The L.A. Metro: A New Yorker Reports

Today I'm kicking it in the LBC. That's right, Long Beach -- home to the Queen Mary, Snoop Dogg, and (more recently) my lovely parents. I like Long Beach. It's a sleepier Los Angeles, with loads of great restaurants and the cute little canal-lined area called Naples where supposedly all of the cool kids hang out. My problem with Long Beach, though, is that it's so far from where most of my LA-based friends live, a setup aggravated by the fact that I don't have a driver's license. Every trip west, I'm faced with the same dilemma: revert back to age 15 and ask my father to drive me to my friend's house, or brave the LA Metro. This time, I took the train.

It's 6:44p.m. and I've just missed the train on the blue line heading north because I bought my $1.25 ticket rather than risk the $250 fine you face without it. You can also suffer the same fine if you are caught playing loud music or rollerblading.

So for not even two smackaroos and I'm going to cross the entire right half of LA. All of the lines, named by color, are laid out like a lobster -- red, blue and gold are the three I'll be taking on this adventure from LBC to Pasadena. A bleached blonde punk kid wearing a bucket of guyliner and carrying an acoustic guitar sans case is waiting beside me. I'm a little sad as he steps on a train heading the opposite direction. I was hoping we could be travel buddies. Maybe next time.

My train arrives about 10 minutes later. I notice a sign reading "1989 Nippon Sharyo Japan," that's nailed to one of the train doors, as well as a mostly eaten apple rind. Other than that the train is clean and free of ads. The passengers are mostly keeping to themselves. I like the automated message man's annunciation.

[8 minutes later] Bang! Something that sounds like a metal bat hits the side of the train I'm sitting on. We are 50 feet above low-income housing that spreads for miles. "Next stop Compton." Everyone's shaken from the noise, but we go forward unharmed. A loose wheel? A stray gunshot? I'll never know. Did you know you could buy a condo in Compton for as little as $299,999? Well, you can.

We pass a motel-looking building called Vanessa's Memories just before arriving at Rosa Parks station. Who is Vanessa and are her memories good or bad? We work our way up the belly of the lobster towards its head, passing soccer games, junkyards and lots of what look like shanties. There are French fries on the train's floor too now. I'm hungry. I like that you get more above-ground ride time in LA's metro as opposed to New York. But in NYC everyone faces each other. Here, all but one or two seats face the same direction, so you inevitably make less eye contact; it feels less friendly.

For the most part, the rest of the journey is uneventful. Long (1 hour and 34 minutes), but clean, safe and all of those other things you can ask for of a metro ride. What have I learned? Always pack a snack.