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MTA is currently building a beautiful and innovative 14- mile- long Busway that will run from North Hollywood to Woodland Hills and is due to open later in the Fall of 2005.

According to a recent press release: “When complete, the Metro Orange Line will incorporate a host of innovative construction and design features, from advanced traffic light signal priority system to artistically designed transit stations, more than 3,000 parking spaces at five park & ride lots, bicycle and pedestrian paths and native landscaping.”

There are sections of the busway, mostly in Sherman Oaks and Woodland Hills, where grasses, trees and other shrubs have been planted in profusion. However, where the Busway runs through industrial Van Nuys, the plantings seems to have evaporated or have not yet been installed. One hopes that the MTA has not pandered to the wealthy areas of the city by lavishing all the landscaping on those districts–and suddenly run out of money for the Van Nuys leg of the route.

Maybe the construction schedule has arranged for the end points to be finished first and the middle area of Van Nuys to be last. Here in Van Nuys we desperately need the public transportation and convenience of the Busway as well as its civic and natural beauties.

Maureen Dowd is a New York Times columnist with a lead foot prose who often clumsily tries to be glib and profound while aiming arrows at President Bush. Her latest column is “Biking Toward Nowhere”, poking fun at a President who she claims does not have his priorities straight because he golfs and fishes while commanding the military in wartime. Funny that FDR laughed to reporters during World War II and the Holocaust–did that make him an idiot?

Drawing parallels between the elder Bush and his son, she recounts a 1991 incident where the two Bushes were golfing while reporters harrassed them with questions. “Hey, can’t you wait until we finish hitting, at least?” was W’s response to the pests which Dowd termed sarcastically as “having his priorities straight”.

Her explanation for the overthrow of Sadaam and the institution of democracy in the despotic region naturally is Freudian: “The son wanted to go into Iraq to best his Daddy in the history books.” Her imaginery version of psychological truth is deemed more objective (and quite funnier) than that of the Pentagon and the Administration who “can no longer cling to their version of reality”. Dowd has a clear and faultless conception of “reality” assuredly.

This August has provided the media with the dramatic sight of a few dozen protesters standing outside the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas. They have held up signs and planted crosses and spoke about their objections to the Iraq war (a war which also is bundled like an iMAC G5 with other sentimental software issues like the Palestinians).

There is a mother waiting outside of the gates of the President’s ranch, who due to her tragic loss of a soldier son, is now considered an expert by many anti-warriors on how to end the war. If Dowd and others are right about Iraq, perhaps we should have never gone to Baghdad, maybe it was better to just leave Sadaam Hussein in power, even the search for Osama Bin Laden should finally end. Why not just go back to the way things were before 9/11? Do the same hearts who plead for peace understand that the enemy kills hundred of Iraqis a week? Only today, 43 died in one bus terminal explosion in Baghdad!

The bike ride to nowhere is up in the Hollywood Hills, along the boutiques of Madison Avenue, on the breezy island of Nantucket, and in the salons of Beverly Hills. Places where the fashionable and coy Maureen Dowd hangs out. The frivolity and gaiety are on the Op-Ed pages. The deadly business of fighting for civil government, human rights, and the defeat of terror goes on in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Dowd should go on patrol in the Sunni Triangle and bring some Guerlain just in case the tank smells musty.

The deplorable condition of many apartments in Van Nuys is due not only to the residents who live there, but the management companies who refuse to fix broken windows, paint over grafitti, have numerous code violations, and allow garbage to pile up without collection.

Doreen Aljalov of Dare Management oversees the management of many apartments in the San Fernando Valley. One particular property of hers is at the corner of Kester and Sylvan. It is in rotten shape with two broken televisions that were dumped on the side of the building that have sat there for months. Balconies are overflowing with bicycles, furniture, rusted exercise equipment. The front yard is littered with bottles and fast food wrappers from nearby McDonalds. A call to her office brought forth an indifferent reply, “Well the people who live around there, they dump that stuff,” she said. She calls herself, ironically enough, a civic leader and a devoted mother.

When Dare Management and Ms. Ajalov clean up the property, this blog will gladly publish photos and give due credit to her due diligence.

We visited Laurel Avenue in West Hollywood last night and happened to pass an endangered building that has gotten some press lately. “Tara” is the name given to a historic home that was built in 1914 and is now destined to be destroyed.

An eccentric and delightful group of tenants has been living here for many years in a home that is reminiscent of an old New Orleans boarding house–full of books, history, music and characters. Slightly decrepit, it contains mature and wonderful old trees, servants quarters, and a tough but friendly guard dog.

The house was donated to the city of West Hollywood, which in its liberal cruelty has enacted laws protecting pets from being declawed, but allows longtime human tenants to be thrown into the street. Rather than respecting this shady old enclave, with its wonderful mystery and beauty, the “doo-gooders” of the local government are selling the home and property to developers who will build something modern and soulless with the politically noble mission of assisted living for the elderly.

Homes like “Tara” were once part of the fabric of Los Angeles and other American cities. Long before “assisted living”, these communal arrangements helped single people of all ages adjust to the often brutal demands of urban living in a kind and tolerant manner. Now the “gay capital” of the world is demolishing one of the beautiful,non-conforming jewels of area, and replacing it with corporate architectural mediocrity disguised as beneficent kindness.

Its very oddness makes it special and the people who lived and visited “Tara” will miss the tears and laughter that once echoed within these grounds.

On Sunday morning in Van Nuys, at the beginning of another very hot July day, the streets are barely travelled, and people are just getting up. At the do it yourself car wash on Kester and Sherman Way, customers are happily cleaning their cars.

The churches along shady and wide Sherman Way are well attended. Stores along Van Nuys Boulevard, north of Sherman Way are still closed, but seem to be thriving.

At the Hummer storage facility on Arminta, east of Van Nuys Boulevard, the menacing guard in his Lincoln Navigator asked this photographer “What are you doing?” as I stood on the public street and aimed my lens at the SUV’s. “I’m standing on public property that’s what I’m doing!” He answered, as I rode away, “Just remember this is private property!”

Even standing on a public street and taking photos is dangerous these days.