TuesdayDriveTime1

Due to circumstances beyond my control I have the opportunity to spend every Tuesday for the next year somewhere in downtown Los Angeles. No, it isn't a jail or community service sentence, although I can see the jail from where I park the car.

You can imagine that I was less than thrilled to have this opportunity, but I'm a good citizen and it will in fact be a valuable and interesting experience. If I told you about it, though, I'd have to kill you... and that's bad for readership.

One thing I get out of the experience is about a minimum of three hours each day behind the wheel of the car, going down there and coming back. A decade ago I had a job which took me all over Los Angeles and parts of Orange Counties, mostly to industrial areas, and that was pretty interesting too. During that period the California Highway Patrol issued the results of a study which said something to the effect that driving only uses about 27% of the drivers concentration. That's roughly 70% mental freedom, much more than I got behind a desk or within reach of a telephone. In fact, communication devices pretty much take freedom away - not unlike this electric box I'm hammering away at right now.

With a real-time task and yet enjoying 70% free-range brain roaming, well, the mind can take you a lot of strange places. Today the news radio stations, a must-monitor for traffic reasons, were all ablaze with the speech last night by President Bush, giving Iraq and ultimatum. War is in the air, people are on the ground and at sea ready to charge right into it, and to say things are uneasy is to understate it. Hard to complain about doing my little part to keep the Republic running.

Then when I parked my car and got out I saw an amazing sight. The strong winds blowing the recent rainstorm out had scoured the L.A. Basin crystal clean. It was clear and cold and mountains were covered with fresh white snow. Accumulated dust and dirt had been washed off all growing things, so any trees or shrubs were at their greenest. Streets and sidewalks and buildings all looked scrubbed, and the sky was a solid light blue. At that hour there were few people around downtown.

Later, up in The Room, I could look out the windows and see the Hollywood sign a few miles away and Chinatown below. There will be days not too far in the future where the air quality probably won't allow me to see that sign up there, but I couldn't miss it today. When business concluded early and the group dispersed, I reluctantly had to take a raincheck on joining some of them for lunch over on Olvera Street. Most of this group had to wait out the afternoon to catch the train to their homes, but I had a shot at making a warp-speed cross-town freeway trek to Pacific Coast Highway and home through Malibu. It was traffic-lite at 1 P.M. and I was at Topanga in 20 minutes. Catalina was visible offshore, although the wind out there was whipping up some haze. It might as well have been 1959. War and rumors of war were reflected mostly by the good graces of drivers; this was one of the most peaceful driving experiences probably since the days after the 9/11 attack.

Construction is continuing on the buildings at the end of Malibu Pier. Zuma Jay (Jefferson Wagner) and a group he heads were recently awarded the concession to run Pier operations, which are rumored to include a restored Alice's Restaurant. That has certain nostalgic appeal for some people, myself included. I could fill a column with tales of that place, and I was hardly a regular by any means. More than once we found ourselves sitting there at a window table during fierce storms, the power being knocked out, the whole place lit by table candles, management letting everyone sit and finish their drinks and sometimes another with the whole world blowing apart mere inches away. Respite from the storms, a shared sense of community, and what it takes to carry on...I hope everybody has someplace like that. Malibu is a place of wealth and glamour to most people, but the rest of the drive north was not about that. I passed two film companies working, saw a famous actor at the market at Trancas, and passed houses both beautiful and ridiculous, all massively expensive, but the place to me is all about things money can't buy, not unlike life.

TUESDAY DRIVE TIME
MARCH 18, 2003

Tuesday Drive Time

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