For the Recently Arrived Angelino
Sooner or later, or perhaps every day, you may have to take this dreaded route instead of the parking lots known as highways in the Los Angeles area. Here is the primer for your experience.
1) Realize that every carlength is a moral victory, and respect it with the appropriate battle yell. “HELL YEAH!!” is no longer enough. If you cannot muster something more than that, you have not had your Starbucks yet. Head for Highland.
2) The right lane is the only proper place to speed. There are in fact straightaway spots on Wilshire, but you must seize them. You must do this by hopping the stackups (busses in tandems or groups of threes which cluster in the right-most lane), while keeping an eye peeled to your far right for any pedestrians who might want to cross along the street that that IDIOT IN THE BUICK ahead of you will undoubtedly stop for when he decides to turn right at the next light without signaling.
3) Your shock absorbers were put there for a REASON. Potholes, drainage tilts and cross street dips got NUTHIN on you. Floor it. Don’t worry, there are no cops till you’re in the vicinity of The Beverly Hilton. When your control arms give out and land you in the ditch, I know a good cheap mechanic on 7th.
4) Never travel behind anything you can’t see past. That includes EVERY SUV. Your mission is clear.
5) Memorize the buses and where they stop. This way you can avoid being the chump stuck in the dead zone behind the bus that is local (#20, among others) and instead find yourself zinging along behind the Rapid (#720). Remember that line in The Joy Luck Club where Auntie Ling-Ling says if you play mah jong and don’t keep everything in your head, it’s just like Jewish mah jong? Well, this is the automotive equivalent of that. Most would never tail a bus, but You’ll know WHEN to tail it and WHEN NOT TO.
If you don’t remember where they all stop, and prefer to play brainless mah jong, you must rely even more heavily on #4, and you’ll miss vast opportunities. Actually at that point you belong in the middle lane with all the Nissans and Lexuses and other midroad sleepyhead vehicles with AAA stickers.
6) Road rage is something we haven’t got time for. No one bothers flipping the bird here, they just shoot you or collect insurance for letting you follow too closely and crash into them. Don’t do anyone any favors. We’ve no time for colorful outbursts. They’d ruin the botox, anyway.
7) In order to alleviate the temptation for #6, you must have the appropriate standard equipment in your car, i.e., a headset and cell phone. THAT is what you do with your time in the areas in which the right lane is looking like the middle lane. Use your Quality Time when there is no way out. Happify and maximimize your life, since most of it will be spent right here.
Bicyclists deserve courtesy on this street only if they can maintain a minimum of 35 mph at all times. All others deserve a good honk at close range.
9) Find a cutter if you can. This means a young ghetto gearhead with a rice rocket, a mad granny with a good shift, or a clueless young hottie with a speedy sports car, who are willing to make insane cutoffs to weave through the holes, — alert, irreverent and properly impatient. Use them, they are your friends. Tail them like there’s no tomorrow. Re: Tickets, see #3.
10) Vehicles to note and stay away from:
A. Vehicles that tell you Jesus is Dios and you must read the biblio. Not because they’re religious, but because they’re too polite and will inevitably stop at the first sign of yellow. And that accordian polka music they’re listening to won’t clue them in to the approaching firetrucks either.
B. Anything that has a gear shift stick longer than 20″ (Metro Bus, food truck, cement mixer, postal vehicle, Fed Ex, El Gardener Dude)
C. Balding fat guy in red mid-life crisis car on cell. He’s retired or consulting, and could care less how soon he’ll get anywhere. Or else, he’s busy pitching a film.
D. Dazed and confused neck-craner pausing at each corner. They’re just trying to find Rodeo Drive shopping parking.
E. Just about anything Buick.
F. Majority of those with Bush stickers.
G. Anyone who cannot see over the steering wheel. But you knew that.
11) Places to take out your phone (see #7): In front of various schools, and particularly 10 blocks in either direction of La Cienega.
12) Best times to drive: basically between 12:30am and 5:00am. That’s about it, sorry.
13) Place to report potholes that nearly swallowed your vehicle but were narrowly missed by dodging the cars parked in NO STOPPING zones:
http://ladpw.org/general/faq/index.cfm?action=NewQuestion&AppSubject=Request%3A%20Pothole&Category=Roads&ReqDivision=RMD&crossStreet=1
Good luck my friends.
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