Los Angeles, CA

Okay, Angelinos, here’s your chance. There’s been talk of expanding the underground (Metro) to the Pacific, and it looks like a measure will be added to the November ballot for this subway expansion. At the cost of half a cent tax hike, we could finally get the $7 billion addition started and take the train to the ocean. Wouldn’t that be cool?

Admittedly, I don’t ride the Metro that much and never have since I rode it as a kid on opening day, but since moving back from a carless and public transit-fueled existence in San Francisco, the boyfriend and I are trying hard to not be so auto-reliant. It’s a lot harder in LA, though the Metro bus system has improved markedly since my time in SF, and they’re still working on it. It’s no MUNI, but with enough support, it could be. Imagine on a hot day stuck inland, with the freeways clogged and the heat coming up from the miles of twisted concrete in waves, just grabbing a towel and a cooler and jumping on the Metro. Make yourself look a little beach bummy so you won’t get harassed as much, and then you’re there! If you go in a group, you can even fall asleep on the ride back and your friends will watch over you. It’s almost like being a kid again, but if you had to share your parents car with those weirdos on the street that always made you roll up your windows and lock the doors. (Can you tell my last experience on the Metro was less than stellar?) Still, don’t just go on my word. I apparently have one of those “Pick on me!” faces, and the differences between the way female and male passengers are treated are huge.

Anyway, as fun as it sounds, there is still plenty of room for debate here. While half a penny doesn’t sound like much of an increase at all, it would bring LA’s sales tax to 8.75%, tying it with two other counties as the highest in California. Ouch. Having worked at more than my share of tourist’s traps, I know how well other people have it tax-wise, so this really is a matter of “How badly do we want/need this?” Do a bit of thinking, you still have 10 months until you have to vote. But be sure to vote!

To read more about the pros and cons of connecting LA to the Pacific, go here.

As you may have heard by now, the Golden Globes have been somewhat canceled this year due to the ongoing writer’s strike. There will still be awards, and there will definitely be glammed up celebs in designer gowns and tuxes hitting the parties and walking away with more goodies in one night than you or I will ever see, but there will be no official ceremony, and probably nothing will be televised. Many entertainment addicts are mourning this latest casualty of the dragging strike, but I say good!

Good? Yes, because this means a superfluous entertainment award show is knocked back down to just that — an unnecessary show for overinflated egos. If any of you are interested in old Hollywood, then you know by now that the Oscars, or Academy Awards, as they were called before they earned their more well-known nickname in the 1930s, was just a short ceremony held at the Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles to show some appreciation for outstanding actors at the time. You can find footage of past award ceremonies on You Tube and elsewhere, and the overall attitude is very casual. No one gives a six minute acceptance speech, there were no waterworks or hissyfits if someone didn’t win. It was just a statue. Obviously, a lot has changed, but maybe not for the better. Maybe it’ll do Hollywood good to go back to a more modest mindset. With the setback they’ve been handed by not treating their writers as equal human beings, maybe they’ll finally learn some humility. Especially if the writers’ allies, the actors themselves, continue to side with the writers and boycott the Oscars as well. Is this what it’ll take to get Hollywood to take writers seriously? Or will they still think that the people who create and animate the characters we know and love are still on par with the guy who drives the catering truck?

To read more about the ongoing developments regarding the Golden Globes, stay tuned with CNN.

If you haven’t heard already, officials are mulling over the possibility of converting some carpool lanes on major freeways into a toll lane. Why? So frustrated single drivers who want to get where they’re going faster can pay to do so. While the proposal may sound like a good idea at first, earning revenue while clearing up some congestion on the perpetually packed freeways, most drivers are actually against this idea. It seems to be poorly thought out at best, and actually gives no breaks to carpoolers who have been using the special lanes for years, or for motorcycles or hybrid cars, who have also been given special access to the current fast lane.

When interviewed for the L.A. Times, most regular freeway drivers balked at the idea. Some carpoolers would even be willing to pay for the continued privilege of using the fast lane as needed, but not at the high prices that are being discussed, and certainly not on a daily basis. Others believe that if the city and state as a whole is really interested in cutting down gridlock and pollution from traffic, then they should put their money towards more — and more reliable — mass transit that is appealing enough to be a viable alternative to single driving.

I have to agree with that last statement. Having lived three years in San Francisco myself, I was tired of always being stuck on one freeway or another and relocated to a city where I could get around reliably without a car of my own. The car was sold in LA and we took a U-Haul up, and I rode MUNI and the occasional cab for three years. There were some definite downsides, like waiting for a bus in the rain, squeezed under a drafty, small bus shelter with fourteen other people, and the buses certainly didn’t run on time, but you had options. If one bus was slow or overpacked, you could get home at least two different ways, and I lived clear across town by the ocean, where the buses aren’t so far reaching. I was impressed at how LA’s Metro system had grown while I was gone (I still freak out every time I see a Metro where I’d never seen one before in my life), but there’s still a lot of improvement to be had in the greater LA area. There are still empty and abandoned bus lanes on freeways that could definitely stand to be used regularly, and if the Metro rail were cleaned up, I’m sure plenty more would take it. It came in handy to get to Union Station when I was taking Amtrak across the country a few years ago, but I was so worried about being raped by the bizarre, short little gangster molesting me that I couldn’t really enjoy the trip. C’mon LA, get your act together! If San Francisco can do it, you certainly can.

To read more about the proposed toll lanes, go here.

Here’s a piece of news I can really get behind: L.A. officials are currently debating over a new law that would limit the size of new and rebuilt homes to keep the new house in proportion of other houses in the neighborhood and the home’s lot size. Over Thanksgiving weekend I drove around my old neighborhood of Downey and was appalled by the number of gaudy new McMansions slowly taking over the cute bungalows and sprawling ranch houses that had characterized the city and its overwhelming 50s style. These ugly giant Cracker Jack boxes are dull, utterly characterless, and take up every available inch of the lot, leaving no room for a yard or any other outside beauty. The architectural design is completely lacking, too. Most of the time it’s a giant box with peach stucco slathered over it — how much did you get paid to “design” that? Those hideous monstrosities are ruining the character of the city and the neighborhoods and have the added bonus of being too expensive for anyone but drug dealers to buy in this market. (And I wish I was overexaggerating or joking when I say that, but the Downey police force themselves said it.) Why would they keep building houses no one can afford to buy?

Anyway, I’m glad I’m not the only one complaining over these nasty things. As early as January of 2008 we could see new laws coming through that would affect over 100,000 housing lots, but to some Angelinos this still isn’t enough. Residents keen on preserving the looks of their neighborhoods point out that privacy and existing views are another factor that should be seriously considered. Most people buy houses and get out of the rental market so they have more privacy and a better home life than they would in a shoebox apartment or a tiny rental house, but if they’re powerless to stop their greedy neighbors from throwing up a McMansion that would literally block out the sun, then what happens to all of their own hard work?

Read more about the new proposals and what residents have to say here.

LA Weekly has a great article up today about indie record labels and bands, and how the musicians are once again reclaiming their art as theirs. I’ve hated every minute of the RIAA legal circus, mainly because they’re making examples of all the wrong people and really just making them into martyrs for the cause, not scapegoats. When you bankrupt a single mother who’s only downloaded a handful of songs, you know you’ve lost your soul. Though these types of stories may anger and depress you as much as me, there is still hope.

Bedroom Confidential: New Crop of Boutique Record Labels in Town is a great three-page article about the new homegrown record labels sprouting up all over the greater LA area, and how the real indie movement — not that KROQ “no, really, we play indie, like Foo Fighters!” crap — are starting to make a mark in the music industry as a whole. In recent years underground bands like Arcade Fire have broken through and made it onto the Billboard Top 100 solely on their merits and word of mouth, not a media blitz and overhype and cross promotion through TV shows that major labels would do to whore out their music. I don’t want to give away a lot of the article because it’s really best to read it yourself, but be sure to read it all!

Personally, I’m of the mindset that if the music is good enough, it will find its audience. With the Internet making music so readily available to anyone, labels and artists need to openly welcome this free advertising juggernaut and use it to the fullest of their abilities. While there will always be a few freeloaders who insist on getting everything for free, the vast majority of the public is perfectly willing to pay decently for music they like. Put up whole songs as samples on MySpace or Pandora or other sites where people can search and discover for themselves, and if it speaks to them, they will actively pursue it. Make quality the winner, not quantity.

You can always count on LA to provide you with a never-ending stream of weird news. The latest item is about crafty thieves posing as maintenance workers who steal copper wiring from public street lights. This may sound bizarre to you, but have you ever taken your recycling into an actual recycling plant? They not only take plastic, paper, and glass, but scrap metal such as steel and copper, and other construction-grade material.

Also, the price of precious metals has gone up significantly in the past year. I have a friend who is a jeweler, and while her business is still small (her jeweler’s bench is in her bedroom, and she has three other jobs to support her art), she is still hurt badly by the rising price of gold, which has more than doubled, steel, and copper. Moreover, when you buy over a few ounces of a precious metal, you have to fill out government paperwork so they can keep track of how much you buy to be sure that you’re not hoarding. And with the rate of the dollar these days, I can’t really blame anyone for wanting to hoard.

The easy way around that is to steal! You get enough copper scraps to turn in and get a pretty sum of cash, and there’s no trail leading back to you. The downside? People are left in the dark for months, making it very dangerous at night for pedestrians, cyclists, and even drivers. This wire theft has been growing in popularity, and is now affecting not only LA but San Bernadino, Redlands, San Francisco, and Pasadena. It might not be a bad idea to take down the license plate of a plain white truck or work van you see when the worker is up a pole fiddling with the lights and call it in to the nearest DWP, just to be sure nothing fishy is up. It may save a life.

To read more about these strange thefts, go here.

After a week of outspoken protesting from Los Angeles’ Muslim community, the LAPD has decided to cancel their plans to chart the Muslim population of L.A. They had wanted to mark the Muslims to track where, to them, potential terrorist plots could form. The Muslim community, understandably, called this act religious profiling, and though the police’s mapping system may be off the table, Deputy Chief Michael P. Downing said that they would reach out to the community in other ways. Spokespeople for the Muslim-American community welcomed this, saying that they would be happy to participate more with the city of Los Angeles and become more involved.

Do you think the police were wrong to try and map out the Muslim population as a counter terrorist measure, or were they just doing their job?

You can read more about the LAPD’s suggest alternatives here, through the L.A. Times.