Lime Bikes are Slime Bikes

I remember when they built the docking bicycle ports near my sailboat. One at Cabrillo Beach, one by the Double Tree Hotel and one next to the homeless rec center at 22nd Street Park. These docking station required a slab being poured and mounting racks with a solar panel charging the batteries to operate the log in.

Notice the missing grip on the bike

Then came along the dock-less version of urban pollution the Slime Bike.

Hard to ride with handlebars this low

I was walking the two dogs one morning when I first encountered
the bikes sitting across the street from a Metro Docking Station. 

There is no shortage of internet stories about how ugly these things can be. At first the slime folks came out in their rented vans an picked up the broken ones but lately they don't seem to give a fuck as now the hot item is the scooters that they rent and the charges are higher.
The scooters require a daily service truck to recharge the internal battery. If you check out the California DMV Code you will see that you must have a valid divers license, wear a helmet and DO NOT OPERATE ON THE SIDEWALK

One of my bike geeks "Neon Fred"was running stairs to get in shape for mountain bike riding on a coaster brake. He found the rear lock off a slime bike laying in the gutter. I took his discovery and with the addition of a tamper proof socket I took it apart (the lock) but before I did that I sent an e-mail to Lime Bikes saying I had their parts if they wanted them back.

They did reply to my e-mail but since reading and writing is not a skill required these days they went to the wrong place so I took the lock apart. Lots of neat gears controlling the locking bar, a speaker, a nice battery plus GPS a couple of other LSI circuits. Not cheap.

At first the cute Chinese Flight Crews that visit the Double Tree started riding them and that was enjoyable. Probably doesn't beat girls in Holland.

Then the homeless started riding them in great numbers. That is a hard figure since you need a smart phone with an downloaded app and a credit card for payment. You can get a cell phone for free if you are on any welfare plans but you also need a credit card? The lock can be forced open by breaking the small plastic gears inside the lock. I see Slime Bikes with dogs in the basket and homeless cruising.

The e-scooters have been banned in various cities up and down the coast of California. same with the dock-less bicycles. YouTube has plenty of dock-less in Asia.
Lots of media jumping up and down about this great cure for transportation.

I see these as another slur a rolling graffiti. Dumped everywhere and anywhere. The ocean is great for rusting and maybe the Pacific will rust this scum.

Starting a New Business (Part One)

Blocking the Sidewalk

In the past I ran my own business for several decades (can't remember how long). Then I slowly drifted into retirement and finally quit the small league collecting checks from customers 15 years ago. I use the Bank of America for some unknown reason probably because they were everywhere in California. Never used them for business just personal crap.

LA River

When I go online to my bank account to see negative numbers (remember math in school when they told you a negative time a negative gives positive results, not so) the bank is always trying to have me start a new business account. So maybe I should start one but what?

LA County

Too late for the dot.com stuff, my days in computers are really old school, insurance or car theft (auto dealers) doesn't fit my ideas. A few months back I got interested in birding and read various books on the subject. Never thought you could make a living watching birds or counting them. So that niche has been taken.

Add caption

New businesses need an expanding market place where items are plentiful. So I looked around where I reside and thought what is there here that they are plenty of? Well ecotourism is a really big business, world wide people spend thousands to travel around the world to see species that are in danger of being eliminated.

Los Angeles Harbor

Then Shazam, the light bulb blinked in my sailboat cabin, only have one 80 watt bulb but a single flash in the darkness can be very bright. I could start a ecotourism scheme where we tour the world  observing the Homeless.

My idea sorted of copies bird watching. You start by buying one of my to be published books or follow me on the web at "Homeless Watching.com" The fun and enjoyment of this sport is quite remarkable

Now you must realize that this is in a prenatal development stage, a work in progress. If you have ever scored baseball you would know you need a score sheet to record all the items of play, balls, strikes, hits and outs (all that shit that baseball nuts love). My homeless score sheet allows you to record location of sighting including GPS data and value points plus bonus points for added descriptions.

San Pedro Pacific Street

For those without throw away income simple observation can be a simple starting point. Lots of expensive equipment can be purchased later such as hidden microscopes and cameras or video. I personally try to look like a bewildered bird watcher carring my binoculars and a Nikon with telephoto lens.

Old School Pedro


I am currently trying to develop a scoring system takes in the difficulty of the sport and how rare the sighting is.

For example a simple homeless sitting on the curb is less points that one at a city bus stop bench but if the homeless is asleep the score is higher during daylight. Homeless on a skateboard is a higher score that one on a normal bicycle.  One must be careful with wheelchair scoring. For example is person just using it as a chair or he/she really needs it. If you try scoring the wheel chair and later find the device was later loaded in to a white land Rover you loose one thousand points. Bicycles get one point no matter what the size. Please multiply score with each addition bike if complete. Extra loose wheels and frames only get half points.

If is hard to score personal cell phones and bling watches and for now I will leave those for later.

Some dumpster divers appear to be homeless but may not be. Also the size of the backpack can also be misleading.

Trailers and shopping carts are also hard to score correctly. same goes with tents and sleeping bags. With shopping carts the farther the distance from the store removal the higher the score. Trader Joe's is a higher point value that the 99 cent store/dollar tree store.

Old City Hall

Plastic bags, suit cases and cardboard boxes scoring will come later.

Distance traveled and expenses involved while building your homeless life list is weighted. If you are on a business trip and see a homeless person pissing in front of your hotel your score would be less that if you traveled to that destination just to add to your life list. We want to promote travel for the sake of seeing more homeless not just traveling.

Camping at the Post Office

Homeless signs can be homeless made as opposed to home made or printed at the local library. If the homeless has a ink jet printer he or she may be an impostor. Pets also can be tear jerking but remember he/she may be renting the dog.  A person with a well fed pit bull is borderline. One dog is one extra point, each additional dog is two points, cats are 3 points each. Birds should not be included for points as these maybe just pigeons looking for their own handout.

                  This will be a first edition so you might what to collect this rare item.

        The Next Blog (LIFE SCORING FOR HOMELESS WATCHING) IS UP NOW

    All Photos in this Blog were taken by my self the Author

Short Term Memories on 420 Day

Yesterday I remembered to pay a past due bill that the bank didn't forget. No rain this morning but the afternoon wind has been coming over the hill the last couple of days making it cooler  The dogs were ready to go early as usually is the case each day. The Telly was on for a few minutes as I got dressed as I listened to the latest freeway reports, shootings, missing hikers or teenagers, but maybe that was yesterday, I can remember.

San Pedro Homeless

Unless you have lived on a boat that is part of the changing ocean your morning starting place at home doesn't usually move. Mine goes up and down with the tide. That change is slow here and we feel no currents ebb or flow but the walk up the gangway can get steep at times. The first things we see this morning are some seagulls, cormorants flying, a few terns and the usual blue heron 

Next to old city hall

The German Shepherd loves to chase feral cats and thanks to several divers (boat cleaners) and a wacky lady that feed these things we try to walk around the stray cats. The dogs warm up with a simple mile walk then I get my camera and we head out again no knowing what we will find. The area around the San Pedro Main Post Office is usually a tent city of homeless and is quite depressing but this morning after going through 22nd Street Park without seeing a homeless sleeping there or a wacked out person we encountered our first person sleeping under a tree on Gulch Street (real name ).

When we got close to the main Post Office we found several shopping cart travelers sitting on park benches but only a few tents or folks living in cars. There has been a major face lift in the area with major street changes and the tearing down of parts of Ports of Call. Traffic on Harbor Blvd. is now rerouted and every time we walk over there something else has been removed.

Fire Boat, Tugs and Iowa

We walked by Vinegar Hill then down to the Old City Hall and I was quite surprised not to see a dozen homeless camping by the old drinking fountain. I stopped to read the plaque about "Bloody Thursday" and went down to see if my battleship was still a float. 

Yes it is still there.

San Pedro has a nice skyline but few take the time to enjoy it.

The flag on old city hall is at half mast for Mrs. Bush. 

After stopping by the fire boat building the dynamic duo and I headed back passing the restaurant Acapulco being torn down.

Post Office Overlooking Harbor

Ports of Call had been dying for years but no one was willing to shoot it. When we lived in Huntington Beach many moons ago I took the family up to Ports of Call and it was new and really nice. 

Swallow

Today I did not see the twin Brigs that the Youth sailing use docked here. Not sure where they went. Several Harbor Cruise Boats have moved from Ports of Call and three are at Cabrillo Way Marina.

In Flight

The Red Car Line that used to run the street cars on the weekend here has stopped while the streets are changed but there still is a Free Bus Trolley that goes from Downtown  Pedro to Cabrillo Beach on the weekends.

Our walk passes the old fishing harbor and we then cross over the railroad tracks and up the little hill past the baseball park where there is a nice grass area across from Crafters. Lots of swallows fly there skipping inches away from the grass in flight.

Hooded homeless in San Pedro

We have a morning ritual here on the sailboat or what might be described as dog vs Ship Captain with frequent outburst such as "shut the fuck up" or stop that whining". The German Shepherd who's name is Happy wants to get off the boat first thing. Last year I had to stop making and drinking coffee in the morning because shithead whined too much to allow for coffee. Personal record was over a year with no coffee.

Rental Bike

As mentioned in the last blog we found a unlocked Lime Bike close to the Cabrillo Beach Yacht Club which is next to where we are docked. Happy escorted the bike pulling like a sled dog and Lucky ran along side having dog fun. These are rental bikes that are scattered around San Pedro that required an App on your smart phone to unlock the bike and you pay through your phone connection. There are Metro Bikes around San Pedro that are locked at docking stations and require returning to another docking station. The Slime Lime bikes are not docked and can be anywhere, blocking the sidewalk, on the pier or beach, in the middle of a dirt field. 

My neighbor who is a bike nut (a real Fred) found one of the Lime locks laying in the gutter across town. He gave it to me and I tried to return the lock but delays in returning e-mails and other messages getting buried in Voice Mail resulted in my decision to take the lock apart. I did and saved all the parts which I may display the internal parts later. 

Lucky in a Basket

I often see homeless using the Lime bikes which led me to the theory that these things could be hacked. Yesterday we took the bike (shown above with Lucky in the basket) out cruising. After a few minutes an audio alarm went off from the speaker attached to the bike lock announcing "the police would be called". WTF, I maybe come apart of a cop chase on the afternoon TV news. 

L

So the bike was parked next to my Nissan in the late afternoon and was gone when we got up this morning. Likely the circuit board inside the lock has GPS and some type of communication to report locations.

Homeless living on Cabrillo Beach

My morning bird watch started with my grousing about the homeless on Cabrillo Beach.

The picture above shows a homeless tent located west of the lifeguard station.

Homeless camping next to Life Guards

As you can see the windows in the Life Guard Station look out on the homeless sleeping next to the signs that say "no tents, no camping". That station is an LA County Life Guard with is part of the LA County Fire Department. This is not to be confused with the second Life Guard Station at Cabrillo next to the boat ramp which is ran and manned by the City of Los Angeles Life Guards.

Lots of shorebirds today

This morning after our beach trip we headed up to Pacific Ave to visit the Post Office at Fort MacArthur. My PO Box is located there not the larger one on Beacon Street close to downtown San Pedro where the homeless are headquartered. Homeless seem to be everywhere here and when I last lived in Orange County there was a family of a mother and two children living along the creek by our house and the children would bath in the creek before going to the public school in the morning.

italian Bakery now gone

Along the sidewalk by the Fort (now an Air Force Base) there are some signs from Old San Pedro on the buildings.

Fort MacArthur 

There is this plaque at the Fort and Richard Henry Dana name appears on it. Dana actually lived here above where my sailboat is located while he was handling the hides collected for the ships return to Boston. As our dog walk continues past the Post Office and back to 22nd Street where we can drop down to the harbor we go through a neighborhood that is not that pleasant to look at.

Homeless living on bus stop bench

This hooded person
lives next to "the Spot" a local dive bar and across from a Cafe that serves breakfast and lunch

Happy misses Arlo's Graduation

As you may know or you may not I live on a 35 foot sailboat in San Pedro with a German Shepherd who may be seven months old since he does not have a green card I am never certain. People always ask me how old Happy is and I often lie about his age. He could be seven months or almost one year old. This doesn't really matter as he continues to grow, eat, bark and poop.

Arlo and his Momma

My grandson finished the 8th grade and as the media is the message I saw him on my smart phone.

Some where I have a picture of Arlo taking a bath but I not posting it.

Butts makes a good pillow

The marina here provides free wifi but right now the bandwidth is so slow I have to resize all the pictures from my phone to post anything on my blog. 

A Nose is a Nose not a Rose

I like the price of free but several user here at the marina would rather pay for a DSL so they have reliable service and a connection that works. My Samsung Galaxy S6 phone has unlimited text and data from the mother fuckers at AT@T who often kill my speed if I use the data, During the last part of May the fuckers kept limiting my data and Instagram basically quit. 

Bat man ears

Today the sun came up without the normal June gloom which was a surprise. Happy's bladder control is no longer pupply like and he doesn't have to get off the sailboat in the dark and he waits to hear the weatherman on the telly before he ventures out.

Homeless during dogwalk
\

During our morning walks and afternoon strolling we encounter various homeless folks. Happy has been prone to bark at these people.  The dog likes to bark at strangers and skateboarders too.

As seen along harbor

Puppy likes to sit in the car and doesn't care if we go for a car ride if we are getting food from the ghetto's Vons or our favorite Center Street Market. I prefer to ride a bicycle to the store but he can't follow. 

One less softball

It is hard for me to leave the boat with the dog by himself and expect to find things not chewed. He does do it everyday but only when you think he is being good.

Homeless with blanket in laharbor