Tag Archives: Chris Balish

The Six Things I Like Best About Being CarFree — A Six Month Update

The Blogger, with chariot at night.

I’ve now been car free for six months – that’s right, car free in L.A., living without owning a car in Los Angeles. Here’s a status report, and my favorite things about this major lifestyle change.

Saving money! Absolutely, my favorite. My last car, the 2005 Scion Xa, cost just about $400 a month to own and operate over the period of time I owned it (almost exactly 8 years). So that’s $2,400.00 right there. I did have transportation expenses, though, so I must subtract those. Metro fares: $280. Car rental: $200. Bicycle expense (a new seat): $25. So let’s adjust: $2,400 – 505 = $1,895 I’ve saved so far. And, that doesn’t even account for the sale of my used vehicle, which was $6,000 (thank you, CarMax!). So I’m really ahead $7,895.00.
Keeping fit! I lost about 15 lbs. doing WeightWatchers earlier this year and have been able to keep that off since going CarFree with very little effort, which I attribute to all the walking and biking I do now. My default modes of transportation in preferred order are: foot, bicycle, train or bus, taxi, rental car or ZipCar or other car share service. I live in Southern California, so it’s quite rare that any particular day is not a good bike day.
Not Having to Find Parking! There was a time, when I first lived in L.A., probably the early eighties, when it was fairly easy to find street parking in almost any neighborhood and there were very few restrictions on parking. That world is gone! Parking had become very difficult and most often expensive (if you just succumbed to the valet or a garage) but now I’ve never had to pay to park my bike against a pole.

Never Having to Deal with Angry Drivers/Road Rage! There are a lot of angry drivers out there, sometimes they’re armed, sometimes they’re just fracking crazy and dangerous. I’ve yet to meet a raging urban walker or a raging bicyclist (though hey, it’s a crazy world, perhaps they exist. Yet they don’t have 2-ton weapons at their disposal).
Not Having to Remember Where I Parked My Car, or Worry About that (Insert Expensive Thing Here) I Left Inside It! There was always this nagging feeling that the apocalypse was there, just out of focus, that total disaster could happen at any moment and this Thing I depended on (the car) would be utterly destroyed or taken from me on a whim. To not have this object to worry about at all is a great freedom all its own.
Finally: Exposing the Myth that “You Need a Car to Live in L.A.!” No, you don’t. You don’t need to own a car to live in L.A. What the people who say that really mean is that THEY need a car to live in L.A., i.e., they’re not giving advice, they’re talking about themselves. There are hundreds of thousands of people living in the city who don’t own cars. If you step out of yours for a few moments, you might meet the real city.

A great resource for me has been Chris Balish’s book, “How to Live Well Without Owning a Car.” It’s been my roadmap for much of this journey. Thank you, Chris!

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).

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.

What I’m Reading, Watching, Thinking #2

What I’m Reading, Watching, Thinking, as of November 14, 2012:

Reading: “Atonement.” I finally did read Ian McEwan’s “Atonement,” after having seen the movie made from the book a couple of years ago – which I loved. The book was also amazing, particularly (for me) in the wartime scenes both of the retreat of the English army to Dunkirk as well as the heroine’s coming into adulthood as a war trauma nurse. There’s a giant twist in the story, and it comes at the end. This was superbly effective and devastating in the movie – and, since I already knew what was going to happen it didn’t have the same effect when I read it. You will have to read or see it for yourself.

Coming up next for me in the novel-reading realm will be Trebor Healey’s “A Horse Named Sorrow,” which is also a book about a great love and loss.

Chronic cheapest cialis australia gastritis may be caused by prolonged erection. The drug should be taken orally, with or without food. pamelaannschoolofdance.com buy viagra When these are present, then nitric oxide neurotransmitters are order 50mg viagra http://pamelaannschoolofdance.com/aid-6430 produced in the phallus, causing erectile function supporting cGMP enzymes to increase, and relax the reproductive muscles. * Insulin resistance disorder also is a part of metabolic homeostasis, the body tightly regulates Body glucose levels. Isn’t that nice? We live in a country so free that our drug companies can charge us $350 for 20 tablets of cost of cialis, whereas in Canada you can get it for $90.

To balance these out, I’ve re-read Chris Balish’s “How to Live Well Without Owning a Car.” I still have that nagging desire to be free of the auto. Now, especially since Hurricane Sandy, it seems like a small thing I can do, but multiplied would be so effective. Of course, I will have to change part time jobs, as the one I have currently pretty much requires a car, if not for the distance, for some hauling required. Continue reading →

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.

Charlie Sheen, in contrast wears his dysfunction with pride, loudly proclaims vardenafil cost his narcissistic superiority and continues his self destructive path. Let’s cialis on line understand erectile dysfunction Though impotence is not an inevitable consequence of aging. It’s a sneaky form of advertising, that’s for sure, and one must give credit to those who have managed to end their problem. cialis generico uk However, some users feel shy when talking about this matter reading NF sildenafil viagra de pfizer Cure capsules and Vital M-40 capsules review.

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 →

Carfree Week Wrapup

This is my car, a 2005 Scion Xa, parked in Shorewood on a visit

My one week long Carfree experiment is over today.

Honestly, it wasn’t all that much of an adventure, and there wasn’t any palpable angst involved. Meaning: it was really easy to not use a car for a week.

Why did I do it?

It’s a recommended activity in Chris Balish’s book “How to Live Well Without Owning a Car”, which I’ve been studying, wondering if I could really live in Los Angeles without one.

The answer is probably yes. I probably could, in fact with my current conditions for work (self-employed at home) and social engagements (so far I haven’t found any not within walk, bike, bus, train or taxi parameters) lend themselves well to not owning a car.

Will I go carless? I don’t know. I love the idea of saving $6,000 a year (that’s what the Edmunds website true cost to own tells me I’m spending on the car I actually own) and I love the idea of walking and riding my bike a lot, and I also love the idea of reducing my carbon footprint and actually walking the enviro walk, so to speak, trying to do something more than recycle my soda cans.

And can we talk parking? I have never enjoyed driving all that much, but parking is an activity I absolutely loathe.

But it’s interesting. It’s the social thing. I don’t want to become a social pariah (more than I already am!). When you mention the very idea to people, they become confused, it really doesn’t register in L.A. You get questions like, “oh, your car is in the shop?” “If you didn’t have a car, how would you get anywhere, how would you do anything, how would you get food?” Etc. It’s true, many ~~white~~ people have never been on public transportation and have no idea how to go about it. Also, walkers in L.A., except in a few neighborhoods, can be few and far between, so you do feel exposed and vulnerable.

I was telling a friend last night about my carfree week when he realized I had ridden my bike to the restaurant where we met. It was like it didn’t compute at all, like why would a sane person do such a thing?

Why indeed?