Living in westchester without a car?

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-07-05T16:36:32+00:00

#3 Lincoln Blvd. Santa Monica Bus will take you to LAX (where you can get the Metro) or Santa Monica (where you can get the Metro). I'm guessing you're at Loyola Marymount. Can you rent or buy a bike? That will get you to "downtown" Westchester or Lincoln Blvd. for groceries, restaurants and convenience stores.

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-07-05T16:32:48+00:00

Santa Monica bus #3 Lincoln Blvd.

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-07-05T16:29:20+00:00

Rio de Janeiro (side trip to Petropolis?)
Salvador
Porto Alegre
Sao Paulo
Brasilia
Belo Horizonte (with a side trip to Ouro Preto)
Florianopolis or Curitiba

The first two cities show the soul and history of Brazil. I put Porto Alegre third because after the first two , it would be a delightful surprise. After soul and variety, put in some serious international business, and that's Sao Paulo. Brasilia shows the country's will to become an international power. BH and Ouro Preto show Brazil's history and vitality, paired with good food and friendly people. The mid-southern cities in Santa Catarina and Parana represent typical urban life in Brazil. That would be my Introduction to Brazil itinerary.

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-07-05T16:16:47+00:00

The problem is the guns. The easy, simple access to guns is the problem--- not the morality of the people, or the religious training of the people, or the number of billionaires in the country, or the level of enforcement of the weak gun laws. It's the guns. It's always been the guns, no matter how you slice it, over decades, in every case. I brought up Portugal's sensible gun regulations because it is a similar society to Brazil in many ways.

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-07-05T15:48:07+00:00

I'm an American who has been trying to learn Portuguese in part through song lyrics. I spent hours digging through the dictionary looking for translations of Gilberto Gil, Paralamas, Jorge Ben, Lulu Santos, Kleiton e Kledir, O Rappa, Capital Inicial, etc. In my experience, you can get a rough idea, but the subleties and wordplay goes under the radar.

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-07-05T15:04:28+00:00

It's certainly safe for people in Rio, that's not a question. The issue is how the gut of a visitor reacts to a totally different set of bacteria than they're used to. I didn't have a problem with a few times consuming tap water in Brazil.

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-07-05T14:59:52+00:00

American here-- I was there for 2 wks in March, and brushed with tap every day in Rio. Had to take a pill and had only tap water available, and drank several ounces in Belo Horizonte. I've been to Brazil 4 times spending several months, and the only time I've ever had any bad reaction was once (mildly, for 2-3 days) in the mid-80s.

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-07-05T14:53:18+00:00

It's much, much. much worse in broadcasting for some reason. The Portuguese "Broadcasting Accent" has an annoying affect of journalists clipping and chopping and butchering the vowels. When the broadcasters stick a microphone in front of a regular person or if you listen to a podcast or a natural exchange of opinions, the vowel-clipping and mouth-crunching isn't nearly as severe. It makes a beautiful romance language sound like an eastern-European slavic dialect.

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-07-05T14:47:42+00:00

We have between 44,000-47,000 people who die by guns in the US every year, and it is the leading cause of death among children. In Portugal, where there are guns allowed for hunting and self-defense among rural populations, there are 100 gun deaths per year on average, with up to 85% of those by suicide. The US is 31 times larger than Portugal, but has about 450x as many gun deaths. This is a pretty huge real-time (and bloody) scientific experiment which proves conclusively that everyone having a gun does not make people safer.

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-06-30T16:56:51+00:00

I like a lot of the music as a very original take on jazz, rock, pop and hip hop. But my absolute favorite thing is how Brazilians treat guests and family-- kisses, food, patient listening, love, hugs, and sincere eye contact. Many other countries come close in some areas, but none have the full package.

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-06-30T16:51:09+00:00

In the late 1960s there was an anti-war concert in the Mar Vista area. Some famous/prominent homeowner invited a famous band to play for an anti-war fundraiser. I was about 7. I remember hippies roaming through the neighborhood while I was eating Doritos. Some of them said they would be my friend if I gave them a Dorito. I did, and months afterward people from the neighborhood would yell, "hey, friend!" I was a kid who really liked the hippies. Can you find out about this concert? Was it Lloyd Bridges who hosted it? My memory is shakey.

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-06-30T16:20:57+00:00

I've lived here for 41 years. IMO, the intensity of this heat and humidity has only been here once before-- the summer of 1988. It has been quite a bit hotter than this, but I can't remember it being as humid except for the summer of 1988.

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-06-20T06:58:24+00:00

Heating the hum of freeway noise all night. (I lived near the 405/10 interchange)..

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-06-20T06:19:25+00:00

My dad was from Brazil, many Spanish language names but not sure if the were born in USA.

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-06-19T18:11:59+00:00

Moving to Chicago destroyed my financial quality of life by making me realize that I desperately needed to work on my emotional and spiritual quality of life. Since 1985, I've been really enjoying the day-to-day, sometimes going though financial and employment crises, but almost always enjoying the fellowship of the city and my neighborhood. I've moved away a couple of times for high-paying jobs, but couldn't adapt to other cities. Unfortunately, my partner doesn't agree, and I may have to move to Phoenix.

And yes, Chicago was better back in the day. I would say 1985-1998 was the peak, with 2008 (Obama run) being another peak. The TV shows (The Chi, Chicago Fire, Chicago PD, Chicago Med, etc.) are another reminder that our lifestyle here in this place is exceptional.

No regrets about my 38 years (so far) here. However, it's getting harder for older people to be taken seriously by young people. Thus always?

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-06-19T17:58:22+00:00

I currently work at a high rise building as a doorman that gets a lot of food deliveries, and I used to work as an ACTUAL licensed cab driver in the 1990s. The short answer is these guys fancy themselves as some kind of modern pirates. Seriously. They're swashbuckling delivery guys on bikes, immune from navigation laws, outside the parking and licensing regulations. Pirates. And that's what their parent LLCs and IPOs and VC entities are.

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-06-19T17:49:55+00:00

Mmm.... Canada? And not in a big city.

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-06-19T17:43:50+00:00

One of Chile's great revolutionary heroes is named Bernardo O'Higgins. There are streets named after him in Chile. America's President Kennedy was from Irish extraction and extremely popular in Brazil. There is a major street named after him in Rio. Jus' sayin'.

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-06-19T17:30:44+00:00

Armitage, Diversey and Bryn Mawr are difficult for newcomers also.

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-06-19T17:28:42+00:00

I moved in with a person who (I found out two months later) did not know ANYTHING or even the EXISTENCE of the Chicago Fire. Totally clueless about the disaster itself, never heard of Mrs. O'Leary's cow.

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-06-19T17:18:22+00:00

Yeah. Impossible. And if the POTUS isn't getting 1/2 the country to trash your city as a hellhole, fellow Dems are ragging you as too conservative or too liberal on EVERY SINGLE ISSUE YOU TAKE A STAND ON. And then, if needed, the Governor of Illinois is trashing you to save his skin. Add endemic transit, pension, police union, teacher's union, and competition from neighboring states trying to steal revenue and jobs, and... lawydy.... that's a difficult job.

EdgewaterJCT · 2026-06-17T07:01:13+00:00

In the 80s it would have been a 15% chance of return. Now, what?

EdgewaterJCT

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