Streetsblog Los Angeles

There have been so many depressing plots surrounding the ongoing horror story unfolding at Deepwater Horizon.  It's sort of a "pick your poison" buffet catastrophe: helpless animals coated in oil,  the universal inability to figure out a way to stop the darned thing from gushing to say nothing of the destruction of tourism, fishing and countless other industries. 

But when it comes to transportation policy, the depressing story has been that there is no story.  Despite the unbelievably clear warning that the Deepwater disaster heralds, most motorists don't see themselves at all culpable as they fill up their tanks and heckle BP executives when they appear on their television.  However, as this comic warns us, the joke will ultimately be on them.  After all, where do they think BP is going to get the money to pay for all the destruction caused by this disaster?

A couple of weeks ago, Brad Aaron posted a gem of a video by Mark Fiore about aliens landing on earth and getting confused by our transportation system.  Seriously?  We run our vehicles on dinosaur juice?

It turns out the theme of confused aliens and our transportation system isn't a new one.  Via Carter Rubin comes this video from the 1960's.  The gist: Martians send a ship to earth to take pictures of the surface and based on our development patterns assume that the dominant species on the planet isn't humans, but automobiles.  $20 says that nobody at LADOT gets the joke.

In honor of Bike to Work Week in Los Angeles, I thought I would bring back "Cartoon Tuesday" with a favorite bicycling comic.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find a comic that amused as much as this drawing on the wall of Gavin Newsom's communications office, so I was at a loss.

But I did find myself consistently getting a chuckle out of a strip that was appearing regularly in my search about a bearded cyclists adventures.  After a couple of click throughs, I discovered "Yehuda Moon and Kickstand Cycling," a daily comic strip about cycling by a cyclist.   I'm providing a copy of today's strip above, but to follow Yehuda's daily adventures, check out their official website, updated daily.

Before I sign out for the holidays, I wanted to give you some homework to help me out.  One thing that Sammy responds to when we’re trying to get him to sleep is singing.  Being a good Streetsblogger, I’m trying to give him as many songs about transit or biking as possible.  I haven’t found a song yet that celebrates dense urban development.

So here’s the assignment, in the comments section leave some of the songs I should be singing, or suggestions on a mainstream song that with a small change could be both baby and clean transportation appropriate.  For example, the above Sesame Street song about bus stops is great; but so would be a small suggestion that I change the words to a popular Phish song to "the tires are the things on your bike that make contact with the road."

Just in case I thoroughly depressed our cyclist readers with the overview of the timeline for the Draft Bike Plan, I wanted to provide some inspiration in the form of some funny and inspiring bike commercials from the Netherlands.  H/t to Dave Feucht of the Streetsblog.net discussion group.

Fortunately, since I can't speak Dutch, the good people at Bike Forums are a couple of years ahead of me in translating.  What follows is the rough translation of the ad above.  After the jump are three more advertisements, two of them don't need a translation, but below the fourth advertisement is another translation.  All translations by Nicodemus at Bike Forums.

The translation from above:

(macho key posing)
announcement: attention: driver of a blue Saab... you forgot your parking brake.

(guy on left chuckles)

announcement: attention: the blue Saab went into the yellow Lotus

(guy on left cringes)

Cyclist at the back walks out smiling.

Zonder ongemakken? (without inconveniences?)
Pak de fiets! (take the bike!)

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I know this commercial is for "last year's" L.A. County Fair, but they're using the same one this year and there's no expiration date on Cartoon Tuesday pieces.

In what I'm choosing to view as an indictment of car-culture, our three heroines have a little bit of trouble at the fair's bumper cars.  The whole mess of a commercial is a gigantic spectacle, and I've never been entirely comfortable with a children's game that encourages young people that it's fun to hit each other with their cars; but I'm convinced the people that wrote the advertisement are on our side and are using the fair's megaphone to spread our message that car dependence can have some awful side effects.  I could easily re-post this video with a "This is your brain on cars" tagline.

And for anyone bothered that Streetsblog would feature an advertisement with such blatantly sexist undertones, the advertisement would be just as powerful if they replaced the Valley Girls with some random male stereotype.  And, I hope you know that I have nothing but the strongest respect for the smart, powerful, amazing trailblazers that happen to be women that are a part of the Livable Streets movement in Los Angeles.

While reading the news magazine "The Week" this weekend, I noticed a small story about how stray dogs in Russia are starting to ride the Moscow Metro to get to their work.  In the morning, the dogs ride into Moscow's down town where they spend the day scavenging for food among Moscow's business elite.  At the end of the day they get back on the train and ride back "home."

Among some more amazing skill those Moscow dogs are the ability not to miss their stop while going on the subway train. Biologists say dogs have very nice sense of time which helps them not to miss their destination. Another skill they have is to cross the road on the green traffic light. “They don’t react on color, but on the picture they see on the traffic light”, Moscow scientist tells. Also they choose often the last or the first metro car - those are less crowded usually.

It kind of puts the argument that Angelenos can't learn to ride transit into perspective, doesn't it?

The Big Blue Bus is proudly sporting ads boasting of a new airport service.  The new route provides quite an increase in service coverage for the agency because they aren’t talking about service to the local airport in Santa Monica or to LAX; but service to the airport in Houston.  Remarkably this service will cost riders only $15.  What a bargain!  I wonder how many stops there will be along the route.  If they’ll stop in Vegas, I bet a lot of Angelenos will be interested.

Ok, so obviously there’s been some sort of mix-up at the advertisement agency.  It’s not a surprise, since many transit agencies use contractors to handle their advertising so I imagine this kind of slip-up happens from time to time.  Still, I’ve gotten a couple of emails about this sign slip, and as Dana Gabbard commented, 

And somehow they have been installed etc. and no one noticed they were
for the wrong area…Beyond surreal…

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
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You know an issue has hit the mainstream when it's mocked on the Daily Show or the Colbert Report.

Colbert, on his mock-conservative talk show, took aim at the dangers created by texting while driving.  After a series of jokes that end with the problems of texting a 911 call; Colbert introduced his new twitter series, Stephen Colbert's tweets for drivers.  His first tweet is, naturally, an advertisement followed by "You're in the wrong lane!"

However, as Colbert rambles on, his desk is struck by a cyclist causing an air-bag to shoot out of it protecting him.  Apparently in their zeal to make New York the Portland of the east coast, NYC DOT painted a lane right up to it.  After a brief exchange, ("Didn't you see the bike lane?" "Didn't you see my desk!?") it's revealed the cyclist was busy reading Colbert's "tweets for cyclists" all of which are reminders that cyclists look stupid in spandex.

While Colbert's humor is absurdest, there is a hidden reminder that cyclists are a heck of a lot more exposed on the street than car drivers.  When a driver misses a signal because he's distracted, he not only has thousands of pounds of steel protecting him, he also has a defense system built into the car.  When a cyclist makes the same mistake, he has no such protections.  Maybe that's why I've never actually seen someone texting while riding their bicycle and I saw two people texting while driving just on my way to the store this morning.

The online news outlet Digital City reports that the state of Alabama has banned the sale of Cycles Gladiator wine, produced by California winery Hahn Family Wines because of what it terms an inappropriate label.  Digital City reports:

A poster advertising bicycles dating back to 1895 is causing quiet a stir in Alabama. Hahn Family Wines out of California makes a wine called Cycle Gladiators and they've featured the original ad on the label.

Why all the fuss? The ad in question (pictured above) includes the image of a long-haired woman flying alongside a bicycle -- wearing nothing but a smile ... well, she's not smiling but you get the idea.

The cartoon lady could be considered artistically tasteful but the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board doesn't think so. The board decided to pull the the wine from liquor store shelves statewide, deeming the label as inappropriate.

I'm not sure why the AABCB decided the label was inappropriate.  Are they trying to make a statement about biking while intoxicated?  Is it because it doesn't appear that the bike has brakes?  Are they worried people are going to try and make their bikes fly?

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