MIGHT AS WELL FACE IT WE'RE ADDICTED TO GAS

I really love January. Not for the weather or the kids finally going back into confinement, sorry, school. No, I look forward to the Super Bowl each January. I am always fascinated by the public display, the clash of will created by these American Titans, the beat of their jingles, the morphing of the graphics, humor of the one-liners and of course the jiggle of Britney's boobs as she shills for soda pop.

Well of course I'm talking about the clash of our titanic American corporations' commercials! I did say American Titans, not the Tennessee Titans. You thought I watched The Super Bowl for that game with the funny-shaped ball? Get real, our annual Celebration of Conspicuous Consumption is a great way to kick off every new year.

I'm looking forward to the car commercials most, especially where they say things like "Zoom-Zoom" and "Ultimate Driving Machine" like you're going to become Richard Petty as soon as you get behind the wheel. As a near 20 year Angelino, I have to laugh at the people who fall for the myth of the open road that the commercials promote. You could be in a Ferrari and you'll have to poke along in traffic at 25 miles an hour like everyone else.

I know, I've been doing a lot of driving lately. The new job I took in September is in the proverbial Valley and I live in San Pedro, down by the LA Harbor. For those unfamiliar with LA, that means it's 50 miles to get to work. 50 miles through some of LA's worst traffic.

[Pictured: Topanga Canyon]

Over the first few weeks I made this trek I tried all kinds of alternate routes -- over Topanga Canyon, Sepulveda, Laurel Canyon (stop me when you think this is too much LA trivia) and found that in spite of the fact that it was choked, the freeway's average speed of 25 mph was still better than the surface streets. You might get up to 40 or so but you have to stop for lights. It's when the freeway drops down to about 15 mph that you are better bailing out, but when it's that bad you can spend a half hour getting OFF the freeway, cause a thousand other people have the same idea.

One longs for a few extra lanes on the freeway, especially in the 405's choke point in Culver City, between LA International and the Santa Monica Freeway that goes into downtown. Easy to say. They're expensive and awfully time consuming to build. They added a carpool lane to parts of the 405 in the early 90's; it took them almost three years to do it.

People take the freeways for granted at best. A shame, because our freeways are actually one of the great wonders of the modern world. Down through history there's never been anything like them. One of the first was right here in LA, the top of the 110 Pasadena Freeway that comes down from the hills to Downtown LA. That part of the 110 seems almost quirky when you drive it now. It was built for much slower cars. The entrance ramps are terribly short and the road's curves are much sharper than other freeways. Most people blast down it anyway, only cursing the fact that for most of its length the road is only two lanes.

I actually have my favorite interchanges, like where the newest freeway, the 105, crosses over the 110. It's got several levels with extra ramps for busses and car pools, and a MetroRail stop in the middle. It's partly carved into the earth and the whole thing must be 100 feet from top to bottom and sprawls over hundreds of acres. Too bad no one notices the soaring beauty of the pillars and the causeways; it's always full of rolling steel, piloted by drivers too busy cursing at traffic.

How the hell did we come to this pass? The Sepulveda Pass, I mean. Freeways are so ubiquitous that it's easy to overlook that they are a recent development. The story in Who Framed Roger Rabbit about LA's Red Cars is true. 50 years ago LA used to have the best mass transit system in the world, but they tore it all down to make way for the freeways. You can still see the rights of way down the middle of Santa Monica Boulevard and in outlying places like Long Beach and Manhattan Beach. They ripped up all the track because in the post-war 40s the goal was two cars in every garage. They succeeded. LA spread horizontally, not vertically like New York. The new freeways made possible for a little plot of land for everyone out in the suburbs, rather than acres of claustrophobic brownstones in the city. But I think we've passed the optimum point. I shudder to think what LA traffic will be like in another twenty years. Hell, in ten years my 50 mile drive home might take three hours, even starting out at 8:00PM!

But we can't seem to put on the brakes. You thought getting people to give up their guns was tough, try getting rid of their cars! At least Arianna Huffington has helped to start a anti-SUV campaign that I gladly donated to (www.detroitproject.com). Actually I don't fault people who have the bucks for buying them, let them have all the associated parking and rollover problems, but it has come to light that people are getting tax breaks for buying these behemoths, sometimes $30,000 or more! That's more than a lot of welfare mothers get to support their families for a year. And all that is on top of the fact that they burn copious amounts of gas! This is more than shameful, it's unpatriotic! Ultimately that's why we fear Saddam Hussein, isn't it? He has us by the oil supply. And just for the record, that's why he WON'T nuke us even if he had a bomb. He's really a pusher and he needs us to keep buying his shit. Come to think of it, doesn't Bush's war sound kind of like an enormous drug bust?

Now Osama Bin Laden, he would love to blow up all our modern conveniences and us along with it. And as long as we're talking about disasters, I shudder to think what would happen if we ever had to evacuate LA for something like that or a really big quake. The freeways wouldn't begin to handle it. They are already at capacity. Even now when they're running right, it doesn't take but a minor infraction, say a traffic stop, to cause rubbernecking, which in turn chokes the flow to a near standstill.

But I digress. Just remember that Saddam and Osama are two very different beasts. Right George? I sure hope you know what you're doing. Actually I think that you THINK you know what you're doing, but we may easily suffer some very nasty unintended consequences from whatever it is you're planning.

Planning, hmm, I guess that's what I'm really asking for, long term planning, the decades variety. One wonders how much more this city can grow. Growing is exactly the right word, for we have become a giant colonial organism, something like a humongous coral colony that lives on dry land. Our roads are really properly called "arteries" and we are like the blood cells, moving between organs bringing home the bacon and a little Air Supply, or Billy Joel or something. And the police are like white blood cells. And this line of thought is sounding too much like Osmosis Jones.

Ultimately the city's limiting factor isn't going to be the freeways. It's WATER. LA is built in a freaking desert for crying out loud. We get 10 inches of rain in a good year and there haven't been many good ones lately. Worse, in recent months a water use agreement between farmers of the Imperial Valley and the cities of Southern California broke down. Fights about how much water the city can have versus the farmers are just beginning.

How are we to deal with the need for water in the coming decades? Can we take advantage of global warming somehow? Maybe as the polar icecaps melt we can get a couple of nuclear submarines to push icebergs into convenient spots where we can melt off fresh water. One good sized berg could last the city a year.

Why nuclear subs? Well, they are built to withstand incredible pressure (they don't break when they run into other boats as we saw last year) and icebergs are 90% underwater. Subs could push far more efficiently than any surface ship. We might finally have a constructive use for the damn things. Your tax dollars in action!

Sooner or later we're going to have to build something sustainable. I think the first step in the plan is to get these short sighted Big Oilmen out of the White House though. Instead of using the power of the government to nuture a sustainable economy, they would rather spent $100 billion or so fighting Saddam Hussein. Oh sorry, the guy who gave us that estimate just quit. The new estimate says the cost of The Resident's war will be only $50 or $60 Billion. I guess they took out the cost of the body bags or something.

It's still too much. If only a tenth of that was put into alternative energy sources and transportation systems each year, I'm sure we'd break our oil habit in a decade or two. Too bad mass transit doesn't look as sexy on the 6PM news as a smart bomb making rubble out of Baghdad.

Anyway, I like my new job so my New Year's Resolution is to move closer to work as soon as possible, I'm sick of the freeways. I mean expensiveways. I must be doing about $100 in gas every month, talk about addiction! Seriously, I'm going to try to get a place within bicycle range of work this time. I could use the exercise.

I think it's time to go back into the Closet and see where that old bike of mine is. It'll be fun to get in some pedaling again. But first there's the Super Bowl and all those clever commercials to watch. After all my driving, my old car is giving out and I want to see which new car can make me feel like I'm King of the Road until I make that big move to the Valley. Thanks for reading and until next month, The Closet is closed.

(C) 2003 - Rusty Pipes

Official Disclaimer: Dude, the Valley blows. It's like a big bowl of smog, and if you're on the west side of it, the Santa Suzannas block any breeze, so you might as well season yourself, wrap up in foil and lay down, because you're BBQ fer sure. Then again, it's better than some of the shitholes on the LA side, so I guess you gotta do what you gotta do. Sunscreen, dude. Lots and lots of sunscreen. And a big gun. If you saw off th... Hey, are we online already?!