Category: Travels

Stop It, You’re Killing Me

Behind Enemy Lines, Crime

…and if you live in upscale areas in Los Angeles, that might be “literally“:

Crime has risen dramatically in Los Angeles, as well as in many other major cities, since the start of the pandemic and last summer’s protests against police violence resulted in the slashing of many law enforcement budgets. News stories document rising fear across LA and crime has become the major issue in both the upcoming mayor’s election and a possible recall of the district attorney. It may not be surprising that issues of race and class are driving this concern, though they have a new twist.

Wealthy and predominantly white neighborhoods have experienced the sharpest upticks in a wide array of crimes.

It shows that the richer and whiter the area, the greater the increase in both raw crime totals and percentages of total city crime. This includes a wide range of felonies, from robbery, burglary, shoplifting and car theft to aggravated assault and rape.

California voters have moved the needle on crime in recent years. Proposition 47 decriminalized a number of theft and drug charges, making them misdemeanors, as it did several “non-violent” felonies. Voters also approved Proposition 57, which allows for early release of non-violent offenders.

Imagine that:  you vote to decriminalize all sorts of crime, and those types of crime increase and the goblins goes to where da money izz (/Willie Sutton).  Read the article for the breakdowns.

Who could have seen that coming?

Well, nobody except the 70-odd million people who voted for Trump last time around.

And stop giggling like little girls, you lot;  it’s unbecoming.

Heartily Endorsed

Travels

I normally look at these travel articles with a jaundiced eye, as most are just crap.  But here’s one I’ll get behind, in spades:

One lake, four countries: Lake Constance is the perfect way to sample the delights of Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein

…and indeed it is.  We stayed in Konstanz (at the Hoel Petershof), caught the ferry over to Meersburg, and later drove along the Bodensee’s southern shore to get to Bregenz. We loved it so much that we went back to Meersburg on a later trip, and stayed here:

Here was the view:

…which you may remember as the header for someone else’s blog.

As for the streets:

Yes, that’s the family grunting its way up the steep street from the lake shore.

Come to think of it, I’d love to do a week-long  tour of the Lake Constance shoreline, staying in Meersburg, Konstanz and Bregenz along the way.  In one of these:

Just do it in spring or summer, because it gets pretty damn cold around the Bodensee*  when the sun doesn’t shine.

*by the way, the Germans don’t call it a “sea” (as the idiot writer of the article claims).  The German word “see” (pronounced zay ) means “lake”.

No Chance

Travels

I see that beautiful New Zealand is opening its borders to tourists next month, and my only thought is:

No.  Fucking.  Way.

Sure;  I’ll endure a 17-hour flight in an economy seat, arrive in Kiwiland only to discover that someone has caught the sniffles so Reichsfuehrer  Jacinda Wossname can lock the place up again, inflicting an endless stream of horrible TV, bad food and ugly, badly-dressed and ultra-feministical wimmyns* on my sensitive soul?

Listen:  the only reason I’d go Further Down Under would be to watch NZ play rugby or cricket against South Africa or England, and even that’s a dubious proposition.

Now I need to ameliorate my apparent harshness with this observation:  while I’ve never met an Australian (male or female) that I didn’t want to punch in the mouth ten minutes after meeting them, I have always enjoyed the company of (male and female) New Zealanders:  Australians without the rudeness and attitude, to make it brief.  But that’s not enough.

Not gonna happen, and as for the beautiful scenery:  you can stick it up your Peter Jackson.  Middle Earth, my aching African-American ass.

*hence the old joke:  Hear about the Miss New Zealand competition?  Nobody won.

Return To Italy

Drive Time, Travels

You will recall my last post on driving the Mille Miglia course:

…and the difficult choices listed from which one would make for a companion, and the car for the journey.

Forget the companion.  The topic is a perennial favorite of mine (I believe my first post on the topic was back in 2017), and I was thinking about it again over the past weekend.

For one thing, I can’t help but think that in doing this particular trip, the choice of car should be exclusively Italian, for the same reason that one should eat at little trattorias  along the route rather than searching for McDonalds, and drinking Chianti rather than Diet Coke.  It’s all about Italy, and one should take the opportunity to immerse oneself in the complete esperienza italiana.

Given that I don’t like most modern cars — both their homogeneous wind-tunnel shapes, and their overpowered engines — I keep going back to the cars of my youth, and was assisted in this thought by pics of a car on sale this week at a Sotheby’s auction:  a ground-up restoration of a 1974 Alfa Romeo 2000 GTV.

 

It’s neat, it’s shapely, and that little 2-liter engine is as capable of purring along at a leisurely pace through the many narrow village streets as snarling at 75mph through mountain passes and along deserted country roads.

By 1974, Alfa had pretty much worked out all the niggles typically associated with their earlier models of the Tipo 105, and I know several guys who were still driving their GTVs of that vintage when I left South Africa in 1986, a dozen years after the car’s release.  So while there would always be a threat (promise?) of some kind of Alfa-related breakdown en route, I would still be willing to take the chance.

And in the end, if I were to become marooned in some little Italian village while the local mechanic waited for spares to arrive, I’d just have to grit my teeth and endure the experience with my translator:

She’d have to be a petite lil’ thing to fit into the GTV, you see…

Okay, so maybe she’s not that petite:

So ignoring the companion, which model Italian car (e.g. 1967 Fiat Dino 2000 GT) would you choose to make the drive?  Here’s a suggested list, just to give you ideas to draw from:

  • Alfa Romeo
  • Cisitalia
  • Ferrari
  • Fiat
  • Lamborghini
  • Lancia
  • Maserati and
  • Pagani.

And if you feel like doing a little research for an hour or two before making your final decision, let DuckDuckGo be your friend… as I did.