About this site

The idea for this site grew out of another site idea covering getting to the wild and green places in California by train, bus, bike, foot, and ferry, which was in turn inspired by a book (out of print) and its related California Transit Advocates site and a long-gone Northern California newsletter, Cortex Connections. When I went car-free for the second time in 2000, I found researching travel and transit topics was easier than ever using the Internet, but I was challenged by many mundane problems like those addressed on this site. The design of the site was inspired by my love of Art Deco and cartoons (and the student discount on Adobe software didn't hurt). I have toyed with the prototype for this site for a long time, so it has some things old (tables), some things new (accessibility features), many things borrowed, and lots of blue. I had at one point planned to make the content more interactive, but thanks to all my procastination—take my blog please!—other folks started blogging on the subject for me.

About Busgrrrl

Busgrrrl is a slightly geeky sometimes activist who likes to walk, stroll, travel, and meander about, mostly in Northern California. Busgrrrl is happy, albeit stressed, to once again be a sometimes student. When not tied to a textbook or cursing at software, she is involved in peace and environmental causes, especially the more practical ones such as transit advocacy and community gardening. Busgrrrl takes her superhero name partly from the old Gorilla Grrrls artists movement, which is apparently still alive at the Guerilla Girls site.

Busgrrrl has seven years of car-free living experience, including six years in her last stretch, and two-plus years of car-sharing experience. She gets around by foot, bus, rail, light rail, and the kindness of strangers. Due to a move, she had to give up car sharing and may be adding a folding bike to her multimodal transport (huh?) options, which now include an occasionally used hybrid car (gasp).

About Andy Singer

Fellow baseball fan Andy Singer is a satirist/cartoonist who now lives in Minnesota after many years in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is published in many newspapers and is probably best known for his toons labeled No Exit. He has a lot of car-free living experience, evidently involving many close calls with nasty drivers on his bike. But, he survives. Check out some of the latest cartoons and merchandise at Singer's site. For his great contributions to cartooning and the cause of car-freedom, he gets the proverbial, but not quite the literal, last word here.

All cartoons on this site all came from the book Cartoons (Carbusters 2000).

About Ken Avidor

Avidor is the Minnesota-based creator of characters such as Roadkill Bill, a rodent-like creature who is covered with tire tracks yet who somehow maintains hope for us humans, as well as Anger Man and a band of revolutionary penguins. The toons here are from Roadkill Bill (Carbusters 2001). His work is mostly two- or four-panel, which makes it hard to view on the Web, so check out his books.

Both cartoonists' books are premium/sales items available from the Carbusters organization.

About John Callahan

Imagine the cliche cartoon image of the Old West, with a posse of deputies on horseback stopped among the sagebrush and cacti. They find an empty wheelchair. "Don't worry, he won't get far on foot" has to be one of the best captions ever. I read Callahan's autobiography of that name many years ago. John Callahan is a quadriplegic author, cartoonist, and musician whose work is a bit too edgy, one might say twisted, for all but the bravest newspapers. Check out his books and music on the twisted and entertaining Callahan forum/newsletter.

Copyrights

The cartoons and graphics on this site are copyrighted by their authors. However, Busgrrrl offers all her images and scripts and Singer and Avidor offer the cartoons in the two books listed royalty-free to anyone doing the good work of reducing car-dominance. All other works by the authors, including this site, are under general copyright restrictions. Quotes were gathered from Internet sites such as IMDB and BrainyQuotes.

Further reading

Carbusters is a nonprofit, international organization that questions car culture. It is currently headquartered in the Czech Republic, with members around the world. CB publishes a magazine, an e-newsletter, and a Web site that offers books and other cool stuff. The magazine offers a great way for true believers to keep up with international news in a wide range of areas such as smart growth, transit planning, and bike advocacy. It is also truly funny and a good, fast read. Also for the converted: Culture Change (formerly Auto-Free Times).

For those new to the subject of car-freedom, there are some new guides I wish had been available when I started. Now, I wish I had time to read them all. I have read reviews of these two: How to Live Well without Owning a Car by Chris Balish, available from Ten-Speed Press; and Cutting Your Car Use: North American Edition by Randall Ghent (Carbusters 2006). For families with kids, check out Family Mouse Behind the Wheel by Wolfgang Zuckermann (Carbusters 1992). Carfree.com includes an active forum, Carfree USA blog is what it sounds like, and you may have been looking for Bus Chick's blog, not this silly site.

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