It’s August again, and that means it’s time for me to check out the COC schedule of classes to see what our local community college is offering this fall. Since I don’t have kids, I usually have a lot of time in the evening, and I’ve found that education keeps me out of trouble. And since COC is well-renown state-wide and run by Supreme Chancellor Dianne Van Hook, our local college has something for almost everyone. So check it out!

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The chords of an acoustic guitar pierced the cool night air as my wife and I emerged from a dark section on one of Valencia’s paseos. “What’s that noise?” we thought as our minds tried to separate the music from the automatic sprinklers, the rustling trees, our labored breath, and the rhythmic mechanical clicks of our bicycles.

As we rolled down the bridge, we heard it again: a beautiful guitar rhythm. Our eyes tried to make sense of the darkness around us, trying in vain to confirm what our ears were telling us: someone was making music in the middle of the night in Valencia.

Barefooted and in tattered jeans, the girl we came across couldn’t have been more than 15 years old, but here she was strumming away on her guitar and singing a Bob Dylan-esque folk song. We stopped to chat with this Siren on our own journey home.

When you don’t have a car in Santa Clarita scenes like the above play out often on Santa Clarita’s alternative transportation network. Whether on a smelly city bus, a relatively high-speed multi-use path, or a winding paseo shrouded by trees and populated by teens, your journey can often times become more interesting than your destination.

The Case of the Japanese Restaurant Waiters

Case in point: three weeks ago, I rode my bike from Newhall to attend the No Doubt tribute concert at Central Park. I met my wife and mother-in-law there, and we had a nice leisurely evening sitting in the soft cool grass. With about a half hour to the end of the concert, we decided to leave, and I hoped I could prove the value and utility of my bicycle by beating my wife to home.

But it didn’t work out that way.

As I navigated my way onto the bike path adjacent to Bouquet Junction, I was stopped cold by -of all things- a waiter from Kisho Japanese restaurant.

“Sir, excuse me, but do you have a cell phone?” he asked, an edge of panic in his voice.

Just then, two other men -another waiter and a 30 something man with a buzz-cut, in a black shirt, cargo shorts, and flip-flops- walked up behind cell-phone requesting Waiter #1.

“What for?” I asked.

“Sir, this man just violated a girl at our restaurant, and he’s trying to escape. We followed him all the way here and we want to call our restaurant,” he said.

I looked at the man, who appeared a bit intoxicated and quite angry that he was being followed on foot by two waiters.

“Fuck it man, just forget it man, these guys are crazy,” the man said to me with anger in his eyes.

I handed my phone over to the waiter who called his restaurant, advised them of his location, and asked the restaurant to call the Sheriff’s station.

Meanwhile, the suspected “violator” marched on down the path towards a gas station at the corner of Bouquet and Soledad. Hot on his heels was the other waiter, a 20 something Asian guy who stood about 5′6.

Many people, at this point, would have beat a path to get out of what looked like a tense situation. But I’m naturally curious, so I asked Waiter #1 for more information.

“He was just sitting there with his friends at the sushi bar and reached over and violated a 16 year old girl. The girl is in tears,” Waiter #1 told me. “When we caught him doing it, he ran from the restaurant and we followed him here.”

Waiter #1 was by now speaking rapidly, emotionally. He was clearly excited.

“My friend has a black belt” in some martial art or other, he told me, “and he’s going to kick this guy’s ass!” he continued, before running off to join his friend.

I glanced over at the Asian waiter, who by this time had physically stopped the suspected violator in the gas station lot. He was untying his apron, and rolling up his sleeves. He looked ready to pummel the suspect, but I guess the threat of force was enough: the suspect went and sat down on the curb.

I hung around that gas station for about 20 minutes, hoping to see a Deputy roll up to diffuse the situation. But the waiters apparently never called the Sheriff’s station, or Deputies were simply delayed in getting there, so I left.

Fortunately, not all of my bicycling encounters are so ugly or filled with tension, but I do often run into the darker side of the SCV at night on those trails.

Drugged out teens, homeless men, and mother and daughter in Newhall

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve rode my bike through a park on a paseo and watched as a group of teens at a picnic table lit up a joint or a bowl of pot amid raucous laughter. It seems the paseos are a great place to stroll or walk by day, but by night they become the domain of teens, drug use and care-free summer fun.

Life in the slow lane also reveals Santa Clarita’s less fortunate, the folks I now call “The Bridge People.” These are the folks so down on their luck they call the underside of the Bouquet Bridge, or the small concrete railroad bridges in Newhall their home. I find them dozing off at mid day, in the early morning hours, or making camp at night. They sleep on concrete or in the sandy bed of a dried creek, oblivious to the 50,000 cars passing overhead or the mile long freight train that rolls through town once a day. I often spot them in small groups, huddling up with tattered old blankets or a sleeping bag or in some cases, just the shirt on their back. Their stench is noticeable even from a bike path, but to most of us, they’re out of sight and out of mind.

My travels by bus are no less full of curiosities. I’ve found that there are two demographics who primarily ride Santa Clarita city transit buses: car-less teenagers and Latinos, and occasionally the foreign students who attend COC. Their’s is a life of waiting to get from Point A to Point B, often for a half hour or more, followed by what must be a long walk from a bus stop on a major arterial into the heart of Valencia, Northbridge, or Canyon Country.On one trip back home late at night, I found myself quite upset as a young Latino mother boarded the bus with her three year old daughter. It was at least half past ten, and I wondered what mother in her right mind would have her three year old child out at night, that late on a city bus. She boarded in Old Orchard and left the bus at the Newhall Metrolink station, then walked up over the tracks to what I hope was her home.

All these encounters tempt me to go back to the auto-centric lifestyle; to give in, buy a car, and travel in a safe and insulated cage from Point A to Point B.

But then, as I set on my bike to accomplish some task, the question in my mind changes from, “How long will it take for me to get there,” to “What will I discover today on my bike ride?” For better or worse, I’m learning more about the people who call Santa Clarita home when I set out on my bike, and it’s an education I’d never get while in a car.

Which is what made the encounter with the Valencia Siren so sweet.

You have to realize that it was a surprising, almost spiritual, moment. Here we were all alone on a darkened paseo, trying to get home quickly when out of nowhere came this sweet voice and smooth guitar.

She told us her name was “Chelsea,” and that after working her summer job all day, all she wanted to do was play her guitar and sing. She said she often strolled up and down this section of the paseos to practice, and from what we could tell, she was quite good.

Around her neck was an old paisley scarf littered with buttons, one of which said, “Do one thing everyday that scares you.” Her other buttons reflected typical youthful optimism and simultaneous cynicism, but I was encouraged because Chelsea was at least involved and interested in the world beyond her safe, homogenous neighborhood. Here was a teenaged girl more interested in the arts than in getting high on a picnic bench in a darkened park.

When I asked her how old she was, she refused to answer, replying instead, “I’m ageless.”

We had a chuckle, took a photo, and parted ways, but on the rest of the ride home, I realized that having such experiences while travelling was, at least at one time, quite common and “ageless” in a way. Homer’s own Odyssey was interrupted by singing women, and the travels of Marco Polo, Ferdinand Magellan, and countless others are tales of experiences during the journey.

My modest travels to and fro in Santa Clarita aren’t nearly so adventurous, but they’re equally as valuable. So thanks Chelsea and keep practicing!

The blogger from the West Side has penned yet another mean-spirited assault on columnist Tim Myers, who stopped writing for the West Ranch Beacon after the Signal offered him his old Sunday column back. Posted herein, I tell Bossert to get a life. Read the rest of this entry »

I was dreading and simultaneously looking forward to Saturday. Saturday, you see, was to be the first full day I would be without a car in the Santa Clarita Valley, a place built for the personal automobile.

I was dreading it because I knew getting around the SCV without a personal vehicle would be more difficult.

But I was also excited about the challenge, which promised rich rewards: personal fitness, money savings, and guilt-free movement to and fro.

Can I get it done though? Can I exist in Santa Clarita sans a car, a condition I have not had to endure since I was a pimply-faced 16 year old at Hart High when gas cost only $0.89 per gallon? Let’s see.

The Rules

I’ve created a list of rules for myself that I plan to follow over the course of the next 30 days. They are as follows:

• No personal vehicle usage: This one goes without saying, but it’s important to state it up-front because even though I am officially car-free, my household isn’t. My wife still has a car, but I am forbidding myself from using it for any personal trip to an SCV destination, barring emergencies. Besides, most of the time she’s rolling in the Civic and won’t let me have it.
•  Mobility Options: To travel from Point A to Point B in the SCV, I can use one or more of the following options:
  • Walking: Highly overrated, slow, and inefficient, plus one gets really hot walking in broad daylight in Santa Clarita’s dreadful summers. Nevertheless, a cheap, easy, and very green option
  • Bicycling:Obviously, my preferred option, and the one I’ve been committed to since March when I started biking to work. This mobility option is not only fun, but it gets me in shape and makes my legs look sexy
  • Santa Clarita Transit: The City spends tens of millions on Santa Clarita Transit, but it only costs me a buck to get a ride to just about anywhere in town. Better still, I can combine my bicycle with the bus to create what the military would call a “mobility multiplier.” Bonus: You meet interesting people on the bus, as you shall soon find out.
  • Hitching Rides: This is a tricky option. My overall goal is not only to not use a personal vehicle, but also to not generate any additional personal vehicle trips by others. How this breaks down will be difficult, but if I’m at a place with a friend and he offers a ride home to me, I may take it, depending on how far his final destination is compared with my final destination.
  • Out of town: While I’m comfortable taking the Metrolink train to just about anywhere, and they let bikes on board, the sad fact of the matter is that Metrolink doesn’t go everywhere I need to go. So I will allow myself to use a personal vehicle if I have to leave town to a point not served by rail. Usually, this means the west side of Los Angeles, a place I visit about twice a month. While Santa Clarita Transit does have commuter bus service to the west side, it’s weekend schedule (when I go) is very restricted.

With my rules set and my leased car returned to the dealership, I was ready.

It’s going to be hot. It’s going to be sweaty. I’m going to be hot, sweaty, and yucky. So be it, Game on!

Saturday 5:05 PM

It was a hot Saturday afternoon at home in Newhall when I got a call from my two brothers. I had just finished swimming and was pondering the evening ahead.

Brother #1: “Hey man, want to watch the fight tonight? It’s going to be a big one.” Saturday night was the big UFC Mixed-Martial artist fight, broadcast live on PayPer View from Mandalay Bay.

Me: “Yeah sure, sounds great. Are you having it at your house?”

Brother #1: “No, there were too many people and I don’t have HD. We’re watching it at Wings ‘n Things near Castaic, it’s on Commerce Center drive.”

Me: *Gulp* “Okay, what time does it start?”

Brother #2: “7 pm, and be sure to come becasue we reserved the table!”

Me: “Okay, I’ll be there!”

Excited about this first mobility test, I hopped on the PC to find out where this Wings ‘n Things was and to study my options.

Bad news: Google maps said Wings ‘n Things is 8.9 miles from my house, and the route the software had chosen for me included about 6 miles on Interstate 5. Six miles on I-5 at 20mph on my bike? I don’t think so.

Even if I changed the routing to allow me to travel on surface streets, my options didn’t look to good. Whichever way I cut it, I was facing an 11 mile ride on such SCV superhighways as Newhall Ranch Road, Valencia Blvd, Highway 126, and more. These are not bicycle-friendly roads in the City, and I hadn’t even considered how cycling-unfriendly the unincorporated County territory was, but all this didn’t deter me.

The Bus!

I realized quickly that for me to get to Wings ‘n Things by 7pm, I had better skedaddle. Life without a personal vehicle in the SCV is a time-consuming affair, but the way I figure it, I either pay to transport myself with time or money. Having used money for decades, I’ve decided now that my time was worth it.

I thought about just taking the bus to my final destination and walking or riding to the restaurant. I checked my SCT timetable and realized I’d have to transfer once at the McBean Transfer station and that my total trip time would be about and hour and a half to get from Newhall to Castaic. That just won’t work; I require beer, sustenance and camraderie, and I can’t be late to the fight.

So, with an eye towards the Saturday schedule of the #1/2 route (Travels from Canyon Country to Castaic/Val Verde) at the McBean Transfer station, I left Newhall on my bike at 5:40pm, travelling on Orchard Village, the South Fork Trail, and finally the streets of Valencia until I reached the McBean Transfer station.

6:02 pm

Some 4.8 miles and 22 minutes later, I pulled up at the McBean Transfer station all hot and sticky but thrilled. I had made it in time to board the #2 bus outbound to Val Verde, which was to leave the station at 6:15 pm.

I loaded my bike on the bus quickly (it was early by the way),  boarded, sat down and took a long swig on my water bottle. It must have been about 100 degrees outside, but the inside of this comfortable Gillig Phantom bus was a cool 75.

Two minutes later, the bus driver’s radio crackled.

“Hey, just an FYI, that elderly woman who sings and curses is going to board your bus. She’s done shopping and is on her way home.”

My bus driver grimaced. Both he and the other driver apparently knew whoever this woman was.

As I impatiently waited for the bus to get underway (it was by now 50 minutes until the fight started), I looked around the bus to see who my fellow travellers were.

There were at least six young Latinos, plus a Latino man in his 20s or 30s who looked like he came straight out of some 1990s gangster film. He looked imiposing in his wife-beater shirt, Virgin Mary and Mexican tattoos, Pancho Villa-esque mustache and hardened look.

Then she came.

Smelling of sweat,  pork and some other unsavory aromas, a large, round elderly black woman with a pink summer dress and a sweaty head scarf waddled up the stairs on to the bus. I imagined that she must live in Val Verde and just finished browsing the mall.

She seemed friendly at first, looking to the driver then me, then all the passengers and asked each of us, in rapid succession,  if we wanted any peaches.

No one took her up on the offer.

After she sat, we finally departed at 6:15 on the button. The second leg of my car-free trip began.

On the Bus

Fortunately, my bus ride seemed faster than it was. I suppose that’s due to the fact that few people were on the route waiting to be picked up.

But then the old black woman started singing about Jesus.

“Jesus wants to help out, tell him what you want. Jesus wants to help out, tell ‘im what you want. Call ‘em up and tell ‘em what you want…”

over and over and over again she sang the chorus to this heretofore unknown Gospel medley, all the way from McBean & Creekside to Highway 126, when the driver, out of frustration, slapped the plastic dividing panel between him and the passengers and said, quite to the point said, “Ma’am, please stop singing that.” To which the elderly black woman replied:

“Whatsa’ mattah? You don’t believe in Jesus? Well fuck you then. I’ll believe in Jesus all I want.”

She then broke out into rants about Mexicans, blacks, and “whitey.”

It was all I could do not to bust up laughing at the old crazy woman. Of course I felt bad for her at the same time, but she seemed to be getting along just fine without my pity.

Destination: County Territory & Highway 126

I considered taking the bus trip all the way out to Val Verde then swinging back around on Commerce, but by now it was around 6:35, so I decided to get off at the stop at Highway 126 and Commerce Center drive. As I exited, the elderly black woman said Jesus told her that I should wear a baseball helmet, not a bicycle helmet. I said thanks, departed the bus, unloaded my bike, and gave a thumbs-up to the driver.

Once I had my bike on the ground, I examined the bus stop. It certainly wasn’t bicycling, let alone, pedestrian friendly. I was standing in some loose gravel, broken bottles all around. An open condom wrapper laid near an over-flowing trash can, and the two dilapidated bus benches were covered in spider webs, gum, and sticky material. Just a scant few feet to my left cars blew by at around 60mph, beyond them lay the beautiful hills behind Magic Mountain.

If this was the bus stop used by workers in the Commerce Center, I immediately felt bad for them.

But there wasn’t much time left. So I hopped on my bike and pedaled up Commerce Center drive, a massive six lane roadway with no sidewalk and no bike lane. I felt naked and exposed, unsafe on this massive roadway, but since this was a Saturday, only a few cars passed by.

Finally, Wings ‘n Things

At 6:46 precisely, I rolled onto an ocean-sized parking lot in front of Wings ‘n Things.  I had never visited this shopping center before, yet it was instantly recognizable to me. Not only was there an ocean of parking spaces, but there were year old trees all around, zero shade, and, most importantly to me, zero places to lock my bike.

“Thanks County of LA for not requiring the developer to at least put in one decent bike rack”, I muttered as I locked my bike to a tree.

This shopping center (surely named Canyons Plaza, Hasley Hills Square, Castaic Village, Rancho Del Valle Marketplace or some other such name) was surrounded on all sides by massive, window-less concrete buildings, themselves surrounded by acres of parking lots. On the hill above the center were some standard SCV homes built on what probably used to be a nice looking ridgeline.

The shopping center itself was strangely vacant; commercial real estate signs, rather than business names, dotted the windows as far as I could see.

My trip complete, I went into Wings ‘n Things, drank some beer, enjoyed the food, and cheered during the fight. All in all, the food was decent and the sports bar atmosphere was great. From there, I hitched a ride with my brother to BJ’s (his final destination), then rode home from there at midnight on the South Fork.

By the Numbers:

So for those of you keeping track, my first day without a car was time-consuming but interesting. I’ll break this trip down in comparison to what it would have cost me with my personal vehicle.

Sure it took much more time, but I spent less money, got a good workout, and got to see how the other half of the SCV lives and what they’re greeted with when they take public transit. That’s a priceless education right there.

Be sure to tune in next Friday for another Living Car Free in the SCV Adventure. Hint: I’ll be biking to various AT&T stores to see if I can score an iPhone.

Many people are talking about LandSource’s bankruptcy and its potential effects on Newhall Land, and therefore, Newhall Ranch and the rest of Santa Clarita, much of which the storied company built in the 1960s until today. And indeed, some of that talk is coming from company officials, but only one new detail is emerging: Marlee Lauffer runs a tight ship. Read the rest of this entry »

Blogs, discussion forums, and news websites have been all a-buzz today over some just-released aerial photographs of what experts are saying is one of the last untouched, un-contacted Amazonian Indian tribes in Brazil. Read the rest of this entry »

It felt as if it never would come. But right as rain (do people still use that phrase?), it’s finally here: Jeff’s 2008 Vacation.

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Roses are Red
Violets are blue
I voted in the election
why didn’t you?
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I was fed up. Outraged. Whatever word you want to use to describe me, that’s where I was at a month ago regarding gas prices. The Official SCVTalk.com Subaru requires pristine 91 octane, and here in Newhall, that costs me somewhere between $3.50 and $3.90 per gallon. And what do I get from the Subaru in return? Only about 18mpg. Enough! Read the rest of this entry »

“Hello, I’m calling on behalf of State Senator George Runner and City Councilwoman Laurene Weste. Senator Runner and Councilwoman Weste urge you to vote for Sheriff’s Chief Bob Spierer for City Council. Can Chief Spierer count on your vote tomorrow,” the woman on the other end of the line asked. Read the rest of this entry »