In the ongoing war of words between East Coast and West, which I am fomenting, I may have leaned a bit too heavily on Western delights and thereby thrown my old home coast under the environmentally friendly electric bus. Yes, I did say that traffic merging on the approaches to Manhattan tunnels can lead to fistfights, and, yes, there is a hellride known as the Cross Bronx Expressway, but here in Santa Barbara we have something sort of comparable at times, called the LOL. I mean the 101.
And Santa Barbara seems to have a strange fondness for speedbumps. They’re all over the place, even in tight spots where it’s unlikely a car could get going much over 5 mph anyway. Does anyone else think we could use some bumpotomies?
Furthermore, not every vehicular incident on the East Coast is horrific. For instance, I once got a parking ticket in Manhattan that made no sense. The dozen or so signs on the posts added up to gibberish. Simplified, it came down to something like, “Parking is not allowed on Tuesdays except for Mondays through Fridays.” So I took a photo of the signs and wrote a column about the ticket for my newspaper back East. A few days later I got a call from someone purporting to be the commissioner of the NYC Department of Transportation. I assumed it was a friend playing a prank, but in fact it was the commish. She said, “I’m reading your column, and I agree with you. What’s more, I’m in the car with an administrative law judge, and she agrees, too. We’re expunging your ticket.” I retrieved my jaw from the ground and went on with my life.