I think I discovered Joe Frank driving down from Idyllwild late one night. Exhausted, dehydrated, trying to pass all the RVs ignoring the pullouts and signs that say “Slow Traffic Pull Over”, so I could get back in time to get a shower and collapse into bed before work for a few hours, before going to work beaten and bruised and scraped by the offwidth of the day. The fingernail moon was hanging in the sky, changing position with every curve.
The stories sounded like a dream I’d had but didn’t remember. If I had been Jewish and grown up in LA in the seventies amidst EST and therapy and drugs and money. I’m not, and I didn’t, but I was hanging out with people who did, and it felt like an alternate life. Many of us transplanted natives feel that way, since we grew up living a dream life watching LA in the movies and TV. Listening to LA bands singing about LA on FM radio. Joe Frank felt like what I imagined my life would have been like if I had grown up in the right place, at the right time.
I could never afford to give him money. I’d love to have his collected works, but not for close to two grand, especially not as a broke postdoc. I set up a program to record WBAI and KCRW Saturday nights at 11, in that short magical time before podcasting, but after radio stations started streaming online. Roughly Napster-era.
I spent a lot of nights listening to Joe Frank, driving back late at night from the mountains, desert, LA, ocean, fighting to stay awake, that voice somewhere between a dream and someone else’s reality.
I want smarter maps. Maps that work like I use them. Surely these use cases must be true for techbros too, even if they are taking the Apple bus [1].
The first three are easy, I think. Almost automatic, I should think. Siri has my home address, and the list of places I’ve been. It shouldn’t be too difficult for her to figure out that I know how to get to the 110 and should be left alone unless I shouldn’t be taking the 110 at all.
The last one is more difficult, but “Find a route that doesn’t take the 405 as all the ramps are closed” shouldn’t be that hard. Jesus I’ve even resorted to pulling out the Thomas Guide one night at 2 AM trying to figure out how to get out of Westwood after a late night and both Apple and Google only giving me entrance after closed entrance to the closed 405 to get home.
[1] Maybe G**gl* or W*z* has these now. I’m not willing to divulge my location at all times for advertising purposes in order to find out.
Parking
I tend to think that the lack of parking for the n-thousand employees where I work, even after recently spending tens-of-millions on a (too-small-even-when-planned [1]) parking garage, was just general bureaucratic ineptitude.
But since the general result is that you have to come in early to get parking, and you can’t leave to take an off-site lunch, one wonders if the powers-that-be [2] are working to some different goal. Like the goal of ending the usual scientist thing of wandering in late and working late. And taking a long lunch. By which I mean, an hour.
Doesn’t matter to me. I bike in most days; there’s rarely a lack of rack space [3]. I bring my gluten/legume/grain/dairy-free paleo FODMAP lunch.
But I can’t schedule a doctor appointment for the morning and expect to drive straight on from the appointment, then work late, which is a PITA. So I schedule everything for 3 pm and leave early. Counterproductive, I’d say.
Still, Hanlon’s Razor. Though that razor is getting pretty dull nowadays, when there really are just bad intentions.
[1] Seriously, even the planning documents show that the new garage would have fewer spaces than the lot that it was replacing, and that’s before the hiring freeze was lifted. Apparently no one in admin noticed, or cared.
[2] The same ones that think that open-plan is a good idea for a bunch of anti-social Ph.Ds working on wildly different projects mixed in with BA folks who spend the day yelling on the phone.
[3] Except for the aspirational lunchtime mountain bikers. There’s always a couple of them in circulation who bring their MBs into work and lock them to the racks, on the theory that they’ll go up the Brown Mt trail at lunchtime, until the bike is dusty, rusty, and flat, and someone leaves a note asking them to move their once-nice, now-POS spacetaker. Then it’ll eventually leave, only to be replaced shortly thereafter by someone else who also will make it up exactly one lunchtime ride before their bike slowly degenerates into a rustbucket while taking up hardcore commuter space. Not unlike the people who get lockers, then use them exactly twice.
Comment
Rant Comments Off on Parking Permalink