lamebot.net

How not having a car became Hollywood shorthand for loser.

shorterexcerpts:

fleetfootedfox:

perpetua:

This is interesting to me. Like, it’s not at all surprising given the intense car culture of L.A. in particular and the rest of the United States in general, but from my perspective as a 30 year old man who has never had a driver’s license and has lived the majority of his life in or around New York City, it’s actually weird to me that most people have to drive. I’d be perfectly happy to never have to drive in my lifetime. When people talk about cars being a form of freedom, it conflicts with a lot of the reasons why I didn’t learn to drive as a teen — I had a huge fear of becoming trapped in the suburbs, and so I stuck with trains and the city because I knew I’d be happier there than if I got financially mired in driving around the Hudson Valley. I’ve always seen driving as a thing that would place limits on me.

I love Austin, but coming from Chicago, the car dependency here is starting to wear on me.  I’m feeling the itch to move somewhere denser, with proper public transit.

I think I could be very happy in a place with great public transit, and only occasionally using a car for weekend getaways. I actually tried life like this in Atlanta late last year and it was pretty good, but I also had the factors of living two blocks from a MARTA station and working half a mile from one. As a result I often daydream of a well-funded MARTA with more routes, stations, etc. Getting out of a car and away from traffic makes the city far more enjoyable.

According to most visitors to Salt Lake City, we apparently have a very good public transit system. Our system consists of a few select downtown area busses running every 15 minutes, others running every half an hour, and the rest running approx once an hour from the hours of 6am to 8pm, give or take. We have a trax system that takes people from the heart of downtown up to the University of Utah, and a joint trax system that goes from one side of the valley to the other. It’s a 100 block trip from one end to the other, with some stops downtown. Also we have a train system that goes from downtown to Northern Utah, approximately an hour drive between those two locations, or about an hour and a half ride on the train. But anything outside of the Salt Lake Valley, we have almost no transit system, and most of everything I just mentioned there shuts down on Sundays because, well, it’s Utah. But using this transit system I’ve been able to get around for most of my adult life. I don’t own a car and haven’t since I was 19. I would like one to get to travel to more places on the weekends, etc. but honestly it’s not so bad and keeps me in shape. I can get to most places by bus, bike, or walking. Also it’s a nice test of my patience. I don’t mind public transit too much.

Plus homeless people are fucking crazy and I couldn’t experience that with a car the way I can while waiting for a bus and having them swarm.

NATIONAL SANDWICH MONTH STARTS IN A FEW DAYS

Here’s all my pics/posts from last year. Get excited, you guys. I’m hoping this year will be good.