Red Riding Hood Productions

Last night 8PM
about to see B.I.K.E. movie
at the Egyptain.

Flashed their lights at me
on Hollywood Blvd.
They ripped cross traffic.

Four lanes later, they
jumped out their unmarked car and
swarmed up around me.

Four big pigs in blue.
My tax money in action.
Couldn't believe it.

GET AGAINST THE WALL!
HANDS BEHIND YOUR BACK! cop yelled
GIVE ME YOUR I.D.!

Told me not to run.
KNIFE IN YOUR POCKET? no sir.
I SHOULD ARREST YOU!

ANSWER MY QUESTIONS!
THINK YOU CAN WALK WHERE YOU PLEASE??
WHENEVER YOU WANT??

ALL YOU PEOPLE AND
BIKES THINK YOU OWN THE ROAD AND
CAN DO WHAT YOU WANT!!

Shocked, I looked at them
shaking my head cuz all I
did was cross the street.

Dumbfounded I asked
"is this a training lesson??"
trainee cop said "yes."

you're detaining me?
threatening me with handcuffs
and arrest for that???

YOU STOP ARGUEING!
WANNA SPEND THE NIGHT IN JAIL??
asshole cop shouted.

Dickheads! Don't you know??
There's WAY more important things
to do with your time.

Threatened me with jail
for jaywalking last night. They
gave me a ticket.

Never in my life
have I been so amazed at
dumb cop behavior.

This fresh in - up on Melrose Ave.

Made me happy to see it. I love fresh street art.

Now if only Swoon would come out here... that would make me super duper deliciously happy!

this is a photo of Trudy's that I swiped off her flickr page. I like it.

I didn't race Monster Track 7. I wanted to. It seemed like a fast, fun route. Oh well.

I got to W 120th St and 5h Ave, the starting point, very late but was happy to see that everyone's bikes were still locked up. I was about to lock up my bike and hike up the stairs when I saw everyone starting to run down. Ahhh. So close. Too bad. It would have been fun.

Instead, I got to shoot some photo's of the start (not many since I was so stunned by the onrush of racers, I barely had the thought to shoot for a second. I felt like a deer in headlights. And also like a rock with rushing water swirling around me. It was pretty awesome). Then I rode with Trudy down to E 68th St where she continued downtown and I stopped at Hunter to see if my ceramic work that I left there last semester got thrown out. It did. At least I know. I rode down to Tompkins Sq Park (where this lovely photo was taken) and hung out with Santana, Patty and Brad and all the rest of the checkpoint people there for a minute before riding over the Williamsburgh Bridge with Chad to the finish point, the RockStar Bar.

All in all it was a good day, pretty relaxing, and fun. It was nice to ride around NY for a minute, do an errand I'd been meaning to do all week (Hunter), hang out with people I don't usually see.

Driving is weird. It is weird for me to drive. This is something I've been dealing with since moving out to LA in Dec. Of course I can get most places on my bike, but as much as I hate to say it, (and I'm sure I'll get megga flak for it from all my super hardcore biking friends) using this car has become an almost everyday thing for me. It sucks. It's isolating. It's expensive. It's scary.

I decided that I would try to write about it since it is something that bothers me alot. This culture of mass gas consumption and murderous metal/glass bubbles that I am participating in right now.

I am using my little sister's car since she is in NY this year for school. I have discovered that I am a bad driver. Driving takes patience, and skill, and requires paying attention ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Even when I'm bored out of my mind stuck in stupid, brain-choking traffic.

I'm trying to get better though. I'm trying to remember I'm inside a potential murder weapon. I'm trying to remember that I can absolutly *not* drive the same way I bike. This last one is the most difficult.

I blew two red lights (not intentionally) in the first month that I was here. Both timed I pulled up to the red light, looked both ways, saw no cars, or bikes, or people. Then I proceeded to drive right through the light, as if I was on my bicycle. Very scary. The first time I got halfway though the street, realized what I did and pulled the car back. Looking in my rear view mirror I saw the lady behind me shaking her head in the most disapproving way. She wasn't wrong. I dissapproved of myself at that moment too.

The second time was on New Years. I was meeting some LA messenger friends of mine downtown, and was talking on my nextel radio trying to figure out directions with them. My friend was in the car with me, and all of a sudden said "Do you know you just blew a light??" I did not know I had just blown the light. He said I stopped, looked both ways and continued driving. (No - I was not drunk, or high) Very alarming.

It's just that driving is SO boring, and I don't do very well when I'm bored. I want to be doing other things when I'm bored.

On my way down to Palm Springs to visit some friends, I decided to try to alleviate my driving boredom by talking into a mini-tape recorder. It was fun, and made me feel a little less crazy somehow. Especially since, because of traffic, what should have been a 2 hour car trip, turned into a 4 and a half hour car trip from hell. It was nice to have the tape recorder mostly because then I did not feel like I had to remember each 'important' thought (since there really is a lot of time to think in a car), that I thought I might want to write down later. I havn't listened to the recordings yet (I'm sure they're mostly just frusterated ramblings of being stuck in traffic) but I'm glad I have them.

I also managed to take some photo's of these murals on the sides of the freeways. I wished I wasn't just driving by though, because I would have really liked to look. They were interesting, and covered a whole range of subjects. And the graffiti on top of the murals also covered a range of subjects.

Thing is, I remember being a kid and looking at these same murals. I remember knowing which murals I was going to see based on where we were going, and which freeway we were going to take. I even remember when some of them were freshly painted, and looked all shiny and new. I remember being excited to see the murals. These were the things I looked forward to even on the most boring of drives. Especially when I was in 4th, 5th and 6th grade and went to a school that was an hours drive away. I remember trying to absorb the details in the few short seconds it took to drive by them, and trying to find more details everytime we drove by. It's like when someone flashes a picture before your eyes for a couple seconds and tells you to write down everything you remember about it afterwards.

I don't know where I'm going with this, or if I'm even going anywhere at all, but it's important to me somehow anyways.