Posted by SBinLA on: January 29 2009
Number 2: The Traffic
I have a childhood memory of an evening drive down to Los Angeles from Santa Barbara. Encountering the wide highways thick with cars, the red of their tail-lights stretching into the distance, I imagined that rather than automobile traffic, it was a flowing river of boiling lava in front of me. Or perhaps a writhing red serpant, slithering over the undulating road. In that nostalgic rememberance, the LA traffic has the quality of a painting, capturing its essential beautiful quality. In the present day, of course, the reality is somewhat different. The truth is that traffic is an almost unescapable reality of living in any part of LA. While Pasadena is no exception, I find it offers a modicum of relief from a life of gridelock, as I will return to later.
The madness that is the LA freeways was on display earlier this week, when a wrongway driver collided with another car.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-freeway-crash29-2009jan29,0,6521465.story
The tragedy of lost life in this incident is unfortunately an all too common experience in this metropolis. Certainly overshadowed in this case, is the fact that thousands upon thousands of people were delayed, their cars idling impatiently, the precious fossil fuels in their tanks uselessly burning away.
Living in the greater Los Angeles area is an exercise in leaving early - if you want to ultimately arrive on time, that is. However, if you are late (because of traffic or otherwise) you can take care in knowing that highway congestion is a perfectly legitimate excuse for arriving at almost any hour. The reason for this is three fold: 1) though traffic is somewhat predicable, sometimes it is just BAD; 2) there is no predicing when the sadistic road orcs will decide to close a lane, on-ramp or overpass, snarling a freeway exchange like the dreadlocks of a rastafarian; and 3) when millions of people feverishly take to the road, charging towards their destinations at 80+ mph, accidents happen.
A must-bookmark site for LA traffic is: sigalert.com
Pasadena of course, offers a slightly better situation. Since it is an older and more affluent neibhorhood, the lots are larger and the population density less. This results in fewer cars and fewer jams. Getting to downtown LA via the 110 freeway is rarely a problem and there are many sidestreet routes. Rush hour is more bearable and during off hours the roads are wide open.
I may as well address getting to Pasadena. The so-called (by me) "backdoor" offers the best SB-Pasadena route. It is only marginally longer, but typically has only a few brief pockets of traffic, compared to what is usually a heavy drive on the 101. Of course, there will always be unexpected deviations from the normal trends.
a google maps route is at: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Santa+Barbara,+CA&daddr=34.395579,-118.605652+to:pasadena,+ca&hl=en&geocode=&mra=dpe&mrcr=0&mrsp=1&sz=9&via=1&sll=34.252676,-118.918762&sspn=1.772983,2.224731&ie=UTF8&z=9
I would recommend this route at almost ANY TIME of almost ANY DAY. Exceptions include Thanksgiving, Christmas,11pm-5am M-Th. Other than that, you're better off taking the backdoor.
Final result: Yes, the traffic sucks. It is an unavoidable reality that even in Pasadena, the most Santa Barbara-like place I could find, one starts to plan your life around the movement of 10 million people in their frickin' cars.
So after number 2, its Pasadena 1; Expectations 1
Look out for more "Reasons I Though I'd Hate L.A." coming soon.
---> As a Santa Barbarian, are you a L.A. hater? or an aficionado? Tell me your assumptions about the big city to the South (negative or positive) and I'll dedicate a post to it.
Posted by SBinLA on: January 07 2009
-- A series confronting my expectations
Number 1: The Smog
In J.R.R. Tolkien's classic, The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins and a hardy group of dwarfs dared enter the cave of Smaug the Dragon hoping to get their hands on a golden treasure. When I ventured down to Los Angeles, I imagined it as my own personal Smaug the Dragon, an angry smoky enemy, breathing a heavy brown haze of sulfur into the air. I won't be able to breath! I'll develop a hackling cough! And running? Riding my bike? Forget about it.
Thankfully, this proved largely false. Of course, it's no SB (I don't think I even knew what smog was growing up). There are poor air quality days, and I avoid exercising from 1pm-5pm on a normal weekday, but day-to-day...I don't even notice. And I'm talking about Pasadena here. The coastal cities are better, the ocean providing large-scale diurnal air movement.
Air quality during the hotter, higher barometric pressure summer month (and an LA summer can be a long time) is typically worse. I can rarely feel it in my lungs or notice a shortness of breath, but views take on a noticeable brown tint. The winter undoubtedly provides the most beautiful time of year. Lower pressures not only mean cleansing rains but also more wind which can make for crystal-clear days, as happened this winter. With snow levels down around 3,000', the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains were covered in white and provided Pasadena with some breathtaking views (which I sought out on runs and bike rides, but appologetically, I have no pictures, I will try to get better about this).
To evaluate air quality in Pasadena (or Santa Barbara for that matter) check out: AirNow.gov (although it is a better source for Ozone than for Particulates, which may be of equal or greater importance).
After Number 1, it's Pasadena 1; Expectations 0. And thank goodness for it. Look out for more "Reasons I Though I'd Hate L.A." coming soon.
---> As a Santa Barbarian, are you a L.A. hater? or an aficionado? Tell me your assumptions about the big city to the South (negative or positive) and I'll dedicate a post to it.
Posted by SBinLA on: January 02 2009
On the first day of the New Year, I awoke to a thick fog obstructing the sunshine that had graced Santa Barbara only the morning before. I felt that 2009 was demonstrating immediately that it was a new and different kind of year. For me, New Year's Day has always inspired ambivalent feelings, particularly about "resolutions." If something is worth doing, why wait until the New Year to start doing it? What is true on January 1 that was not evident the day before? But of course, there is something different. It is as if at the stroke of midnight, I step through a doorway and, closing the door behind me, leave the past in the past, and embrace the new future in front of me. It is a chance not only to change how I act, but it is an opportunity to change how I THINK. It those ball-dropping, confetti-flying, toast-making, New Year's-kissing, Auld Lang Syne-singings moments and the first dawn that follows I remember how to smile, how to breath in life, how to see the best in the future that will inevitably come.
On this New Year's Day, I departed Santa Barbara for a southward trip to my current home. Listening to an ominous "tink-tink-tinking" from my car's engine that sounded like a metronome after ten lines of cocaine, I breezed along the empty 101S passing the landmarks that I used to chart my journey: Rincon and La Chonchita; Golf n' Stuff; Kanan Road; the 405 heading off towards parts of LA more glamorous; Griffith Park; the ABC building; the Rose Bowl; and finally to my exit in Pasadena, CA.
I've lived here three and a half years now, and despite my initial dread in moving to Los Angeles, I really like it. It is similar in some ways to Santa Barbara. And different in many others. But as is apt to happen, I have started to take my surroundings for granted and I walk through this beautiful place in a fog like the one that welcomed us to 2009. So this New Year's Day I will make a resolution: To look with new eyes at the place I am living and to use my words and my camera lens to share it with the town that will always be number one in my heart.
So consider this Santa Barbara ex-patriot your foreign correspondent in a distant land. I hope to provide information and a perspective on Pasadena for the City 2.0 community.
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