I admire your tenacity at remaining relatively unchanged for more than a decade but lately I’ve noticed some fraying around the edges of your social fabric. Your village has accumulating a lot of village idiots and it’s time to flush them out and enroll everyone in some remedial etiquette. Consider this some tough love.
If you are in a car:
- The universal sign for “I’m waiting for a parking space” is to turn on your right-hand turn signal. You may only do this if you see someone who is visibly getting into their car with an intent to vacate the parking space. Do not stop on Larchmont in the hopes that someone *may* vacate a space.
- If you are behind someone who is waiting for a parking space to become available you may not a) use your horn unless a suitable length of time has passed. b) pass the car in front of you by veering suddenly into the left-turn lane and accelerating profoundly.
- Parking spaces are defined as, well, parking spaces. Stopping your car in the middle of Larchmont Blvd. while you “dash” in for your coffee does not qualify as legally parking your car. If anything, this qualifies you to have your car crushed and melted – even if (or especially if) there are still passengers inside.
- Remember, even if you are parking you still have to follow the rules of the road. You may not disregard stop signs, turn signals, and randomly walking pedestrians even if there is an empty parking space ahead.
Exceptions to 1, 2, 3, and 4: if anybody (and I do mean anybody) is on a mobile phone, you are free (if not obliged) to open fire. However, I believe Miss Manners suggests firing a warning shot over the miscreant’s head first.
And if you are a pedestrian:
- Although you might prefer to think of Larchmont as a sleepy little village it is still in the middle of Los Angeles – a very busy city! If you are in a group of three or more people, please do not walk in tandem across the sidewalk if there are other people attempting to pass. If you are piloting a SUV-sized baby stroller barge, the maximum limit is one across.
- Driving an oversized baby stroller does not give you an automatic free pass to cut in line, stand in the middle of doorways, or otherwise be a road hog.
- If you are crossing Larchmont Blvd. please use the crosswalks… Nah, screw that. Just use some common goddamn sense. If you run out directly in front of a driver, sure they are legally required to stop, but you’re also running 2-1 odds of causing a rear-end collision between circling parkers who aren’t paying attention to anything other than parking.
- If you are crossing Larchmont Blvd., please cross the street! Do not stop in the middle of the street to talk to your friends, talk on your phone, etc.
Thanks everyone! It is my hope that with these suggestions we can all cooperate and make our difficult lives a little bit easier. Otherwise, may the forces of the Great American Corporate Leviathan mow every single inch of your “village” down in its tracks and sow the ground with radioactive salt. I’ll miss Sam’s Bagels, but if it’s going to continue to be such a pain in the neck to deal with Larchmont Village I can handle scratching it off the map.
P.S. To the two douchebag guys and one douchebag girl who felt the need to become a slow-walking roadblock on the sidewalk: OK, sure… I’m vaguely irritated at having to walk into the street to pass you guys even after I attempted to excuse myself through, but did you really have to offer up a stream of “some people” and “what’s your hurry?” criticism? It’s very high schoolish and not age appropriate for folks like you who are in your early 30s. I have to admit that I was initially thrown because you guys were still clinging to your Part Time Punks tote bag, your dubious hipster haircut, and your loud self-assumed intellectual broheim critique of Z Pizza as being “too California.” Guys, you are in California but even we managed to get rid of the pink polo shirt and white jeans combination some time ago. It’s just embarrassing now and not at all ironic. Actually on second thought, please just go die now. k thx bye.
Sheesh, I feel like some sort of emo blogger. Oh wait a sec…
probably the most funniest Quartz City entry!
>>>>If you are piloting a SUV-sized baby stroller barge
HA!
-from someone who just parked in the Koo Koo Roo
parking lot, ate there, then meandered down the street.
I’m proud to say that the biggest stroller I ever drove was the hand-me-down-pram that never left the house.
I mean geez, who can push one of those things and the heavy little human inside at the same time? That sounds like WORK!
I was fine with all of this except for
>>pass the car in front of you by veering suddenly into the left-turn lane and accelerating profoundly
I thought this was standard operating procedure when passing slow-moving vehicles.
For extra fun with dawdling pedestrians: nose your car right up to them, drop the car into neutral (don’t
forget this step), and floor it. You might get yelled at, flipped off, etc., but it’s usually worth it.
>> I thought this was standard operating procedure when passing slow-moving vehicles.
There’s something about Larchmont Bl. that makes this k-dangerous. Delivery trucks sometimes park in the left-turn lane (there’s no alleyway behind the stores on the east side of the street) and there’s the occasional oncoming traffic from people dodging people backing on the other side of the street.
I suspect that because of the street’s layout (one lane each direction, central left-turn lane, diagonal parking on both sides) drivers think that the street is much wider than it actually is and pedestrians think that it’s narrower (and are more likely to dash out in front of traffic)