Nanas on Scooters – What’s next?

Since Nanas are the ones driving Facebook, it wasn’t such a stretch to get to Nanas driving Scooters. It seemed appropriate for me to utilize the tools available to me to get to LATC yesterday, where our MFA Y2s are beginning to tech their fall productions, The Brothers Size, by Tarell Alvin McCraney, and The Minotaur by Anna Ziegler. About a year ago, I’d bought myself a bicycle helmet, with the strong intention of getting a bike to go with it. I figured I would reduce my carbon impact on Los Angeles. After I shared my plan with several friends and watched each of their faces contort into a grimace of concern and incredulity, cooler heads prevailed, so I’m taking the Dash or Metro to and from work, thanks to the reinstatement of a USC discount for using public transport. This new practice has afforded me about an hour of time to read, answer emails, and listen to music. The helmet has sat on the bottom shelf of my foyer table gazing sadly up at me with disappointment.

When my friend Caro was visiting, I thought we’d go out and try the scooters, more because I wanted company in my first outing, but alas, time did not allow for us to try. Knowing I had this all day rehearsal at LATC yesterday, I’ve been checking out the scooters as I walked home from the bus. Now I am going to get myself in trouble, because the scooter I chose to ride was not the one my nibling is the spokesperson for in SF. (Sorry EV – they look so tall!). I chose the Bird because it looked geared for smaller Nanas and I’ll work my way up to the citrus fruits later. Friday night, I downloaded the app to my phone, happy to discover that part of the process was pretty standard for someone with experience with Uber.

Yesterday morning, I shuffled everything from my purse to a backpack, grabbed my very excited little purple helmet from the shelf and headed outside, where the app told me a Bird was waiting for me in front of my building. Sure enough, there she was, and I stood over her, looking at the handles and trying to figure out how to turn it on. Pretty easy, and she chirped a few times, before I scooted her away from the restaurant where she was parked, and headed out onto Ninth Street. Scooting past the Grand Hope Park, I could almost imagine Jimmie in a Munch-scream-like pose sitting on the bench watching me pass, but couldn’t raise my hand to wave because it would have been too perilous. I’m such a damn goody-two shoes, so had watched the little instructions of how to ride twice, and I was damned if I was going to ride on the sidewalk which was not allowed. Because it was Saturday, there was a lot less traffic, but I learned first hand that the scooter ride is not smooth – there are about a dozen sewer covers on each block, and as I turned left onto Main St., the traffic crawled to a halt because they were paving the street. Bad choice, so I did ride up on the sidewalk until I could get to an east/west street to dart over to Broadway. This involved negotiating the still clumpy asphalt around the sidewalk crossings and eventually I was back on my way up Broadway, then a right on 6th, and I still walked about a block to the LATC building. Bird insists that you take a family photo of all the other little scooters parked on the sidewalk before she chirps a brief goodbye to you. This, an attempt to make sure you’re not leaving her lying face down in the path of another Nana to trip over. (Have you noticed how many Nanas there are in DTLA?)

At ten PM, as I left LATC after the day’s spacing rehearsals, I found a Bird right in front of the theatre, but she wouldn’t play with me, so I walked a little further south, finding another, which chirped happily at me and off I went.

I got home, and in my excitement, called Chris (at 10:30).

Mom, are you okay?

I became a scooter rider today! Love you, bye!

What’s next for Nana? Stay tuned. Anything’s possible!