It’s Hollywood Baby; Driving Miss Brad (and his imaginary friend)

About a month into my life here in Los Angeles I started to get a twinge in my lower back. I couldn’t work out what it was. I tried turning over my mattress. Sleeping on the other side of the bed. Tried a few new exercises. Wait who am I kidding, I actually tried to start doing some exercises. Nothing worked. The twinge was still there. And then it hit me one day as I was trying to reverse-park my car. I’m on the wrong side! Fifteen years of driving had programmed my lower back to the rigors of turning to your left to look out the back window. Now suddenly at the age of 30 something, ahem, I was suddenly trying to turn to the right. It just wasn’t natural. Seriously give it a go – next time you have the need to reverse your car, try looking over the other shoulder out the back window. After four months of driving now, I still don’t have my full Californian license (shhh) simply because there is no way I could pass the reverse park test. I’m bumping things left, right and centre. Apparently you can be failed for touching the kerb. Really? Over here, that’s the only way I know how close I am. You gotta go the touch park. You can get a parking ticket here if you’re not close enough to the kerb so I like to make sure.

And then a few other things hit me. I was still driving like I was in a right hand drive. It’s the iconic driver’s position – we all sit there with our left arm on the wheel, the right elbow resting on the open window. Only swapping to change gear – because, let’s face it, driving an automatic is not really driving. But I still can’t get out of the habit. Now here in America, I’m still driving with my left arm on the wheel, but my right arm hanging limply with nothing to rest it on. I’ve even resorted to putting it up on the passenger seat like you do when you have your girlfriend next to you. Which just looks odd when I’m driving on my own. People stare at me with that look of “wow check out at that guy driving with his imaginary friend…that’s so sad”. Smart arses have questioned why my imaginary friend and I are not driving in the car pool lane. And of course now my right hand is also the gear change hand. Changing from second to third means pushing the stick away from you. Away. If I get honked at one more time for stalling the car because I’ve tried to move away from the traffic lights in fifth gear there will be some serious road rage. They should have a sticker I can put on the back like a “Don’t blame me, I’m foreign”. Or how about “My imaginary friend is 6’5″ and 300 pounds. Don’t honk or he’ll tear you a new arse”. Or maybe “Be patient, I’m not used to using my right hand”. Maybe not.

I tell you this because driving in LA is hazardous enough without feeling like a 16 year old driving your parent’s car for the first time. There is so much to concentrate on without having to worry about what hand does what and what mirror I should look in and what shoulder I need to look over. So here’s a little guide to driving in LA.

Indicating doesn’t exist. I know this is symptomatic of most cities but in LA it actually seems out of fashion. So prepare yourself for anything. Especially on the Freeways where any lane seems to be a fast lane, and no one really knows what the speed limit is anyway. Over taking, under taking, it’s anything goes really. Which is scary enough without adding to the mix the incredibly large 4WD vehicles that Californians love. You know the ones that look like they’ve come straight from a monster truck rally. Nothing like being stuck in traffic and looking to your left and all you can see is a massive wheel and hoping to God that there is a car connected to that somewhere above. What annoys me about the Freeways is actually the road surface. Freeways are supposed to be the quickest way to get from A to B (excluding rush hour), so why make them with a surface that is akin to skiing the Olympic moguls? When I’m doing 70miles an hour, with one hand on the wheel and the other around my imaginary friend, the last thing I want is to feel like my suspension is about to make an unscheduled appearance through the flooring of my car.

Sad to say though that steering clear of the Freeways is no better. There’s an odd thing that happens in LA – pedestrians have the right of way. So here’s the deal – yes there are jay walking laws. And believe me the police are strict about that. It means that you can only cross the road at a designated pedestrian crossing. Which sucks when you finally find a parking spot directly across the road from your favourite restaurant only to realise that you now have to walk 100m down the road to cross over and then 100m back up the other side. But I’ll get to parking later. Because bearing in mind that pedestrians have the right of way, a strange thing can occur when you are driving along a main arterial - a road with two lanes of traffic on each side doing about 40miles an hour. If someone starts to walk across the road…usually a homeless person…everyone just stops! No honking, no nothing. Cars just come to a halt. I guess because they figure that some of the crazy homeless people will just walk out in the middle of traffic so you better stop just in case. And you shouldn’t honk a homeless person because you never really know just how crazy they may be and no one wants a shopping trolley through their windscreen. The considerate homeless people stick to the back streets. However as a pedestrian you also have to be careful. I did the jay walk the other day (shh). There was no traffic on my side so I thought I would do the dash to the centre island and wait for a break in the traffic on the other side. Except when I got to the island, all the cars on the other side stopped for me. They obviously thought I was going to just keep going. The look of panic in their eyes was astonishing. I felt so bad about stopping three lanes of rush hour traffic. But also felt a slight heightened sense of self importance like I had just parted the Red Sea.

And so on to parking. Yes parking in LA is a nightmare. Especially in places like Hollywood Blvd, Sunset Strip etc. Usually all the places where the cool bars and hotels are. This creates a new phenomenon. Valet parking. For as much as $10 not including tip, you can pull up to your restaurant right out front and hand over your keys to some stranger who will take your car to God knows where, whilst you dine. And this isn’t just at the up-market places. This is at your local pub. The place you go to where they spin the alcohol wheel to try to get $5 jagerbombs. The place where for two dollars you can try your luck maneuvering the claw to try to pick a lobster out of the tank, like what you used to do to get that crappy Wonder Twins ring out of the machine at the arcade parlour. Valet parking is everywhere! At night, driving down Sunset Blvd is a bizarre sight. Valet parking lots employ people to stand on the kerb waving glow sticks enticing you to leave your car in their lot. It’s like a Mexican imitation of Bruce Willis from that crappy Die Hard sequel where he stood on the runway trying to guide in that plane using flares. And even in places where parking is free and legal like in the car park of your local laundromat or bank, you still have to cope with the glare of the car park attendant who sits under his umbrella and behind his podium making sure that you are indeed using the car park to patronise one of the stores in that vicinity. But of course if you are like me, and you have that Australian gene that makes you say “bugger that, I’m not paying for parking” then feel free to roll the dice and try your luck at the parking game. It’s not so much finding a park that is the problem. It’s finding a legal park. Which usually means pulling up to the kerb and spending 5 minutes reading through the 12 signs on the one pole describing how you can only park there during the hours of 4pm to 8pm, except on Mondays because of street cleaning, or Tuesdays because it’s suddenly a temporary tow away zone, or before 2pm during school days, or only if you have an area 30 parking permit, or after 10pm if you drive a white Hyundai with a number plate ending in a D. Except on Saturdays and Sundays in very small print. It’s at that point that you get confused, start to glaze over and then get mesmerised by the hypnotizing, flashing glow sticks of the valet parker, who is now smiling quietly to himself and rubbing his hands together a la Mr Burns. Excellent. And it is then that I suddenly realise that the pain in my back is from constantly having to reach into my back pocket to hand over another wad of cash for simply parking my car. Wonder Twins powers activate – shape of … a legal car park. Damn, that was a waste of $2.

From now on I walk, parting the Red Sea as I go. Excellent.