Things Angelenos Hate: Me, While I’m Driving
Like the citizens of all big cities, Angelenos enjoy a love/hate relationship with their home. I plan on documenting as many of them as I can. First up: Me While I’m Driving:
Here is a very, very small segment of the Los Angeles freeway. It looks like this at literally any time except Sunday morning, when Angelenos apparently hate to drive.
For an idea of what I have to go through any time I want to go anywhere (which is often, because, hey, L.A.’s a big city and I want to see everything), here is a map of Los Angeles with the freeways on it:
The only thing I really understand on there is the Pacific Ocean, and I didn’t really get that until I almost drove into it while tooling around Santa Monica before church on Sunday.
Anyway, if this blog were about things I hate, the Freeway — and really, just driving in Los Angeles — would top it. So it only makes sense that the first thing I’ve noticed Angelenos really hating is Me While I’m Driving.
I was telling a friend of mine that driving around here is more of a video game than anything else. If you look down at your speedometer, you will not only be shocked at how fast you’re going, but you’ll also rear-end the Maserati in front of you. Thus, you do not look down at your speedometer. Instead, crouch over the wheel like a grandmother and stare very hard into the rear windshield of the Maserati. Adjust speed according to how big or small that windshield becomes. In Los Angeles, driving is a video game.
I didn’t know any of this, nor did I realize that it must all be done while trying to navigate a grid loosely based on an uncooked package of ramen noodles. Which explains why it only took about twenty minutes of driving around on my first day before I was cursed out by some guy for cutting him off (for the record, I didn’t). Yesterday, on my way home from work, I got yelled at by two dudes in a nasty Honda (note: not the good kind of nasty). I guess I “cut them off” too or something, because every time they pulled up next to me, the driver kept screaming at me. I couldn’t shake them. I could see them yelling in the rear view, I kept ending up next to them at red lights where they would yell at me. By the time I turned myself around and headed back up Sunset, I could barely breathe.
I dunno, maybe it’s not Me While I’m Driving that’s so offensive. In fact, I’m blaming it on the Wilco sticker on my car. Yeah, Angelenos also hate Jeff Tweedy.
(Here he is giving L.A. the Beverly Hills Howdy)
