Currently I’m in Los Angeles sleuthing about. This is a mere 5% of the video I’ve collected so far, a little transit, a few bikes, some trains, a bit of Los Angeles, a sausage and more. Know where the sausage place is, because it was great, totally worth a visit when you’re in LA! So here’s a short sneak peek of upcoming Transit Sleuth TV footage… enjoy! Remember, episode 3 is coming out this Monday at 7:30am.
Author / Adron
A Few Pieces of Advice
None of these should need to be tweeted. However, I felt inclined to offer some advice on twitter since there had been some pretty poor decisions made by some people today…
Los Angeles!
Finally got the first trip of a set scheduled. Here’s my plan for sleuthing to the maximum. I’m going to make two trips to Los Angeles, hopefully both will be before the end of the year. The first trip will be later this month, departing on the Coast Starlight on October the 24th. Paul @emptedesign will be going down on this October trip to help me capture some footage. We’ll also be catching up on the Railvolution Conference on the train ride down. Then the next trip will be sometime in November or December. Here’s the break out of mission goals for the two trips so far.
October Coast Starlight Trip
- We’re going get a Transit Sleuth TV segment put together for the Coast Starlight trip itself.
- Catch up and put together another Transit Sleuth TV segment on the Railvolution Conference and a wrap up around that.
- Get video for a secret project and some segment work on Transit Sleuth TV of the transit in action and explore new realms of the city. Prospectively the Gold Line or elsewhere. Got ideas? Send them this way!
- Catch a commuter train to somewhere. The question is, which one and where to? Where is a good town center along the way, good livability and related things?
- Find the good food the locals dig. Where is it, where’s the walkable streets that we should tackle?
Later Coast Starlight Trip
- Catch up with the Wolfpack Hustle and get the lowdown on the rides, packs and hustles. If you’re not aware of this crew in LA, check this out. Keep an eye out for those rockin’ tall bikes!
- Bike and transit and bike and transit and bike and then bike some more.
So these are coming up… Transit Sleuth will be sleuthing and the adventures will be on Transit Sleuth TV on a future episode!
Streetcar Mobile Music Festival, Sleuthing News & Updates, Plus a Sneak Peak of Next Episode of Transit Sleuth TV
The Streetcar Mobile Music Festival, or more simply the #SMMF, was great. (There’s a video sneak peak below, keep reading!!)
I’m currently working on getting the footage put together of the three bands I was able to see. It’ll be on an upcoming episode of Transit Sleuth TV in the coming weeks. Why did I only see 3 bands? It’s all about the logistics of how the festival works, it’s really pretty cool. Albeit it does leave you missing some of the bands.
How the Logistics of Music Work at SMMF
This years festival has a loading and unloading stop where all the bands stage ready to get on and off the streetcars. At the same time an audience builds up at the stop for switching to the streetcars as one arrives with a previously playing band and a new streetcar arrives to embark the next band. Check out this map below for an idea of how it works.
The starting point is also the ending point. A band boards with all their gear at the starting point, which this year was at the eastern stop just over the Broadway Bridge. The stop is N Weidler & Ross (id: 13607). That is is used for quick mobile phone update of when the next streetcar is arriving. At the festival you could see a lot of phones being used to record the bands and see when the next arrivals were coming over the bridge.
Once the band boarded they would play a set while the streetcar travelled south toward OMSI. This year the last stop at OMSI wasn’t taken however, because of construction for the pending connection to the new bridge. Because of this the streetcar was turning at the section of the route tagged turnaround below. Once the streetcar turned the second half of the set would be played while we traveled back north to the N Weidler & Ross stop. There the band, and much of the audience, would disembark and wait a few minutes for the next streetcar to arrive and start the jamming over again with a new loop trip.
Bands
For more information on the bands check out the Streetcar Mobile Music Festival Site and there is a bands section. Here’s a video sneak preview of the band Thanks that’ll be in the upcoming episode of Transit Sleuth TV.
Bicycle Brown Bag, The BBB!
In the coming week on October 17th another Bicycle Brown Bag with Adonia Lugo is coming up. Adonia will be talking about “Recognizing, Supporting and Celebrating Diversity in Bicycle Culture“. From the Bicycle Brown Bag site:
Yes, L.A. has a head start on Portland in the realm of diverse bicycle culture. But a tour of St. Johns or East Portland will reveal the variety of people riding bikes here. As we work to encourage everyone who wants to use a bike for transportation to do so are we missing the “ Invisible Riders” ?
Adonia Lugo will draw on her experiences at Ciudad de Luces (now Multicultural Communities for Mobility) and CicLAvia, as well as her academic work, to address this topic.
A cultural anthropologist and activist, Dr. Lugo blogs at urbanadonia.com about her carfree adventures as a Chicana woman and the belief our cities can be socially just and ecologically sustainable. In Los Angeles, she co-founded CicLAvia and City of Lights/ Ciudad de Luces (now Multicultural Communities for Mobility).
It’d be great to meet and see others, so ping me via Twitter @transitsleuth and let me know you’re coming. I’ll be sure to say hello!
Happy hygge, cheers!
Streetcar Mobile Music Fest #SMMF 2013
The Streetcar Mobile Music Fest 2013 is happening this Saturday (that’s tomorrow). The last one was great, careening around the CL Line and the one before that (or was that just bands on streetcars?) was great too! Either way it’s going to be a great time, so come ride a CL Line Streetcar and enjoy the scenery and music! I’ll be there video recording and photographing the event for fun (thus, say hello) and the intent afterwards is to get a crew together afterwards for dinner and drinks. Of course, somewhere on the streetcar line! 😉
For a quick idea, here’s a video montage from last year.
Transit Sleuth 