Saw Flightplan today. If you saw the trailer, you already know what it’s about: Jodie Foster is on a commercial airliner with her daughter. Her daughter vanishes. No one else remembers seeing the daughter board, and they all try to convince her that her daughter is just a delusion. But she finds physical evidence in the form of a heart drawn on the the foggy window that shows that her daughter is real and was on the plane. I really enjoy these classic Hitchcock-style “ordinary person caught up in a dangerous mystery” sort of stories, but since the trailer has already revealed 70% of the plot, the only remaining issue is: Is there some clever, logical explanation for what’s going on? The answer, in this case, is a resounding no. The ending is patently ridiculous. During the last 30 minutes of the movie, most of the theater was openly laughing at the contrived plot. (Though to be fair, the two guys sitting behind me also giggled at just the opening credits. I think they were stoned.) So many people were getting up and leaving that it felt like the captain had just turned off the fasten seatbelt sign. Oh well.
Paradise Regained
So once upon a time if you googled david kirtley my site was the first to come up, and if you googled just kirtley my site was the second. But then I moved my site from www.sff.net/people/davekirtley/ to the current and much more succinct www.davidbarrkirtley.com. One unforeseen side effect of this was that my Google rank plunged and I found myself exiled to the pit. If you googled david kirtley I was like number 6, and if you googled just kirtley I was on like page six. I was just like, “Is this the region, this the soil, the clime, this the seat that we must change for Heaven? — this mournful gloom for that celestial light? Farewell happy fields, where joy forever dwells! And hey Google, $#@! you!” Fortunately, after most of the year, my Google rank is now back where it was, though I still can’t seem to overtake that Pat Kirtley guy.
Peter S. Beagle Needs Help
Locus online has a link to this page about Peter S. Beagle needing help. Beagle is the author of the novel The Last Unicorn, and also wrote the screenplay for the animated film. I first read The Last Unicorn on a camping trip as a small child. I saw the film shortly thereafter, and I’ve seen it probably hundreds of times since. It had an incalculable effect on me. Its rhythms still influence the way I speak and write. The image of valiant Prince Lir writing poetry helped inspire me to write, and also inspired my (somewhat less successful) attempts to be a sword-wielding prince. One of my earliest surviving writing projects is a picture book adaptation of The Last Unicorn that I started drawing the night I came home from the theater. I wish Peter S. Beagle good luck and all the best.
West Hollywood Book Fair
Went to the West Hollywood Book Fair today. It was basically a few square miles of tents with book vendors, author signings, and panel discussions. I didn’t see any spec fic authors, which was a drag, though supposedly Neil Gaiman was there, but he left before I even arrived (indeed, before I even heard about it). Bill Maher was there, but not speaking, only signing. I hadn’t even heard of any of the other authors, who were mostly chick lit or mystery writers. I did sign up with the Writer’s Guild to receive email bulletins about upcoming events (supposedly they’ve signed up Charlie Kaufman for a rare public appearance in a few weeks), so that was worthwhile. I also picked up a book for $1, an anthology of stories that appeared in Galaxy magazine that includes an essay by each author about how they wrote their story.
Supposedly the Book Fair included a “giant” cake. When I asked how big it was, one of my friends said, “Six feet by four feet. Don’t ask me how I know that, but I’m sure. Maybe I dreamed it,” and then, “Wow, six feet is really tall for a cake.” I said, “Assuming those dimensions are correct, I’m sure it must be six feet long by four feet wide. Who ever heard of a six foot tall cake?” My other friend suggested that maybe it was one of those big cakes like the ones strippers come out of at birthday parties, in which case it could very well be six feet tall. I’ve never seen one of those stripper-style cakes in real life and, intrigued at the prospect, decided to check it out. We somehow got the idea that the cake unveiling was at 5:00, and hung around for an hour just for that, then went looking for the cake. The cake was hidden inside an enormous, cordoned-off red velvet tent, which seemed promising. But then we realized that the cake unveiling wasn’t until 6:15. Unwilling to wait around another hour, my friend surreptitiously reached past the cordon and pulled the tent flap aside. The cake inside was six feet long by four feet wide and all of about six inches tall. Do you call that “giant”? What a frickin’ ripoff.
Gaiman Reading
Last night I went over to Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena to see Neil Gaiman read from his new novel, Anansi Boys. The event took place in this really cool multi-layered back courtyard. There were several hundred people there. Gaiman read the section where Fat Charlie dreams about his brother the spider god disrupting a fancy L.A. pool party. There was something really magical about listening to that scene while actually being outdoors at night in L.A. Gaiman also noted that Anansi Boys has hit the New York Times Best Seller list at #1, and then said something that stuck in my mind all night: “And I didn’t have to change what I write to do it. I just kept writing the kind of thing I wanted to write, and eventually enough people found it.”
While there, I randomly ran into a few of the USC students who I’d gone with to Serenity. I mentioned to one of them, the guy who’d organized the Serenity expedition, that Vroman’s carried a copy of Empire of Dreams and Miracles, which includes two of my stories, and he wanted to see it, so we wandered over to the science fiction section. He ended up buying it, and as it’s a bit pricey, I offset the cost somewhat by giving him one of my copies of Game of Thrones. (That’s four I’ve given away now. Just one left.) We loitered among the shelves a while, discussing various books. I couldn’t believe how many books he’d read. Most undergrads these days seem to have never read anything that wasn’t assigned for high school English class (and I mean come on, Of Mice and Men is cool and all, but if that’s really one of your favorite books of all time, you need to read more), but I had the feeling that this guy might’ve even read more science fiction than I have, which is a scary prospect. He’d even read Redshift Rendezvous by John E. Stith, which despite being one of my favorite books is fairly obscure. I was like, “Who are you?” He said that his mom is a voracious science fiction reader and will sometimes come home from the bookstore angry because they don’t carry any science fiction she hasn’t already read, and that she recommends the good ones to him. He also said that an adult mentor had died and left him his entire science fiction collection, and as a tribute to the man he’d read them all. I was impressed.
Classic Stories
I notice that Fictionwise carries some really great classic science fiction short stories. These are stories that just blew my mind and were a huge influence on me and many other people, but might not be so familiar to younger readers. It’s exciting that they’re online where anyone in the world can find them instantly. If you haven’t read all of these, check them out. And come on, they’re selling for like the price of a Coke. I’m sure there are many more out there, but here are a few must-reads I’ve run across:
“Sandkings” by George R. R. Martin
“Inconstant Moon” by Larry Niven
“Neutron Star” by Larry Niven
“I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison
“‘Repent Harlequin!’ said the Ticktockman” by Harlan Ellison
Serenity
Saw Serenity tonight with a big group of students (15 or so) that I hooked up with through Facebook. I’ve only watched an episode or two of Firefly, and had no particular expectations going in, but I was really blown away. The script was damn near flawless. The Operative is the coolest character I’ve seen in a long time. Even given that the opening night crowd was mostly diehard fans, the audience response was extraordinary. I’ve never observed a crowd so audibly enjoy a movie — not even close. I want to see the movie again. Now.
It was an evening of firsts: my first trip to the amazing Arclight Theater in Hollywood, my first ride on the not-so-amazing L.A. subway system, my first Giovanni Ribisi sighting (he was hanging around outside the theater smoking a cigarette).
After the movie, the group went out to a diner. After that, the girl I’d been chatting with very nicely offered to drive me back to my car, but her sense of direction was, if this is even possible, even worse than mine, and we ended up driving around in completely the wrong direction, very confused, getting honked at constantly, until after half an hour we ended up, totally by accident, back at the diner. This time, having established which way was north, we managed to locate my car.
Quick Update
I haven’t been feeling very motivated lately to provide complete coverage of my life, but briefly: last Friday I partied at a house up on 23rd street with the Literary Association. Saturday I partied at a house over by Echo Park with some MPWers. Both parties were a lot of fun, and I met a slew of new people.
Tuesday’s Academy Series featured the guy who wrote Scent of a Woman. He was really interesting, particularly when he talked about the range of things that had inspired that story — the original Italian movie, his brother getting expelled from Exeter, an officer he’d known in the service. This officer always wore the fanciest, most expensive shoes anyone had ever seen. They later learned that he did this to try to compensate for his feet — he’d lost all his toes to frostbite.
My Writing for Film class last night was pretty cool. We watched The Player, and the instructor, Kershner, also read long excerpts from Bradbury’s new book of essays singing the praises of horror and science fiction, so I really enjoyed that. One of the girls told Kershner she’d seen him on TV last weekend talking about Star Wars (he directed The Empire Strikes Back). He said, “Did I sound stupid? I always sound stupid in those things. They always ask the same dumb questions, every time. None of these journalists today care about anything important. None of them have passion, anger.” So I burst out, “Well I was really angry when they released the Star Wars Special Edition and they made it so that Greedo and Han Solo shoot at the same time. Man, that just pissed me off.” Kershner stared at me for like a minute, trying to decide if I was joking (or maybe just trying to figure out what the hell I was talking about). Finally he said, “Yeah okay, anger, that’s what I’m talking about.”
I finally got my first L.A. haircut, and finally found the post office and got postage to mail off a fiction submission. This afternoon I’m going to meet with a grad student I heard about who’s a writer in the English department and has taught a summer class on science fiction here at USC.
Bullshit
In class last week someone mentioned Marie Antoinette saying “Let them eat cake.” I have, of course, heard hundreds of times that she said this, and have never questioned it, but suddenly my bullshit detector, which grows keener with each passing day, went off, and I said to myself, “You know what, I have no knowledge about this topic whatsoever, but that just sounds like bullshit to me. I bet she never said that.” I just looked it up and I was right. The phrase was already a commonly used joke when she was 10 years old, though it was later attributed to her by her enemies. In the course of this research I also discovered that lots of other things I believed are also not true. Did you know that: Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” is grammatically flawless. “Ring around the Rosie” has nothing to do with the black plague. The F-word is not an acronym for “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.” Neil Armstrong did not say “Good luck, Mr. Gorsky.” Also, I already knew these last two, but I’m getting really sick of hearing them, so please never repeat them in my presence. The flush toilet was not invented by Sir Thomas Crapper, and NASA did not spend $12 billion to develop a zero-gravity pen while the Russians just used a pencil.
Nifty
I’m currently #7 on Fictionwise’s Best Selling Authors: Recent list.
Galloway
Went to see George Galloway last night at a church up on Willshire. It was an enormous church, and the place was packed. Hundreds and hundreds of people. Galloway was superb. He talked for over an hour (without notes) about the current international situation, and was by turns hilarious, heartbreaking, and rousing. Unfortunately, he was bookended by some stuff that wasn’t so much fun.
Doors opened at 6:00 and he was supposed to go on (I thought) at 7:00. I ordered a ticket online. I wasn’t sure how long it would take to battle my way up Vermont, so I left around 5:00 p.m. (having earlier retrieved my car from the parking center to go grocery shopping). Vermont at rush hour was hell. As far as I can tell, there are no green arrow left turn signals anywhere in Los Angeles. Since traffic flow is continuous, if you want to turn left you have to pull into the middle of an intersection, wait for the light to turn red, then quickly go before the stopped cross traffic can start moving. This means that about two cars can turn left per green light, so if you’re the eighth car in line, as I was, you’re going to be there a while.
Finally I found parking, but it was still only about 5:30 p.m. I was one of the first people there. I got in the line for preordered tickets and gave the guy my name. He couldn’t find me on the list. He went off to consult higher powers. The line froze behind me and started to swell. Nothing happened. Finally the guy came back and told me to stand aside, then he disappeared again. Much later he came back and asked, “Did you order your ticket recently?” I said, “This morning.” He said, “That explains it,” in a tone like I had done something wrong. His list of names had been printed out last night, so I wasn’t on it. But he swore that the updated list was on its way. I had to wait longer. I thought this was silly. Couldn’t they just take my word for it that I’d paid? Did they imagine I was some super-spy who somehow knew that their name list would be incomplete and was trying to bluff his way past the desk to avoid paying $13? Finally they let me past.
At that point, the church was still practically deserted, so I got a front row seat. Then I waited. And waited. Did some more waiting. Around 7:00 p.m., they made an announcement that due to the bad traffic they were delaying the start of the program until 7:30. More waiting. By then I was really ready for some hot Galloway action and then a quick exit. But first there were four opening acts, who each spoke for about twenty minutes. They weren’t bad, but the delay was maddening. By the time Galloway actually appeared on stage, it had been almost four hours since I left my apartment. Anyway, Galloway, like I said, was great. (He had better be, after that wait.)
But then would come the dreaded Q&A session. One guy, a Native American activist, couldn’t wait, and started addressing the crowd while Galloway was still talking. Security came over and encouraged him to sit down. Galloway kept saying, “Peace be with you, brother.” Finally the guy sat down. Galloway offered to answer four questions, but the first six people he called on (including the Native American guy; don’t ask me why he called on him) came up to the lectern to deliver long, incoherent diatribes instead of asking questions, so Galloway kept calling on people, desperate for someone who would actually ask a question. Finally he got a couple sort-of questions, tied them together into a closing statement, and called it a day.
Today I wrote an essay about Gladiator for class, attended the first meeting of the newly-formed USC Literary Association, and went over to the bookstore to buy a USC T-shirt. I picked one out, and was holding it up in front of me before the mirror when a random girl walked by and exclaimed, “Looks good!” So I bought it. Obviously.
Random Stuff
Apparently Keane gave a free concert yesterday over by Tommy Trojan. I probably would’ve gone if I’d heard about it, but it wasn’t announced on the USC website until … today. Thanks, guys. But it’s probably just as well. I would’ve been that guy in back constantly shouting, “Play Somewhere Only We Know!” or, as I think of it, The Only Song By You That I Know. And reportedly they didn’t play it until last, which I would’ve found frustrating, though I guess I can’t blame them. If they played it first, all the people like me would leave right away.
I awoke this morning to a fierce thunderstorm. I thought I must still be dreaming. Before this, not a drop of rain had fallen since I arrived in L.A. Someone told me that rain is so infrequent here that Subway stores give out free sandwiches as a promotion whenever it rains. I find this extremely difficult to believe, but it’s a good urban legend, so I’m doing my best to spread it. I’m too lazy to actually locate a Subway and test this out, but if anyone tries it, let me know how it goes. You never know. I did once get a bunch of free sandwiches plus an enormous bag of slightly stale cookies from Subway (but only because the girl who worked there had a crush on me).
I’m going to try to get tickets for Thursday to go see George Galloway speak. He’s the colorful British MP who bitch-slapped the U.S. Senate over their handling of Iraq.
Fictionwise
My stories “They Go Bump” and “The Trial of Thomas Jefferson” are now on sale at Fictionwise. Those are the last of the 10 I’ve sold to Fictionwise so far. As of this morning, people have bought more than 200 copies of my stories, pushing my payment due to over $25, which means Fictionwise should be cutting me a check any day now (they pay in increments of $25). And yeah, I have noticed that $25 is half the cost of a parking ticket around here, thanks. When Heinlein sold a story to John W. Campbell’s Astounding, he was paid enough to buy a car or a pool, which has always seemed to me like much more equitable compensation for a story you spent three months working on, but I don’t run the universe, more’s the pity.
Battlestar Galactica
Last week I found a science fiction group at USC on Facebook. I posted a note asking if anyone around here ever meets up to write or discuss science fiction. One guy responded, saying that a few people get together in his dorm to watch the new SCI-FI Channel series Battlestar Galactica, and sometimes stick around afterward to discuss science fiction. I’d never seen the show, but I’d heard good things about it, so I decided to drop by.
I was supposed to call the guy to let me into his building, but I couldn’t since I’d destroyed my cell phone. These dorms require you to swipe your card to get in and to use the elevator or stairs. I had to hang around looking as studentish as possible and follow people through the doors, infiltrating the building in much the same way as (in retrospect) Cylon agent Number Six … only sexier. It wasn’t hard. I didn’t even have to resort to my more devious gambit — swiping my card (which I know isn’t going to work) and exclaiming, “What the hell? My card’s not working. Is yours?”
The “group” to watch the show turned out to be just me and the guy I’d talked to. This is honestly exactly what I was expecting. If my long sad experience with school clubs and humanity has taught me anything, it’s that if an activity is even the slightest bit smart or interesting, no one will show. Though the guy claimed that there were usually more people — including an actual girl.
Anyway, Battlestar Galactica is super cool. (The guy loaned my some DVDs with a bunch of episodes on them.) The new show has only the most tenuous connection to the ’70s TV show of the same name, which is a very good thing if my hazy recollections of that show are correct. What impressed me most was that the new show doesn’t shy away from forcing characters to make tough decisions. I also really liked that the future humans are polytheists, while the invading robots are monotheists. The first season comes out on DVD on Tuesday, and I recommend checking it out.
I also ended up randomly talking to another student in the dorm, who’s taking a class in science fiction. I contacted the professor, and I’m going to meet with him next week to talk about his approach to teaching sf and see if maybe I can sit in on a class.
Mein cellphone ist kaput
Drove over to Santa Monica yesterday to go rollerblading along the beach. Someone told me there’s a mall on 4th street where you can park free for 3 hours, and I wanted to try it out. After I skated, I was skipping around in the surf for a while. I wasn’t really intending to go for a dip, but a surprisingly powerful swell tripped me up. (Later a lifeguard was yelling at people not to go too deep, because there was a storm surge warning in effect, or something.) Then I realized I still had my cellphone in my pocket. My cellphone is now history. If you try to turn it on, the screen flickers piteously then goes dark. If you plug it in, it vibrates continously. What a pain in the ass. I have no other phone here, and I already programmed everyone’s numbers into it. Then I was stuck in traffic for two hours coming home (a 20 minute drive), watching in agony as my $30-a-tank gas burned away into the air. So overall, that trip was less than a total success.
BMOC
This morning, to cheer myself up, I walked over to the campus bookstore to admire the shelved copies of All the Rage This Year. An undergrad screenwriter I know walked by. I showed her the books, and she was like, “That’s so cool!” and bought one. (The first one anyone’s bought.) So that was pretty cool. Then, within the span of ten minutes, I separately ran into two other people I know, neither of them from my program (since people from my program are never around during the day). I’m starting to feel like a regular BMOC.
In other news, my two horror stories, “The Disciple” (Lovecraftian) and “The Skull-Faced Boy” (zombies), are currently the top two bestselling horror titles at Fictionwise.com. In spite of this, they are still selling noticeably less well than any of my other (fantasy & science fiction) stories. I’d heard that horror was not selling well right now as a genre, but this is the first direct numerical evidence of that that’s crossed my path.
Power Outage
I’ve spent most of this morning trying to get a working laundry card for the washing machines in my building. This is harder than it sounds. After much toil, I finally located the machine I could use to add money to my laundry card, but it wasn’t working due to a power failure that affected the entire street. I returned to my apartment (the electronic card reader was down so I had to go in through the back) and entered my darkened kitchen. Just then I got a call on my cell phone. My friend Erica asked, “Is your power out?” I said, “Yeah. Is yours?” She said, “I’m actually down in University Village, but yeah, it’s out here. I’ve heard it’s out all over the city, and there are riots and stuff. The guy here says terrorists sent a tape to Fox news yesterday threatening to destroy Los Angeles.”
Suddenly my laundry card woes didn’t seem so pressing. Nothing like a little terrorism-inspired riot to put things in perspective. (This general area is razed during each major riot, so the prospect of a riot is of more than academic interest.) As she continued chatting, I double-locked the door, scanned the alley below for looters, and slid the windows closed to prevent exposure to fallout and/or biological/chemical agents. I contemplated how long my food and water might last. I contemplated what heavy furniture could be stacked against the door to prevent a break-in (though, given the crime around here, that’s actually a fairly common pasttime). With no TV and no power, I couldn’t get any news, so I said goodbye and called home to try to find out what was going on. It turns out that power was out throughout the city, and there was a terrorist tape threat against L.A. yesterday, but there is not actually any rioting, or any reason to believe the outage is terrorism-related. Well that’s a relief.
Now about that damn laundry card…
Update: From CNN: “About 700,000 electric customers in Los Angeles lost power Monday afternoon after a worker mistakenly cut a wrong line, triggering a cascade of problems in the city’s power grid.”
Fictionwise
My stories “The Second Rat” and “The Skull-Faced Boy” are up on Fictionwise this week.
The Intern; Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
The Intern last night was really exceptional. Whip-smart, erotic, hilarious, and haunting. Even the stage was cool, kind of multi-layered and black with lots of steep stairways. It reminded me of Escher’s “Relativity.” My enjoyment was diminished slightly only by the knowledge that this fabulous piece of theater was playing to an audience that was smaller than the cast, while somewhere a great steel coliseum is groaning under the weight of a hundred thousand NASCAR fans. It’s not just sf writers who get the shaft from society. In the end, I was only able to get one person from my department, Erika, to go with me, but she was terrific company, and became the first vict…er, beneficiary of my George R. R. Martin largess. As we filed into the theater, we noticed a man lying facedown on the stage. Erika said, “Who’s that, do you think?” and I responded, obviously and jokingly, “I think he’s part of the play … not just some random guy,” and then in a funny voice, “Hey Joe, how many times have we told you, ya gotta sleep on the couch.” Ha ha. The actor could probably hear me. Probably some smartass at every show makes some variation on that joke. And speaking of jokes, as we were walking to the theater, a girl outside a comedy club handed us a flyer and said, “Come in sometime. It’s a great show. I pee myself every night watching it.” We laughed. I asked Erika later if she thought that girl ever got sick of telling that same pee joke to everyone who walked by. Erika suggested that maybe the girl had like 5 jokes like that just to mix it up a bit. I suggested we could test that by walking up and down the street repeatedly, but we never did. I guess we’ll never know.
This afternoon I went to a symposium on solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Needless to say, the issue was not solved. I had felt pressure to attend, since the event was co-sponsored by my department, and the head of my department had been handing us all tickets. Apparently, the rest of the grad students are not so susceptible to pressure. Only three MPW students (including me) showed up, and only I made it through the whole event. (Though, to be fair, the other two left after the event had run well past its stated time limit.) Still, three people? Out of 160? I know there are that many because I’ve seen their mailboxes, but I’ve never seen more than about 40 around campus. Where are the rest? Who are they? They’re like grad student dark matter.
Anyway, some of the speakers had interesting insights, but some were really tedious. Despite an early directive that the talk should center on the future and solutions and avoid dredging up the past, one guy spent a solid 20 minutes giving an 8th-grade level history lesson on the conflict, full of such searing historical insights as “Anti-semitism in Europe reached its apex during the holocaust.” Gee, you think? You might imagine that my extensive experience as a panelist at sf conventions would have inured me to public speakers who are going to blather for half an hour without making a point, but in fact my patience threshhold has taken a nosedive. I used to give these guys the benefit of the doubt. Now I recognize them within the first three sentences out of their mouths.
I only stuck around at the end because I was curious what characters the Q&A session would dredge up. I’ve learned through painful experience that not even the sharpest sketch comedy routine can compete for sheer ludicrous risibility with an average member of the public given more than 30 seconds to unload their personal baggage upon an audience. Today brought a woman who commented that how could we expect to be peaceful when we polluted the “temples of our bodies” with the beings we killed, by which I inferred she meant eating meat. Okay, totally irrelevant to the issue at hand, but perhaps a fair point. But then she got in line to speak again, and said, “I didn’t get a chance to say everything I needed to say the first time.” Here’s a tip: if you ever find yourself tempted to speak this line, you have almost certainly said way more than you needed to already. Anyway, this time she said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems intractable now, but we should all take consolation from the fact that the Mayan calendar predicts the dawning of a new age of Aquarius in 2012. At this point, I just couldn’t contain my snickering. Even on her own terms, what she said about the Mayan calendar is totally wrong, and besides, anyone whose civilization has been totally wiped off the face of the earth is automatically disqualified from consideration for “people who could accurately predict the future.”
Midnight Ridazz
Midnight Ridazz (actual name) last night was freakin’ awesome. I went with three girls from my program and their friends and girlfriends. We met up around 7:30 at an apartment in Eagle Rock for drinks and pizza, then around 9:00 we carpooled over to the parking lot of Pioneer Chicken in Echo Park. There were several hundred bicyclists there. The theme was “heavy metal,” and lots of the people had crazy outfits. One guy was dressed like a barbarian with a giant papier mache hammer. One guy had welded the frame of one bike on top of another, so that he rode like ten feet off the ground. We set off west down Sunset Boulevard. At each intersection, four or five riders would stop to halt cross traffic and let all the bicyclists past. Many people in cars going the other way rolled down their windows and cheered us or tapped on their horns, and we hollered and waved back.
We turned north onto Hillhurst, past the Scientology church, and I was like, “Hey! I know this street!” Hillhurst was the street I parked on and walked down to get to the Sunset Junction Street Fair. I was really excited that out of all the billions of streets in L.A., I’d randomly ended up riding up one I recognized, though no one else really seemed to share my excitement. We turned east onto Los Feliz, and then south onto a bike path that runs parallel to Riverside Drive. This was the coolest part of the ride. The path runs along a river, and is only sporadically lit, so we were riding in near-darkness, and ahead you could see hundreds of people’s red rear bike lights blinking. Then Fletcher to Ave 36 to Eagle Rock road. I passed an intersection where a cop car had been stopped by the riders, and the cop was saying over his PA system, “Why are you stopping traffic?” I dunno, because there’s a couple hundred of us and we can?
Finally we pulled into the parking lot of a bowling alley. Some guy came out and yelled at us that this was private property and we’d have to move, but everyone ignored him and he went away, though I had to give him credit for trying. I wouldn’t try yelling at two hundred people. The ride was supposed to continue back to where we’d started, but after an hour and a half (it was around 1:00 a.m.) no one was showing any signs of going anywhere. One of our riders had pulled a muscle, and we were only a few blocks from the apartment where I’d parked my car, so we just went back there.
Can’t wait until next month.
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