Moving Around SoCal

Reminders of our recent short trip to southern California just keep coming. This past week it was a fire in the Port of Los Angeles that, according to the TV news we saw, elicited a suggestion to residents of San Pedro to shut their windows to stop toxic air entry from the outside, and to stay inside. Now reading this weekend report from the Los Angeles Times--a newspaper that we were glad to get to know during our days there--I see that the fire hit the Pasha Stevedoring and Terminal wharves on South Fries Avenue in Wilmington, the industrial town we drove through several times between Long Beach and our motel in Harbor City. It took 32 hours for more than 100 firefighters to contain the fire, but no one was injured, despite toxic air that threatened terminal workers, firefighters, and elementary school children. With shifting winds and above and below sea-level activity, fighting this fire--the worst at the LA port since 1976--was extremely difficult. Some awesome and instructive pictures have been gathered by the Times in several stories.

Having familiarity with an area brings a story like this home, even if it happens in a place that is not your home. We had lots of free time during our five days in southern California, and a rental car. Even though our GPS operator had a preference for freeway driving, we managed to see a lot of the byways of the towns of Harbor City, San Pedro, and Wilmington, and even touched into Long Beach, Lomita, Carson, and Torrance. It never occurred to me not to rent a car for the trip--that's the only way to get around in LA, isn't it?

It is not. The first thing I noticed outside our 50s-era (but completely updated) motel--smack dab on the Pacific Coast Highway (Highway 1) in Harbor City--was a bus stop. A bus stop with benches and sun shelter, and lots of people using it. Every time we walked across the "highway," which is more like a Main Street at this point of its trajectory, we saw people waiting for, getting on, or getting off buses. I heard from a colleague after returning from my trip that he had lived in downtown Los Angeles for a year, half of it without a car! He rode the buses and got all over the huge area of southern California. Everywhere we drove in SoCal, we also saw buses. It is indeed possible to survive in the great metropolitan sprawl without a car.

But if you are driving, you have more flexibility. And you had better put that flexibility to good use as you share the street with emergency vehicles, trolleys, bicyclists, pedestrians, and oodles of skateboarders!