AM news: transportation and departures

Fausto Vitello passing out Thrasher stickers circa way back when.

get on the bus The Daily News gets happy with Orange Line riders.

take the shuttle The Downtown News checks out the weeks-old Union Station Flyaway shuttle to LAX and finds it's drawing 500 people a day — pretty good, but you'll have no trouble finding a seat.

ailing San Gabriel mayor Chi Mui has been hospitalized after less than 2 months at his post; he is believed to be suffering from complications from cancer.

departed
Bonnie Owens, who was married to first Buck Owens and then Merle Haggard, died Monday after a long battle with Alzheimer's; she was 76.

On Tuesday, urban theorist Jane Jacobs died at age 89. Architecture critic Paul Goldberger summed up her ideas: "In the '50s, American cities were generally considered messy, undesirable things. Suburban life was considered the ideal. Jane Jacobs fought valiantly in defense of plain, old-fashioned, urban life." She fought Robert Moses over the construction of an expressway through lower Manhattan and won, preserving Greenwich Village and other communities for generations of hipsters.

Fausto Vitello, the founder of Thrasher Magazine and skate impresario, had a heart attack and died Saturday; he was 59. He was bicycling at the time, but we know he's now skating and destroying in the great beyond.