Archives for January 2005

Back to Archives

a morning hike

January 23, 2005 by Eric Richardson

So yesterday morning Kathy and I followed the lead of Will Campbell and took a hike in Bronson Canyon Park. The trail Will talks about was easy enough to find, but at times the "trail" was more concept than absolute: at one spot in particular we stopped for several minutes, thoroughly confused, before finding that the trail continued directly up the streambed. A good time, and much thanks to Will for blogging about his hike and thereby giving us the idea. — Continue Reading...

The TripMaster 5000 Needs a Tune-Up

January 21, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I was looking up some transit routes from my apartment to work just a minute ago and clicked on the "Advanced Trip Planner" link on the Metro's home page. It appears they're rolling out a new application here, and feature-wise it seems pretty cool. But when it comes to bugs, good programming, and usability -- egads. — Continue Reading...

Flexcar: Quick Response; Still Waiting

January 20, 2005 by Eric Richardson

Continuing my thread on Flexcar... I got a few quick responses to questions I had about the service. William del Valle, their SoCal GM, indicated that most current usage of the Downtown cars is during the day. That leads me to believe it's largely business people using the cars during the day after using transit to get here. It's also good since my usage would be the opposite: nights and weekends. He also said that their LA service is again starting to expand, though more slowly (and I might add realistically) than the first time. — Continue Reading...

Yikes... It's Them

January 19, 2005 by Eric Richardson

So I come into my Urban Transportation Planning class tonight (a few minutes late, thanks to traffic on Figueroa that made my 81 bus late) and find a girl from the Bus Riders Union presenting about an upcoming conference they're holding. Normally I'm pretty hesitant to express unequivocal dislike here, but I don't like the BRU. I ride buses all the time, and as of a couple days ago I guess I'm officially "transit-dependent", but when it comes to the BRU... well... I just don't like them. I'm sure they had a place back in the time of the consent decree, but the BRU these days is just a little nuts.

Taking a Closer Look at Flexcar

January 19, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I mentioned Flexcar briefly in my last post as one of the transit options I was looking into. Today I took the next step and signed up with them, so that I can try it out next month and see whether it seems like something that'll work effectively for me. Today I started a little more research into their service. — Continue Reading...

Assessing My Transit Options

January 18, 2005 by Eric Richardson

So yesterday I got in my first car accident. I hate writing about negative stuff like this; I'd prefer to always just be posting fun things like cool LA trips and bands you should go see. But well, sometimes the unpleasant parts of life are a reality, and I have to write about those too. Just to make sure it's above the fold: no one was hurt, so that's good. But now it's time for me to assess my options in regard to transportation. — Continue Reading...

Yesterday Evening's Events

January 16, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I yesterday mentioned my evening itinerary: gallery reception, dinner, and a movie. For once a plan went off exactly the way it was supposed to. It's far too nice outside for me to stay inside all afternoon, but I figured I'd stop by to fill you in on the details before I wandered back out. — Continue Reading...

A Full Evening

January 15, 2005 by Eric Richardson

Plan for the evening:

The earlier part of my day is up at blogdowntown.

I'm in Print

January 14, 2005 by Eric Richardson

The January 17th issue of the Downtown News includes an opinion piece I wrote in response to last week's DLANC article. You can read my piece online: "Another View of Downtown's Neighborhood Council: Board Member Says a Lot Is Going Right With DLANC." I wrote a little more in my post over at blogdowntown.

Ah, Deadlines

January 14, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I understand that sometimes getting a story out quickly means that writing suffers, but consider a sentence from this AP piece on an evacuation in Riverside County:

However, Corona authorities, defending their decision to evacuate 508 homes, 330 mobile homes and a recreational vehicle park near Prado Dam, about 50 miles east-southeast of downtown Los Angeles.

The parser's definitely going to fall over on that one. ABC News has a cleaned up version of the same piece.

Numbers and Egos

January 14, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I've mentioned before that Bob Hertzberg's campaign site -- http://changela.com -- is doing a very cool thing with their Daily Digests, a roundup of the day's LA news from both traditional and blog sources. Brian, the Hertzberg staffer who collects the info for those posts, has linked to my site many times now, and I think that's great.

But sometimes you have to wonder, how much is too much? Right now there are five entries on the first page that have to do with me: a link to Sean's blogging.la post talking about blogdowntown, links to parts one and two of my Art Walk coverage at blogdowntown, a link to my post here introducing blogdowntown, and farther up a link to my bit yesterday on the sales-tax debate. If you consider that there are 50 entries on their home page, that means that I am 10% of what's going on in LA today. Even in my deluded fantasies I don't occupy that large a position in LA.

Music: Jim Bianco and the Tim Davies Big Band

January 13, 2005 by Eric Richardson

So tonight Magilla, Kathy, and I hopped on the freeway and took a quick trip up to Hollywood to catch Jim Bianco and the Tim Davies Big Band at King King. Amazing. I saw these two perform together just over a year ago, and all the good memories I had weren't just my imagination. My poor little brain can't understand writing and arranging for a 19-piece big band, but Tim does it unbelievably well and creatively. I need to make it out to one of their monthly shows sometime.