For those of you know know me, this is old news. For those of you who don’t, you should know: I believe Los Angeles, California, United States to be one of the most beautiful cities on earth. Now, if you’ve been there that statement just made you recoil from your computer and think twice about subscribing here but I urge you to hear me out.
You see, Los Angeles has a very unique property and it’s one that seeps through every pore of its being: hope. Sheer, unadulterated, unrealized hope. It is filthy, it is huge, it is kitschy and it is sad, and I love every single little bit of it. So I’m going to *show* you what I love about LA. Yes, it’s true, it will include some tourist destinations, but it will also include some stuff you don’t see too.
Today, I’m starting with subway stations. Firstly, this is the cleanest subway system I’ve ever been on and, no, it’s not because everyone drives. Lots of people use the LA transit system AND its actually very easy to use. If you’re staying near a station then you’re golden. I think that people who say you can’t get around by transit in LA obviously come from places that you can’t get around without a car. Or New York. No one can use the New York subway system and if you somehow manage to learn it, you’ll never be able to use something with anything less than 5 lines. I digress. The reason that, in fact, LA has such a clean subway system is because of this:
You gotta love a city that won’t let you eat, smoke, spit or chew gum, litter, use a gas powered vehicle, be loud or rowdy, rollerblade or skatboard, or play loud music. Oh and as a side note, you’re also not allowed to travel without a fare. Do you *see* what he punishment is for chewing gum on transit? It’s a $250 fine and FORTY-EIGHT HOURS OF COMMUNITY SERVICE. Yep that’s right. If it’s not the money that gets ya, it’s the two days of your life that you have to give up because the Stride goat kicked you and made you chew that second piece.
But then, their stations look like this:
Now that station is at Hollywood and Vine so they DO kinda have to keep that clean, but it’s the principle of the thing, you know?
Also, they have these really fun auto-attendant ticket sellers which you need to go to to get any form of ticket, unless you got on at a bus stop. The best part? They rotate through times of the day when they will take credit cards. Sometimes they will, sometimes they won’t. It’s some kind of mystical DaVinci Code as far as I’m concerned. So basically, you never see an employee when you’re on the subway… that is until the police show up at an entrance to check to see if you’ve got your ticket on you. And we all know what happens when you don’t.
