portions of the plan, and I'd like to harp on a couple of the same things I've harped about before on other forums, here on this blog, and in print.

Bike Parking (in Chapter 4)
The current draft Bike Plan has more references to the sections of municipal code that allow for a swap of bike parking for car parking. There are not many specifics in some sections, calling only for an "increase" in bike parking on private parcels. Where the bike parking swap is spelled out in numbers, the amount to be swapped is a measly 5%. Bah humbug.

A developer should be allowed to swap 50%, 75%, or hell 100% of car parking for bike parking. The bike plan should offer up sample code to make this so. What, is this going to trigger an EIR?

Bike Plan Progress and Measurement (in Chapter 4)
The current draft Bike Plan "requires" the city to monitor data that in most cases it already monitors, but has no provisions for the publishing and types of analysis the public should expect. Please, give us a publishing deadline! Quarterly? Bi-annually? As it is now, it looks like the reporting period is 2015!

Bike Lanes and other stuff in North East LA
I live and own a business in North East LA. The last couple of draft of the bike plan completely ignored this section of town (dropping "potential" "maybe" "not really" bike facilities in the area). The plan still uses a bunch of phoney bloney jargon to hide the fact that there are no real plans to get a bike lane on, say, North Figueroa Street. To build a bike lane on North Figueroa Street would require the removal of a traffic lane, as would most bike facilities in LA - a step that would in many cases improve overall automobile traffic as well.

Most "arterials" in this area are underutilized, with traffic only at choke points next to freeway entrances. Removing a lane and bring down the maximum speeds of cars on the road would in some cases improve the flow of traffic. Our arterials also, typically, run parallel to freeways on this side of town. If someone wants to get through the area quickly in a car, they should be on the freeway - not flooring it through our business and residential areas at 35 and 45 mph (as the LADOT has them doing now).

There needs to be an out-in-the-open confirmation as to the feasibility of getting something installed in my community. I am sure that other people feel the same about their neighborhood.

Anyway, this stupid plan has dragged thousands and thousands of man hours away from productive activities. All the free labor that has been thrown at this endeavor could have physically built the city's bike infrastructure already. I hope that, now that the professionals are in charge, they can address these three issues (among the many that exist and have yet to be addressed properly).

p.s. One more thing: REPEAL LAMC 80.27