Having just spent a weekend in the grimey-at-heart Bay Area, where lack of understanding or appreciation of the L.A. universe remains a chronic ailment on the popular consciousness, I am especially feeling the wide-eyed awe of this article from The Philadelphia Inquirer tonight. It's about the still-in-process L.A. subway, which I found reason today to ride again:
L.A.'s high-speed transit is - are you sitting down, preferably on a subway bench? - based on the honor system. You can't crawl under the turnstiles to con Metro; there are none. No one collects a ticket. (The same is true of a few other systems around the world, notably the mostly new subway in Athens, Greece, and on South Jersey's three-year-old River Line.)
Granted, this is the sort of tone many -- no, most -- of L.A.'s residents would take if they undertook the same assignment. Nice to know it takes someone from "back East" to actually go and do it. (But he didn't spend much time on the "ghetto blue" line, of course.)
And for the record, Oakland's Fruitvale district really is part of L.A. and not the Bay Area (had delicious barbacoa street tacos, and consome in a foam cup). Also, that propoganda on an intra-state speed train, after the increasingly treacherous and traumatic drive down the I-5 (saw two accidents), is worth another viewing.
* Link via Curbed LA. Photo of descent into the Central Valley by akatsilometes.