The main thing I'd want to communicate is that the places where these signs go up are uniformly miserable. It sucks to be a person on foot in a place where the state has to warn you that it's too dangerous to cross a regular city street. These streets are terrible, loud, dirty, and they smell bad. A crowded urban street with a "no pedestrian crossing" sign is a place created by infrastructural and institutional failure and it sucks that we have any of them in these busy neighborhoods.

Some honesty, please. Of course it feels good to own a car; sometimes it is even necessary to own a car, because enough people have decided that it feels good to own and drive a car.

Excellent article about Los Angeles and transit and cars and American culture. I do honestly believe that the car is an evil machine, and this country's reliance on the car is a sign of our general backwardness and social myopia. It is a wretched deal that was struck before my time but I still must deal with. Ain't that being a millennial.

I abhor the fatalistic pessimism that regards American public transit as unfixable, and I extend that to Los Angeles. But while increasing ridership through coverage and frequency is in the hands of LA Metro and funding, the broader experience of getting around is a bit more complicated. A lot of my complaints fundamentally boil down to a desire for there to be fewer cars.

In December of 2025, I found a used 2025 VW ID Buzz in Texas that was selling for a great price, so I flew down, bought it, and drove it back.