Conveyance

Have you heard the one about the L.A. Christmas lights? It goes like this: The whole city is aglow like Candy Cane Lane. Thousands of red tail lights make you squint on the freeways. Hundreds of white — and frustratingly, blue — high beams fill in for the nonexistent street lamps on so-called “quiet” blocks. The nightly commute is brilliant in its composition. The best part? In January, the decorations don’t come down.

The city is in a constant state of congestion. We yearn for a brief hiatus, but distrust it even when it comes. It’s not just you: Even Google seems genuinely confused. On one of the biggest travel days of the year, LAX to Silver Lake clocked in at a whopping half-hour, contrary to the ETA on the algo. The next evening, the navigation was baffled again: Hollywood and Highland appeared clear on the apps when, in fact, it was at a complete standstill in all directions. Could it be that these aren’t isolated incidents? They never are, the traffic truthers insist. Suspicions of big data behavioral analysis studies notwithstanding, it does feel like we are listening to the tune of the irrational. We’re playing too many games on our phones.

Or maybe something else is afoot. Your stepdads and tías in the SGV have long insisted they know the streets better than a system that hasn’t been around longer than Gen Z. Every holiday, they get their best Jamie and Jada cosplay on. Intuition might save a few minutes. But when it doesn’t go their way, even the true believers must admit there are forces beyond their control.

We’ve grown so accustomed to life between these two poles of the inevitable that we often preemptively decide to repress our desire to move. We have places to be but ample reasons to cat. We live to get where we’re going, but dread the parking. We heat-check the drip and it becomes its own reason not to make moves. We check the forecast or get an inkling that there is traffic and we decide to order in.

It wasn’t always this way. The truth — in our most earnest Hotep voice — is that we were once kings and queens of getting active. Open up your third eye, and you'll realize: The process of transporting ourselves from one place to another doesn’t have to be so passive. We could return to being conveyances that fly.

And lo, we present “Conveyance.” Issue 24 — our final issue of Year 3 — is an attempt to help you remember that you can just get up and go. Don’t overthink it. Just keep turning pages. The people we’ve assembled are conveyances here to take you on a journey. Terrace Martin has a story to tell you about his life before and after Sounds of Crenshaw. Briana King, Junior and Robert Neal take you over the fence and inside the L.A. skate scene’s not-so-secret community center: the schoolyard. We’ve also thrown in a few trips down memory lane —to the boxing gym and the red carpet (Hi, Julissa James!) — for good measure. Make sure to stop in front of the step-and-repeat on your way in; Daniel Roseberry is in town and has some fits on deck.

A conveyance gets us from Point A to Point B. Sometimes that’s a literal vehicle — say, a skateboard. Other times, it’s more of a metaphorical vessel. There are many means of being transported. The mode is besides the point. What matters is a willingness to move. Under the bright lights you can be frozen goods. Or you can push into the sunset. “Conveyance” is the energy we on headed into 2024.

Ian F. Blair
Editor in Chief

Image logo by Ivan Alvarado For The Times