85. I'm walking | KCET
Title
85. I'm walking
I didn't have to. Diane Meyer had arranged my ride to Santa Monica. She brought me back to Lakewood.
It would have been possible to walk-bus-train- bus to the art gallery, but the 34-mile trip from my office would have taken me almost two-and-a-half hours. There isn't any easy way back at the hour the panel discussion ended.
I could have "? as some of the carless in Diane's exhibition do "? spent the night in Santa Monica and returned in the morning. I could have spent $40 or $50 for a cab ride to the Blue Line station downtown. I could have asked a former L.A. Times transportation reporter, who was there, to take me to a bus stop in Belmont Heights in Long Beach, where he lives. He might even have been given me a lift all the way home to Lakewood. It's sort of on the way. If I could see well enough at night, if I were fearless, if I were properly equipped, I might have ridden a bike back home.
Some of the carless in Diane's show do just that, and they explain how and why in brief quotes that accompany their photograph. The attitudes of the carless range from earnest to desperate: Not driving is liberating. Not driving is a curse. I'm saving the world. I'm lost in L.A. I'm better than all of you who drive. I don't belong here because I won't ever be like you, who drives.
The carless are great improvisers, even of their reasons to remain carless. They are a spectacle of contradiction in Los Angeles, but no one notices. They alone hear the sound of their footsteps on our empty sidewalks.
My bit came at the end, after a panel on not owning a car (More bikes! More Zipcars!) and after presentations that covered the iconography of walking in L.A., the history of sidewalks, and the accounts of two academic pedestrians who have crossed L.A. on foot like a modern Lewis and Clark.
I just said that you should learn to wander. I said become an expert flâneur and acquire pedestrianism as a vice. I said acquire the desire to walk into your neighborhood with the purpose of expecting something "? Wonderful! Offensive! "? to occur to you as wandered into an undiscovered place.
The image on this page was made by Flickr user cobalt123. It was used under a Creative Commons license.
Support the Articles you Love
We are dedicated to providing you with articles like this one. Show your support with a tax-deductible contribution to KCET. After all, public media is meant for the public. It belongs to all of us.
Keep Reading
-
For the last 30 years, El Nopal Press has intentionally been a studio where artists can experiment with printmaking. Some of the most provocative artistic pieces and innovations have come from the studio’s collaborations with women.
-
What truly matters? Ali Behdad, professor of literature; Kristy Edmunds, artist and curator; and Michael Eselun, chaplain for the Simms-Mann/UCLA Center for Integrative Oncology discuss the important things in life.
-
After the screening, KCET Cinema Series host Pete Hammond sat down with director Jay Roach.
-
The U.S. currently incarcerates more people per capita than any other nation in the world. Police forces and school systems are beginning to use diversion tactics to redirect young people away from criminal records.
- 1 of 225
- next ›
Comments