David Byrne's L.A.

Matthew Fleischer was in the audience last week for Talking Heads founder David Byrne's appearance at Aloud to talk about his new book, "Bicycle Diaries,” and Los Angeles. The event was also billed as a conversation about bicycles in the city, and Fleischer found both elements wanting:

His first slide was a less-than-flattering aerial shot of an L.A. freeway. “Oh-oh,” screamed my anti-L.A. radar, “here it comes.” A couple of weeks ago Byrne wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal that characterized Downtown L.A. as a culture-less office park. He argued that freeway culture has turned us into socially isolated, attention-crazed, fake-titted casualties of mid-20th century urban planning.

But on this particular evening, Bryne seemed to reconsider his stance towards Los Angeles — at least parts of it. After spending the afternoon riding around Broadway and 5th Downtown, he rightly concluded, “It’s pretty great.”

“I’m sure you recognize this,” Byrne said approvingly, showing a slide of the Grand Central Market. “Well, SOME of you recognize,” he reconsidered.

No, dude, seriously, we don’t live here because of the freeways. We know about this stuff.

The later discussion about bikes really got the blogger's goat.

More blogger goat: Rip Rense on Mark Swed and 'Siegfried.'

Photo: Striatic via Flickr