White Boy/White Dog Move To Skid Row

Certified Beach Dude Moves To Downtown Los Angeles

It’s Friday- I’ve survived my first week working at a client’s site in almost 7 years, and I did it by relying on Los Angeles public transportation- something I thought was damn near impossible. I must give credit to my friend DGlobetrotter who just happened to decide to take the bus/train trip from her house in Manhattan Beach to a seminar in Universal City last Friday. I figured it SHE could do it, I could too, or I was a desperate failure. Her timing was perfect to prod me into trying this experiment.

In one week, I’ve seen lots of interesting things on the Metro system- a few random events:

On a 5:30 am bus, a (trampy looking) lady got on and yelled out “Does anyone have spare change so I can ride?” to which no one blinked. She procede to sit down, and the bus driver did nothing about it. I’ve heard stories of the drivers stopping and calling police and everyone has to get off and take another bus, so I’m glad he didn’t do that.

Some guy was hitting on a girl that sat next to him on the subway today on way home, and she didn’t like it and got up and they started screaming obsenities back and forth for at least a minute- they were both black street-types and the language was pretty ugly… I was waiting for weapons to be drawn. The funniest part was when lady walked to front of the car, some petite asian lady that had been standing sat down next to this burly black guy that was still yelling, and she did not bat an eye.

On one of the long escalators, a lady comes pushing by me carrying a paper cup she had obviously dug from a trash can, yelling “get out of my way- she has to go to the bathroom” and she catches up with a bent over lady 20′ ahead of me on escalator. They get off and go over to the side and the lady procedes to squat and pee in cup (she was wearing a dress thank goodness).

I met a nice lady who I had seen on a previous morning rail then bus- she owns a preschool/kindergarden on Ventura Blvd and has to get there at 6am to open up. She has ridden same line for 4 years and knows EVERYTHING about the timing, the bus drivers, and was a wealth of knowledge. She knows when to run, when to wait, what to do with transients that bug her- a great chance meeting. We chatted for the whole bus ride this morning and I’m sure we will have many more great conversations.

Lack of sleep is catching up with me- for the first time this morning I needed the alarm to wake me up at 3:30am (previously I had been waking up about 10min early and getting up). On train home my head kept nodding off but the thought of not getting off at right stop made me stay awake. The walk from Civic Center to loft woke me up a little, at which point I took a caffeine pill and an 25mg of ephedrine HCL (ECA stack- fat loss baby!) and walked White Dog. I’m revved up to go out for a couple of beers before I hit the hay, but it looked like they were filming a movie at Far Bar when I walked by so I guess I’ll have to hit the Edison. I really wanted my “Cheers” bar, jeans, etc but I’ll have to shower up and throw on some styling stuff to get in to Edison, if only until 9pm or so.

This is big weekend- new housecleaner tomorrow, back workout at gym, brunch at Weeneez, Little Tokyo festival begins, Macy’s One Day 65% off sale, and then there’s Sunday… I’ll cover that after I sleep a little.

I am so excited to be able to sleep in tomorrow- I hope I can stay asleep until 6:30 am, my “old” waking time.

But who knows, I’ll probably get revved up with a couple of beers and get back on and blog- I got lots of stuff racing through my mind… have a great Friday night!