Last Semester and Demise of the Red Car

It's been over a year since I last wrote anything for this blog, and it's now time to sweep away the cobwebs and start blogging again.

I am now in my last semester at CSUDH. One of the three classes I am taking this semester is the IDS (Interdisciplinary Studies)Senior Seminar, in which we have been tasked with writing a minimum 25 page thesis on any subject that may peak our interest and would consider enjoyable researching and writing about. The only stipulation is that we seek the professor's final blessing before beginning.

After pondering various subjects that I have an interest in, I had finally decided to write the paper on the Demise of the LA Red Car Line and it's effect on Los Angeles. My decision for this was based on a short, quasi-documentary iFilm I had made on this same subject for a Social Documentation class I had taken in 2008.

At the time I had wanted to dig much deeper into the history surrounding the Red Car Line, but time was short, and formulating my first short film using a program that I had never used before turned out to be quite a challenge, but none-the-less a great learning experience.

The film is about as amateur as it gets, but I hope to be able to take the material that I have researched for this paper and eventually develop a short documentary on a more professional level. If you would like to see it, I have uploaded it on Youtube here.

As I continue researching this subject, I am starting to come across many interesting historical facts in relation to environmental and social changes that have occurred in Los Angeles which may be directly or indirectly related to the loss of the Red and Yellow Car lines. Hopefully if time permits I will be able to post some of my new discoveries.

New Years' Day Photos

While on break at work New Years' Day, I decided to go to the roof of our building and take some photos of the environmental equipment. I liked the contrast between the metal and the rust.



I also took some pictures from the space inside our building next to our parking structure looking up at the buildings and few trees located inside this pseudo-courtyard.



This is a photo of a building I go by on the way home which is located at the corner of Federal and Wilshire Boulevards. I am not sure what this "mural" is referring to, but I found it interesting. It may be some type of advertisement, since there seems to be a proliferation of building-size ads popping up all over LA.

Funny and unusual things heard this week

While sitting in lunchroom at work the other day, I had overheard four female co-workers discussing body types of the perfect man. Mind you, I was the only other person in the room with these four women, and they were not exactly whispering. I would have to admit some of the comments were pretty funny.

The conversation began with all four of them expressing their extreme disgust at steroid-taking body builders. One of the more vocal women stated "Those over-muscular guys are eeeewww gross..." Another chimed in with " I don't like a swimmers' build either. They have a weird v-shape with broad shoulders, no butt and very short legs."

All of these women also came to the conclusion that they do not like real tall guys, and prefer the average medium-build, slightly toned man, maybe just a little taller than them, or possibly the same height. Not too fat and not too skinny. All four also made it very clear of their distaste towards "bony guys."

The pinnacle of the whole conversation was at the end when one of the ladies stated that she liked men in the shape of a rectangle; The same at the top and bottom."

I'm sure their Geometry professors would have been proud.

The funniest thing I heard this week was the story of my 10-year-old cousin and the new hand-held video recorder he received for Christmas. His parents just recently had new bamboo flooring installed in the kitchen and formal dining area, separated by new marble tile in the entry way. In admiration of this new flooring, my cousin wanted to include it in his first video.

While videotaping the recorded "introduction" to his home, he had referred to the beautiful new "baboon flooring" and "marbles" tile in the entry way.

I hope Peta doesn't get a hold of this video!

IGooogle Quote of the Day

This is one of today's IGoogle quotes which I find resonates the truth:

I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.
- Jack Handey

While riding home one evening, I had been experimenting with my Digital SLR and took some shots while moving. The results are below. I guess they are kind of cool...

Daily Chatter

Funny thing heard at work today-
During the last debate between Obama and McCain, one of my co-workers had been on the phone with her daughter while McCain was making his statement about Gov. Palin being a "breath of fresh air." Her daughter had suddenly asked her why McCain would say something like that. Puzzled by the question, my co-worker asked her daughter what she was talking about. Her daughter replied "it sounded like he said "breast of fresh air!"

Something I learned today-
It is going to be a while before I am ready to take the Friday(aka diabolical) LA Times edition of Sudoku!

The Salt of the Earth

This evening in my Labor and Film class we watched the movie "Salt of the Earth" which is a film about a mining labor union's fight against the unsafe working conditions in the mines.

What makes this movie interesting involves the history surrounding it.

The film was produced in 1954 by blacklisted Hollywood filmmakers which included director Herbert Biberman, producer Paul Jerrico, screenwriter Michael Wilson, and actor Will Geer.

Because of the McCarthy's "anticommunist hysteria," it was next to impossible for the producers to get mainstream actors or guilds men to work on its production, and getting funding was next to impossible. Most if not all filming had to be covertly completed due to the constant harassment from McCarthy's goon squads. Many, if not most of the shots were done in one take.

Some of the shots had to be completed in Mexico because Rosauria Revueltas,the lead Mexican female actress, had been deported due to mostly bogus claims that her passport did not have the correct information.

Overall, the film is a masterpiece considering what they had to go through to complete it.

Even when it was completed the film was, for the most part, kept underground until the 1960s.

Riding the Red Cars

Today my wife, my son, my mother-in-law and I all went down to Ride the Red Cars at San Pedro. I had heard many great things about them, but have never taken the time to go down and check them out. Since I have this school project coming up, it made for a cool family outing.

We had arrived at the Red Car Depot across from the Los Angeles Maritime museum at 10:00 when the first Red Car was supposed to be picking up passengers. After looking at a few of their posted signs we discovered that the hours had been very recently changed to noon. I guess they need to update their website.

So to kill the two hours we wandered around the Ports O' Call area. It was still pretty quiet there, but we knew it would be rapidly coming to life as the time moved closer to noon. While we were walking around I had suddenly developed this urge to take pictures of Signs. Why, I still don't know. I think it was because of the huge diversity. Anyway, here is a few of them:









After a while we had decided we should eat before getting on the Red Cars. After turning down multiple high-priced brunch areas down there, we finally settled on eating at Acapulcos Mexican Restaurant. While we were there, I had decided to try my hand at a little social documentation. There was a group of animated Mariachi band members playing at different tables, whom I figured would make decent subject matter and took a few shots of them. I have converted them to black and white for a little more contrast:





After eating we still had 10-15 minutes to kill, so we hung around the outside of the Maritime Museum until the first car arrived.

When the first car arrived, we had boarded rapidly chasing my son who was extremely excited about riding the train. But it was getting close to his normal nap time and the excitement slowly morphed into his normal tired crankiness.

While we were riding, I had started to ask one of the conductors questions about the car, its history, etc. He had said he only knew a little about these cars, but if I was interested in knowing more, I could take the next car that came along(which happened to be their restored original car) who had a conductor named Bob who was very knowledgeable on the subject.

After boarding the second car I had met Bob, and he proceeded to give me a wealth of information via a lecture. Some of the information I was already familiar with, but was none-the-less interesting to hear from another perspective.

The part of his lecture that I found the most intriguing was about a study that USC had completed in reference to the 1965 Watts Riots. They had known that one of the primary catalysts for the uprising was a high unemployment rate within the community, but what they had discovered was that the unemployment rate sky-rocketed after the Red Cars were removed from service and replaced with buses.

Below are a few pictures from the ride: