Going to the Getty Center by Bus

In most of your extensive and excellent coverage of the Getty, you really gave short shrift to us bus riders. Sure, you mentioned the route numbers, but not their schedules or boarding points. From a very friendly, helpful MTA phone operator (after a 12-minute hold), here’s what I learned:

MTA bus No. 561 originates and terminates in the San Fernando Valley, where most of us don’t live!

From downtown: At Wilshire and Figueroa, take Santa Monica Bus Lines bus No. 10; at Bundy and Pico, transfer to Santa Monica bus No. 14, which stops in front of the Getty. Unfortunately, No. 14’s last departure from there is at 5:43 p.m., precluding a long visit.

Hey, MTA! For most of us, downtown is our starting point for more distant destinations, so where is your “new and improved service,” especially to the most touted edifice in L.A.’s history?

And hey, Getty! Surely you have some municipal influence! So how about a bit of MTA arm-twisting to make your place more easily accessible to us? (With your disposable billions, perhaps you could even underwrite such transport!)

JAMES B. HUGGINS

Los Angeles

* I would like to register my displeasure with the Dec. 16 cartoon by Michael Ramirez. His characterization of the opening of the Getty Center as a Christmas present for Los Angeles strikes me, a Jewish Angeleno, as exclusionary and parochial. How insensitive to present an image which, while probably warm and friendly to those brought up as Christians, excludes all others!

I’m sorry, but I see the Getty Center as a marvelous gift to all of Los Angeles, and the world; I don’t appreciate not being included in Ramirez’s model of what that means.

MARC SAZER

Los Angeles

* Each cartoon of Ramirez’s is a sparkling gem. “Merry Christmas, Los Angeles” is no exception. I regret not having saved each one since he joined The Times’ staff.

ANITA S. MOORE

Monterey Park

* The recent stories on the Getty Center have overlooked an important point: The Getty is already an anachronism. The Getty in particular, and museums in general, have been replaced by the World Wide Web, which brings art (of all periods), music and literature to the public and does so without further crowding our freeways and polluting the environment. It is the Web, not the Getty, that realizes the dream of the late Andre Malraux to create, for the people, a “museum without walls.”

The public would truly benefit if the Getty were torn down and the cliffs and hillsides restored to their natural splendor.

RONALD MARTINETTI

Glendale