2009/07/06
this is a test
2005/03/25
photo enforced [part i, west hollywood]
Here is a list of photo enforced intersections in West Hollywood:
La Brea Avenue and Sunset Boulevard
La Brea Avenue and Fountain Avenue
La Brea Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard
Fairfax Avenue and Fountain Avenue
Fairfax Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard
Crescent Heights Boulevard and Fountain Avenue
La Cienega Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard
La Cienega Boulevard and Melrose Avenue
Robertson Boulevard and Beverly Boulevard
More jurisdictions to come!
2005/02/24
jetblue, we love you
According to the LA Times, the pioneering low-cost airline JetBlue will begin service in April between the Burbank Bob Hope Airport and its East Coast hub at John F Kennedy International Airport. As capacity is already at maximum at the little airport that could, JetBlue will be waiting for the now-defunct Aloha Airlines to vacate its current gate. This nonstop service will complement JetBlue's existing service from the Long Beach Airport, its West Coast hub. Between the two of them, there should be nine nonstop flights a day from the Los Angeles area to JFK.
This is good news for anyone, like your correspondent, who does a great deal of travelling between LA and NY, and has no desire to either (a) pay four hundred bucks for a nonstop from Delta or its ilk, or (b) pay $150 for some flight that routes through Wichita or Talahassee en route to my final destination. I'd rather just go for the hundred-dollar nonstop with leather seats. (JetBlue, we love you.) Indeed, the new nonstops between Burbank and JFK will debut at the stunningly double-digit price of $99.
The rather odd thing is that the City of Los Angeles evidently does not consider either Burbank or Long Beach to be part of its larger-scale airport infrastructure. A quick peek at the Los Angeles World Airports site (now there's a really silly name for a metropolitan transportation authority) shows only LAX, ONT, VNY, and PMD as elements of the system, translating to the Los Angeles, Ontario, Van Nuys, and Palmdale airports. Given that both Long Beach and Burbank do a hell of a lot more for passenger travel than Van Nuys or Palmdale, this breakdown seems pretty arbitrary. Palmdale is pretty much a non-entity as far as flights go, only receiving its first passenger plane in 2004. LA Airport planning has always been daft, but this really goes too far. Let's get off our high horse and embrace JetBlue's fine terminals with the same grace as the rest of our area airports. Without them, whither the City of Angels?
I mean: Long Beach is actually JetBlue's hub, for crying out loud. Doesn't that give it some kind of credit? Sigh. City bureaucrats.
2005/02/02
free parking at ucla
I am willing to disclose the one free parking area I know about on the UCLA campus, since I don't care much for that campus anyway (my position is not likely to change, even in the unlikely event that I go to school there next year).
If you go down Bellagio from Sunset, the Easton Women's Softball Field is on the right side (at DeNeve). You will find a gate at the softball field entrance. If you go through said gate, you can park in any available space to the best of my knowledge and not pay exorbitant fees and/or receive a parking citation (there are no posted restrictions in said location, as last I checked).
On that note, UCLA now gives out actual City of Los Angeles parking tickets instead of UCLA-specific parking tickets. This means that you can't just throw away the tickets and expect nothing to come of the associated fines. What a great revenue trap!
free dodger stadium parking
There is a minimum of one location within close proximity to Dodger Stadium where one can park for free. Once again, I am going to be a prick and not disclose muchinformation about these magical parking spaces except the existence thereof. I will tell you that, for at least one such location, one who visits the Stadium regularly has likely driven past it on countless occasions without even realizing it.
2005/01/26
"exit only" doesn't always mean what it says
Now, it would be silly for me to tell you exactly where to find the "exit only" freeway offramps are that do not actually make you exit the freeway. However, I can point you in the right direction for where to find two of them; one of them is off of the 5 South somewhere between the 134 and 110, while another one is off the 10 East somewhere between the 405 and the 110.
Good luck finding these marvelous little Easter eggs!
2005/01/25
the scenic shortcut to manhattan beach
If you've driven to Manhatatn Beach before, you've probably encountered the slow-moving nightmare otherwise known as the 405. If you continue reading, you will find out how to bypass much of the 405, including the entire section of it around LAX.
The first thing you want to do is get to Culver Boulevard (you can reach it via any number of ways, most notably via the 90). Culver Boulevard runs diagonally, so take it southwest through Marina Del Rey and Playa Del Rey until you see a sign with an arrow pointing to "Manhattan Beach."
After you see this sign, hook slightly left onto "Vista Del Mar." Follow Vista Del Mar, which runs right along the ocean, all the way down until you reach Manhattan Beach. It is your headache to figure out where to go once you reach Manhattan Beach.
2005/01/20
an alternative to laurel canyon
For regular drivers in this city, it is especially common to dread trips to and from the San Fernando Valley. One way to avoid Laurel Canyon Boulevard, and its associated congestion, is to take Nichols Canyon Road instead.
To get to Nichols Canyon, go slightly east of Fairfax Avenue on Hollywood Boulevard. You will then see a traffic light that says "Nichols Canyon" on the north side of the street and "Genesee" on the south side. Head uphill on Nichols Canyon.
At one point, you will have to turn right to stay on Nichols Canyon. This is fairly easy to figure out because the street will otherwise reach a dead-end.
You will eventually reach Woodrow Wilson Drive. Turn right on Woodrow Wilson and follow it up to Mulholland Drive. Turn left on Mulholland once you reach it.
At this point, you have several options:
1. Take Mulholland to one of the more common downhill routes (Laurel Canyon, Coldwater Canyon, Beverly Glen and so forth).
2. Take Mulholland to a poorly marked street called "Multiview Drive." Turn right on Multiview and wind down the hill. You will wind up on Cahuenga Boulevard West in Universal City.
3. Take Mulholland to Wrightwood Drive. Turn right on Wrightwood. Follow all the appropriate signs on Wrightwood to stay on it until you reach Vineland Avenue. Turn left on Vineland and it will take you down to Ventura Boulevard.
4. There are other options, depending on where you are going. You can figure them out as you go along.
Note: In light traffic conditions, Nichols Canyon is more of a scenic route than a timesaver. Plan accordingly.
Additionally, there is a way to cut between Nichols Canyon and Laurel Canyon once you are in the hills. This is for you to figure out by yourself.
the fast way to pacific palisades
Most people assume that Sunset Boulevard is the only way to get to Pacific Palisades. This is most certainly not the case. Although there are some shortcuts that utilize surface streets in Santa Monica, I refuse to disclose those. However, I will share a more obvious trick, although it's useless under heavy traffic conditions.
If you pay close attention to the signs on the 10 West, you will see ‘Chatauqua Boulevard’ at the bottom of one of the exit lists. This mysterious exit actually comes after the 10 merges with Pacific Coast Highway, so the sign seems erroneous.
To reach this lost exit, simply follow Pacific Coast Highway north until you see the sign for ‘West Channel.’
At West Channel, you can make an obtuse right turn onto Chatauqua Boulevard.
Once on Chatauqua Boulevard, simply follow it all the way up to Sunset Boulevard.
Turn left onto Sunset Boulevard and, a few blocks later, you're in the middle of the Pacific Palisades business district. For anywhere else in Pacific Palisades, modify your directions accordingly once you reach Sunset Boulevard.
Under good traffic conditions, this shortens the travel time from Downtown Los Angeles to Pacific Palisades to approximately 30 minutes.
2005/01/19
airbus’s bigger bertha (ii)
Wired now has a column one article about the new A380 as well, proving that a really disparate range of news outlets is willing to jump on this bandwagon. Fortunately, their take is rather more balanced. The focus is on the reality of the highfalutin promises of airborne casinos and retail shopping, which the author feels to be more fiction than fact. After all, similar promises were heard when the 747 debuted, with little to show for them; passengers are still packed into planes like cattle.
Of course, there's always Sir Richard Branson, whose trend-setting brand Virgin Atlantic promises to provide “two ways to get lucky on a Virgin flight.” Mile-high gaming is one; he leaves the other to the audience's imagination (making the brand name seem particularly ironic). He's just crazy enough to actually follow through in using the new A380's capacity, though his other sky-high project of late, Virgin Galactica (which plans to offer customers a stratospheric joyride), seems so fanciful as to defy even the rebel billionaire. Time will tell.
The Wired article goes on to outline potential flaws in the A380's business model. Notably, no major U.S. airline has submitted any orders for the jumbo jet. Some of this hesitancy may be due to a general American partisanship for Boeing, but the unanimity bespeaks something larger. Ryan Singel avers that a poll shows that North American fliers prefer smaller planes with non-stop flights to jumbo-jets which must detour to major hubs before a second flight carries them to their final destination. A preference for a single-hop trip seems natural to more than just a Western Hemisphere audience, but perhaps the Old World is simply less demanding of that ease of flight.
In any event, Boeing is laying its bets squarely on the non-stop bandwagon with its 7E7 Dreamliner, the successor to its popular 767. The new 7E7 would have considerably longer range and cargo capacity, due in large part to more efficient air profile and lighter-weight materials (much like the A380). More intriguingly, the ‘E’ indicates a new commitment to a ‘smart’ infrastructure providing wireless networking, electric hookups (to all passengers), and better centralized entertainment systems. Now those sound like improvements we can sink our teeth (or rather, Blueteeth) into.
