MOMOKO: October 2009 Newsletter

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Sushi Restaurant Uses My Collage

Kanpai Sushi in Palo Alto, CA, now has small pieces of reproductions of my collage series, changing the dining room wall from traditional to contemporary. More interior projects in the same restaurant are coming up over time in the future.

Before Picture

After Picture

The Bay Area versus Miami Continued ...

In the previous newsletter I versed my own version of the differences between Miami-Dade and the Bay Area. As far as my observation on traffic safety, I couldn't be more correct about it. (Thank you, Tanya, for sending the scoop.) This study lists 40 major US metropolitan areas in terms of safety, and you can clearly see that Miami has much more traffic related deaths. In fact, not only Miami area, but also four Floridan metropolitan areas are listed as high in traffic death in this study. As many of you know, I drive a lot more than an average person. This past year alone, I drove the states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, Texas, Nevada, Louisiana, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado. If I include the previous years, I have driven the total of 42 states and also crossed Canada. What I am trying to say is that I am glad to be out of Florida. After driving in Florida for years I still have my head, legs, and arms attached to my torso. And that is a miracle.

And as this article mentions, the traffic death rate is directly related to how well the public transportation functions in the area. The more people use the public transportation, the less traffic deaths in the statistics. Think about it. The worst possible thing you can do when you are heavily drunk and be in a public transportation is to puke in public, say something really stupid and politically incorrect, and then fall asleep on your own puke, or something like that. If Mel Gibson was not driving that day, he could have saved himself from the Antisemitism saga (and DUI). I am originally from Japan, where public transportation is far superior. Yes, you may see drunks in Japanese trains at night and they can be annoying but they don't kill people because they are not operating vehicles. I know people in the Bay Area LOVE BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), but over all I don't find the entire transportation system not great at all here in the Bay Area. It costs much more than driving and parking, and it takes too long to travel. But relatively speaking the public transportation is much better than Florida's non-existing public transportation. I remember the brochures I saw in Miami's public library. This government issued brochure said, "Miami-Dade Public Transportation Plan" on its cover, and when I opened it, all it said, "Please send us suggestions" with a mailing address next to it. I worked for the Miami International Airport North Terminal Transportation Project in 2003 where I had the hand-on experience on how so impossible to implement transportation system in Miami.

MOMOKO : October 2009

Sushi Restaurant Uses My Collage

The Bay Area versus Miami Continued ...