A series featuring car-free women in LA.

Jody of Westward Ho!

Basics: 32-year-old aspiring urban planner/green builder who’s studying to take the LEED-AP exam. Lives in East Hollywood/ Los Feliz by herself, but plans to move up to Valley Glen in a month. Child-free.

Car free since: Always.

Blogging since: Summer 2006.

Notable post: Overheard Tonight While Riding Home on the 200 Bus

sketchy guy: “do you smoke? weed?”
teenage girl: “oh… no.”
SG: “you want to go to a party? we can smoke weed, listen to music…”
TG: “no thanks.”
SG: “i bet you’re real mature. girls always more mature than guys. i read somewhere that girls do better in school… you in school?”

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On going car-free….

I have always been car free. I’m a native of New York City, where it’s the norm not to drive. Many of my friends and colleagues from there have never learned to drive; the ones that have did so when they got older, moved away for college, etc. I got a learner’s permit when I was about 19, but I never followed through with driving lessons.

[I'm car-free] mostly out of habit, but also because of anxiety. Even if I were a great driver, it would be hard to defend myself against the oblivious text-messagers and drunk drivers I’d have to share the road with. I don’t know how people do it every day.

The cost of buying, owning, and maintaining a car seems prohibitive at this point in my life. The cost to the environment is great too, but depending on one’s driving habits and make of car, it can be a matter of degree. And I’m very aware that carbon footprints and gas prices affect my quality of life even if I’m not the one doing the driving.

How she gets around.

I take a combination of bus and rail. Currently I live in a very transit-friendly area with several major bus lines and a couple of Red Line stops. If it’s late, I’ll splurge for a cab – I’ve got Yellow Cab’s number in my cell phone contacts, so as long as I’m in their service area, I never worry about having to flag down a taxi. Also, my boyfriend has a car; he’s very generous about using it to help me out with difficult errands.

Every time I’ve moved, access to transit has been a major factor in my decision of where to locate, and this is no exception. The only drawback is that East Hollywood is not ultimately that walkable – cracks in the sidewalks, people who don’t clean up after their dogs, litter, street crazies.

In about a month I’m moving up to Valley Glen, right off the Orange Line and other bus routes, and only a few stops to the North Hollywood Red Line station. I think it will be easier to walk around there, although the Valley gets quite hot in the summertime.

On the upsides and downsides….

Upsides:
1) Being able to concentrate fully on music, a book, a phone conversation, or the view outside.
2) Not having to worry about where to park, or what kind of shape my car would be in after getting it back from the valet.
3) Being in touch with the human race, even when I’m not in the mood to be – it’s healthy to get out of that isolated comfort zone.

I think many women in Los Angeles cope with the daily stressors by hiding in their cars. One of the most stressful things for me as a female non-driver is feeling like I’m on display for men to leer at and comment upon. There have been days when I’ve gone out of the apartment in frumpy clothing and a ponytail so I wouldn’t be noticed. A lot of guys see a woman standing on the street waiting for a bus and they get the idea that either she’s a prostitute or she deserves to be treated like one. I still don’t really know how to cope.

There were a few months when I was taking classes down in Orange County, and I was taking the bus home to L.A. at night. I had to withdraw from the classes because I was getting approached too much at the bus stops and it freaked me out. (I’m generally a pretty approachable person.)

Often on job applications, I’ll see that one of the prerequisites is having a Class C California driver’s license. I know this isn’t meant to single out non-drivers, but it seems to say that the employer doesn’t trust public transit or bicycles as being “reliable transportation.” My education and career path are in urban planning, and it hurts my soul that the planning departments aren’t practicing what they preach.

Advice for the car-free curious.

Strength in numbers! Measure R passed by a supermajority because enough people were fed up by a very lopsided transportation infrastructure. Change is in the air; if you’re thinking about going car-free, this isn’t a bad time to start. And when you do, let Metro know that these issues are important to you.

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green LA girl’s notes: The leering and catcalling issue is clearly a problem for many women in L.A. — a problem big enough that most women interviewed so far have named it as a key disincentive from de-car-ing. I’m not sure how exactly we can work on this issue. Even when I was working in NYC and living in Brooklyn Heights — both walkers’ paradises — catcalling was a daily issue. I dealt with it there by avoiding certain streets, and I dealt with it here by moving to Santa Monica, where the catcalling happens much, much less than in every other area of LA I’ve lived in.

I think every woman I know who does even a bit of walking in urban areas learns both to ignore the leering / catcalling (By ignoring, I mean that she doesn’t respond to it. She likely still feels annoyed / upset by it.) — and also learns what streets to try and avoid fairly quickly. This is v. unfortunate, and speaks a bit to the individual vs. group issues that came up in the comments to Browne’s post (i.e. it’d be great if women could “reclaim” those areas where walking feels uncomfortable due to leering / catcalling, yet it’s really, really unpleasant and potentially dangerous for any individual woman to walk those areas).

Read Westward Ho!, which Jody started when she moved to L.A. for her master’s degree at USC to record “a New York expat’s thoughts on the West, in a pretty open-minded way.”

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