OS ANGELES - Thirty bucks and 40 minutes.
That was the cab ride mantra on a good day here.
Making themselves right at home in a city where traffic tops everyone's list of complaints, convention delegates stashed at hotels in every direction almost instinctively took up the refrain. But the cost of transportation, the travel time, and the traffic snags were just some of the reasons convention organizers and attendees were dumping on LA.
Los Angeles, as anyone who has traveled its numbered freeways knows, is a far-flung city. Forget a central core. Downtown is dead after business hours. The action is in other parts of town: the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, the restaurants in Beverly Hills, the college hangouts in Westwood.
For the Democrats, that meant that at the end of the day delegates who were supposed to be fired up about the party, about Al Gore, and about the election wound down quickly as they dispersed from the Staples Center.
''I don't think it has been conducive to a spirit of unity,'' said Christopher Daigle, a delegate from New Orleans.
The other problem, Daigle said, was crowd control, which in some instances seemed overzealous. Police used pepper spray and rubber bullets at times against the protesters, and other times blocked off routine exit routes.
''At times, I feel more closely aligned with the protesters than with the people who are supposed to be protecting us,'' Daigle added. ''And I think that's contrary to what our party stands for. LA is opposite what our party stands for.''
After President Clinton spoke Monday night, thousands of convention-goers were herded outside, all of them, it seemed, trying reach a party at Paramount Studios about 5 miles away. But the shuttle buses refused to let people board. In the ensuing chaos, delegates in suits and skirts were stranded on the curb and spilled onto the street, pushing against each other. No one seemed to know what was going on or where to go.
''Monday was a crazy night,'' said Patricia Williams, a delegate from the Bronx. ''We waited like an hour to get a bus.''
Many people gave up on the party altogether. Then they faced a new problem: finding a cab in a city where the car rules, and even stars drive themselves around.
The Democrat leadership had its own troubles, some unavoidable in the land of backlots and sound stages. In Tinseltown, where people are inured to A-list celebrities, getting attention is no easy feat. Convention speechmakers who are big shots in Washington had to compete with international stars here.
When vice presidential nominee Joseph I. Lieberman addressed the convention Wednesday night, for instance, he received rousing applause. But there was no wave of flashbulbs popping when he took to the podium. That was reserved for actors Jimmy Smits and Tommy Lee Jones, who gave brief convention addresses.
Democratic operatives were soon calling LA a failure as a convention site.
''People are furious,'' said one congressional aide who asked not to be identified. ''The problem is that for a lot of these delegates, it takes an hour and a half to get from the convention site to their hotels. And as we spill out onto the street, the energy should continue. But it doesn't because people go in 30 different directions, 30 miles away.''
While the delegates complained about cabs, the protesters marched around Los Angeles in the oppressive heat, many of them asking directions to the city's minuscule subway system. They, too, were scattered, staying in this youth hostel and on that friend's floor.
But organizer Lisa Fithian said protesters had greater concerns than getting to the next corporate-sponsored party. ''The vastness of LA was one of our organizing challenges, but it didn't undermine our power,'' Fithian said. ''Our coalition is in the streets. It doesn't matter where we're sleeping.''
Former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, in town yesterday, said that if he had been elected president in 1988, ''This city would have great public transportation.''
Dukakis, known for riding the Green Line from Brookline to the State House while still in office, rattled off the bus schedule from the airport to the University of California. ''And for a senior citizen like me,'' he said, ''it costs 30 cents.''
The problem is, public transportation is limited here. And that is filling cab drivers' pockets.
''We're not complaining,'' said one stressed-out driver who declined to give his name. ''It's just too much pressure.'' He said the dispatchers keep urging the drivers to ''stay on the road as long as we can. We are tired already.''
