The lost art - Stick edition

We are gathered here today to mourn what’s become a dying skill. A cultural relic that once separated the casual driver from the true master of the open road: driving a stick shift.

Kids today look at a manual transmission the way a caveman might look at an iPhone: equal parts confusion and fear. Be that as it may, let’s have a good laugh at youngsters who will never understand the joy—and terror—of grinding gears.

Driving a manual used to be a full-body sport. Your left hand gripped the wheel while your left foot was a finely tuned machine dancing on the clutch. Your right hand held tight on the shift knob—custom leather if we were bein’ all fancy—and slid through the gears with precision timing.

As opposed to todays’ automatic transmissions, where you sit back and let the car do all the thinking.

Driving a stick came with one universal truth: You will stall the car. And because God does have a sense of humor it was usually when you were on a hill (mine was on La Cienega just before Sunset Blvd.), and the car rolled backward like a panicked toddler.

Still, there are some definite perks to knowing how to drive manual. For one, nobody will ever ask to borrow your car. Also, it’s probably the best theft deterrent on the market. No thief under 40 is touching that thing.

I can’t help feeling sad for today’s generation of drivers. While their self-driving cars will be convenient—and is it really driving if the car is driving itself? Discuss—they’ll never know the rush of nailing a perfect heel-toe downshift, or the satisfaction of cruising down the highway with your car purring in the sweet spot of fourth gear. They won’t have the connection with their vehicle that only comes from manually controlling every grunt and groan of the engine.

So, here’s to the gearheads of yesteryear—and the kids who think “clutch” is just a handbag. May we never forget the joy, frustration, and sheer chaos of driving stick.

If you’re feeling nostalgic and want to talk about it some more, come find me.

I’ll be the guy on the hill, rolling backward into traffic, trying to shift into first.

Mourning the commute

For many years, I had a strange coincidence regarding my morning commute. It seemed no matter what agency I worked at, whether it was in Brea, Irvine or Playa Del Rey, my commute was exactly 26 miles each way.

But they were morning rush hour freeway miles, which as anyone who's done it knows are like dog years except the conversion rate is much higher.

All this to say I'm extremely grateful for the commute I have these days to the agency I'm working at in Huntington Beach. The gig won't last forever, but I'm nothing if not blessed with the route I take. For starters, I don't have to get near a freeway to get there. I just cruise down PCH from my house to work, a breezy 25 minute ride if there's traffic.

The picture above is essentially the view I have to endure on my drive home.

Living in Long Beach, and working in either L.A. or Orange County, I was pretty much held hostage to the 405. The best I could ever hope for is that there'd be a few stretches along the way where I could get up to 35mph for a few miles.

I don't miss it at all. But I also feel like I'm standing on the tracks, and the train's coming. At some point, hopefully not anytime soon, it's inevitable I'll be one of the cars stuck in this picture of the 405 commute.

I'll also say this - it's nice to come into work relaxed and clear-headed, without excessive amounts of adrenaline running through my body from screaming at other drivers and letting them know I think they're number 1 (if you get my continental drift).

Well, that's not entirely true. I never screamed.

Seeing red

There's good news and there's bad news.

The good news is that for the past week, and the next couple coming up, I'm working in Santa Monica. I lived here for almost 20 years, and the city feels like home to me. I can see the ocean from my office, the sunsets are stunning and I know the shortcuts when I need to get where I'm going.

The bad news is those shortcuts don't do jack for me at quittin' time.

See that red cross going from where the 10 freeway starts to where it intersects with the 405? That's what I have to navigate every night to get out of the west side, and then crawl the rest of the way home to Long Beach.

As I've said many times here, I grew up on the mean streets of west L.A., north of Wilshire. And I don't want to become one of those guys that starts a lot of sentences with "back then", but back then this was a precision driving town. People knew how to maneuver. They knew how to go with the flow.

Which is hard to do if the flow's not going.

It's also gotten a lot more crowded since I was a kid. I blame it on the Rose Parade.

Every January, at the same time the rest of the country is digging out from fifteen feet of snow, playing hopscotch over downed power lines and holding on to lamp posts so they don't blow away, they're also watching the Kiwanis Club float celebrating "Togetherness Through Diversity" and the Davis High School Marching Band on television, and seeing the clear, beautiful and often warm sunny January days we get to enjoy here.

So everyone watching sells their house and moves here. The majority of them from the east coast. The thing about the east coast is they actually have public transportation that works, so many times the car they're driving here is their first one.

Which is no news to you if you've ever been on the 405 at rush hour.

Rosh hour

Representation of 405 this morning

Today is the day when Jews all over Los Angeles observe the high holy day of Rosh Hashanah. In my experience, I’ve found the best place to observe it is from the freeway.

Whenever the Jewish high holidays roll around, traffic in L.A. is virtually non-existent, especially if you’re headed to the west side or any of the studios (go ahead, tell me I’m wrong).

Being the non-practicing Jew I am, and despite four long, long years of Hebrew school, I don’t really remember much about Rosh Hashanah. It’s either the celebration of the Jewish New Year 5773, or a rejoicing of the fact there’s no traffic on the usually gridlocked 405 for two days in a row.

I’m going with the second one. And I’m going with it at 75 mph.

One tradition of this high holiday is the blowing of the Shofar (this is a family blog - insert your own joke here). I prefer to participate in the alternate tradition of blowing past all the places I’d normally be stuck on the way in.

Not only are the roads empty, so is the office. Truthfully, since work is not allowed on Rosh Hashanah, I probably should’ve stayed home and gone to temple. I haven’t done that since I was 13. But you never know. It could happen.

Meanwhile, I’m sure the ride home will be equally as quick and uncongested. It’s just the kind of drive that makes me wish everyday were a Jewish holiday. But then movies would never get made, and what would I do on Saturdays?

So happy New Year to all my friends of every faith.

And just so you know, next up on the Jewish high holy day calendar in just ten days from now is Yom Kippur – the day of atonement where observing Jews are supposed to fast all day long to atone for the sins of the past year

This post will probably be first on my list.

Rock and roll

There's an exhibit coming to LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) called Levitated Mass. At first I thought it was about me on a ladder. Come to find out, it's actually a display with a giant 340-ton boulder as it's centerpiece.

That's how I knew it wasn't about me. That boulder weighs at least twice as much as I do.

I had an advance viewing of the rock yesterday as I was coming home. Turns out they're transporting it, slowly, right through my very own city on it's journey to the museum. There was a huge line of traffic moving slower than the rock just so they could get a look at it.

Logistically it's like a presidential visit. Since the bed of the truck it's on is 32 feet wide, it can only move on specific streets wide enough for it. Roads have to be closed as it passes, and traffic signals have to be coordinated since it doesn't exactly blow through the intersection.

I know what you're thinking: it's a rock. Technically, true. But it's also one of the single largest items ever moved since ancient times. Maybe that's because they didn't have flatbed trucks back then.

As the video shows, the engineering behind moving it is mighty impressive.

I know what you're thinking. He's reached the end of the post, and here comes some quasi-attempt at a funny wrap up line involving the words "getting stoned" or "rocks in his head" or "sticks and stones."

You're way ahead of me.