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- You don't have to be in snow to say "mush." Try urban mushing in Costa Mesa.
- "Cardinal Roger M. Mahony today apologized to victims of sexual abuse by priests in the Los Angeles Archdiocese."
- Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa skips his monthly appearance on KABC-TV's Eyewitness Newsmakers because of personal questions.
- By the 1930s, the Los Angeles streetcar system had nearly 600 miles of track and used more than 1,200 cars. Downtown News shares the opinion and dream of many.
- In place of the old El Toro Marine base will be new development and one of the nation's largest municipal parks. That's the future. However, the balloon ride has opened.
- Huntington Beach Police Want Nudity Ban.
- Internet Radio in limbo: killradio.org will be at Lost Souls Cafe tonight for an acoustic benefit concert.
- Dave Matthews Band urges better mental health care for troops
- FBI cites best example of using YouTube for investigations was a LAPD beating caught on tape last Fall.
- Why is Toluca Lake named that?
Photo by Frank Steele via flickr
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The Streetcar article makes it sound as if the automobile happened to just come onto the scene and the public simply chose to start driving. The story I've always heard from my grandparents is that General Motors bought the streetcars, replaced them with buses, got more roads built, and began indoctrinating the people of Los Angeles with the concept of driving their own car on tax payer supported highways rather than shlepping around town on a bus.
My grandparents also told me about how easy it was to take a streetcar from the Valley to the beach. But, then, my grandparents may have just been a couple of Commies.
I've read a lot about it. The general consensus is that National City Lines (a holding company owned by General Motors, Firestone and several oil companies) was not completely blameless in the demise of streetcar systems, but they sure did their part. Neither are they unseen puppetmasters working behind the scenes in a vast conspiracy.
Other factors important in their removal included public sentiment, construction of the highway system by the Fed. govt., anti-monopoly lawsuits, low interest loans for cars and cheap gas. Declining profits by streetcar companies (1930's onward) meant they could not maintain or upgrade their capital facilities. By the time most streetcar systems were ripped out in the 1950's, many were running 30 or 40 year-old streetcars that were falling apart. In the end, municipal ownership was the only way they would survive: the Pittsburgh system became city owned in 1922 and San Francisco in 1917. Both of those cities never ripped out their systems completely.
Check the entries for "Pacific Electric" and "Los Angeles Railway" on wikipedia. There's some good info on there.
Taking the Red Cars to the beach. Hmmm. If it was around 1950, you would catch the valley line along Van Nuys Blvd., take that to Hollywood. Transfer at Highland and Santa Monica and take another streetcar down Santa Monica to the ocean. If you wanted to, you could take another streetcar down Main Street to Venice Beach.