First Night for the Art Walk DASH
Eric Richardson
[Flickr]
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Last night marked the first night for the Art Walk DASH, made official only a few weeks ago. At 7pm I walked over to Spring and only had to wait a few minutes before Jorge came driving up in a bus whose headsign proudly proclaimed:
FREE SHUTTLE / SPECIAL SHUTTLE / ARTWORK DISTRICT
Not quite perfect, but a good start.
I'm totally giving the wrong impression by posting a photo here of an empty bus. Any service has to be in place a while before people acclimate to it and start to use it, and tonight's DASH was no exception. We made it a little over one lap before we picked up our first passenger, and it was very slow in the next few laps. After that I got off to actually go look at art, but I've heard it picked up as the night went on. Every once in a while I'd look up as one of the buses passed and there would be people on board.
In the end I'm thrilled to get the service up and running, and I think its use is going to continue to grow over the summer. I know I came out of this first run with some tweaks we might be able to make, and I'm sure others did as well.
So who here was a first night "Artwork District" DASH rider? What did you think?
The Juice on June 15, 2007, at 12:31PM – #1
Last night was my first time going to the art walk, and I have to say it was awesome. It was so nice having so much life and activity on the streets. I wish it could be like that every night, maybe one day. I started off by getting a couple beers in me at Bar 107, which was my first time there as well, great bar! I only had enough time to check out the galleries on 4th and 5th unfortunately. The live music in front of the Pharmaka gallery really helped provide a nice outside atmosphere. I also enjoyed the art in the pharmaka gallery as well, they had some real abstract stuff in there, probably my favorite gallery from last night, and they were giving out free bottles of Grolsch too.... always a good touch!