Riding Metrolink is a known specialty of mine after multiple columns over the years about trips I’ve taken and destinations I’ve visited. In pre-COVID times, readers who introduced themselves tended to ask where I’d gone recently, or share that they had taken their first ride because of me, or sheepishly say that they hadn’t yet but might one day.
I owe a lot of my love for public transit and downtown Los Angeles to Robert Herman, who died April 9 at age 92. The retired Pomona College sociology professor was the author of “Downtown Los Angeles: A Walking Guide.”
At the time of publication, that almost qualified as a joke title — 1996 wasn’t long removed from Missing Persons’ 1982 hit “Walking in L.A.,” whose chorus was “Nobody walks in L.A.”
Bob Herman did. “I love to walk and I walk everywhere I can,” he told me in 1999 when we met. That included downtown L.A., which barely rated a mention in tourist-focused guidebooks. After rejections from 30 publishers, he put out the book himself and had sold 6,000 copies in three editions, mostly to locals.
All the more remarkable, he lived in Claremont, 35 miles east of downtown. The day Metrolink service between Claremont and Los Angeles began in 1992, he is said to have raced home to announce, “This is the greatest day of my life!”
“He’s only a suburbanite in where he lives,” Sue Laris-Eastin, then the publisher of LA Downtown News, told me in 1999. “In his soul, he’s absolutely an urbanite.”
Like me, Bob Herman was saddled with two first names, and like me he found cities exciting rather than distasteful. When we arranged a personal tour in March 1999 for a newspaper feature, I had been on Metrolink precisely once.
That trip involved going to the Central Library, riding the Red Line subway and getting a French dip at Philippe the Original. With that itinerary, obviously I was inclined to like downtowns, walking, transit, historic architecture and classic restaurants on my own.
But my trip with Bob was like a Master Class.
Photographer Terry Pierson and I convened at Claremont’s Santa Fe Depot with Bob and boarded the next Metrolink train west for a daylong adventure. Thousands of assignments later for each of us, Terry and I both remember this one vividly. I even saved my notebook — which I dug out for this column.
Bob was an enthusiastic, affable guide. Union Station, the end of the line, was grand even in its tarnished late-1990s state. “This is a cathedral to Los Angeles,” he declared. “It even has a cross-shaped footprint.”
As we descended underground to take the subway, Bob imparted a lesson: transferring to the subway is free with a Metrolink ticket.
On my solo outing of a few weeks before, I’d squandered $1.25 on a separate ticket. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
Emerging from the subway at Seventh and Figueroa, we almost immediately ran into a downtown tour guide who saw me carrying Bob’s book and said her copy had proved of immense help. For one thing, it listed every scarce public restroom.
“I wrote it,” Bob told her, delighted.
Our stops included the 1925 Art Deco masterpiece named the Fine Arts Building. “It’s almost a sacred space,” Bob said. “You want to get down on your knees, change your religion.” Biddy Mason Park would, in 2020, inspire a column about the former slave from San Bernardino.
We ducked into the 1893 Bradbury Building with its five-story atrium (“step through that door and you’re in the Paris of 100 years ago,” Bob enthused) and strode through Grand Central Market, back when it still had sawdust on the floor, on our way to the Angels Flight funicular, a 25-cent ride.
After descending the Bunker Hill Steps on foot, we walked through the Central Library and the Biltmore Hotel to eye Pershing Square. This was not long after a controversial makeover that left the famous space nearly devoid of interest or life.
“The problems with Pershing Square would take dynamite to fix,” Bob said, shaking his head.
The downtown L.A. renaissance was a few years away. DTLA had about 8,000 residents compared to today’s 80,000. On Seventh Street between Hope and Grand, we passed an entire desolate block of boarded-up storefronts. Today it’s lined with hip restaurants, bars and shops.
“It’s finally happening,” Bob told Pomona College Magazine in 2007. “We’re getting a lot of people moving downtown. I’ve been waiting for it all my life.”
Born in Champaign, Illinois, in 1928, Bob moved with his parents to Redlands in 1945 from Arizona so his father, Abbott, could teach at the University of Redlands.
As we’d crossed the L.A. River that morning before pulling into Union Station, which opened in 1939, Bob recalled: “My first look at this city was in 1945. It was on a train from Redlands. It was through this same procedure, through these arches.”
In the coming years, I’d sometimes see Bob’s lanky, 6-foot-4 frame ambling purposefully along the sidewalks of Claremont, or bump into him leading a tour.
I’ve gone by train to L.A. a few hundred times and have become accustomed to subway, light rail, buses or plain old walking. Because transit systems operate on fairly universal principles, these skills have served me well in travel here and abroad.
In an unexpected bit of serendipity, one of my last pre-COVID speaking engagements was in 2019 at Claremont Manor. Bob, who turned out to be living there, was in the audience. Afterward we had a warm private chat. It was a pleasure to tell him how life-altering our outing of two decades earlier had been.
Hearing of his death makes me want to take Metrolink again soon. And when I next walk through the subway turnstiles without wasting money on a separate ticket, I’ll think of him.
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The New York Times crossword for April 25 had this clue for 12 across: “Liberal arts college in Claremont, California.” Answer: POMONA. Imagine how many puzzle solvers also puzzled over why Pomona College isn’t in Pomona.
David Allen writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, three more conundrums. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, visit insidesocal.com/davidallen, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.
