Recently, my favorite sports writer, Joe Posnanski wrote a piece about the meanings of advanced baseball statistics. He started quoting this piece from Louis CK:
“And then I was looking at the little Chinese lady. There was a beauty to her — she was just a tiny little Chinese lady, I was staring at her because I was fascinated by her. I don’t know anybody like her, and I am SO not a little old Chinese lady.
“Then I look and I think, ‘What are her thoughts?’ That’s what I was burning inside with. ‘What is she thinking right now?’ I can never know. And my dumb brain is telling me she’s just thinking: ‘Ching chung cheeng, chung cheeng chaing.’ That’s how dumb I am, that I think Chinese jibberish* that I made up is in her actually Chinese mind.”
Posnanski then went on to explain that a lot of people who oppose the use of advanced statistics are arguing with the Chinese jibberish in their head.
Baseball people really don’t get at all what people like Bill James and Tom Tango and Pete Palmer and the like are doing at all. They might THINK they know. But in the end, they are just assuming that the Chinese jibberish that they make up is what is actually happening in the minds of the most brilliant sabermetric minds.
This is a long way of saying that whenever I mention car culture or Washington State imposing car culture on its city folk, that I feel like the arguments I get into are with people assuming the Chinese jibberish in their head is my argument. If this was confined to the Internet, I’d just chalk it up to trollery and use this post to write about something else (more metacommentary, probably), but I hear it in conversation elsewhere, so I thought I should clarify what I mean, and hopefully we can get away from that and onto an actual conversation.
To address the jibberish: Opposing car culture doesn’t mean that nobody will ever be allowed to drive anywhere. It doesn’t mean that we’ll turn all the roads into bike paths. It doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to drive. While I can’t speak to anyone else who uses the term, for me it certainly doesn’t mean I think you’re a bad person if you drive or if you enjoy driving. It doesn’t mean that you are a bad person for feeling unsafe on a bike, or thinking it’s important to have a car if you have children.
Car culture is the myriad ways we privilege driving over other ways to get around as a society. It’s the fact that you need a car for so many jobs, even jobs unrelated to driving. It’s the fact that our bicycle infrastructure even in Seattle is pretty inadequate, and worse further out. It’s the fact that so many parents have such a need for cars. It’s all the roads without a shoulder let alone a decent bike lane. It’s the sidewalks that neighborhoods have been promised for decades but that never quite seem to materialize. It’s the underfunded public transit. It’s the fact that when we discuss the viaduct replacement that many people are more concerned about how to move cars than how to move people. It’s our refusal to deal with the externalities of driving from pollution, to global warming gases, to the big holes in cities where we have to park, to the fact that streets aren’t safe for pedestrians in the way they were before cars.
And car culture is treating all these things as inevitable instead of the result of choices we make. When I say the legislature imposes car culture (especially, but not exclusively) on Seattle, I’m saying that consciously or not, the policies that the state pushes make those things in the above paragraph, and more, worse. So when, for example, a state legislator from Yakima tries to impose a maximum parking tax on Seattle that’s a choice for that legislator, and possibly the entire state. They’re saying we should have cheaper parking. Not we should figure out what’s reasonable given the budget deficit and the things that extra parking does to a city, but that they know best. When the legislature wants to build a replacement for the Viaduct, instead of looking at how to move people around, they’re looking at how to move cars. Until they recognize that cars are one way people and goods move around, but aren’t the only way, they’ll still push cars on us when there are better alternatives. Not just with the Viaduct replacement but with all sorts of policies.
* Yes, I know how to spell gibberish, but since that’s how Pos spelled it (intentionally, as it turns out) I’m spelling it the same way.
Great post!
I’d note that, Seattle is also guilty of imposing car culture on its self. You think one way long enough and it gets hard to think any other way and it’s probably a minority of people in Seattle that can think outside the car culture box.
Yawn.
Maybe Slog or Publicola is a more useful place for this screed. BTW I’m a liberal enviromentalist who’s voted for every transit measure that’s been on the ballot.
So long, HA.
@2,
I enjoy reading Slog and Publicola, so that’s not much of an insult. Until someone is foolish enough to grant me access to either of those sites, I’ll write here. And I’ll write whatever I damn well want.
Carl,
Food for thought. Especially for a guy with a V8 pickup.
Good post, Carl.
Capping parking taxes is effectively a public subsidy choice since it assumes the funds anticipated will have to come from somewhere else and effectively raise the price of some other good. Given that we have foolishly decided to tax behavior but not income, one wonders how much more smokers and drinkers can stand.
Obviously, they will join all businesses and move out of the state. Bye bye tax revenue stream!
Hi Carl:
Doubling down on stupid, I see. You either can’t, or won’t, get that what you call “car culture” is nothing more or less than people’s desire for personal mobility.
People regard personal mobility as a basic human right, by any means necessary or convenient. Neither you nor anyone else will be getting rid of it any time soon, if ever. To do so would be to go back to the medieval times, when only nobles, knights, and the gentry were allowed to ride horses, and the serfs had to walk.
Personal mobility has been one of the great democratizing forces in human history. If you don’t understand that people will seek it out no matter what, you simply don’t understand human nature. You might as well be trying to put toothpaste back into the tube.
We get that every advance in technology, and every advance in social evolution, has its down sides. We are cognizant of what they are. This puerile screed does nothing to address them. It is just another elitist, pseudo-intellectual rant from one whom I hoped would have learned more by now.
This blog is horseshit without Goldy, and I don’t give it much longer. I have only so much time for a daily barrage of bicycles and marijuana.
“bicycle infrastructure” is not the opposite of “car culture”.
Bicycle’s have some use, but you can’t run a city on bicycles. In a city with snow, or where it rains 5 months out of the year, or it’s 45 or colder, and very hilly, you just simple factually end of story will not get a “significant” percentage of the population to use bicycles as a alternate mode. YES there is that 1%-2% who do it. Nice. But you’re NEVER get more than 10% in the most fantastical magical realm of imagination. So that done, what about the other 90% of the public? The folks who simple will not accept the alternative to cars is to bike up a 3 mile long hill in the 43 degree rain with 2 bags of groceries and a baby in the ‘trailer’.
Let’s get real and stop with the fantasy. How do we move people around Seattle? Let’s talk more work at home (like I do) which eliminates the daily commute. Let’s talk more rail. I’d take the rail more if it eventually went somewhere. I’m not “dissing” Columbia City, but I have only wanted/needed to go there twice ever. How about if the rail went to South Center mall…where ALL of those PILES of cars are. Huh. That would have been a good idea…put rail into the most car congested part of town. Shocking.
@7…
…don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
@8
We’re not making the claims that you say we are. Note what Carl said:
Far from pandering to car drivers, Seattle (like many other cities) is hostile to them. Just look at what they’ve done to parking fees — only the affluent can afford to park downtown now. (Sorry, downtown merchants, but I’m not going to visit your stores anymore.)
On the other hand, look at the privileged treatment bicyclists get (no license or insurance required, no taxes or fees paid for use of public roads, rarely if ever ticketed for outrageous behavior that endangers themselves, drivers, and pedestrians).
I’m not against bicycles or bike riders, per se. I’m against assholes, and some bicyclists — way too many of them, in my opinion — are assholes. I’m specifically referring to bicyclists who deliberately obstruct vehicle traffic or think they’re being cute by playing chicken with cars, although I also include those who unintentionally do so by being thoughtless, heedless, and careless. (To stay fair and balanced, I’ll mention here that way too many car drivers are assholes, too.)
One thing I’d like to say to any bicyclists reading this is that car drivers’ eyes are conditioned to look for car-sized objects and often literally do not see the bicycle or motorcycle in front of them or off to one side. It can take a few seconds for the human (or rabbit) eye to adjust, see a bicycle-size object, and register it in the brain. So, if you suddenly lane-change or swerve in front of an approaching car, you are asking to die; and even though the car driver may technically be legally at fault for your death, the fact is he didn’t see you or become aware of your presence in time for him to do anything about it, and it’s your own damned fault that you’re dead.
What a significant percentage of Seattle’s bicyclists need is a lot less hostility toward car drivers and a lot more common sense, if not because that’s the right thing to do, then at least for the sake of their own self-preservation.
It doesn’t take a fucking rocket scientist to figure out that the best way for cars and bicycles to get along is by keeping them separated.
Cars aren’t going away. The internal combustion engine will go away when the oil runs out, and drivers will go away when computers take over driving tasks, but cars are too utilitarian and useful to be disappear; and there really is no form of mass or communal transportation I can visualize that has any prospect of replacing them.
Therefore, municipal policies designed to make life more difficult and expensive for car users, which make driving and parking feasible only for a wealthy or privileged elite, are anti-worker, anti-consumer, anti-ordinary citizen, anti-democratic, and — not to put too fine a point on it — suck. I won’t vote for such policies, or politicians who support them, and 98% of the rest of us shouldn’t vote for the anti-car culture or its proponents, either.
@7 Your positions on cars and marijuana seem inconsistent to me. When I was young, my buddies called cars “freedom machines,” and rightly so, because without a car your access to jobs, dating, entertainment, and almost everything else in our society was severely limited. How can you be FOR the freedom of personal mobility, but AGAINST the freedom to smoke pot? The only possible justification for opposing marijuana legalization is that letting individuals use pot harms society in some way. But all the evidence indicates that pot is minimally harmful, if at all, to individuals and trying to outlaw it is enormously harmful to society in terms of law enforcement costs, abusive actions of law enforcers against sometimes-innocent citizens (e.g., last summer’s Great Tomato Plant Bust against my next-door neighbors, who were handcuffed and dragged out of their home into the street for having tomato plants on the roof of their rental house), and the costs to taxpayers of prosecuting and incarcerating people for trafficking in and/or using pot; not to mention the utterly unnecessary suffering imposed on sick people by enforcing anti-pot laws against legal medical marijuana growers and users. Until societal harm is shown — and, notwithstanding the torrent of exaggerated and outright lying anti-marijuana propaganda we’ve been inundated with for many decades, there is very little if any proof that pot use hurts society in any meaningful way — pot use should be a matter of individual choice and freedom, just as you argue that owning and driving a car should be. I fail to see how you can be in favor of one and against the other, unless you believe the lying anti-pot propaganda, in which case you’re a plain stupid person.
Republicans claim they’re for individual freedom, but this, like all the rest of their propaganda, is hypocritical nonsense.
Republicans are almost uniformly against legalizing pot and in favor of locking up people who smoke pot, including medical users. See, e.g., the Bush administration’s ruthless and inhumane policy of preempting state medical marijuane laws and siccing federal prosecutors on medical marijuana patients. Nobody who does that can claim to be for personal freedom.
Republicans theoretically are on firmer ground in their opposition to abortion. After all, terminating a pregnancy affects someone other than the mother making the decision, i.e., the baby whose life is being taken without its consent. There are some definitional problems here, of course; namely, when does a cell become a “baby,” a problem SCOTUS wrestled with in Roe v. Wade and couldn’t figure out. Personally, I think it’s nonsense to say that a fertilized egg, the day after conception, is a “baby”; and, it necessarily follows, by simple logic, that preventing a mother from ridding herself of an unwanted fertilized egg whic is far removed from being any kind of separate and sentient person is interfering with her personal liberty in a very major way. No political party that does that can claim to be a party of individual liberty and freedom.
(As regular readers of this blog are well aware, I’m personally opposed to abortion on moral grounds, but I’m not prepared to impose my personal moral beliefs on others who may not share those beliefs through exercise of the power of government; while I would like to see all abortions stop, the means I would choose of doing so is through cultural change that would eliminate demand for abortions by changing peoples’ attitudes so they won’t want abortions.)
Republicans are against individual liberty and personal freedom in other very important ways, too. For example, when they abduct, imprison, torture, and kill people in secret, without any due process of law, and some of their victims are utterly innocent of terrorism, being combatants, or anything else. What we saw during the Bush years is that Republicans’ attitudes toward the personal rights of some other people are indistinguishable from Hitler’s or Stalin’s.
So don’t preach to me about individual liberty or personal freedom, Republicans, until YOU stop behaving like fucking Nazis or communists.
Republican Hypocrisy Of The Day
Republicans claim tax codes shouldn’t be used for “social engineering.” Here’s today’s “What the fuck???” response:
“House Republicans are trying to use the tax code to curb abortions by limiting tax breaks for insurance policies that cover the procedure.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42.....itol_hill/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: This belongs in more-or-less the same category as passing $117 million in new tax breaks for business, then stripping state workers of their collective bargaining rights based on a claim that the state needs to save $137 million in personnel costs because the state is “broke.”
@11
Until a couple of months ago, I always blew off comments like this. Then I had to spend a few days driving around in Seattle and almost flattened a couple of cyclists myself. Eeesh. Seattle has got to hold the record for worst cyclist behavior in the country.
@15 I’m biased against aggressive bicyclists because, some years ago, I got knocked down by aggressive bicyclists twice in three days. On both occasions, I was a pedestrian in downtown Seattle, crossing streets in marked crosswalks with the “Walk” sign, amid a crowd of other pedestrians. These assholes came flying around the corner and barreled right into the dense crowd of pedestrians in the crosswalks at full speed, making no attempt to slow down. The pedestrian crowd was solidly dense, and it was inevitable that people would get hit, and I and several other pedestrians (including women) were struck. In both incidents, I was hit with full force by large guys on bicycles traveling at high speed and knocked to the ground. Both of these motherfuckers cussed me out and threatened to punch me out. One of them worked for a bicycle messenger service (Bucky’s), the other was, so far as I know, just a guy getting around on a bicycle. I called them some choice names, but restrained myself from loosening their dentures; I now regret that restrain, I really should have hit those guys in the chops.
Partly, but not entirely, because of these incidents I support passing a municipal ordinance that would (a) make riding a bicycle on a sidewalk illegal and require cyclists to get off their bikes and walk them when on sidewalks, (b) require any bicyclist riding a bicycle on a public street, public sidewalk, other public thoroughfare, in a public park, or anywhere else in the public domain, to display a license plate on his bicycle (so he can be identified and sued if he injures someone), carry liability insurance, and stop and give “driver” information in case of a collision with a pedestrian, another cyclist, or a car — just as car drivers are required to do. I also would make it a felony for a bicyclist to leave the scene of an accident, if it isn’t already.
I have no beef with responsible bicyclists who use bicycle lanes, streets, and crosswalks in a safe and reasonable manner. These suggested laws aren’t intended to harass them. They’re aimed at those who abuse the privilege of riding bikes in public, to the detriment of other citizens who also have a right to be there. It would be nice if we didn’t need such laws, but we clearly do, because some people regardless of age don’t know how (or are unwilling) to behave like adults.
As an aside, I find it sort of interesting that while China is trading in bicycles for cars, America is trading in cars for bicycles.
@7
Freedom of movement is a fundamental right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.....States_law
However, if you’re engaging in that movement via a car it’s highly regulated and dependent on quite a few things all coming together, being able to afford a car and insurance, gas to run the car (and a world wide network to get the gas), having roads to drive on, meeting the requirements for a drivers license, and so on.
When you’re relying on a bicycle you strip away that layer of regulation and most of the others requirement. Fully inflated tires and a cheap bike are all you really need.
When you go by foot all you need is a pair of feet, some socks and a sturdy pair of shoes.
The idea that cars provide us with freedom is really a misnomer. You want to truly be free, ditch the car.
@17
Funny how that works, huh.
Rabbit @ 12:
I’m not against pot, you buck-toothed rodent. I’m for it. I’m just bored to death reading about it every other fucking post, as if it was the only subject in the world.
Michael @ 18:
Freedom is in the eye of the beholder, and I don’t negotiate it with the likes of you.
@20
Your freedom is going to feel a lot more like enslavement when gas is 5 bucks a gallon and gas taxes and the roads are full of potholes.
So… Maybe we ought to get on with rebuilding our country in a way that you don’t need a car to go everywhere. Walkable communities are pretty darn nice.
Oops, meant to scrub that bit about gas taxes, which don’t come close to paying for all road work now and will pay for less and less in the future, out of # 21.
why is the nazi-lover rabbit allowed to pollute threads with unrelated BS?
This thread was actually a great read, until I hit up his posts
the dis-bared ex-lawyer is a nutty joke.
@23…
uhhh…because he’s WAAAAAAAAYYYYY smarter than you are sonny.
@18
When you’re relying on a bicycle you strip away that layer of regulation and most of the others requirement. Fully inflated tires and a cheap bike are all you really need.
you forgot about a helmet…..and possible registration and license….bike licenses have been are and are again being considered in the city of seattle – as well as other places.
its all about the revenue baby.
@24
spoken like a true child.
break any church windows lately?
@25
You can’t take my freedom!!!
(That’s a joke, BTW.)
Good post Carl! Many of the comments proved your point, they just can’t see beyond their shiny metal boxes.
You’ve really got nothing.
State of WA is getting ready to hit up electric car owners for an extra fee to be charged every year.
The reason? Because the state doesnt get any gas tax money from them.
LMFAO…remember when it used to be all about TEH ENVYROOMUNT? eh, not so much – its all about TEH REVENOO!
@29
I’ve got 10″ of swinging personality….just ask your old lady.
Your “escort” says it’s a piece of salami tied to your pencil dick with a string.
Add @32…
…you and your goat fukkin’ buddy maxie.
@30
It’s always been about the revenue, right back to the founding of this great country.
As long as the rich and big business are not paying for the services they demand, the burden will end up else where.
@30
Gotta pay for road upkeep somehow and hitting up someone on a 3 year old $300 bike for it isn’t going to do it.
@11
This is, actually, a really good example of the “car culture” that Carl’s talking about. Seattle has high fees for parking down town, but unless you’re coming into downtown from the south it doesn’t have a good way to get there other than in a car and it doesn’t have a good way to get around once you’re in down town. So you end up needing your car. I bet if you could get down town and around easily once you’re there you wouldn’t be casting it off.
If Seattle had really said “screw cars we want people on foot, transit and bikes in down town” they could have put in wider sidewalks, dedicated bike lanes, and had trollies in deadicated lanes. But, because Seattle lacks balls and leadership they went the wishy-washy-middle/Seattle-way, tried to get something for everyone and wound up with a system that sucks for everyone. Seriously.
Contrast that with London where you had real leadership and now you pay a toll every time you drive into the city. But, but, but, you say, London has The Tube and buses and space for bikes and is a very walkable city. Yep, and Seattle could be like that too if it had made a firm commitment to getting cars out of down town.
Want to drive around to everywhere you go? There’s an easy solution for you, it’s called the suburb*, go live there.
*For the record I live in a suburb.
Yes….by all means,
…let’s slam kids and starving students for riding bicycles. Cars? Great as long as energy prices are low and you ignore the externalities (like fucking dying from smog). The whole car thing is highly subsidized. Now Ivan may be correct to claim “that’s what we want”, but it’s a dead end culture. It’s noisy, dirty, and expensive. Only cheap oil, public subsidies, and slick advertizing keeps this merry-go-round going.
And rabbit…only rich people can park downtown? Well, here’s a clue, mostly it’s only rich people or well paid professionals who can afford to live downtown. What the fuck do you want? Publicly subsidized parking garages for the rich? That is beyond dumb.
People, including the poor schlub who empties the office trash in those downtown high rises should be able to live in the city near their workplace.
The key to this is raising their wage, more public transit, and more public amenities downtown. In other words changing the subsidy structure.
The way I see it, you, Carl and Ivan are arguing over the scraps and the rich and powerful get off the hook again either by the distraction this infighting creates or by the diversion from the real core issue-who gets what part of the economic pie in this country.
Shame on you guys. Kiss and make up.
@32
wow…I expected a lame come-back…but not that lame….geez.
way to go, geek.
@34
last time I checked, the “rich” pay the gas tax just like I do.
Unless that is, they flash their “Im rich” card at the gas station and get the gas tax removed from the cost.
ya think?
@37
so the guy dumping the trash downtown should make $95k a year so he can live downtown?
huh?
the other problem with “downtown”, is that nobody in their right mind would want to raise a family in that concrete jungle.
raising a child in the downtown area is akin to child abuse…period.
sorry, but living in a box, surrounded by other boxes above, below, and on both sides might be OK for the wannabe hipsters, but it gets real old, real quick.
and yes, I have been there done that.
@41
Yes, in a typical shitty American city it does. But, go to London, Paris, or just about any other city in Europe and it’s quite nice. A big part of that nice is do to their cities being built built before the car was around and so the car had to fit into the city rather than the other way around like we do it in America.
Who said anything about raising kids? Raise your kids in Green Lake or Ravenna or Ballard or Renton or Gig Harbor, probably not Bremerton- that place is a shit-hole. Raising kids has nothing to do with it.
@41
The whole “raising kids thing” is really just another version of the car culture trap. Just like it’s a mistake to make every single neighborhood easy to get around in in a car, it’s a mistake to try and make every single neighborhood kid friendly. Down town Tacoma’s doing fairly well with mostly young people and empty nesters moving in. The latest census data showed a pretty big jump in the number of people living in Spokane as well. When it’s time for the young folks that are living in down town Spokane to start raising little ones they’ll trade in their apartment or condo for a house on the South Hill, Corbin Park, or Garland.
Proud Leftist is right for a change… Unfortunately he stopped too quickly. They also continue to vote for McDimmWitt!
@40: huh?
Eloquently put, but hardly convincing.
Is there some law against janitors making a decent living?
@41: East Garland or west Garland? Big difference.
@45
I never said anything about not earning a decent living…..nice try at putting words into my mouth – an old, tired, progressive trick.
However, I do not think being a janitor merits $95k per year…do you?
@42
sure it does.
@46
West, one would hope.
@48
It’s not like there’s a shortage of suburbs and Target stores going on…
thats for sure.
I do not think being a janitor merits $95k per year…do you?
Why not? After all Lloyd Blankfein got $19million for a year’s “work” in 2010. I’d stack up what any good janitor did for society last year against Lloyd’s contribution any day.
What’s happened is that we’ve lost the connection between the value that ones work adds to society, the skill that’s required to perform it, and pay. Let’s give the janitor 30K a year, a couple weeks vacation, and a fully funded pension. For Mr. Blankfein a 9mm round in the back of the head and a shove off the back of a west bound ferry should do nicely.
well all know Proud is just a lefty dipshit – and his post confirms that fact once again.
I can go with Michaels post though.
this post is right on. the car culture is so strong it is hegemonic…much like the various cultures and institutions promoting patriarchy in say 1850…..it’s just embedded into everything that the car is top dawg and everybody else gotta accept that. if you build a condo building, you must build parking! no matter that 25% of adults don’t drive being old disabled blind too pro transit or not desiring of adding $40K to the cost of the condo. if you build shopping store, must build parking. if you speed, hey no big deal! go 12 over the limit. it’s culturally acceptable. if you get a ticket, go downtown and talk them down from $144 down to $20, no moral issue there about speeding and what not. and if it’s for cars like a DBT who *needs* any transit in it? who needs a finance plan? just build it we got the 18th amendment there’s plenty of gas tax money, that money is specially privileged and safe from any legislative horsetrading as it is dedicated to cars and highways. special rights for highway funding, it’s right in the constitution, you can’t have a more privileged position than that.
OK smart guy….go ahead and build some commercial space with no parking – and see how many tenants you get…..NONE.
It could be 50′ from a light rail stop AND bus line – you getting NOBODY to rent the space…’cept maybe for some hippie greener v-gan tofu joint that does $450 in business a month and sells weed on the side just to make ends meet.
dont like cars? dont drive one. simple. elegant.
it is what it is and its not going to change. most people just done want the “urban experience”.