Jaywalking Into the Time Machine

After 20 years in this city, I have finally been made the butt of L.A.’s small joke on the unwary and uninitiated. Crossing an otherwise deserted street on an otherwise fine and sunny day about a week ago, I heard a siren wail somewhere behind me. Without looking, I knew my fate. I had been busted for jaywalking.

So there I stood on the sidewalk, making a fig leaf with my hands, while a cop the size of a rodeo bull brought me to justice. The lights on his patrol car were flashing like a Christmas tree, and all passing motorists seized the opportunity to slow down and view the drama.

I’m sure they identified it quickly as a jaywalking bust. Everyone knows the signs, right? The bustee stands next to the officer without benefit of automobile or motorcycle, looking faintly ridiculous.

Absent a machine, the bustee has nothing to lend him camouflage or protection while his crime is being recorded. He is totally exposed, and has the choice of either staring into the middle distance, pretending nonchalance, or simulating an interest in the citation process, as if he were trying to learn the craft. Either way, he only looks more pathetic.

There is, of course, a third option: engage the officer in dialogue. Ask him about the rapists and murderers who are getting away while he writes you up. Inquire about his salary.

But from long experience viewing others, I knew that nothing would spare me the humiliation. So I just stood there, doing my fig leaf. The officer scribbled away, handed me the citation, and roared off.

Almost forever, it seems, the jaywalking bust has existed as one of the curious anomalies of Southern California. Initiated in Los Angeles sometime after World War II, it spread as far as San Diego and then stopped.

Chicago certainly didn’t want it. Nor did New York, Boston, Paris or London. In those cities, the notion of punishing someone who crossed in mid-block seemed quaint, the preoccupation of rubes.

But not here. Los Angeles loved the idea. Somehow, the jaywalking thing got connected to the prevailing idea about Los Angeles at the time. Namely, that this was a new kind of city, without the unruly messiness of a Chicago or a Philadelphia. Here people would obey the laws, both large and small, and they would be made safe from danger.

Perhaps there was some truth to that belief. At the time. In the early days of the freeways, pre-smog, it was possible to picture an infinitely suburban city of simple pleasures that, in some ways, had been exempted from the many curses of urbanity.

And there was, in fact, a upside to the jaywalking busts: a kind of social contract between walkers and drivers that existed nowhere else. If pedestrians were forced to walk only at corners and crosswalks, then cars--by damn--would give them the right of way. They would grind to a stop as soon as the pedestrian’s foot hit the pavement.

I remember being startled, 20 years ago, when I tried my first crosswalk in Los Angeles. As soon as I took the first step, traffic stopped so quickly it seemed to be happening in a cartoon. Every car in both directions waited for my passage.

Some of the drivers even smiled.

All gone now, right? The sweet dream of a non-city slipped away sometime in the early ‘50s, probably about the time the San Fernando Valley was wholly consumed, and pedestrians are now killed here at the same rate as anywhere else. Actually, our killing rate is a little higher than in most cities.

As for the crosswalks, well, you know. These days you make no assumptions about a social contract between drivers and walkers.

All gone. Except for the jaywalking bust. It lives on, a darling of the cops, a revenue-generator par excellence, last reminder of the old city of rubes.

I would make the argument that it’s time to let the jaywalking thing go, but I know it won’t happen. The cops enjoy the ritual too much, and maybe it’s valuable as an artifact of what we once were. Or believed we were.

In any case, the cops handed out half a million jaywalking tickets in the 1980s, and show no sign of slowing down. And, by the way, the old $10 fine is a thing of the past. The new bill for jaywalking comes to $54.

I know because I wrote out my check just yesterday. When the check comes back, maybe I’ll frame it. A reminder of old dreams.