by Selena Templeton (Mon Jan 25, 2010)
Los Angeles is affectionately referred to as ‘the
city of angels' and not-so affectionately as ‘the city of carbon monoxide.'
This
is a place where everyone, no matter how financially-challenged, owns a car to travel
from one end to the other of an expansive town criss-crossed by freeways. And
now city officials are beseeching us to take public transit, carpool, cycle
(hang on while I pick myself up off the floor from a laughing fit; cyclists
become mysteriously invisible on the streets of a city where Car is God) - anything
to save the environment.
So the other day I took the bus downtown to visit
a friend (more to save my wallet from the crazy gas prices than to save the
ozone layer, I must admit, but the end result was the same so who cares about
the motivation). It was a 30-minute, one-bus ride and I had a window seat and a
good book. Not bad, I thought. Maybe I could even do this on a regular-
What the fuck?
Someone had turned on their radio so loud that I
jumped in my seat. I looked around for the offender, couldn't pinpoint him,
opened my book, couldn't concentrate, gazed out the window, couldn't relax,
tried to eavesdrop on the man wearing two sets of glasses talking to himself,
couldn't hear him, surveyed the other passengers like a sniper peering through
a riflescope and then realized: the noise was coming from the television suspended
behind the driver. A television on a
bus?
The news was playing - LOUDLY, did I mention that?
- and I was forced to listen to reports of murder, violence, betrayal and
hundreds of thousands of newly-lost jobs. In my life I choose not to watch the
news because it is chock full o' tragedies and negativity, and all that does is
permeate my mind and ferment like pickled ginger. (Honestly, how is knowing all
the grim details of a man dismembering and eating his family on the other side
of the country useful to me?) But, trapped on a moving, public vehicle, I was
stripped of that choice. I couldn't read, I couldn't daydream, and if I'd been
with a friend, conversation would've been difficult. That's how loud and
obnoxious (due to the newscaster's typical monotonous and nasal voice) the
metro-television was.
And to make matters worse, every 5-8 blocks the
computerized voice announcing the next stop blared over the top of the news
report, so that it sounded like a screaming match between sports commentators
trying to out-do each other. The TV distracted me from clearly hearing the next
stop, and the stop announcer prevented me from clearly hearing just how many
women a certain celebrity has cheated on his wife with (wait, was that fifteen or fifty? My life depends on that detail, goddammit!).
Not only were my senses of sight and sound
violated, but with the shock-absorber-free wheels hitting potholes every few
yards, my spine was collapsing and expanding like an accordion. I got up to
give my seat to an older woman with several bags but I felt like I was
betraying her warm thanks as I rubbed my freshly bruised ass and stretched my
neck.
As I stood there, one hand on the bar above me,
the other keeping my purse strap on my shoulder, being flung to and fro like
knickers on a clothesline, I couldn't help but shake my head (which was
actually quite involuntary) in wonder. The whole ride had been jarring, loud,
distracting, unnerving and totally unpleasant.
And they want us to abandon our cars for this?
