Red Line 20th Anniversary Contest Winner Announced!

Last week the Metro Red Line celebrated its 20th anniversary serving the subterranean commuters Los Angeles, and The Militant put on a little contest to commemorate it.

Entries were simple: Submit a one-paragraph anecdote on one of your experiences riding the subway.

And today, we have a winner, selected from an anonymous and unspecified panel of judges: Congratulations to Heather Johnson of Koreatown for winning the priceless package of Metro memorabilia!

Here's her entry:

A few years ago when I still worked in downtown LA I commuted via Red Line to the Civic Center station. I was dozing off in my seat when I had a weird feeling that I was being watched. Turns out, I was! A street artist was sketching me. When I got off at my stop, he gave me the sketch for free. It's actually quite a likeness. The sketch is currently on my wall and I keep getting told I should frame it.

Her account could be construed as either sweet or creepy, however you want to view the situation. But it nicely described the forms of human interaction that have only really occurred in the past two decades, something that rarely happens on the bus, and can never happen in a car.

We have some other great stories worth sharing, though!

Being a Clippers season ticket holder, I take the Red Line downtown to every game. Most days I take the Red Line the train is full with blank, tired faces, maybe a couple of conversations happening, nothing spectacular. One day, I invited my friend, who came from out of town, to the game. He had never been on the train before. We get in the train car and there are people getting down. Someone had a boom box blasting some funk and people were dancing. It was a party all the way town to 7th. We get of the train and my friend says "Man it must be fun to ride the train to every game.

-- Sean Baello, Los Feliz

Thanks, Sean. And if we do get to see a Clippers Parade this June, can you tell your fellow Clips Fans (diehard and bandwagon alike) to take the train for that one?

Every May Day protest, riding the red line with protest signs and wearing shirts with specific messaging, I end up having some genuine conversations with folks on the train. Folks ask what the sign are about, why am I protesting, what is May Day etc. and I answer their questions to the best of my capabilities.

More often than not, they'll see me wearing a shirt that reads, I am undocumented. That'll get the conversation started and it give me the opportunity to talk about not being a legal resident of the US, the work I do organizing with the immigrant community and putting a face to the issues folks have with immigration.

By the end of the conversation, folks leave with a little knowledge about what's going and they got to hear it from someone who is personally invested and affected by it.

-- Erick Huerta, Boyle Heights

Dude, Erick...that was more than a paragraph. But hey, a great example of how transit spurs human dialogue. Thanks!

One time, I was riding the Red Line towards Union Station, and a man with a very old and ragged-looking accordion came on. He gave a really good performance, and some people in the car, including myself, applauded him.

-- Joshua Insel, Studio City

Okay, that was shorter than a paragraph. But thanks for sharing, Joshua! BTW, was the accordion player accompanied by a woman carrying a baby and asking change from the rest of the passengers? Those are the first Metro Gypsies! How European...

There are many great experiences I've had riding the Red Line. I remember taking the Red Line with my grandmother for the first time in 2001 and there began my love for riding this train. I’d never been on a vehicle like this before. I had a great view while sitting in the front. I could see the beginning of each tunnel we passed through. I took in my surroundings and was aware of the speed of the train and in awe of the engineering it took to build this train. I saw that some seats were removed to accomodate bicycles. I saw that people from all walks of life came to ride. I met the train operator and ever since then, we would exchange greetings and small talk everytime I rode the train. I’m passionate about the Red Line, because it has impressed me from day one and has been part of my daily ritual. The Red Line has become such an important part of my life because it is the only way I get to explore our great city.

-- Marc Caraan, Burbank

Thanks, Marc! "I saw that some seats were removed to accomodate bicycles. I saw that people from all walks of life came to ride." Next time you see angry people wearing yellow shirts handing out fliers telling people how "racist" the subway is, remind them of what you just said.

And finally, this most honorable of honorable mentions:

Photo provided by Chase White

When waiting on the Red Line, I ran into this gentleman, who I actually had seen before on the bus. It wasn't Halloween. He happily let me take his picture. I asked if he was an emergency room nurse. He said "No, I'm a head nurse."

-- Chase White, Highland Park

Thanks for all your entries! Didn't win? No worries! The Militant will throw more cool contests like this, so stay tuned and STAY MILITANT!

Militant Contest: Win Some Historical Red Line Swag!

Twenty years ago yesterday, the Metro Red Line first opened. Twenty years ago today, people were still enjoying free rides during opening weekend. Today, The Militant is giving away a bunch of historical Metro Red Line mementos from The Militant Archives!

What You'll Win:

- Original, mint-condition 1993 vintage RTD first-ever Metro Red Line schedule from January 30, 1993

- Metro Red Line information brochure (Published 1989)

- Updated Metro Red Line information brochure (Published 1993)

- Old school 1993 RTD Metro Red Line ticket

- Red Line/MTA refrigerator magnet

- Old school Metro "M" logo stickers!

Cash value: PRICELESS! (You can't find these anywhere anymore!)

How To Enter:

1. You must have ridden the Metro Red Line at least once within the past 20 years (If you still haven't, there is no hope for you).

2. Send an email to militantangeleno@gmail.com with the following:
- Your Name
- City or Los Angeles neighborhood you live in
- A short, one-paragraph story, anecdote or interesting occurrence that happened to you while riding The Red Line.

3. One winner may or may not be chosen at random. Or maybe you have the most interesting story. The Militant hasn't quite decided yet.

4. Submission deadline: 11:59 p.m. PST,  Sunday, February 3, 2013.

The Militant will announce the winner on Monday, February 4 on the MA Blog. He may or may not also publish some of the more interesting stories!

Good luck and Stay Militant!

A Subway's Birthday: Happy 20th, Metro Red Line!

The Metro Red Line on Opening Day, January 30, 1993 (Note the "RTD" banner hanging on top and how shiny the trains were).

January 1993: Elvis appeared on a postage stamp, America inaugurated Bill Clinton as its 42nd president, teens and young adults used pagers to communicate, Michael Jackson performed at Super Bowl XXVII, held at The Rose Bowl. Speaking of the NFL, the Los Angeles Raiders and Rams didn't seem like they were going to go anywhere (both literally and figuratively), Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" was the #1 song and a city long-chided for not having a subway system opened the first 4.4 miles of it to a curious, naive and skeptical public.

January 2013: Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, pagers and Los Angeles' NFL teams are no longer with us. People can print their own postage stamps on their computers. We have an African American sitting in the Oval Office now, starting his second term (Bill Clinton refuses to be irrelevant, though). And the Little Subway That Could now stretches 17 miles to Koreatown, Hollywood and North Hollywood, connects with four other rapid transit lines, runs 24 hours on New Year's Eve, stays open to 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and last month logged in a record high 158,830 daily average ridership.

Yes, our Metro Red Line subway turns 20 years old today (Which means anyone who does the "L.A. has a subway?" thing now truly deserves an ass-kicking).

Unfortunately, unlike The Militant's 20-year-old vintage video of the Blue Line's opening he posted in 2010, the video he shot for the Red Line's Opening Day wasn't nearly as ceremonious. Just a bunch of people waiting in line and a few trains passing by. There was a VIP ribbon-cutting event the previous day, and a smaller ceremony that day, with free rides the rest of the weekend.

For those of you who were still in diapers back in '93 (or worse, still in the East Coast/Midwest, etc), The Militant will give you a glimpse of how things were back then. The Red Line only had five stations -- Union Station, Civic Center, Pershing Square, 7th Street/Metro Center and Westlake/Mac Arthur Park. That was it. 4.4 miles.  The ride lasted all but seven minutes. It was only used by the folks Downtown, and that really meant the people that worked Downtown. No one really lived there yet. There were no bars and restaurants and ArtWalks. Could you imagine that?

TAP what? This is an old-school Red Line ticket from '93!

To make up for the 7-minute subterranean adventure, the RTD (Southern California Rapid Transit District, to you youngins/newbies, as Metro was known at the time) set the fare to all but 25 cents. You can connect to the Metro Blue Line, which was just a couple years old, and Metrolink, which was just a couple months old, and had only three lines going to Moorpark, Santa Clarita and Pomona, respectively.

The trippiest thing about the Red Line back then was its schedule: 5 a.m. to 7 p.m.  Ya rly. 7 p.m. Like The Militant said, there wasn't really a DTLA back then. 

The first Metro Red Line schedule, January 1993.

Compared to today's timetable, it really wasn't much! Hopping on board a train (they were clean and shiny back then) at Union Station, you emerged at Mac Arthur Park 7 minutes later to a dredged-up lake across the street. Crews were busy at work building the second segment which would open up in 1996, adding the Wilshire/Vermont, Wilshire/Normandie and Wilshire/Western stations to the line (there was no Purple Line then, and incidentally the Wilshire corridor segment -- which was to be re-reouted along Olympic en route to the Westside thanks to certain politicians, was originally going to be named the "Metro Orange Line"). The 25-cent one-way fare remained in effect until the second segment opened.

How did people react? The Los Angeles Times  wrote articles about how riding in a subway was a strange new paradigm. Many people were leery of being in the tunnels during an earthquake (despite undamaged subways in other earthquake-prone cities like San Francisco, Mexico City and Tokyo) and others thought the whole thing was a $1.4 billion boondoggle and would never go anywhere.

But like the great El DeBarge once said, Time will reveal. A year later, the Northridge Earthquake caused only miniscule cosmetic damage and no structural harm. Within a few months, thousands of Downtown workers suddenly discovered that they were just 25 cents and a couple minutes away from the best pastrami in town, and injected new life into a once-floundering Westlake delicatessen, right across the street from the subway's western terminus. In 1994, The Red Line got its silver screen debut playing a supporting role to Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock in the transit porno flick Speed. After the Wilshire segment opened in '96, The Red Line got its real Hollywood premiere in the summer of 1999 with five new stations along Vermont Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard. And a year after that, the subway as designed was finally completed, speeding underneath the Santa Monica Mountains and reaching North Hollywood. People voted for more rail and more subways. Some politicians boasted having a Subway To The Sea as other electeds undid the Wilshire tunneling ban. Park N Ride lots in the Valley became full. The only haters were Libertarians and those yellow-shirted folks who blindly spout their "rail is racist" tirades. But subways are here to stay, yo.

Come 2023, our subway will be 30 years old - and will (hopefully) reach the Westside. Our first subway, the 1-mile trolley bypass tunnel built for the Pacific Electric, itself lasted 30 years. But this time it's for keeps.

If you can, wish our subway a "Happy Birtthday" by riding the Red Line today. It opened up people to new communities and new ways of travel. It even helped open up whole communities itself. It opened up even more possibilities in the city of many possibilities.

Go Metro, it's yo birthday...Happy 20th, Metro Red Line! 

Secrets of the Metro: Wilshire/Vermont's 'Metro PCS'

One of The Militant's favorite Metro Rail subway stations is Wilshire/Vermont, because it's so different. First off, it's the only 'junction' station in the subway, being the diverging point for the Red and Purple lines. Also, because of that, it's the only stations where the tracks run parallel on top of each other (as opposed to the perpendicular nature of the 7th Street/Metro Center and the Imperial/Wilmington/Rosa Parks/Willowbrook/MLK Medical Center/Metro Central Control/Dennys stations. It's the only Metro Red/Purple line station to have a weekly farmer's market at street level (Though The Militant recently learned that one will also be coming to Hollywood/Western this Spring). It also sports the looooooooooooongest escalators in the state of California.

But most of all (and the whole dang point of this blog post), is the fact that it's the only Metro subway station that offers cell phone coverage.

Kinda sorta.

Metro bus and light rail riders currently enjoy chatting, texting, surfing and Tweeting from their phones during their journeys, and most of the time it makes the long ride a bit more enjoyable (unless you're not on the phone and sitting in close proximity to someone who's yapping louder on a call than they would talk to someone in person...). Even the Blue Line offers a place to charge one's mobile device.

But Red and Purple line riders do not have that privilege. Those QR codes on the subway car advertisements are useless. This all may or may not change in the near future though.

Some frequent riders who board at Wilshire/Vermont know what's up though. They can talk, text, Tweet and surf from 120 feet below the street - the deepest station in the entire system.  Because of the particular design of the station, which lacks a proper mezzanine level that would buffer cellphone signals from the surface, mobile users are able to get coverage here.

Cellphone reception is best near the escalators on either level, but if you're sitting on the train and your car is situated close to the escalators during your stop. you can send out that text or Tweet you were suddenly inspired to write while immersed in the zen of the whooshing of tunnel air and the acceleration and deceleration of the train's electric motors (Hey, at least The Militant finds those sounds to be soothing...).

So there you go Metro subway riders...you can use your mobile phone in at least one station. Of course, in that not-too-far-off future when those calming subway noises make way for the cacophony of People Yapping Too Damn Loud and the annoying din of Really Awful Ringtones, y'all gonna look back fondly at the days when only one station gave you the privilege of cell phone usage.

And lookie here, there's even a plug for you to charge up!