Field trip to Hollywood for some vegan food!
Hart House had just opened a couple weeks earlier. Everything is vegan.
Kevin Hart and his team are taking aim at traditional fast food (which is awesome). From opening in a former McDonald’s to advertising that they’re open Sundays (Chick-fil-A is across the street) to developing their own fake meat, they’re positioning Hart House to be potential competition to the fast food we’re used to.
Even the prices were reasonable. And the place seemed to fill up quickly.
Kelsi tipped me off to the chicken sandwich, and I had to try the chocolate shake.
But Hart House is only one of the vegan things that was happening in Hollywood that weekend, so I needed to kill some time between meals. Fortunately two of the Star Wars women got long-overdue stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last year, so I wandered around looking for them (they’re in front of the Zara next to El Capitan).
I never thought I’d want to go to Taco Bell, but their Hollywood location was one of three in the nation that was testing the vegan crunchwrap. And it’s not like it’s vegan because they left out the meat and dairy, this is the first Taco Bell item to use vegan meat, cheese, and sour cream.
Whoa, fancy Taco Bell! All orders were done through the kiosk which had the vegan crunchwrap at the top of the options list.
It was really good. That nacho cheese sauce was especially excellent. And it seemed to be popular, the women next to me were eating the same thing. I think the test is over now, so hopefully everyone went out and tried one and they will bring it back permanently.
El Capitan Theatre from the Hollywood and Highland Center next to the Hollywood and Highland train station.

Before the pandemic, I commuted to downtown LA on the train every day. The train isn’t an amazing experience, but it’s alright. There might be someone who doesn’t know how to use headphones, or the rare occurrence of someone smoking in the enclosed car, but it generally gets you where you need to go without incident.

I’d heard rumors that metro ridership fell after March of 2020 (makes sense), but that it had gone back up to pre-pandemic levels. Sounds like everything’s back to normal, right? Then recently I saw an article about violent incidents on the train and how both the city and Metro felt it was the other’s responsibility to hire more transit police to ensure safety.

Well, I’m sure those violent incidents were just a fluke, the train ride can’t have fallen off THAT badly. So when I wanted to get to Hollywood, I decided to take the train. (I mean, who wants to look for parking in Hollywood?)

The first hint that things were different was that everyone had forgotten how to use headphones. We left Long Beach to the sounds of a call on speakerphone, a sports recap, a comedian, and two different types of music, all playing on people’s phones or Bluetooth speakers. Then there was the pre-recorded announcement along the lines of, “drug use isn’t allowed on the train. We’re trying to enforce that, but it’s hard.” Next was someone smoking in the car. When I switched trains in downtown LA, there was also someone smoking in that car. So I switched cars, walking between two men who were chatting amiably but who soon started shouting at each other. That was followed by someone on the platform at Hollywood and Vine who arranged an empty pizza box on the floor and then lit the box on fire. (The train conductor came grumbling out of his cubicle to get the fire extinguisher off the station wall.)

So in one morning I saw more craziness than I’d seen in three years of pre-pandemic train rides. There used to be kids that wander the train aisles selling water, snacks, and phone chargers. Now they’re selling headphones, tasers, and pepper spray. (On the way back the kid even pressed the taser button so we could hear that it works.)

When I got home, I looked up “LA metro since the pandemic,” and the top result from the LA Times was an article from two months ago called, “Until Metro feels safer, readers say they’re avoiding transit.” The more troubling article, though, was about the things Metro employees have seen and experienced. Last year 158 employees were assaulted. Complaints about drug use went up 100%, and one employee revived 21 overdose victims in 15 months. Metro’s policy on training/allowing employees to use naloxone to save overdose victims is fuzzy, so that one employee just started doing it. He asked not to be named.

Metro does have a clear policy about Metro employees speaking to media or photographing conditions in the trains. Both are not allowed.
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