Busted for Jaywalking!

Introduction

During a recent business trip to Irvine, in southern California (motto: “The other, lesser California”), I was pulled over by a motorcycle cop—while walking. He gave me a long, brain-freezing lecture and a ticket for jaywalking. The fine is close to $200. I’m going to fight it via a written testimonial. This is my rough draft. Very rough.

Appeal to Citation #[———], Superior Court of California, County of Orange

I humbly request that my citation for Section Statute 21955 VC (Jaywalking) be dismissed, on the grounds that it’s complete nonsense.

First of all, $200 is really steep for a victimless crime. If I’m driving a car in an unsafe manner, I’m endangering others—I get that. I understand that driving a car is a privilege, and that by obtaining my Driver License I am agreeing in advance to follow the vehicle code. Walking, however, is not a privilege. It is a God-given right, pre-dating all laws and societies, and I never agreed to anything when I first put one foot in front of the other at age two. What right do you have to fine people for not walking how you’d like them to? When’s the last time a pedestrian hurt anybody?

Moreover, holding my Driver License or Vehicle Registration hostage if I skip out on this fine is totally baseless. How can you restrict my driving privilege on the grounds of any misbehavior I committed when not driving a motor vehicle? What’s next, suspending my license due to moral or intellectual turpitude? And if you actually make it impossible to register my car, which my wife shares, you are punishing her as well, along with our two kids. Why stop there? Why not go after my brothers, my cousins, nieces, nephews, and our parents? It’s insupportable and absurd.

The motorcycle cop who came after me—long after I committed my misdeed, which suggests you’re using video cameras to crack down on errant pedestrians, which is bizarrely inappropriate—has already subjected me to a long safety lecture which was, I feel it safe to say, humiliating to the cop and me both. So haven’t I suffered enough? The lecture insulted my intelligence because the cop said, “Safety is a two-way street. I can’t protect you if you don’t obey the law.” Protect me? When’s the last time a cop protected a pedestrian? There is nothing a cop can do to protect a pedestrian except perhaps block an intersection, which he would never do. Pedestrians are utterly defenseless in an era of increasingly distracted drivers.

Since when do cops protect anybody, for that matter? They only show up after an accident and occasionally assign penalties, and maybe call in the actual paramedics who try to mitigate the bodily damage. When’s the last time you saw a cop and thought, “Oh, thank goodness”? The vast majority of the time, seeing a cop approach you is a basic “Oh, shit!” moment. But this was not always the case. Cops used to be respected members of the community. They walked their beats, got to know the citizens, and built up some rapport and trust. That all changed when they started driving cars. Now they are just faceless badges, ensconced in vehicles, that go around busting people. (This is not just my own supposition. A college history course I took devoted a couple of weeks to the subject of law enforcement, and presented this as a widely accepted assessment.)

The other totally absurd thing about the cop’s safety lecture is that he delivered it while stopped on a six-lane thoroughfare that had no shoulder. I was up on the sidewalk at least, but he was right out there in the road, absolutely at the mercy of the cars whizzing by. Anybody drunk, texting, or otherwise distracted could have just wiped this guy out. As annoying as the cop was, I did not want to see him get run over, so I was cringing the whole time. And you wanna talk about reckless? This guy is riding around this congested megalopolis on a motorcycle forty hours a week! What, is he fricking crazy?! Who is he to lecture me about safety? I was tempted to ask him, “Does your mother know what you do for a living?” But of course I couldn’t, because you just can’t mouth off to cops.

And that’s the most degrading part of all. I had to try to be all contrite and docile, in the vain hope that he’d let me off the hook. I tried my best, but I’m sure he caught a whiff of contempt—even if he didn’t catch mine. I’m sure he didn’t feel this was his finest moment, pontificating to this hapless pedestrian, sensing the passing cars snickering at both of us. I’m sure when he dreamed of being a motorcycle cop—a dream based on watching CHiPs, needless to say—he was thinking he’d be catching bad guys, solving actual crimes, and being a hero. He’d watched Erik Estrada in that one CHiPs episode dancing onstage to “Celebration” and thought maybe he himself also had what it takes. I doubt he figured he’d one day find himself taking his life in his hands merely to slap the wrist of the only person stupid enough to try to walk somewhere in southern California.

By the way, the cop was apparently unaware of how egregious your fines are. I asked for an estimate and he said, “Well, the ticket itself is only like $20, but then you get all the local and state governments piling on, with all these extra fees, so it ends up being like $85.” He acted like this was a real shame, the result of a bloated government apparatus that was a hindrance to us both, when of course he had the option to let me go with just a warning. Maybe if he’d known it was $200 he’d have spared me the ticket, or at least the lecture.

Now, let’s get back to this safety-as-a-two-way street business. You, the so-called Superior Court, see fit to fine me for behavior that put my own safety at risk, but actually, you are going after the wrong party. If you really want justice, challenge a road and sidewalk layout that discourages walking, and seek out the city planners that make walking legally in your county a unreasonably inconvenient thing to do. The setup of your roads and sidewalks is actually putting pedestrians like me in far greater danger than we ourselves ever could.

Yes, I crossed a street in the middle, rather than at an intersection—I admit it. You know why I did it? Well, I was walking along the sidewalk, which was unpleasant enough because all your streets are like highways—nothing even slightly resembling a residential street seems to exist in Irvine—and suddenly the sidewalk just ended. I found myself walking along in the plants growing alongside the road, literally off in the weeds, with nothing between me and the cars. This is not only unpleasant, but unsafe. Why provide a sidewalk for like half of a long stretch of roadway and then suddenly end it? What city engineer masterminded that design? Or did the city or county just run over budget with the sidewalk half built? Or maybe the construction guys got sick of building it?

(Here is a photo of what I’m talking about. No, it’s not the scene of the crime, which location I’m not sure of because your cop pulled me over far away from where I committed my transgression. Meanwhile, I didn’t know I’d be ensnared in your legal imbroglio at the time so I didn’t photograph the civic inadequacy. I snapped the below photo later, in another location which was equally representative of what I’m talking about. One more thing: I jaywalked in broad daylight, not at night.)

So yeah, I could have turned around and walked a quarter mile back to the previous intersection, but to be honest, I just didn’t feel like it. I was not enjoying my walk whatsoever and just wanted to get it over with. I was like, “Okay, Irvine, you win! I won’t walk anymore! I didn’t understand before! I get that you hate pedestrians!” I had come to understand why I was almost the only pedestrian in the entire city, unless you count the quasi-homeless-looking woman I saw herding her small child the day before. But as it happened, an instance of amazing fortuity presented itself: in both directions, all the traffic was stuck behind red lights off in the distance, giving me ample time to cross the road to the other side where there was a sidewalk. I calculated that no believable rate of acceleration could bring either wall of cars in range of hitting me. I was in a position to manage my risk very effectively.

Crossing a road in this situation, I believed in the moment and continue to believe, is a safer scenario than crossing at an intersection, where motorists are allowed to turn right whenever they deem it safe. It’s up to them to look for pedestrians in the intersection, and in SoCal the motorists do a very poor job of this. Why? Because there are hardly ever pedestrians in your sprawling, poorly planned so-called community! We’re about as common as space aliens! In pretty much any intersection in your wretched county, I am putting myself at the mercy of people who have all but forgotten pedestrians exist. Your jaywalking law essentially mandates that I outsource my safety to complete strangers who routinely neglect to use their turn signals, fail to pay attention, and have been taught to believe cars are “the heartbeat of America” and that driving is some kind of game.

When I ponder the fact that you’re slapping me down for my measly infraction, in support of a civic engineering apparatus that demonstrates not just incompetence but practical contempt for safety, I almost throw up in my mouth. You know what’s dangerous? These labyrinths of asphalt, more than driveways but not quite roads, that connect the giant boulevards to the scattered buildings within the bloated office parks dotting your sprawling landscape. Even Google Maps can’t really make sense of these little connectors. Once you’ve parked your car, you have to cross first the giant parking lot, then these twisty quasi-roads, and this is far, far more dangerous than what I did, which was merely crossing a straight road at a perpendicular.  When drivers try to navigate these rats’ nests of tarmac, they get very confused, and end up paying more attention to their GPS screens than to what’s in front of their cars.

You want proof? I took three Ubers during my brief visit to Irvine. The first Uber driver had to crane her neck quite a bit, and stopped dead in the roadway at various intervals, but nonetheless managed to find her way around. But the next two Uber drivers, despite their navigation systems, managed to get very lost indeed. I submit to you Exhibits A and B.

In both cases I watched their groping progress on my phone. That first guy found himself navigating a loop to nowhere. The second guy missed a turn and ended up driving a long way in one direction, making a 90-degree left, driving another long distance—trapped by a little road to nowhere and having to make a U-turn at the end and backtrack both long stretches before getting back on track. Now consider that all these little roads are eclipsed by parked cars, and that you’ve got people walking diagonally across these vague unmarked spaces, without a sidewalk to be seen anywhere. It’s like Frogger on LSD! For you to pretend that you’ve figured out not just a safe way, but the safe way for a person on foot to navigate this automotive nightmare, and that anybody who strays from this safe scheme deserves to be heavily fined—well, it’s like something out of a darkly satirical work of dystopian fiction.

If real justice were to be served, it would involve evacuating your irreparably screwed up county, bulldozing everything in it, and then bringing in intelligent, learned city planners from a properly functioning city—I’m thinking perhaps San Francisco or Amsterdam—and just starting over. Then you could have a place where people aren’t driving fifteen minutes or more to every destination, putting up with constantly bad traffic, and voicelessly accepting an asphalt tyranny that leaves no room for responsible transit like walking and bicycling. By starting over from scratch, you might actually develop a community where people can enjoy getting around. But instead, what do you do? You put in surveillance cameras so you can punish pedestrians for not complying with your absurdist, half-baked, ultimately utterly benighted “safety” principles! You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Obviously there’s nothing practical for the Superior Court of California, County of Orange, to do about a massive civic problem that has been steadily building for decades. You could, however, admit the farcical error inherent in punishing me for your community’s sins, by dismissing my case and striking it from the record. Thank you for your consideration.

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From the Archives - BART Opinion "Card"

Introduction

For the first five years I lived in the Bay Area, I had no car and depended on the excellent Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system. It’s easy to use when you get the hang of it, but when I first started using it, I was clueless. Worse, I was anxious about it, I guess, and really wasn’t very resourceful when it came to studying the map, looking for schedules, etc. I didn’t understand the time-saving benefits of transfers, either, and I wasn’t even thoughtful enough to bring a book. Probably I was just so dazzled by it all, my brain couldn’t do anything right.

Over the last couple of decades, BART has improved quite a bit: its reach has grown (most significantly, it now goes all the way to the San Francisco International Airport), its ticket machines work better and accept credit cards, and its website is very easy to use (which helps the newcomer understand about train transfers and such). But even back in 1990 BART was a much better system than the following letter suggests. What you are about to read started out a handwritten response to a survey, but quickly I ran out of paper and it morphed into something like a short story.

I actually did get a response from BART to this letter/survey/story, but it was absolutely the most rote, boilerplate response possible. If somebody had scrawled in the margin, “There are plenty of schedules at the customer service kiosk, you dope,” that would have been very helpful. Anyway, I forwarded my letter (and the response) to some family members and friends, some of whom couldn’t believe that the remarkable events described my letter really happened. I swear to you that it’s all true—I didn’t make up or embellish anything.



BART opinion card — August 28, 1990

The little blue card says:

Your Opinions Count!

We’d like to know which of BART’s services you especially appreciate and how you think we could make BART better for you.

This is what I like about BART:

Riding BART is nostalgic, reminding me of my past family vacations when your electric trains were more a novelty, like an amusement park ride, than merely a means of transportation. Rockridge station is only two blocks from my apartment so I can walk there. I like that you let me take my bike on BART so I can go out east of the Oakland hills for the only flat bike ride I’m likely to get around here. BART is clean and quiet and allows people to travel without completely polluting the air and becoming freeway zombies who occasionally spring to life from their drowsy half-comas to cuss at other drivers, make frantic obscene gestures, and even cut each other off because they’re so frustrated at being trapped in a little steel box that can’t move because of all the other single-occupancy rolling motels.

This is what I don’t like about BART:

I don’t like how you people don’t give out schedules and maps. The other day I ran into your station, running because I had no idea whether I had thirty seconds or twenty minutes to catch your next train. I arrived at the depot just in time for your train to arrive. As the doors opened for a few brief, precious seconds (this time should be lengthened!), I suddenly realized I had never before commuted on your trains from the Shattuck station (or whatever it’s called—I can’t check to see because you don’t give out schedules or maps) and didn’t know what direction I had to travel in to transfer to the Walnut Creek station. So in my moment of hesitation, not wanting to get on the wrong train, the doors closed and I missed the train. Sometimes I can find schedules posted in your stations, sometimes not.

I decided to ride my bike up to my apartment, drop it off, and try to make the next train from the Rockridge station. I ran the few blocks between my apartment and the station, feeling like an idiot because I was just sure I’d make it with fifteen minutes to spare and have gotten all sweaty for nothing. Did I mention my shorts were falling down, too? All because I didn’t know when the next train left. I got to the station and tried to add some fare to my ticket. Your machine wouldn’t take my bills. You know those incredibly crisp, new twenties the Automatic Teller Machines give out? Well you can’t get singles, just twenties, that are that crisp. So why do your machines seem to demand them? My bills were pretty good, I thought. I’ve fed change machines in video arcades much more weathered bills than that.

Anyway, you can guess what happened: by the time I gave up, resolving to get better bills later, I ran up the escalator and just missed my second train of the day. We’re talking a matter of seconds here. There’s nothing more frustrating than barely missing your train. I once saw this scenario played out by somebody else while I waited safely inside the train. The poor, irate sod just started beating the side of your train, clubbing it with his foot. Can’t your drivers stop the train for people like that? This was the second time in as many weeks that your ticket machines had made me miss my train.

I guess it wouldn’t be so bad if your depots weren’t such a hell on earth. I mean, you’re suspended on this platform that looks like something from the Death Star, sandwiched between two roaring freeways, protected yet trapped by link fences like a caged animal. There’s absolutely nothing to do—maybe you can read the business section of the paper that somebody left behind, or you can look at the cold cement structures or beyond the fence at the fuming cars, or listen to the honking horns and blaspheming drivers. But that’s no way to spend twenty minutes just because you didn’t have a schedule to consult before making your way to the station.

Perhaps you feel as though I’m just nitpicking for the sake of whining, but bear with me, as my BART story is not quite done yet. The same day I missed two of your trains, I was returning from Walnut Creek on the 11:55pm train, and at the station I even asked the attendant which set of tracks the train for Rockridge would arrive on. Well, I waited my fifteen minutes or so (resting after my ridiculous and inevitable sprint to the station) and felt greatly relieved that I would make the last train after all. (I had called your number in the yellow pages asking for schedule information, and your operator sounded like she’d been asleep, or on Valium or something, and gave me very vague information.)

In the station I found a section of the paper that wasn’t too boring, having some comics and whatnot, and this cutesy columnist had asked various people to describe the worst date they’d ever been on. One response was so fitting I even clipped it, and at the risk of copyright infringement, I will share it with you now: “Michelle Garber, 28, legal secretary, Moraga: The date itself wasn’t so bad. We just ended up drinking, and I lost track of time. We parted, and I discovered I had missed the last BART train to the East Bay. I had to spend the night at Carl’s Jr. with the bums drinking coffee all night. I didn’t call my date. I felt too stupid and embarrassed.”

I had just shared this funny article with a well-dressed, young executive-looking woman when the roar of the train shocked us both into that state of stomach-churning paranoia that comes from having only five seconds to get through the doors of the train. Suddenly a calm, perfunctory-sounding announcement came over the loud-speaker: “Attention riders bound for Daly City: the Daly City train will arrive on the Concord platform.” One of your employees came running out of his little kiosk, frantically waving his arms in the universal symbol for “Run! Run!” We watched, spellbound, as seconds later the train slid in on the far tracks, across the huge cement trench of the near tracks—and more importantly, across the dreaded Electric Third Rail. Had I been Indiana Jones, I would’ve swung across on my whip, but alas, I’m a mere college student, so I ran after my hapless co-passengers, risking life and limb to run down the escalator, across the station, and up the other side.

One well-dressed young businessman walked confidently, sure that the train would be held since BART had, after all, screwed up. Perhaps I could have made better time, but I found myself behind the executive woman, who was actually running astonishingly quickly for somebody in high heels. The horror! For the third time in a day, the train roared off blindly, just outrunning three panting and hugely disgruntled would‑be passengers.

Adding to my pathetic fate, one of them—a woman far less sophisticated than the high-heeled executive sprinter—screamed, “Noooooooooo!” almost right in my ear. To my bewilderment, she then threw herself down on the floor and started shaking, even wriggling, as if a pre-teen having a tantrum. I think she was vying for attention from the goony guy she’d run up the escalator with, who looked like one of the guys in my high-school shop class who was out of high‑ school now and working in a factory de-burring plastic parts or something. He had these fingerless gloves that I couldn’t figure out.

Whatever buttons the shrieking woman was pressing were the right ones for him, boy. She had on this all-black Lycra outfit with some kind of vinyl jacket or something, and way too much makeup. The over-confident businessman had arrived now, and seemed more than surprised at the inability or refusal of your people to hold the train for us. I guess maybe he wasn’t the standard businessman; his clothes were stylish but not office-formal. L.A. Gear shoes, actually. Handsome—a good match for Executive Woman. A nice pair of pairs, those two and the shrieking woman/shop guy combo. Where do I fit in, then? Well, somebody has to pay attention to the trains and fill out the little blue card telling you guys our opinions.

We all went down to talk to the guys in the kiosk, and one of them said, “I been working here eighteen years and this kind of crap has happened all along.” The other guy was making a phone call to see what the deal was. He came out and said, “Well, all I accomplished was to have the guy on the other end demand an apology. Say’s I’m not man enough to give him one.” I’m not making any of this up, I swear. I envisioned the five of us spending the rest of the night in a Carl’s Jr. drinking black, stinking coffee.

Fortunately, there was one more train. I was going to propose that we roshambo to see who had to throw himself down on the Electric Third Rail in case of a repeat track screw-up, but the two couples seemed to be hitting it off well and I didn’t want to disturb them. Classy Guy was describing a jazz festival he’d just seen to Executive Woman, who then began talking about the amazing watermelon daiquiris her thirteen-year-old nephew had somehow learned to make. Shrieking Woman and Shop Guy went out for a smoke. Then we all went back up to the platform to try our luck at the next train, and Classy Guy produced the Sunday Chronicle. He read our horoscopes, and we chatted away, while Shop Guy and Shrieking Woman had drifted off and seemed to hit it off in a more, uh, profound way. Two minutes before the train was due, they made for the escalator. “Wait!” cried Executive Woman. “Where are you going?” Shop Guy looked over at her and said, “To a motel.” Confused, she said, “Why?” and then Shrieking Woman gave her a little knowing wink. After they left, Classy Guy said, “What do you mean, why? Where have you been, don’t you know about motels?”

We all had a good laugh, and then Executive Woman and I had more laughs trying to figure out why Shrieking Woman had been flipping around on the floor like a fish out of water after missing the train. Finally the train came, on the right tracks, and on the trip home Classy Guy read the Prince Valiant comic aloud, in his best low deejay voice, while Executive Woman acted out the parts for us in the seat beside him.

As I left the train at Rockridge, Classy Guy said, “Parting is such sweet sorrow,/ That I shall say good night till it be morrow.” How could I match his wit? “Ah, William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Scene II,” I said. Then Executive Woman told me, “I’ll bet this is a ride train you won’t soon forget.” I think she’d mentioned having had wine earlier. “You mean train ride,” I said. I left BART with high hopes for Classy Guy and Executive Woman; after all, they had all the way to Daly City to become Classy Couple.

Obviously, everything had turned out for the best, but that’s not the point. What if, for company during my ordeal, I’d only had Shop Guy, or Shrieking Woman, or yet worse, both? I guess what I mainly don’t like about BART is its unpredictability. So print up a few hundred thousand schedules. Hold a train for a guy down on his luck every now and then. Fix your machines to take less-than-perfect dollar bills. And if your train is going to end up on the wrong side of the tracks late on a Saturday night, for God’s sake give us a phone call so we won’t have to worry!

London - Part Two

oooooo
Introduction

Don’t worry, I don’t kid myself that you care as much about my London vacation as I do, and I know I don’t have the luxury of a captive slide-show audience, and that you can alt-tab to any of a number of different PC applications the second your interest begins to flag. So I’ve tried to keep this post relatively brief, interesting, funny, macabre, and pictorial throughout. I also refrained from using the phrase “across the pond.” A word about the photos: I tried out medium size, which I'm not that happy with; you can click on these to zoom in for a better view. [Note: this post is rated PG-13 for described violence and adult themes.]

Jet lag

Jet lag hit us hard. The first few nights saw Erin and me waking up, bolt upright, variously between 1:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. This led to some atrocious sleeping in when we should have been touring London. We have come to dread bedtime, and Alexa, having come across a Magic 8-Ball in the house we’re staying in, has made a tradition of asking it, every night, “Will we sleep well tonight?” So far it’s been pretty accurate (e.g., “Don’t count on it,” “Better not tell you now”).

For me, the worst jet lag came on my third night, when I got so desperate I started counting sheep. Just counting, of course, wouldn’t be counting sheep, so I try to picture them jumping over a fence, but this can get complicated. The first few sheep were cartoon sheep. Then they morphed into these stuffed sheep toys my dad bought one year to give to certain women back in the mid-‘80s. They were almost completely round sheep, with four perfectly cylindrical legs all clustered together. Then my mind swapped these out for pretty realistic sheep, which was fine until it hit me—could these be lambs, or goats? In other words, am I doing this wrong? What’s the difference between a sheep, a lamb, and a goat, anyway? A few bearded billy goats jumped over the fence and increased my doubt. Then I got back to wooly, lamb-esque sheep jumping over, but my under-stimulated mind contrived all these crazy camera angles, and the super-slow-mo effects from “The Matrix.” Meanwhile I absolutely couldn’t keep a straight count. Despite two hours of this I never broke a thousand, even though I’m pretty sure I skipped a few hundred here and there.

Ealing

The house we’re staying in is in Ealing, which is a suburb of London. (One person here said that all of the UK is a suburb of London.) But it’s not just any suburb; it’s the Queen of the Suburbs:

We haven’t yet seen any of the sites on this postcard. The official website for Ealing notes, of the Hoover Building, that an architecture critic called it “perhaps the most offensive of the modernistic atrocities along this road of typical bypass factories.” (I love this English self-deprecating impulse.) Anyway, Ealing is a fine place, and located very strategically, about halfway between the Heathrow airport and the center of London.

Mass transit

The London subway is the oldest in the world, and with around 300 stations and 250 miles of track, it’s one of the largest. We paid a bunch of money for week-long all-u-can-eat Oyster cards, and we’ve been taking it everywhere. It’s got a good website, and (my early struggles described in my previous post notwithstanding) I’d say it’s pretty easy to use. The longest we’ve had to wait for a train has been about five minutes, and usually it’s been shorter than that. (My only complaint is the cost, which is about $55 a week, compared to $45 a month for the San Francisco equivalent. Part of this is our anemic dollar, which has dropped almost 20% against the pound since March.)

Of course, the underground, being pretty utilitarian, doesn’t thrill the kids like the double-decker bus does. The bus is all Alexa talked about the first day, and we promised her we’d get home on one after some grocery shopping. When the bus that arrived wasn’t double-decker, poor Alexa wept. So the next day we fixed that, by taking the underground to Kensington Gardens and then riding double-decker buses all around the area. Here, the girls about to take their first trip:


Note how the woman in the movie billboard on that bus is juxtaposed with what appears to be a severed head. As you shall see, beheading will be a theme throughout our London visit.

We boarded the bus, swiped our Oyster cards (all the mass transit in London uses this contactless card, something Bart is just now beta-testing), and headed upstairs. I’m sure tempted to write “found my way upstairs and had a smoke,” like in the Beatles song, but I don’t smoke, and I don’t think they allow it anymore on the buses anyway. Here are the girls enjoying their front-row seats (and pretending the yellow bar is a steering wheel).

Here we are in front of Kensington Palace (which we didn’t tour because it’d have been like fifty bucks):

Tower of London

The next day we toured the Tower of London, a famous fortress, palace, and prison built during the 11th and 12th centuries. We arrived just in time for a guided tour by a guy in a Beefeater costume. We were forbidden to photograph the tour guide, who was an ornery, funny former military man (twenty years in the service being one of the requirements for being a Tower tour guide). His lecture focused on the executions that went on in the Tower and on the adjacent Tower Hill. I hope my kids weren’t paying attention, because here is my best stab at rendering his most interesting tale:

ooooo“How many of you have heard of James Scott? Nobody? Good. You will, after what I’m about to tell you. He led the unsuccessful Monmouth Rebellion, attempting to dethrone James II, and was sentenced to be publically beheaded. Now, in London in those days, a public beheading was considered entertainment. All the schools were closed and families would pack a picnic and head out to Tower Hill to watch. It was a grand day out for all but one person.
ooooo“The executioner wasn’t actually paid anything for doing this job. His pay normally came from the person being executed, kind of like a tip paid in advance. It was thought that this payment ensured that death would be swift and merciful. But James Scott, being a nobleman, refused to pay anything. Whether or not this was the reason, the execution did not go well. Normally, one blow of the axe took the head clean off and that was it—it was stuck on a spear and paraded around and the thing was done. But in this case, the first blow came down on Scott’s shoulder blade. He turned his head and said to executioner, ‘If you miss again, I cannot guarantee I will remain still.’
ooooo“Unfortunately for him, the next blow landed on his head. The one after that hit the neck, but only went in about two inches. All told it took about half a dozen blows to finish him off. And for some reason, instead of putting his head on a spear they sewed it back onto his body and paraded that around. Probably all your children will have nightmares now. By the way, I’m available for babysitting.”

I won’t go into the vivid description of the beheading of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife, because I don’t want to spoil the surprise should you decide to rent the DVD.

Not all of the tour focused on executions, of course. For example, our guide described how Sir Walter Raleigh spent thirteen years imprisoned at the Tower, and was tortured daily (“by having his wife in there with him, and all she wanted to talk about was feelings”). And there was this tidbit about ravens: for superstitious reasons, Charles II issued a royal decree that the Tower must always have ravens. Specifically, it must have six at all times. Today, perhaps as a response to 9/11, it has nine. We saw a couple of them.

We went through a breathtakingly long line to see the crown jewels. There were loads of scepters and crowns and whatnot, encrusted with so many jewels they looked fake. The jewels must have been much more impressive before little toy-vending machines and Cracker Jack prizes came along.

Then we went to the “Henry VIII: Dressed to Kill” exhibit. From this picture, you can get an idea of one of the more surprising features of his armor:

They didn’t allow photography in the exhibit, which is a real shame, because the, uh, athletic cup feature of the armor was extraordinary. The armor itself was very interesting and sophisticated, but couldn’t help taking a back seat to the, uh, generous endowment provided for Henry VIII’s junk. Was he known to get, er, stimulated during battle?

oooo

Finally I realized what was going on. This was a guy who must have had a pretty big ego—after all, he created the Church of England, breaking all ties with Catholicism, just so he could marry Anne Boleyn—and was certainly ruthless, having had two of his wives beheaded. If I were building armor for him, the last thing I’d want to do is appear to underestimate the size of his, uh, packet. And once the armor was ready, I’m sure Henry VIII wasn’t about to say, “You made the cup too big. I don’t need that much room.” Anyhow, the best I can do for a photo was this one, taken in the gift shop, of some lesser man’s armor. Note that the, uh, pouch in this armor isn’t nearly the size of what Henry VIII’s armor had. Note also how this other tourist seems to be admiring it.

The other noteworthy thing about this exhibit was the last suit of armor built for Henry VIII, when he was in his forties and looking to wear it in a tournament of some kind. All the dimensions were given for each suit, so we know that his waist had gone from 36 inches to 48. Not that we needed the numbers: the suit was astonishing in its girth. Jack Black would have been swimming in it. It was really sad, actually, looking at the giant belly section, immortalized in steel. That poor king. And what’s worse, he was so dissipated and slovenly by this point that he never even wore the suit. Ah, "th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame” (to quote a decidedly more slender 16th-century Englishman).

It’s hard to guess how much attention my kids were paying to the Tower tour. I can tell that Lindsay did grasp something of Henry VIII’s importance, because last night she said to me, “Fa-fa, it’s time to ask the Henry the Eighth Ball if we’ll sleep well tonight!”

Tower environs

After leaving the Tower, we had lunch and then walked around the area. (A note about the food in London: this will get its own blog post in the next week or two.) First we checked out the Tower Bridge. This is a much bigger deal than the London Bridge of the children’s song. (They’re very close together, both crossing the Thames.) The Tower bridge has a drawbridge for the taller ships. Photos:

From there we found some groovy church with a rock sculpture. The way the kids flocked to that rock, you’d think they’d been starved of play, which I guess they actually had:

In any other place this church would probably be a pretty big deal, and maybe it is, but there are so many groovy churches in the London area I can’t keep them all straight. From here it was a short trip to the replica Globe theater, built on the original site where Shakespeare’s plays were performed. Tours cost money and we didn’t go in. We proceeded to the Tate Modern to check out some modern art. Actually, we went there because it was free and we badly needed a restroom. We did check out some of the exhibits, but the really cool-sounding ones cost money. Photography is not allowed in the Tate so I have nothing for you to look at except its Orwellian exterior. If you grasp that Alexa’s evident enthusiasm is ironic, then you will doubtless agree this would make a good album cover:

Buckingham Palace

The next day we set out to watch the Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace. We’re not huge fans of the royalty, nor of quasi-military procedure; rather, this was more of a literary pilgrimage, based on our love of the A.A. Milne poem:

oooooThey’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
oooooChristopher Robin went down with Alice.
oooooAlice is marrying one of the guard.
ooooo“A soldier's life is terrible hard,”
oooooSays Alice.

(If you have kids and haven’t read this poem in When We Were Very Young, you need to go get that book, and its companion Now We Are Six, before I report you to the authorities.)

We waited in line for over an hour at the gates of Buckingham Palace, among vast throngs of other tourists. Had they opened the gates at any point, it probably would have been like the concert stampede scene in “Pink Floyd – The Wall.” But at no point did they open the gates. At the appointed time, a lot of soldiers in funny hats arrived, many of them playing instruments, others carrying machine guns with bayonets, others comprising a marching band. They paraded around out front and then entered through a side gate.

The actual changing of the guard was very complicated, with no play-by-play from anybody, so we had no idea what was going on. It lasted for a really long time, and it was hard for Erin and me to see anything. Our kids had a great view from our shoulders; Alexa got this shot:

About the only other thing of note is that the band played the song “Dancing Queen” by ABBA. At that point, exhausted, we left. After lunch, we headed over to Westminster Abbey:

It cost fifty bucks to get in, so we didn’t. (Note that the coolest museum in the U.S., the Smithsonian, is free. Just sayin’.)

Across the street was the House of Parliament. The tall tower is where, according to Erin, all the paper copies of the laws are kept. Of course these could all fit on a single DVD, but that’s not the point. Anyhow, this is a huge complex of buildings that was really hard to get into a single photo. Between the first two, you get the idea. More about the third photo later.

Here’s a close-up of Big Ben, which you doubtless recognized in the previous two photos:

The London Eye

From here we walked across the Westminster Bridge and headed down to the London Eye (originally called the Millennium Wheel), which is basically the world’s largest Ferris wheel, if you could call it that. According to the official website it was built in 2000 “as a metaphor for the end of the 20th century.” (Based on how much it cost to ride—about $3/minute for our family—I’d say there was another motive as well. By my rough calculations, I’d guess it brings in about $500,000 per day.) Until about a week ago I’d never heard of this thing. I have to say, it’s pretty dang cool. It took seven years to build. It weighs 2,100 tons. It takes you about 450 feet up. It takes half an hour per revolution. And what’s especially impressive is that passengers, 25 to a pod, get on and off without the wheel having to stop.

Before our “flight,” as they call it, we watched a “4-D” movie promoting it. (Why they promote the thing after you’ve already bought tickets is beyond me.) The 4-D technology involves a special, enhanced version of 3-D glasses:

What’s special about the glasses is, obviously, that they look so good. But they’re not actually involved in the 4-D aspect of the technology. Here’s what 4-D is all about: you watch a movie that has several 3-D elements, like a seagull flying in your face or bubbles swarming at you out of nowhere, and the bubbles are—get this—real! So what you think is a super-hi-tech illusion is actually, well, what you’re really seeing. (I cheated by removing my glasses at a key moment.) For some reason you also get splashed with water during the movie. Maybe this is a sanitary way of conveying the idea of seagulls defecating on you.

Anyway, to focus solely on the 4-D bit is to fail to appreciate the real cinematic integrity of the film. It pays patent homage to “The Red Balloon,” using a non-narrated, dialog-free story of a little girl going on the London Eye with her father. What we see is from her perspective (if she had a helicopter for parts of it), and at the end she gives her dad a big hug: a stark contrast to her reserved, almost Germanic coldness at the beginning. The message is not hard for an experienced, insightful moviegoer to interpret: if you take your daughter on the London Eye she will love you a little more. Does it work? Yes, I think so. My children do seem to love me more, now that they’ve been on the London Eye and I’ve answered their questions about the movie.

But with no further ado, here are the photos. One London Eye photo you’ve already seen: the third House of Parliament photo above.

If this were truly a full-service blog, I’d include all the photos I took, annotated to show the great many points of interest. But I pay for server space on this blog, and besides, I’m tired, and you’re tired, so let’s just wrap this up. Stay tuned for my next installment, Oxford & the Cotswolds, coming soon to albertnet.