Fear and Loathing on the Public Transit System

While your Social Climes staff does move among the limo-ed, we are not snobs and we sometimes ride buses.

Among our all-time favorite diversions in transit were a couple of business-suited, expensively coiffed women who got into a shoving match. “That’s the seat I wanted,” screamed the one who was last to get on the bus.

But nothing can top the laughing young man who staggered onto a freeway flyer last week with an open bottle in a brown bag and a tiny screwdriver. He sat near the front of the bus and combed his hair with the screwdriver. Then, apparently remembering the bottle, he moved to the back of the bus.

Throughout this scenario, the only words the bus driver said to him were, “You didn’t pay your fare.”

Perhaps we need to rethink this egalitarian commuting thing.

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Angels Flight: We are obsessed with transportation. An upcoming event that catches our fancy is the reopening of “the shortest railway in the world,” the city’s historic Angels Flight, which on Feb. 24 will once again haul passengers up and down Bunker Hill in cable cars. The funicular railway was dismantled by urban renewal in 1969 after operating for 70 years.

On Feb. 23, there will be a gala to celebrate featuring cocktails, dinner, an auction, dancing and, of course, railway rides. The evening benefits the Angels Flight Railway Foundation, KCET Women’s Council and the Los Angeles Conservancy.

Angels Flight opens for daily passenger service at 10 a.m. Feb. 24. There will be a street fair on Hill Street between Third and Fourth streets from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Feb. 24-25.

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Stoli and Cigars: We don’t know if this is a good thing or not. Morton’s of Chicago in Palm Desert has announced its first “Girls’ Nite Out” a.k.a. “The National Women’s Cigar Dinner” on Feb. 20.

“The girls” will drink Stoli Campari martinis with their hors d’oeuvres and eat a four-course meal accompanied by wines and hand-rolled cigars with each course. Definitely the kind of evening that separates the women from the girls.

* COMPILED BY THE SOCIAL CLIMES STAFF