TK

Biking in Los Angeles: A brief history

A week before Bike to Work Day, I calculated how long it would take me to travel from my apartment in North Hollywood to the office in Glendale. 

One hour. If I wanted to take a bus instead, tack on another 20 minutes.

Last year, when I covered L.A. City Council meetings, it took me 40 minutes, sometimes 35, to reach the Civic Center exit on the Red Line. Glendale was several miles closer, but it didn’t have the support of an underground subway system, with trains speeding past the mounting traffic above.

 I decided against it. I mainly work out of the office, but I occasionally have to jump in my car to cover stories during the week. I knew that the one day I decided to bike to the office would be the day that a multiple-person shooting, canyon fire or toxic chemical spill occurred during my shift. I didn’t want to chance it.

But on Wednesday, the day before the nation was scheduled to wobble on two-wheels, I decided to take a walk along Chandler Boulevard as the sun set. On my way back, I passed multiple bikers zipping along at high speeds and I felt a clench in my heart.

I used to do this too, I thought. I used to be one of you. My first ride with the group Midnight Ridazz was in 2008 and it was Star Wars-themed. We met in downtown somewhere, but I couldn’t remember the exact location now. Everywhere around me I saw Princess Leias and Luck Skywalkers and Storm Troopers.

I was in a boys Ewok Halloween costume, on a boys bike. Both were a few sizes too small. When the ride started, I was left behind almost immediately. I ended up at least 10 miles off track, in Montebello.

But the feeling of the wind on my face in the warm summer night made up for my swollen knees and callouses on the palms of my hands that showed up the next day. I was addicted. The next week, I bought a vintage bike for $60.

Having never been much of a runner, I finally found my outlet in biking. Weekends were filled with themed rides all around the city. Weeknights I went on local rides with boys who showed me how to repair tires and forced me to develop muscles to keep up with them.

The day after my walk on Chandler, I came home and immediately headed to my racing bike, perched in the corner by my books.

“Be careful,” my roommate warned as I headed out the door.

It was an ominous warning. By the time I made it to the bike lane, it was past 8:30. I was only a couple miles into my ride, in Sherman Oaks, when I saw an SUV backing out of a driveway right in front of me. I didn’t have time to think. I instinctively screamed as loud as I could and hit the spare tire on the back of the car as I passed. 

Luckily, the car heard me and stopped. I biked to the corner, then pulled over to the sidewalk and stood there for 15 minutes, watching the crosswalk sign change from a red hand to a white pedestrian. Over and over again.

I considered walking home; It wasn’t far. I’ve been on multiple rides in the dark. I’ve biked alone on most streets on the eastside. I’ve yelled at men in trucks who tried to cut me off and schooled drivers who thought I wasn’t allowed on the road. But the incident shattered my confidence. I’ve never been close to colliding with a car while on a bike.

After walking with my bike for a few blocks, I was angry with myself. The driver wasn’t at fault; they simply didn’t see me. Regular cyclists have to deal with worse obstacles than a near-miss. 

I got back in the bike lane. At first, my body became tense with each passing car. But by the time I reached Laurel Canyon, I was sad to be home. I thought of the air, flowing through my body until it was entwined in my limbs. 

Eulogy for Portrait of a Bookstore

My local independent bookstore is gone. Well, almost.

A couple of weeks ago, Portrait of a Bookstore broke the news that they will close on May 17. It was inevitable but also a reminder of how long I have lived here.

Here being North Hollywood, in the city of Los Angeles. In April of 2009, I packed my mattress, clothes and laptop in my Volkswagen Jetta and headed to a three-bedroom apartment to live with two friends. I didn’t even have enough things to rent a moving truck. I had no desk, no chest of drawers, no adult furniture to speak of. My bed frame was (still is) from IKEA and I took apart the wooden pieces and sat in the middle of my large room putting them back together like they were part of a giant puzzle.

I was too impatient and young to even be bothered with boxes; most of my possessions I threw in large garment bags or spare containers. Almost immediately after dropping off my small evidence of life, I started exploring the neighborhood. I walked and walked and walked. I found small theatres and a Metro station that could transport me to downtown in 35 minutes on a good day. Starbucks was a ubiquitous sight but I also found local coffee houses, furnished with pianos and padded benches.

It was a little over a mile to walk to Aroma in Tujunga Village. I liked to bring a book or a notepad and sit outside, soaking in the interesting characters and the pointed conversations people had about screenplays and lawsuits and auditions.

When I got tired of the clattering, I stepped inside the small bookstore, as thick as a hallway and roughly the size of a master bedroom. The selection was small but hand-picked for an audience that likes its experimental prose and nonlinear plots as much as its bestsellers. They carried Etgar Keret and Tao Lin and David Rakoff and Joan Didion. 

It was there I bought Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom,” which sold out after President Obama was spotted buying a copy. I added to my Jorge Luis Borges collection with “Seven Nights” and “On Writing,” two books that irrevocably changed the way I think. 

I bought Mary Roach’s “Packing for Mars” on a whim, but it proved essential background reading when I ended up covering Mars exploration and NASA last year. 

Books I read about in the New York Times ended up on their shelves a week or two later. I’d come in with a list of new releases and found them there, staring right in front of me on a display. No wandering around through isles, no asking a sales person and having them look mildly confused before punching in a code on their computer, no disappointment. 

Like an attentive boyfriend, they always knew what I wanted. But now we’re parting ways and I’ll remember our time together as part of my mid-twenties epoch. There’s no bitterness, I just feel displaced.

The next closest bookstore that stocks new releases is Barnes and Noble. And B&N doesn’t have clerks who can talk about what book is the most engaging for a book club or how an author made them feel. They won’t give me free book marks and discuss Murakami for twenty minutes. They will hand me a small square of receipt paper with three computer-generated recommendations listed on it and try to sell me a Nook.

I don’t want a Nook. I want to walk into a bookstore and find “Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy” sitting next to “Hemingway’s Cats,” and be greeted by a person at the register who is equally intrigued with a novelist’s extensive pet history and George Smiley.

Counting time

I don’t have a wall calendar this year. I’ve had one every year. Last year I had one of vintage maps, the year before, femme fatales and aliens. Time is passing by but it’s hard to keep track. 

There is a certain window at which to buy a calendar before you’re doomed to a year staring at a blank wall. Christmas came and went, I stayed in town and worked. New Year’s seems like years ago, but I wouldn’t know.

Most of the time, I didn’t even fill in the tiny boxes with dates. I just liked to look at them, symmetrical rows of 168 hours. I liked visualizing where we were in the year.

I can’t tell by the seasons because it’s always roughly the same temperature outside. There are slight variations: yesterday was 90 degrees and blistering hot, today is gray and misty. The weather is like a temperamental teenager.

Real women in L.A.?

The New York Times has a photo essay online, ‘On Hollywood.’

The photographer, Lise Sarfati, says her series “shows women who really live in Los Angeles.”

The images are visually beautiful and well-composed, but I’ve never met any of these women. (And why are half of them smoking?)

None of them look like my friends, neighbors or colleagues. Maybe I’m hanging out with the wrong people.

Their occupations and stories are omitted. It just adds to the growing illusion of what Los Angeles is to people who live on the east coast. They may be portraits of women in Los Angeles, but I don’t know if they’re true.

(For the editors out there, L.A. Observed points out the mistakes in the piece.)

Monday.

What do you do on your day(s) off? 

People always ask this. In the 90s, people asked, what do you do for fun? (Probably due to the fact that I was a teen in the 90s.) 

I have Mondays off. It’s an odd day to be idle, but it has let me observe how the city starts its week. Sometimes I wonder if anyone is in an office. The markets are packed full. There’s traffic on Laurel Canyon. I’ve had trouble getting a table for a late breakfast at a cafe. 

There’s not the serenity and calmness of a Sunday. At noon, people start having lunch. Movie producers, actors, agents. By 1 p.m., traffic subsides but in an hour or two it starts up again. Parents pick up their kids from school, buses begin their daily trek. The freeways begin to get clogged and stay that way until 7:30.

Dinners run to 8 or 9. Then its television shows and bed. Back again tomorrow.

Reading alone

I finished “1Q84” about a week ago and I’m still reeling from the experience. When you see a movie in Los Angeles, you can find any person on the street to talk about it. The creative community sees the independents and the blockbusters. Start talking about your opinion on a film at a party and five people will circle around you, ready to debate. You bring up film and you’ll be safe. Partygoers will breathe a sigh of relief. ‘Yes, a topic I know something about!’

You bring up a novel, especially one over 900 pages, and people will retreat. ‘I’ve got to go to the bathroom.’ ‘I’ve got to meet a friend outside.’ ‘Did someone already buy the option for the film adaptation?’

Reading a book can be alienating in this city. I announced that I was finished and heard nothing on the other side. 

I bought “1Q84” the day it was released in America: October 25, 2011. I reserved a copy at Skylight Books in Los Feliz because I assumed that it would sell out. It didn’t. But it’s nice to pretend that it could, somewhere. 

“Town of Cats”

On rain, Los Angeles and Al Martinez

Today, I woke up to pouring rain but I decided to go out anyway. Sunday is the start of my weekend, and I usually start it with a walk or an adventure. It’s always on foot. After being obsessively glued to electronics five days of the week, I need to make sure my legs still work.

A little rain didn’t deter me. Only it wasn’t a little. By the time I walked to the Metro station, rode the bus to Lankershim Boulevard and walk a couple of blocks to a coffee shop, I was soaked. When I went to the bathroom to survey the damage, I saw a dripping wet, bright red face staring back at me in the mirror. I never buy umbrellas. They always turn inside out or break after a couple of uses. But as I sat down at a table, still shivering, I thought about buying ten.

The week before, I drove in the rain to the Huntington Library to meet columnist Al Martinez. My car almost spun out a few times on the 210 freeway and I dreaded the trip back to the office. It’s a Honda Civic Hybrid. It would never survive New England weather; it could be carried away with a slight breeze.

Martinez arrived as soon as the museum opened.  He said he wanted to be at his exhibit the day that it opened. The rain didn’t seem to bother him. He is 82, with a full head of white hair. He wore white pants, black loafers and a black sweater. We sat in the hallway leading to his exhibit, in two chairs placed underneath a row of photographs of him.

“What have you learned about people through your columns?” I asked him.

“Never enough,” he replied.

Read the full profile here.

Everyone is boring compared to him

The most fascinating obituary I’ve ever read. 

His name sounds like a character in a Jane Austen novel. He married an astrologist. He crossed oceans in a rowboat. He wanted to live like Tarzan in the jungle.

“At 9, he settled a dispute with a pistol. At 13, he lit out for the Amazon jungle. At 20, he attempted suicide-by-jaguar. Afterward he was apprenticed to a pirate.”

Why didn’t I discover this until today?

The March issue of Wired has a story on Bob Lefsetz. I had no idea who he was before reading the article (apparently, I’m not alone, according to the headline). An unorthodox music journalist, he blogs about the industry while analyzing its key players. People hate him. Every agent and label reads him.

I didn’t know what to expect when I visited his website, Lefsetz Letter. His bio claims he’s “famous for being beholden to no one.” The design is simple. No photos in the entries, just text.

I was hooked after reading an entry about a man buying $105 worth of Lean Cuisines at Ralphs. 

Like Charles Bukowski and John Fante, he observes people and situations in Los Angeles that most writers wouldn’t even notice. 

What’s more impressive than his insight is the volume of his work. Thirty or forty blogs a month. According to the Wired article, he doesn’t make money from it anymore. He used to charge a subscription fee, but now its free. He makes his living through speaking and consulting gigs.

I don’t particularly follow the music industry, but I will keep reading. I like his attitude.