Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 5

     Despite needing to study for midterms, I decided to base this week’s blog post on a trip down Los Angeles’ historic Sunset Boulevard aboard the Number 2 Metro Bus. Despite an overwhelmingly large number of riders which forced me to stand for the majority of the trip and the occasional encounter with a peculiar rider, I would say the trip was a success.

     The trip itself began at the Gayley/Strathmore station and while I intended to ride the bus into Downtown LA, I accidently got on the bus headed in the wrong direction and wound up in Pacific Palisades. After a lengthy wait for the next bus, I rode the bus in the correct direction all the way to Downtown LA, where I had a friend take me back to UCLA. Throughout the trip I witnessed and experienced several things that relate to, represent or contradict concepts discussed in class.

     The most obvious of which was the idea of a restriction of physical access as it relates to how difference is represented spatially that was discussed in class this past week. This idea, in a nutshell, describes how certain aspects of city’s physical structure restricts access to only a differentiated public, thus, keeping the undifferentiated public out. This concept is also mirrored in the idea of the Carceral Archipelago, one of the five hallmarks of the post-metropolis that Los Angeles represents. This was seen in several ways, the most obvious of which, was the presence of the “bum-proof” benches we discussed in class. These benches were built in such a way that mitigates the likelihood that the homeless or any other undifferentiated group will attempt to sleep on them. This was done both by eliminating the backrests of the benches and/or by inserting armrests that bisected the bench. There were also a far greater number of these benches in more affluent areas, such as Hollywood and Beverly Hills, than there were downtown. Whether this correlates to the city’s policies on accommodation of an undesirable public cannot be determined, however. This is a blatantly obvious way that the city maintains its control over who enters and stays in the town. Another example of the city attempting to restrict access to an undesirable public is by removing the sidewalks that lined the major points of entry into these cities. I saw this most in the more residential areas, in the area between UCLA and Pacific Palisades. While it may be mere coincidence, I choose to believe that these residential cities are removing sidewalks in order to maintain the status quo culture of their respective communities. One final way this idea was represented was by the absence of bus stops in Beverly Hills relative to the other municipalities I passed through on my journey. While this could be a strategy of the Department of Transportation, who assume there are few people who ride the bus in such an affluent neighborhood, it is more likely that the city was designed in such a way to discourage outsiders from easily entering. In any case, it is clear that David Sibley’s argument that we have a deep seeded desire to separate “us” from “them,” or the civilized from the uncivilized, is on full display along the Metro #2 line.

     Another class concept that my trip embodied, was actually more of a contradiction. Seeing as Los Angeles is the poster boy of the post-metrpolis, I found it very peculiar that my bus and virtually all the buses seemed to congregate around a central location, Downtown LA. From that point, it was also interesting to note that the bus routes are designed to intersect with several MetroLine stations, all of which converge at Union Station near Downtown LA. While every other aspect of my journey supported the idea that Los Angeles was born during the fourth urban revolution, the apparent centrality of its transportation services seemed to contradict this idea.