Pros and Cons

The LA Metro system is a part of my life. Actually, it might be one of the biggest parts of my life right now, since I ride the subway every day. I go to work most days, and I ride my bike most days, and I sleep most days, but taking the metro is probably the only thing I do every single day.

To give out-of-towners an idea what it's like here, I have am compiling a list of things I do and do not like about the metro. My idea is to try to avoid making this list comparative. I'd rather define the absolutes about the things I do or don't like than reference other forms of transportation. Hopefully this will be at least mildly entertaining, too.

I like that I can be only passively involved in my own transportation. This way, I am guaranteed about 30-45 minutes per day of reading time, or sometimes audio spanish lessons. If it weren't for the metro, I am sure that I would make less time for each of these things.

I don't like that eating and drinking aren't permitted in the subway. It would be possible to save even more time by eating on the way to work if it were allowed.

I like that the seats next to the Elderly Priority Seating have a little ledge where you can put up your knee, so when I take the first morning train back home at 4:38am after a long night at work, I can put my knee and elbow up and rest my head. Unless I have my bike with me, which is usually, because then I have to stand.

I don't like that the trains stop running between 12:58am and 4:38am, because this means that if I finish editing a show at 1am, I have to wait for over three hours to get home.

I like seeing all kinds of different people with all kinds of different objects and companions. I hear different accents and I wonder where they come from and I look at what they are carrying and speculate what is the backstory with that crazy hat. I enjoy it when there is a young couple and one of them sits on the other's lap, not because I particularly like or don't like public displays of affection, but because it usually makes a middle-aged woman across the aisle smile knowingly and then stare off nostalgically. That I do love to see. Also, the metro is pretty much the only place where I see little kids these days.

I don't usually like it when people in the metro talk to me. Most often, a person will see that I am reading a book, comment on the book or the author, or perhaps books in general, and then try to twist that into some general interest we have in common in an effort to talk about something else, like a moneymaking scheme or his highschool football career. This should be against the law, because it certainly defies logic. If you liked a book that you see someone reading, let that person read the book in peace.

Occasionally a good, honest, working person will want to talk to me about my bike. I refuse to talk to bike-people about bikes, but if a normal person without one of those silly bike hats wants to talk about my Super Flashy home-stenciled paint job or my Tough Cookies sticker or my special whiskey flask holder in place of a water bottle, I'll do that. A couple of times, this has taken tangents to talk about the state of transportation in LA, jobs, getting to work, colleges, tech schools, starting over, and that kind of thing. This is really pretty rare. And usually the practical matters of the situation make it kind of awkward, because there isn't a concrete etiquette laid out for whether you're supposed to continue talking once the train comes and you'll almost definitely be split up since there are rarely two free seats next to each other, and even if there were, are we really ready to commit like that?

I don't like that the ticket machines are slow to respond. When I press the buttons to buy a ticket, sometimes it takes 4 or 5 seconds for it to wake up and display the menus for all of the button presses I entered, and then another 4 seconds to print out the ticket. Who has that kind of time? During off-peak hours, there are twenty minutes between trains, and those 8 seconds waiting for my little card could easily mean the difference between just catching a train and just missing it.

I like that the tickets are fairly cheap at $1.25 per one-way and $5.00 per day pass. If I weren't such a stingy bastard, I might even spring for the monthly pass at $60-something, but it's hard to fork over that much money at one time. If I were smarter, I would realize that having a monthly pass would save me all those 8-second waits, and that might be worth the money.

I DO NOT like this certain look I sometimes get from other white folks in the subway stations. It's sort of an acknowledgment, a recognition that we're kind of rare in public transportation in LA at certain times of the day. Class issues and race issues abound. Great. Don't nod at me.

I like the stairs. I have a rule that I only take the stairs, in part because I would be crazy to turn down free exercise and in part because the thought of standing and waiting in the middle of a long pack of people on the escalator makes me really anxious. Even when I have my bike on my shoulder I would still rather bound up the stairs two at a time than be stuck in a herd like that.

I like the constant hum-and-whoosh sound in the subway trains. It serves as a good foundation for starting random thoughts from scratch, especially when you're really tired. Last night's was pretty good: the next time someone breaks up with me and starts dating my roommate, I'm going to print a life-size picture of myself and wheat-paste it on the inside of their door. Not in a malicious way, sort of in a just-sayin' way.

There are probably more things that belong on this list, though I'm sure they are very small and hard to describe. If I think of it, I'll add them as they come up. Overall it's clear that the cons don't even come close to the pros on all of this, and seeing it laid out like this now, I just decided to pony up and buy the monthly pass. Go Metro!