One day, bitches: the future of the Los Angeles Metro

I don't have to "prove" that I lose Los Angeles

*love*

okay time to turn ILX off again =)

"in-shape" ? omg did i say so un-PC on ile? i shouldn't have to say that anyway since you're all Angelenos and i'm being redundant

okay no more drinking and ilxing. g'nite

did u get it off the PUBLICLY EDITED OMG UNRELIABLE wikipedia?

i'm going to tear myself away from this thread for now to get some sleep but i dont really see the point of returning; i really wish i didnt start it. clearly none of you are as exoted abt the potential map of the metro as i am (which if you notice, still doesnt service bev hills, bel-air, or the palisades)

PS, You're still awesome, but I think you made some extreme conclusions upthread which are impossible to prove and can only ever come across as stereotyping etc.

Finally, as much as I love the LA Weekly, it's politics often border on the hysterical and while its often right, the incessant conspiracy theories and doomsday predictions sound like a boy who cried wolf if you've been reading them since you were 12.

i'd rather talk about strip mall restaurants. my favorite new one is raku on olympic and barrington. it's japanese and korean and two people can get five little dishes for under forty bucks. highly recommended.

Can anyone do that, supplying hard facts and proof, without turning this into a 'I must defend my homeland" emotional argument?

Why does anyone need to supply hard facts to refute your argument when you haven't supplied any to support it? It's not that I don't believe you but I would love to see some information about these votes you keep talking about: when were they, what exactly were they about, who voted which way, etc.

So, yeah, the Friday Fling: Let's start at Vic's balcony, then on to Mashti Malone's (I've lived in LA off and on for 12 years and never been!) and then caravan over to the Thai Elvis place. Or maybe we should do the reverse. Or we could just go to Bahooka's. And the bar at Hotel Figueroa. I don't know!

Where is Filipinotown?

Oh no, I completely forgot about the Basement Jaxx show! Don't they have the usual $1 tickets?

I don't understand the appeal of Eva Longoria at all.

also: "I don't live in Koreatown. I live in Larchmont."

Or Hancock Park adjacent. Remy, are you moving to East Hollywood/Silverlake Adjacent? Or Glendale? Or the Westside?

I really like South Pasadena (esp. I the new-ish video/DVD place on Mission, the people there are sweet) though their Gold Line protests are really ridiculous. The Southwest Museum stop is right up the block from me--I find the sound of the train sort of comforting.

I took the Gold Line to the Red Line to the Blue line to pick up my car at the Long Beach airport. Loads of fun until the final leg--I had to wait for a bus to the airport in that creepy downtown Long Beach area for 45 minutes. Apologies to anyone who lives there, but it's always seemed really depressing to me. Maybe it was thriving once.

xpost!

Except for my friend's beautiful apartment that he didn't know shakes violently whenever the subway goes underneath (at least he didn't decide to buy it).

Category 5 http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Maps/117-34.html

it makes everything else on this thread moot... i havent read it since last night but still... we're all gonna die together so we might as well get along. Spencer you can have my "record" ceramic drink holder from the Bonaventure if i die first

Actually, downtown Long Beach was in really bad shape throughout the 1980s and into the mid-90s when the city finally stopped meddling with impractical and ridiculous redevelopment schemes and just let things be. Pine Ave. downtown and east 4th. St have come along nicely.

There's a fantastic bookstore on Long Beach Blvd. & 3rd St. downtown right next to the Blue Line station that you can kill time in.

I don't know what sort of "evidence" would inarguably support my side less than the voting records themselves, or something analyzing them, but I'll keep trying to dig something up.

Walter if you havent yet - and I'm assuming you're a film person if you're familiar w/ Prof Boyd - I'd really urge you to see that Los Angeles Plays Itself documentary that Jody mentioned upthread, and that Remy Arthur and I all caught recently. The guy really goes into some goog detail regarding the racial segregration issues, combining it w/ the public transportation issues without letting it seem like a rant - and ingeniously, all by using thousands of film clips! It's an analysis of the whole city through the cinematic medium, perfectly apt for an industry town such as ours.

To talk about these specific issues, he brought up a lot of films, but in particular I remember him focusing on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? which was very clearly a metaphor for the racial/transportation problems of Los Angeles. In the film, as you remember, the toons are performers but a subjugated minority, analogous to the city's minorities, and restricted in many aspects; the establishment has made deals with the "Cloverleaf Corporartion" to replace the electric cars with freeways, which would also be used to further geographically restric the Toons (and further on, some of the antagonists want to do away with Toontown altogether). In the end the bad guy dies so i'm assuming everything is saved? I havent actually Rabbit this film since it came out..

-- Remy (rem...) (webmail), June 16th, 2005 1:20 AM. (x Jeremy) (link)

Take your classmate slander back to the East Coast plzokthx.

and dean, why does your fukked-up map-comment on myspace contain TWO long beaches? with one being next to norwalk?

Haha I didn't even notice that. That's the last time I let an Eastside sweatshop make my gif maps.

-- Spencer Chow (spencercho...), June 16th, 2005.

Mr Chow, my friend Lucy whom you met at Ned's shindig also has _all_ of them, but she's involved with other ilx0rs I think. The last time I was there my date wanted a martini but I forced the kid to get a vodka in the coolest one available - the glass boot. Do you have that one too? I was pissed they were temp out of the state of Cali and the hotel one

I blame NIMBYs and a traditionally weak mayor/civic government who have been continually bought off by corporate/real estate forces. Racism and classism *has* played a major part in LA political/urban planning history going back to Chavez Ravine, Chinatown, and Bunker Hill's redevelopment so it's not surprising that folks would continue to assume that.

Poor people are politically weak when it comes to civic development. The Wilshire Bl. business association had no problem stopping the Red Line from continuing west along it's original path, but the poorer owners on Vermont and Hollywood Bl. were basically told to "suck it up".

The Airport Parking Commission (which has an unbelievable amount of clout) successfully kept the Green Line away from LAX - redirecting it to a useless area of El Segundo.

Meanwhile, the MTA had no problem using their cost overruns to build a 24-store palace downtown while the bus system (which actually serves poor people and has more ridership than the trains) was left to twist in the wind. Naturally, the people who depend on the bus system are going to think there's unspoken racism, when in reality it's a crappy MTA.

Things are hopeful w.r.t. to public transportation, but I wish there was a Robert Moses-style autocrat in power who can make that map at the top of the thread a reality.

here is problem: i am working 'til 9:30 tomm night (but its walking distance from my place / Mashti Malone's) ... sorry if that holds things up

Vic, thanks for all of the info. Like I said before, it's not that I don't believe you and I have in fact heard those same accusations of westsider interference repeated many times before. I was having trouble digging up any hard facts though which I thought was strange. I have some other theories about resistance to public transporation beyond the simple accusation of racism but I guess we've already discussed this to death.

The film you mention sounds interesting. It's funny that you mention Roger Rabbit because I seem to remember Boyd giving a pretty impassioned rant in one class, blasting Roger Rabbit for its racism.

Me too.

Yeah thats really apparent from that map, especially in west hollywood. My fantasy though, is that the parking structures that would have to be built to accomodate all this would be fantastical nouveau art deco erections in variegated colors. Or modernist faux asian structures, modeled after the random buildings you see in K-town.

Walter - what year did you graduate? ...and do u have AIM?

i feel like starting a LA pictorial thread when i come back from work...we are overdue one arent we? i keep coming across funny pics when im trying to research this issue