Some of his benches have become part of the fabric of the city — sat on and rained on, captured on Google Street View and even vandalized. Scrawled in tidy handwriting on one bench was, “i love it, thank you,” punctuated by a small heart.
His greatest frustration is that whoever is removing them is leaving bus riders with no place to sit. The benches and their removal get at one of the more byzantine corners of transit bureaucracy in Los Angeles.
— Los Angeles Times
Realizing he had no place to rest at the bus stop near his Eastside home while recovering from a knee injury, this anonymous Los Angeles artist took matters into his own hands and began installing benches at neglected bus stops around the area, Carolina Miranda writes. Unsurprisingly, some of his benches have been removed, shedding light on L.A.'s frustratingly tedious process to approve the installation of more bus benches and shelters.
This is my favorite guerrilla bus stop in Indy - it's in front of the city's most important cemetery and it says "Embrace Mortality". Love it.
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Finally, something good happening in the world.
See also PUP (but we're notanonymous. Kudos to all the guerrilla benchmakers.)
There's a barstool that someone left at a bustop by my house. Makes me smile everytime I drive by.
why doesn't he just get the proper approval so the benches don't get taken away?
Because the city removed the benches for a reason...to be hostile to homeless people.
Oh, Koww, seriously I don't think you have any idea what that entails. The local transit authority - who I've worked with - has three pages on requirements just for appropriate clearance dimensions at bus stops. I can only imagine that in LA it's 3x as onerous. Then there's the permit process which is thousands of dollars and can also can require state-level approval if the state DOT has authority, and most likely they will just say no. Then there's paying a licensed contractor to drill the holes because it's in public ROW which means all contractors have to be approved by the city and filing paperwork to do a temporary work sidewalk closure and...ugh. It's way, way too much just for a bench.
This is my favorite guerrilla bus stop in Indy - it's in front of the city's most important cemetery and it says "Embrace Mortality". Love it.
I thought I was the only person frustrated by the lack of consideration to bus riders, especially women with children, not having a place to sit safely at the bus stop. Why? The city should be ashamed for such neglect. I rode the bus as a young mother with child, stroller, diaper bag and backpack in both arms many years ago. I would not have been able to continue my daily responsibilities if there were no benches which there were during those years. Thank you for doing something helpful and positive.
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