Thinking About Public Transportation Just A Little Bit More

"I'll probably start thinking about public transportation a little bit more." -- Wealthy San Francisco SUV female driver filling up with $4.79 gasoline as reported on NBC Nightly News this evening.

This is why I love nightly news reporting on gasoline. It's fake. They intentionally edit for rich women in SUVs, with well manicured nails, a large wedding ring, nice clothes, an expensive watch, a diamond bracelet, and a late-model $43,000 rig, bitching about gasoline prices. She'll start thinking about public transportation? Are you fucking kidding me? And the way she rolls her eyes saying "public transportation..." says that what she's saying is a total lie. She'll never intentionally sit next to a commoner.

This woman would never never! pay bus fare to get to her FIRE (Finance, Insurance or Real Estate) job in Palo Alto. Are you kidding me? This kind of reporting makes for a good sound bite to be sure, but well-to-do white San Franciscan women are among the last class of people in this nation who will willingly go without their SUVs. The day they mount a bus or a BART train to save a dollar or three is a day we'll not see in our lifetimes.

After having spent fifty grand on a vehicular unit and nine hundred and twenty thousand on a loft in SoMa, do you really think this woman gives a shit about another dollar per gallon? No way. She'll be burning gasoline in her rig all the way through $25 a gallon. She didn't spend her life working to live in San Francisco and spend three day weekends in Napa Valley to ride a fucking bicycle.

Ironically, San Francisco is among one of the best places in this nation for those willing to live a low energy lifestyle -- it's built compactly with most amenities within walking distance, and has a vibrant, spirited atmosphere. This is why it costs eight hundred thousand dollars just to buy a brick shithouse -- people want to live there. I want to live there, too...but it's too expensive for my income. Instead, I opted for an extreme energy intensive cheap Sacramento suburb where I have to drive everywhere for everything...as 40% of the rest of America has done.

Indeed, tonight I really, really wanted to take light rail to the Amon Amarth metal gig in mid-town Sacramento. The venue was only two blocks away from the 16th street light rail station...but the last light rail train on weekends leaves at 9:26 PM, thanks to service cuts implemented during our little economic slowdown in 2008. The show ended tonight at 11:35. I had no option available to me other than solo occupant commuting by private automobile if I wanted to see the show. So I drove, consuming $4 gasoline every twenty miles driven.

With no mortgage and a $50/hour recession proof job, you can be assured that I will continue to recreationally use oil at the same level I currently use it all the way through $25 a gallon, too, and as our civic, state, and federal leaders continue to fail to deliver viable alternatives to private automobiling, well, there will continue to be no other options and there's nothing that's going to stop me. I'm no different from that rich woman on the news -- only I won't "probably" start thinking about public transportation a "little" bit more. I think about using my bicycle or public transportation every time I leave my housal unit. I think about it ahead of time, even thinking about how I could work around RTs shitty scheduling, but alas, if I wanted to see the show I had to drive myself. I exhausted all other carpooling options. I cannot ride my bicycle in the dark around here because we 1) have no safe north-south bicycle-only option, and 2) there's no bicycle parking outside the Ace of Spaces venue. I'm not risking my life bicycling on Franklin Blvd in the dark, never. I'm not risking losing my bicycle by having to chain it up to some lamp post in the back alley because there are no bike lockers or dedicated bicycle parking areas.

The presumption among the Ace Of Spades venue and the rich woman filling her SUV in a San Francisco fill station is that we are supposed to drive ourselves. Our national identity hinges about solo-occupant private-automobiling. My mom, my two sisters and brothers-in law and me and my wife all commute by private solo occupant motorized vehicular units. The more affluent, the more this rings true. We are not conditioned to take a bus. Many simply won't do it, regardless of the price of gasoline.

This is why I love America. Fat, overweight, out of shape solo-occupant commuters commuting 36-miles to their national defense jobs designing predator drones to kill pro-Qaddafi Libyans so that oil production resumes and their commutes are each a nickel cheaper than what they otherwise would have been. This is why I love America.