Dear Passing Lane of the 405 Through The Sepulveda Pass:
Passing Lane, you are a horror show. I can't even begin to describe the extent of the misery you beget going north from the West Side to the Valley. You are wining, inclined, incredibly narrow and you are bordered by a slightly depressed rut on your left side, thereby forcing vehicles to travel partially in the lane to the right. One sneeze, and you're a goner, along with everyone else in an extremely congested three car radius. Your perpetual construction, your concrete paving and your wonton disregard for any kind of fahrvergnügen make for a thoroughly miserable driving experience. You are just wretched.
I had to drive you Monday morning after coming from a doctor's appointment in Santa Monica where I'd endured the sensation, both physically uncomfortable and psychologically humiliating, of having a wart dry-iced off of my face. There's nothing quite like an early-morning wart freezing followed by an excruciating ride up the 405 on the hottest day in Los Angeles in over twenty years. This all added up to an experience taxing not only my car's air conditioner and turbocharger, but the very depths of my soul.
And yet, Passing Lane, you offer scenery not entirely dissatisfying. Look up gentle drivers of Los Angeles; at the majesty of the Getty Center and its curving funicular; look at the gaudy terra-cotta roofed and stucco mansions of the unfortunately-zoned Scadlock Dr., just south of Mulholland, whose multimillion dollar price tags buy backyards with views of the ten-lane behemoth below and its accompanying soundtrack. Look at the spreading lights of the Valley below and the mountains beyond as you crest the top. But look only briefly, as Passing Lane, you provide almost no margin for error.
In the future, perhaps I'll take the carpool lane.
Best regards,
Dear Crabby
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
Dear Women Parked on Ocean Avenue
Dear Women Parked on Ocean Avenue:
This is not a letter to crab, but rather a letter of inquiry, for you have piqued my curiosity. I see you, without fail, on weekend evenings, around 6:00, parked at by the crosswalk at the intersection of Ocean and Georgina Avenues in Santa Monica. You sit in a newish Beetle convertible with the top down, but the tall, bulbous windows raised to protect you from the strong ocean breeze. You never get out of the car.
Driver, you are attractive, maybe around 40ish, your face hidden behind sunglasses and your blond hair under a black fisherman's hat with the red and tan Burberry band around the brim. You sit pivoted, leaning against the door, your back against the raised window and traffic passing behind you, facing your passenger. She sits looking directly forward, making no effort to look at you.
Her frail passenger sits propped up in her seat, rigidly uncomfortable, as if there is something somehow supporting her delicate frame. Her head is forced awkwardly against the headrest, and there is a long, elaborate scarf tied around her throat, the consistent presence and bulk of which makes it seem like it masks something beneath, a ventilator or breathing tube. What little is visible of her skin is fiercely pale, and her hair is short and unkempt, her glasses unnaturally thick; I can't tell if she is twenty or forty. The handicapped placard hanging from the rearview mirror most likely confirms that she is in some way disabled. MS? Cystic Fibrosis? Developmental issues? All these possibilities flit through my mind, as they inevitably do when one sees the overtly ill.
I wonder what you talk about. I wonder if you even put money in the meter.
The situation I imagine, Driver, is that of a delicate invalid taken out for some fresh air by her unlikely care-giver. You're not her nurse, you're not a home health aid; perhaps you are her sister. Perhaps you stop by once or twice a week for a visit, and perhaps getting some fresh air is what you do to pass the time. Your conversation in the car seems earnest, even strained; perhaps you revisit the same issue every week, some bastion of melancholy, of disappointment. I envision your conversation attempting to skirt the subject of, but inevitably coming back to, the sadness of the one your passenger-perhaps-sister's plight, somehow your guilt over being powerless to change her situation. I imagine this not because the handicapped or ill and those around them are inevitably unhappy, but because you both so very much seem that way.
One cloudy Saturday, stretching after a run against the railing overlooking the ocean, I watch you for almost half an hour. With the sounds of the Pacific Coast Highway rising from below the ravine, the ocean-effect mist is tangible in the air, thick as smoke, hiding the trees as it drifts upwards. The top of your convertible is down, but you both wear heavy coats. Woman in the driver's seat, you sit as usual, your back against the door, wearing sunglasses despite the gloom. But you take them off as today, you start to cry. Your companion sits, pale, swaddled, staring straight ahead, her lips barely, but still visibly moving.
What tragedy is this that has its hands on you? Is this ritualistic ride to the ocean, this time spent together, a source of comfort or an act of self-flagellation? To what are you paying homage?
I cross in front of your car and walk back up Georgina Avenue, with its gracious craftsman mansions and orderly palm trees. As I proceed further and further east, I turn back to see you still sitting there, your car almost hidden in the fog. Although I wonder at all the questions I have, I know I'll most likely never get the answers. What I do hope is, at the very least, that I'll see you again next weekend.
Best Regards,
Dear, for once, not so Crabby
This is not a letter to crab, but rather a letter of inquiry, for you have piqued my curiosity. I see you, without fail, on weekend evenings, around 6:00, parked at by the crosswalk at the intersection of Ocean and Georgina Avenues in Santa Monica. You sit in a newish Beetle convertible with the top down, but the tall, bulbous windows raised to protect you from the strong ocean breeze. You never get out of the car.
Driver, you are attractive, maybe around 40ish, your face hidden behind sunglasses and your blond hair under a black fisherman's hat with the red and tan Burberry band around the brim. You sit pivoted, leaning against the door, your back against the raised window and traffic passing behind you, facing your passenger. She sits looking directly forward, making no effort to look at you.
Her frail passenger sits propped up in her seat, rigidly uncomfortable, as if there is something somehow supporting her delicate frame. Her head is forced awkwardly against the headrest, and there is a long, elaborate scarf tied around her throat, the consistent presence and bulk of which makes it seem like it masks something beneath, a ventilator or breathing tube. What little is visible of her skin is fiercely pale, and her hair is short and unkempt, her glasses unnaturally thick; I can't tell if she is twenty or forty. The handicapped placard hanging from the rearview mirror most likely confirms that she is in some way disabled. MS? Cystic Fibrosis? Developmental issues? All these possibilities flit through my mind, as they inevitably do when one sees the overtly ill.
I wonder what you talk about. I wonder if you even put money in the meter.
The situation I imagine, Driver, is that of a delicate invalid taken out for some fresh air by her unlikely care-giver. You're not her nurse, you're not a home health aid; perhaps you are her sister. Perhaps you stop by once or twice a week for a visit, and perhaps getting some fresh air is what you do to pass the time. Your conversation in the car seems earnest, even strained; perhaps you revisit the same issue every week, some bastion of melancholy, of disappointment. I envision your conversation attempting to skirt the subject of, but inevitably coming back to, the sadness of the one your passenger-perhaps-sister's plight, somehow your guilt over being powerless to change her situation. I imagine this not because the handicapped or ill and those around them are inevitably unhappy, but because you both so very much seem that way.
One cloudy Saturday, stretching after a run against the railing overlooking the ocean, I watch you for almost half an hour. With the sounds of the Pacific Coast Highway rising from below the ravine, the ocean-effect mist is tangible in the air, thick as smoke, hiding the trees as it drifts upwards. The top of your convertible is down, but you both wear heavy coats. Woman in the driver's seat, you sit as usual, your back against the door, wearing sunglasses despite the gloom. But you take them off as today, you start to cry. Your companion sits, pale, swaddled, staring straight ahead, her lips barely, but still visibly moving.
What tragedy is this that has its hands on you? Is this ritualistic ride to the ocean, this time spent together, a source of comfort or an act of self-flagellation? To what are you paying homage?
I cross in front of your car and walk back up Georgina Avenue, with its gracious craftsman mansions and orderly palm trees. As I proceed further and further east, I turn back to see you still sitting there, your car almost hidden in the fog. Although I wonder at all the questions I have, I know I'll most likely never get the answers. What I do hope is, at the very least, that I'll see you again next weekend.
Best Regards,
Dear, for once, not so Crabby
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Dear Man Yelling "Alice"
Dear Man Yelling "Alice:"
I don't know who you are. I don't know who Alice is. I don't even know if you are necessarily a man, or perhaps just a woman with a very manly voice. What I DO know is that every night around 11:00 PM, you stand outside your house, somewhere in the vicinity of the intersection of Spaulding and Norton in West Hollywood, yelling "AL-LICE" at the top of your lungs. These are all the facts that I know.
Obviously, I assume Alice is a pet of some variety; and most likely a cat, as it's somewhat ill-advised to let a dog wander around the neighborhood and expect it to return when you call it.
Let the record reflect, Man Yelling "Alice," that our neighborhood is both densely packed and quiet; and unless the fire station a block away is called to action late at night or one of the many ubiquitous helicopters in the skies above Los Angeles is passing, you can generally hear a pin drop. What gives you the right to shatter this quiet with your petulant yelling, night after night? Why do you get to invade the rest of our consciousnesses, in the midst of our evening vespers and ablutions, bellowing for your gallivanting feline? I've gone through a smorgasbord of emotions over the course of the past few months, listening to you every night, not entirely dissimilar to the five stages of grief. The first was disbelief: "Is this actually happening?" The second, anger: "HOW does someone think this is OK?" The third, sadness: "That poor man, or woman with a deep voice... his or her cat is gone." The fourth, resignation: "Oh, there's that man or woman calling for his cat again. I guess this is going to become a habit." The fifth, quaint bemusement: "It's just not bedtime until the neighborhood looney stands on his stoop yelling Alice after eleven o'clock."
It is that final stage that has ensnared me, Man Yelling "Alice." Perhaps you are one of the elderly people in the neighborhood, increasingly disillusioned as the gays migrate to the less fashionable side of Fairfax, driving up the rents; a lonely widower with only your cat to keep you company. Is this merely a nightly summons for Alice to return home, or a ritual, performed both ad memoriam and infinitum, for a long-ago vanished pet, akin to leaving flowers by a headstone? The former is at least remotely understandable, the latter, however unlikely, certainly poignant. Perhaps Alice is all you have, perhaps that is why you care so deeply that she return every night.
In the end, it doesn't matter; as I'm moving in ten days. But rest assured, I'll be thinking of you as bedtime approaches, a scant few blocks south, where I'll certainly keep my eyes peeled for Alice. And continue to angrily slam my window closed just as I have been.
Best regards,
Dear Crabby
I don't know who you are. I don't know who Alice is. I don't even know if you are necessarily a man, or perhaps just a woman with a very manly voice. What I DO know is that every night around 11:00 PM, you stand outside your house, somewhere in the vicinity of the intersection of Spaulding and Norton in West Hollywood, yelling "AL-LICE" at the top of your lungs. These are all the facts that I know.
Obviously, I assume Alice is a pet of some variety; and most likely a cat, as it's somewhat ill-advised to let a dog wander around the neighborhood and expect it to return when you call it.
Let the record reflect, Man Yelling "Alice," that our neighborhood is both densely packed and quiet; and unless the fire station a block away is called to action late at night or one of the many ubiquitous helicopters in the skies above Los Angeles is passing, you can generally hear a pin drop. What gives you the right to shatter this quiet with your petulant yelling, night after night? Why do you get to invade the rest of our consciousnesses, in the midst of our evening vespers and ablutions, bellowing for your gallivanting feline? I've gone through a smorgasbord of emotions over the course of the past few months, listening to you every night, not entirely dissimilar to the five stages of grief. The first was disbelief: "Is this actually happening?" The second, anger: "HOW does someone think this is OK?" The third, sadness: "That poor man, or woman with a deep voice... his or her cat is gone." The fourth, resignation: "Oh, there's that man or woman calling for his cat again. I guess this is going to become a habit." The fifth, quaint bemusement: "It's just not bedtime until the neighborhood looney stands on his stoop yelling Alice after eleven o'clock."
It is that final stage that has ensnared me, Man Yelling "Alice." Perhaps you are one of the elderly people in the neighborhood, increasingly disillusioned as the gays migrate to the less fashionable side of Fairfax, driving up the rents; a lonely widower with only your cat to keep you company. Is this merely a nightly summons for Alice to return home, or a ritual, performed both ad memoriam and infinitum, for a long-ago vanished pet, akin to leaving flowers by a headstone? The former is at least remotely understandable, the latter, however unlikely, certainly poignant. Perhaps Alice is all you have, perhaps that is why you care so deeply that she return every night.
In the end, it doesn't matter; as I'm moving in ten days. But rest assured, I'll be thinking of you as bedtime approaches, a scant few blocks south, where I'll certainly keep my eyes peeled for Alice. And continue to angrily slam my window closed just as I have been.
Best regards,
Dear Crabby
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Dear The Coffee Bean
Dear The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf:
First off, I want you to understand... I've never liked you. So you were already fighting an uphill battle.
I'm not one of those coffee snobs who orders their lattes at a certain temperature or categorically refuses to set foot in any establishment that is not their preferred purveyor. But after today, I'm getting there.
The Coffee Bean, I don't like your coffee. I don't like your baked goods - they are greasy and even fattier than they need to be. I don't like your tiny little BB ice cubes which immediately melt and dilute my iced coffee. I don't like your computer-based ordering system which requires a barista to ask me my name even if I am the only person in the store. I don't even like my colleague who goes out of her way across the hall to fill her mug every morning with the Coffee Bean coffee they brew their rather than the Starbucks variety at our own coffee station. And I CERTAINLY don't like getting screwed, which I discovered today, I am whenever I visit you.
The Coffee Bean, I was forced to visit your La Cienega and Third location today against my better judgmenent, as the line up the street at Joan's was out the door. After delivering my order, I was asked if my iced coffee was "for here or to go," a question not typically asked at chain coffee shops. As I was meeting someone there, I gladly said "for here." Ever the environmentalist, always looking for ways in which I can save the planet (as long as they don't force me to do anything I wasn't going to do anyway), I hoped that by saying this I was sacrificing yet another difficult-to-recycle plastic cup, and was instead opting for a glass. Not only was this NOT the case, but it turns out, my good intentions actually cost me more. When I received my coffee in a plastic cup, presumably the exact same cup I would've received had I said "to go," the conversation went like this:
"This is a plastic cup. Why did you ask me if I was getting this to go?"
"We charge you sales tax if you stay here."
W-w-w-w-what? The Coffee Bean, in what universe does this make sense? The coffee is prepared the same, the materials used are the same, and there is no table service of any kind. Why should it matter if the customer stays or leaves? Not only that, but that policy actually traps people with good intentions of at least small-time environmental sustainability into getting, instead, big-time screwed. (Granted, only screwed to the tune of thrity cents or so, but we're talking principle here.) After pulling a cartoon character-worthy double-take, I asked:
"From on what logically lofty highs this inane policy had been trumpeted?"
"It's just our policy, sir," was the reply.
Don't try to mollify me with your misappropriated respect, The Coffee Bean! I won't for a second have it. "That seems a little capricious," I said to the heavily-made up barista. "They don't do that at Starbucks."
She blinked at me, saying nothing. This is increasingly the response I get when talking to anyone in the service industry. Or, come to think of it, most people in general.
The Coffee Bean, there may be a perfectly plausible reason behind this policy, or at the very least, a reason; but whatever it is, I think it's a load of shit. Any policy that out-of-step with your competitors, any policy that unwittingly causes people to spend more money than they need to, is inherently duplicitous, and therefore, morally rank. You have unwittingly given me even greater cause to avoid your dinky ice cubes, your fat-ass baked goods, and dumpy waitstaff. (Not to mention even greater reason to impugn my hall-crossing co-worker). From now on, I'll stick to Starbucks, and even if they automatically charge me to-go prices without checking, at least they have the decency to not give me the option of unwittingly choosing my own overpriced adventure, doing their best to incubate against the harsh realties of our increasingly illogical age, lessening my increasingly unrewarded quixotic stabs at making sense of it.
Best regards,
Dear Crabby
First off, I want you to understand... I've never liked you. So you were already fighting an uphill battle.
I'm not one of those coffee snobs who orders their lattes at a certain temperature or categorically refuses to set foot in any establishment that is not their preferred purveyor. But after today, I'm getting there.
The Coffee Bean, I don't like your coffee. I don't like your baked goods - they are greasy and even fattier than they need to be. I don't like your tiny little BB ice cubes which immediately melt and dilute my iced coffee. I don't like your computer-based ordering system which requires a barista to ask me my name even if I am the only person in the store. I don't even like my colleague who goes out of her way across the hall to fill her mug every morning with the Coffee Bean coffee they brew their rather than the Starbucks variety at our own coffee station. And I CERTAINLY don't like getting screwed, which I discovered today, I am whenever I visit you.
The Coffee Bean, I was forced to visit your La Cienega and Third location today against my better judgmenent, as the line up the street at Joan's was out the door. After delivering my order, I was asked if my iced coffee was "for here or to go," a question not typically asked at chain coffee shops. As I was meeting someone there, I gladly said "for here." Ever the environmentalist, always looking for ways in which I can save the planet (as long as they don't force me to do anything I wasn't going to do anyway), I hoped that by saying this I was sacrificing yet another difficult-to-recycle plastic cup, and was instead opting for a glass. Not only was this NOT the case, but it turns out, my good intentions actually cost me more. When I received my coffee in a plastic cup, presumably the exact same cup I would've received had I said "to go," the conversation went like this:
"This is a plastic cup. Why did you ask me if I was getting this to go?"
"We charge you sales tax if you stay here."
W-w-w-w-what? The Coffee Bean, in what universe does this make sense? The coffee is prepared the same, the materials used are the same, and there is no table service of any kind. Why should it matter if the customer stays or leaves? Not only that, but that policy actually traps people with good intentions of at least small-time environmental sustainability into getting, instead, big-time screwed. (Granted, only screwed to the tune of thrity cents or so, but we're talking principle here.) After pulling a cartoon character-worthy double-take, I asked:
"From on what logically lofty highs this inane policy had been trumpeted?"
"It's just our policy, sir," was the reply.
Don't try to mollify me with your misappropriated respect, The Coffee Bean! I won't for a second have it. "That seems a little capricious," I said to the heavily-made up barista. "They don't do that at Starbucks."
She blinked at me, saying nothing. This is increasingly the response I get when talking to anyone in the service industry. Or, come to think of it, most people in general.
The Coffee Bean, there may be a perfectly plausible reason behind this policy, or at the very least, a reason; but whatever it is, I think it's a load of shit. Any policy that out-of-step with your competitors, any policy that unwittingly causes people to spend more money than they need to, is inherently duplicitous, and therefore, morally rank. You have unwittingly given me even greater cause to avoid your dinky ice cubes, your fat-ass baked goods, and dumpy waitstaff. (Not to mention even greater reason to impugn my hall-crossing co-worker). From now on, I'll stick to Starbucks, and even if they automatically charge me to-go prices without checking, at least they have the decency to not give me the option of unwittingly choosing my own overpriced adventure, doing their best to incubate against the harsh realties of our increasingly illogical age, lessening my increasingly unrewarded quixotic stabs at making sense of it.
Best regards,
Dear Crabby
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