Category Archives: Green Saturdays

Posts about car-free life, sustainability, environmental issues, frugality, general tree-hugging stuff

Adventures in CarFree L.A.: My One Month Without Wheels

I’m not in this line.

Well, it’s been a month! I sold my car on June 7. It’s been 30 days without a car, and so far the world has not come crashing in on me.

Mostly, I knew what I would encounter. Since I work at home, there was no commute for that on a daily basis.

I’d already experimented with grocery shopping using my bike, now outfitted with panniers. So I knew that worked – if anything, the only thing I’d say about this month with no car at my beck and call, is that there were fewer to no impulse “treats” bought — like if I really really wanted that Haagen-Dazs or chilly refreshing root beer, I’d have to walk over or get on the bike. So there was less of that. My waistline is grateful.

I did experiment with going to the beach using public transport. I took the Red Line subway to the Wilshire Boulevard Rapid Bus #720, picking it up at Vermont. It deposits you right at Palisades Park, Ocean Avenue and Wilshire in Santa Monica, so you get right to the beach (a short walk down the steps and over the pedestrian bridge spanning Pacific Coast ~~Freeway~~ Highway). The good: it gets you right there, for a total cost of $3 (that’s with 1 transfer, I bought a day pass for $5 which made more sense), I was able to read on the bus (Kindle on Android) and I got a seat both ways, which surprised me since it was a heat-wave Sunday, there was very little waiting time — that bus runs every few minutes, and the subway runs about every 10 minutes. No paying for parking at the beach or searching endlessly for a free space somewhere. The not-so-good: it takes forever to get there and get back, between 1.5 hours and 2 hours each way!

So, if you’re spending a couple of hours on the sand, is it worth it to make what is basically a 4 hour round trip (it’s around 20 miles, give or take a few, across the urban congestion of L.A. and West L.A.)? I think that for me personally, next time I’ll plan to spend the day there doing things in addition to my sunworshipping on the sand. That way, it seems more reasonable for the distance and also, travel times would be both later and earlier, thus hopefully a bit shorter.

Then again, one of the tenets to car-free living in a gigantic place like Los Angeles is that you basically “live” in your neighborhood. The beach is not in my neighborhood, so I have to accept that. What I will say is that it’s pretty much a nightmare getting there from the valley with a car as well — unless you leave at 4 a.m.

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I had one minor accident/mishap, totally my fault, and not on the street. It was in the lobby of my apartment building, where I foolishly decided to back up while still astride my bike. I got my foot caught in the pedals and fell backwards on top of the thing. I’m OK, and so it the bicycle, but it was a little bloody.

I’ll spare you a photo of that.

Adventures in CarFree L.A.: going to the dentist

My Chariot, at its former home in Palm Springs.

Another in my series of the occasional challenges of getting around town without a car.

This one being, the dentist — that I’ve gone to for over 20 years and is no longer near where I live. I moved (many, many times); he didn’t. So, I was presented with a couple of options: one of the philosophies around CarFree living is to live local, as in, to patronize and support your neighborhood businesses. I guess that means including dentists and doctors. So, I could’ve easily found several within walking distance of my home. They are legion, actually.

But there you have the rub: I didn’t want to change dentists. He’s a great dentist. He knows my mouth intimately (wait, that didn’t come out quite right . . .) But you know what I mean. There’s a fortune invested in those chompers.

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So, I vowed to get to him, and I did. I live in Valley Village, west and south of North Hollywood, north of Studio City, and east of Sherman Oaks, in the San Fernando Valley. The dentist’s office is in West Hollywood near the Beverly Center. For those non-Angelenos reading this, it’s about a 10 mile trip if you’re a crow. There’s also an ancient mountain range between these two locations, sometimes known as the Hollywood Hills.

There is no easy, straight, one-line public transport option between these 2 points. So, I opted for the best alternative I could think of, which is to take my bike on the subway.

Pretty easy, actually, and the bike ride turned out to be my workout for the day. I live about one mile west of the North Hollywood Station of the Red Line. I ride there using the Chandler Bike Path.

I get on the Red Line subway there and get off at Hollywood Highland Station, just two stops, 8 minutes, never a delay. But it does take you over (well, under) that mountain range and deposits you directly into the heart of tourist Hollywood.

Tough getting back on the bike amid the Marilyns and the Zorros. But I prevail. Google Maps tells me the best bike route to my dentist (Melrose and La Cienega) is to take Orange Drive south to Willoughby, then Willoughby all the way west to La Cienega. From there it’s a quick couple of blocks down La Cienega to my destination.

Can I tell you how much I love that Google Maps gives you a car, public transport, bike and walk option for any direction? Even if they’re sometimes wrong, I actually think it works better than Metro’s own website “Trip Planner” function.

I know we’re supposed to hate the Google right now because it’s farming our brains for their own sleazy 1% profit but just for the minute I’m liking this.

So here’s my thoughts:

The good: Nice sunny day for a bike ride. Kind of nice that I don’t have to go to the gym for exercise, my transport is providing it. Being early afternoon on a Thursday, there’s not a lot of traffic and no crazy drivers. I get there with minutes to spare, thus the Google Maps direction timer was accurate.

The bad: Parts of Orange Drive, especially just south of Santa Monica Boulevard, are in terrible shape. Let’s be frank, the street sucks. It needs new asphalt. Why they made it a sharrow street is like torture for cyclists. Also, Willoughby is a sharrow street too (which means you’re supposed to share the lane with a car – um, good luck). What we really need in Hollywood-West Hollywood is a dedicated east-west street with a full bike lane for riders.

Oh, and the cleaning and check-up went great. My teeth may last for another year!

Sold my Car: Car Free in Los Angeles

I finally did it.

Last week I sold my Scion to Carmax in Burbank and walked off their lot as a car-free man!

Buh-bye, little Scion (parked at Dad’s in MKE in 2009)

For those of you who’ve been following my increasing use of my bike, my feet and public transportation over that past few years, this probably won’t be coming as a huge surprise – but it’s still a rarity (to be car-free — in Los Angeles, anyway) so I opted for this kind of mass explanation.

I gave up the car for many reasons:

Financial – my particular car cost me about $5K per year to own and operate, which is actually a low figure as far as autos go. These continue to be tough times and that will make a huge difference to my budget.
Environmental – I want to part of the solution, not a part of the problem, in any way that’s available to me – and this was one.
I don’t need it – I work from home; I’ve also figured out through enough trial and error and “dry runs” how to live the rest of my daily life quite easily without owning a car.
I don’t like to drive and I don’t like to park. Honestly, I’ve not enjoyed this process for years and years now. In L.A., it’s a nightmare! I’d rather leave it to the pros (like cabbies and train and bus drivers).

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There are a few other reasons but these are probably the biggest. Having just spent the last month car-free, visiting relatives in New Orleans, it seemed like a good time.

Spontaneity will suffer, yes: we’ll have to make plans, anathema to some, I know. Also, note that I didn’t say that I’d never drive a car, I just won’t own one. There’s now a bunch of car-sharing options (like Zipcar) which makes much more economic sense to me than owning something which sits idle almost all the time.

True, I’ll have to forego those midnight, madcap trips to the beach to frolic in the sand and the waves – unless I want to spend the bucks for a cab out there – but the truth is those kind of nights ended long ago.

I intend to blog more about this as the process unfolds so make sure come back. Or, maybe you’ll just see me walking past you on the sidewalk as you sit behind the wheel, idling away in a traffic jam!

Here’s a great book which really helped me get to this place: Chris Balish’s How to Live Well Without Owning a Car.

Empty House Syndrome

Nation of Change

Houses are bigger, and we’re living with others less often. Not to mention all the empty houses in the country, that for whatever reason can’t be used to house people who live outside.

Doesn’t it all seem a little weird? Here we have both a terrible homeless problem and a terrible real estate problem. Empty houses on the one hand and on the other people who have no place to live. However, the people who have no place to live have no money to pay to live (either rent or buy) in those empty houses. So the solution – to let the people live in the empty spaces – can’t work, because of the “rules” we have.

We can’t have homeless people squatting in foreclosed upon houses – that just, I don’t know, just can’t happen? Why? Because it’s not the way “it” works. Blah blah blah. And the usual argument would follow, but then everybody would want to live in their house for free, etc.

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I’m sure there’s a million reasons why not to. I guess it all comes down to the kind of society we wish to live in and how we want to relate to our fellow human beings. Am I saying it’s wrong to deny the homeless shelter in vacant homes that someone else owns? Probably not. I know that’s not how the “system” works in this or other countries. I have a vacant porch and I have yet to invite a homeless person to camp there. However, I am curious as to when and how it got to that point, where an arbitrary economic model trumps compassion and extends misery.

Much easier to talk about the parts of the story which involve doubling up or living with friends, etc. Not only is there money and energy to be saved, there’s camaraderie to be had and loneliness to be stanched. There’s more people living alone today than ever before in history (myself included). Have you ever wondered why this is, and found it odd – after all, we are social animals. Cats and dogs have certainly benefited!

If you live alone, do you think you’ll always want to? Or would you like to live with other people, especially as a single older person?

Old Values, Mutualism Making a New Comeback

Just add beard?

Any neighborhood where the denizens have (nicely trimmed, please) beards, wear suspenders and sport a few tattoos would be a place I wouldn’t mind visiting – hey, a lot!

In Sara Horowitz’s story in The Altlantic on the new (old) mutualism, she describes the movement (at least in Portland) as thus. As in, the male folks involved in cooperative ventures have this aesthetic.

More important, of course, is the movement behind the fashion – cooperatives filling a void to which neither government nor the private sector has been able or willing to provide good solutions.

I remember back during my one year at the University of Wisconsin in Madison – where I lived within walking distance of the Mifflin Street Co-op, which was a thriving holdover from the 1960s countercultural movement (it seemed like a long time from the anti-war riot days, but it was really just 1977-78). I tried to support it as best I could, but I do remember the healthy offerings weren’t often what my college-age junk food-loving body wanted.

But I digress. Horowitz goes on to talk about some of the bigger successes, like the Freelancer’s Union insurance programs, as well as more glamorous enterprises like Etsy and Kickstarter, which has funded thousands of art/music/film/design projects over the last year.

The cooperative movement couldn’t be more American or traditional than Ben Franklin, who started a “fire insurance company, Philadelphia Contributionship, which still operates today.”
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I found this definition of a social-purpose venture: It needs to:

Be financially sustainable
Have a social impact

So that’s pretty broad. I think the main differences between the old mutualism and what passes as the new version will have to do with technology – specifically the internet and crowd-sourcing, avenues simply not available to our ancestors in the 1890s. Maybe that and the tattoos – I can see the men of the 1890s in suspenders and beards, but were tattoos really the thing back then? I think that’s a more modern wrinkle. Then again, I could be wrong.

And, I learned a new word: locavore. I bet you, smart reader, don’t even have to look it up.

Yes, Virginia, it’s Easy and Cheap to take Public Transportation from the Valley to Long Beach

View Larger Map

Last Thursday, I had a lunch date with my friend and colleague Krys Grondorf, down at a place in Belmont Shore (Open Sesame) which is near where she lives. Time not being an issue, I decided to take the train options we have in Los Angeles to get to Long Beach, and document that trip for you here on the blog.

The trip involved two buses and two trains. It’s a distance of about 40 miles or so, according to calculations. I live in Valley Village, about a mile from the end of the Red Line Subway in North Hollywood. So I took the Orange Line (an express bus line that operates like a train, dedicated roadway with few stops) the one stop from Laurel Canyon to the North Hollywood Station.

From there, I took the Red Line Subway through Universal City, Hollywood, Silver Lake, Koreatown, etc. and got off at 7th Street/Metro Center, where I transferred to the Blue Line light rail.

The Blue Line runs mainly directly south after going east along Washington for a short distance just south of downtown L.A. It follows the previous right-of-way of the famous Pacific Electric Railway (red cars) which was dismantled after WW II – and then rebuilt in the 90s. I got off at the Long Beach Transit Mall, the end of the line, a couple of blocks from the ocean. I still had to take a bus, probably about 2 miles, to Belmont Shore. It was Passport Bus A or D, which I picked up around the corner from the Transit Mall.

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Trip Time: about 2 hours each way

Cost: Each leg of the metro cost $1.50, debited from my TAP card. So that part of the trip cost $9.00, round trip. The bus in Long Beach was $1.25 each way, so the total cost of this trip was $11.50. According to the Trip Planner function on the Metro Website, the driving cost (round trip) would be $41.56 (which doesn’t include any parking fees that might be added). And actually, I think I could have used some kind of transfer for the Long Beach bus — but I didn’t know how to do that, so it would have been less than that $11.50.

So, it’s definitely doable. Would I do it every day? Hell, no. I did get a lot of reading done, and I did all my email and calls on the smart phone on the Blue Line. The nicest thing was the zero stress, and seeing parts of the city I don’t ever get a chance to see when driving. Oh, and there was a hooker on the Blue Line coming back, which was entertaining in its own way.

First, let me apologize about the crappy video below. I’m still learning how to use the smart phone video app, and the worst part about it is in bright daylight you can’t really see the image on the screen, so you’re pretty much shooting blind. Sorry about the last shot in Long Beach, I must’ve turned the camera off before I thought I did, and heaven knows why I turned the phone upside down. Ooops.

Enjoying Los Angeles Arts and Culture Without a Car

La Cienega/Jefferson Station on the Expo Line

Step-by-step intrux on how to: How to Enjoy L.A. Arts and Culture Without a Car.

Thoroughly enjoyed this enlightening and entertaining story by Alissa Walker in the L.A. Weekly blog. It’s really a blog post about a book, Car Free Los Angeles and Southern California, by Nathan Landau, a transit planner.

Walker, who navigates L.A. every day car free, writes about Landau’s ideas as how they work for a skeptical resident as well as someone visiting or a casual tourist. Both authors emphasize how Los Angeles public transportation has and is being improved, seemingly on a monthly basis — for instance, this week (on Saturday, April 28) the Expo Line light rail opens. Not only will this be the first light rail link to the west side in 50 years, it will also take one to museums in Exposition Park and some nice restaurants in Culver City.

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I recently had the opportunity to show my brother and his family some sights of L.A. in one day – and we did make use of the Red Line subway for part of the trip. Sightseeing Goal: Staples Center. We didn’t need to park downtown, and we didn’t need to get on the Hollywood Freeway. That in itself, I’m sure, lowered my blood pressure a few points. Continue reading →

Personal car-sharing: yep, that’s right, not everyone needs to OWN a car

should I, could I, rent out this baby?

Personal car-sharing is a new twist on auto rentals

Click on the link above to read about the newest twist in car sharing – apps that allow the average person to “share” their vehicle by renting it out.

The brainchild of a guy who noticed how much of the time zillions of vehicles are just parked, not in use, not doing anything, sites like Getaround, Wheelz, JustShareIt, RelayRides and others allow the enterprising person (yourself, maybe? me, maybe?) to either rent or rent out a car.

This is brilliant, it reminds me of the old idea of the fugitive “hiding in plain sight” – only this time, it’s our consumerist mindset that’s hiding. We were conditioned to believe that we ALL needed to own these things, that otherwise it would just be too difficult to get around, do things, to live, etc. (And believe me it was planned conditioning – there was/is no innate “need” to have things like cars.)

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Just say no to Christmas?

Alternative uses for a credit card!

link to Just say no to Christmas? from USATODAY.com.

See, being a non-conformist can get you into print! After I did this post a few weeks ago on Adbuster’s Buy Nothing Day and #OccupyXmas, I was contacted by the paper to contribute to their story on “Christmas without consuming.”

It’s good to know there are others out there (many, many others, I would imagine) who feel the same way I do about the consumerism that has taken over Xmas and has become responsible for so much stress and debt.

So what am I doing for Xmas? Dinner with friends on both Xmas Eve and Xmas day, and an open house in the neighborhood, where I’m told (yes!) there will be cookies.

This year in particular, because of the death in our family, since I don’t celebrate the crassness of Xmas there were no diversions, such as (un)necessary trips to malls, real or online, parking lot traffic jams, overdrawn checking accounts, and well, you get my drift. I’m grateful for the time I had with my family.

My best wishes to everyone for fellowship and light on the holiday – after all, the kernel takeaway from Xmas is “peace on earth, goodwill to men” – right? There doesn’t need to be more than that, unless of course you have to have all the rest. It’s certainly been enough for me, going on 15 years since I said goodbye to all that.

You know what? Once again, nothing bad happened.

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What if you just said no: Buy Nothing Day + Buy Nothing Christmas #OCCUPYXMAS

Buy Nothing Day #OCCUPYXMAS

So there’s all this crap out today about Black Friday, and about the scuffles, the tramples, the pepper-spraying, etc., all to be found in abundance today at the mall, apparently.

What if – what if you don’t have to do any of this? In fact, if you really do hate corporate greed and want to hit them back in the only place they care about – their pocketbook – a strategy you might consider is Buy Nothing Day, brought to you by Adbusters. You might have heard of adbusters – they’ve been around for more than a decade, trying to point out to people about the insidious power of advertising (take that, Don Draper!).

They also provided the match that lit Occupy Wall Street. So this is an act of “disobedience” that’s unbelievably easy to implement – simply don’t go shopping today. No driving to stores. No online clicking with credit card. Just. Don’t. Do. It.

Do something else, for instance: Nap. Read. Watch TV. Go to a Movie (or two). Go to the Gym. Go for a Hike. Clean the house. Try new recipes for Thanksgiving leftovers. Make love with your partner, spouse, or a new friend (or all 3). Read to a child. Take your pet out. Chat with your neighbors. See, that took me all of 30 seconds to type out, who knows what I’d think of if I really put my mind to it! Continue reading →