 © Peter Malarkey
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Going Underground Click to read Click to |
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© Peter Malarkey
|
Going Underground Click to read Click to |
Going
Underground
I’m from New York. After I moved to Los Angeles a couple of years ago, I
discovered that I missed one thing in particular about my hometown—the marvel
of modern urban life known as the subway. Whenever I look out at the sprawl of LA, I
think, "What this city really needs is an underground railway."
That’s why I went downtown on Saturday along with 50,000 or so of my fellow Angelenos to inaugurate the first leg of the Metro Red Line. This 4.4 mile, five-stop subterranean jog from Union Station to MacArthur Park had the city fathers— and mothers— clapping each other on the back in a frenzy of self-congratulation. The Rapid Transit District’s publicity flacks had taken great pains to point out that this wasn’t the first subway ever to roll beneath the streets of la. The Hollywood subway ran a whopping one-mile route along Glendale Boulevard from 1925 to 1955, and the Blue Line, when not crushing hapless drivers at crossings throughout the Southland, also goes underground for a brief stretch downtown. Still, the hoopla surrounding the Red Line’s opening stressed the historic nature of the event, an irony in a town where history is just another word for last year’s news. And for the budget-conscious, the price was right—free for the opening weekend, and only a quarter for the first month of operation.
Although ex-Mayor Tom Bradley, Governor Pete Wilson, and other luminaries attended a special 11:30 am ceremony at the Civic Center Station, the system didn’t officially open until one o’clock. Of course, only in LA would you have to drive to the subway. I showed up at Union Station about a quarter to one and, after parking my car, was surprised to discover a long line. I wandered over to the Plaza at Olvera Street, where there were dancers and tables set up to distribute various opening-day giveaways. The lines were shorter here, and after five or ten minutes I came away with an official Metro shopping bag full of goodies, including a Red Line refrigerator magnet and a cardboard replica of a subway car.
Inside, the line moved slowly. One of the things that had made me skeptical about the Red Line were claims that it would not be like New York’s subway. Yet the Red Line publicists had been right. Thus far, passengers were behaving like suitably laid-back Southern Californians. In New York, a wait of an hour or more to ride the subway would be enough to incite a riot, but here, the atmosphere was festive—as though we were spending a day at the beach or at Disneyland. That’s the way one of the new RTD transit cops put it: "Disneyland at a price that everyone can afford."
Once underground I could see that this was Disneyland, or at least a theme park. Coming off the escalator, I was confronted— not by graffiti and the acrid stench of urine— but by . . . art? Yes, a mural tracing the history of Los Angeles. The whole thing reminded me of the ride at Universal Studios where they fake the giant earthquake. "There should be a big banner," I thought, "Subwayland: The Adventure Begins." It couldn’t be more absurd. The ride would take seven minutes and drop us at a station located nowhere that we wanted to go. This being LA, we’d all have to wait in line on the other end, just so we could take the train back to Union Station, pick up our cars, and drive home.
On the platform, transit workers kept everyone several feet back from the tracks. Even so, when the horn blast of an approaching train filled the station, we all pushed forward to see. The tunnel filled with light, and the train pulled in. It was a subway, all right—curved chrome and flat windows—but spotless. Then the doors opened, the people crushed forward, and for the first time in Los Angeles, I felt at home. I elbowed my way to a seat, glad I’d had years of experience in subway etiquette. The novices whom I left in my wake looked insulted. "How long," I wondered, "will it take them to learn?"
Inside, the first thing I noticed was the smell. A clean smell, like a new car. Or not quite a new car, but a new Band-Aid—the way the gauze smells when you peel back the wrapper. Then I noticed that the seats were upholstered, which was why the smell was so strong. Upholstered? I laughed to myself. "We’ll see how long that lasts. Wait until people start living down here."
After the train was full and we had jolted into motion, I found myself happy to be on a subway again, enjoying the people around me as they ooh-ed and aah-ed. The ride was quiet, the result of "rubber-like pads under the trackbed," according to an RTD brochure, and, when we pulled into the Civic Center Station, people started chattering like birds. They were black, white, Latino, Asian. They were young, they were old. They were all together: a glorious mosaic of city life. Most had never ridden a subway before. We went through Pershing Square, and on to Metro Center Station, disembarking at MacArthur Park.
Back at Union Station, the crowds were as thick as they’d been when I arrived. For days I’d been laughing at what I saw as flaws in the system—the 7 pm closing time; the fact that there were no turnstiles, just an "honor system" in which tickets were bought but not collected; my own suspicions that one good seismic jolt would crush these manmade tunnels. But, standing in the waiting room, clutching my refrigerator magnet and cardboard subway car, I had to admit I was impressed. Sure, it was a train to nowhere; sure, it would have little impact on my life. Still, it was a start.
I thought about this when I went to retrieve my car from the park ’n’ ride outside. At the bottom of the ramp, a parking attendant asked for my ticket.
"That’ll be $5.50," he said.
Profile
Not that David has anything against movies. It’s just that his interests turn more towards books. Reading them, writing about them. And writing them. He’s working on one now, trying to decode the Jack Kerouac mystique and place it in a context that will make sense of Kerouac as a real person who once existed in the world.
David didn’t like la much when he first got here, but he’s getting used to it now. He likes the space of it, the fact that, out in California, he’s got room to breathe. At his home in the Fairfax District, he writes in a tower, a tall cylindrical room with twenty-foot-high ceilings and a wall of slanting, translucent windows that color his desk with morning light. On certain days, at certain times, he says, it’s like working inside a cathedral. What this means, David still hasn’t figured out, but he does know he likes the way it feels.
—Peter Schramm
Bio
David L. Ulin
Place of residence: Los Angeles.
Birthplace: New York.
Day job: Freelance writer
Education: B.A., University of Pennsylvania.
Books: Cape Cod Blues: Poems (Red Dust, 1992).
Serial publications: Los Angeles Times. Newsday. The Nation.
Current project: A book about Jack Kerouac for the University of California Press.
Favorite book: Stop-Time by Frank Conroy.
Membership: National Book Critics Circle.
Favorite music: Rock ’n’ roll.
Favorite sport: Baseball.
My team: The Yankees. I’m a hard-core fan, born and bred.
Food: I eat whatever’s put in front of me.
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