The Giant Earthquake Can't Come Fast Enough

One of the biggest differences between Los Angeles and New York City, besides the fact that New York is a real city, is the polar opposite position each takes in the car-pedestrian binary. Los Angeles is decidedly a city with an overdeveloped car culture while New York is a pedestrian-based culture. Obviously. The stereotypical images of a mass of people crowded on a New York City sidewalk and the parking lot-like conditions of a Los Angeles freeway are very much based in fact. Each is capable of making you truly and wholeheartedly despising everyone around you.

In NYC, public transportation rules. And unless you're rich, in a hurry, or drunk and just want to get home, the subway is the way to go. And you need to walk to the subway. In Los Angeles, you drive everywhere. Only poor people take the buses, tourists take cabs, and nobody rides the subway. Maybe someday I will, and then I'll blog about it. But not now. In LA, I drive to places that are literally just down the block; if I was still in NY, the same stores could be three times the distance and I'd happily walk there.

New York is so pedestrian-oriented, that it is the only place in the whole country with a blanket "no turn on red" law. Los Angeles, meanwhile, is so car-oriented that it is the only place in the whole country where jaywalking laws are enforced. I know 5 people who have been ticketed for this "crime."

And while NY -- as a real city -- maintains a uniformity with regards to it's predisposition towards pedestrians, Los Angeles has 2 incredibly obnoxious exceptions. The first is the lack of left-turn arrows at certain extremely busy intersections allowing only one (only 1!) car to turn per light rotation ; meanwhile the ones with left turn arrows at the dead intersections leave you sitting there for ten minutes at three in the morning with your thumb up your ass.

The second annoying, and more importantly -- extremely fucking dangerous -- exception to driver authority is the crosswalks. The crosswalks not at intersections, but located in the middle of blocks. Drivers are required to stop in the middle of a block for pedestrian crossers at these places. And a lot of these crosswalks are on streets where the speed limit is 35, so everyone is going 45. And then they have to stop suddenly.

They have one of these crosswalks just down the street from my house. It's a very busy street. And they don't mark these crosswalks in any way except with a stupid sign off to the side of the sidewalk. The one by my house -- as many are -- is obstructed by trees. And, what's more, there aren't any street lights near it. So tonight, I almost killed two women and their dogs. I was driving along at 40mph, when suddenly they stepped off the curb into the street. I hit my breaks in time, and almost got drilled by the guy behind me who had to swerve into the other lane because he was closer to my ass than that one dogs nose was to the other dog's ass.

So, in doing the right and courteous (if completely asinine) thing -- stopping -- I was almost rear-ended by some jerk practically driving in my back seat.

This town blows for so many more reasons than Hollywood actor types and Valley girls.