New Geography

Author: Jerry Sullivan

  • Orange County Vantage Point: One Eye on Egypt as Little Saigon Rebrands Tet

    Scenes from Egypt, Tunisia and other places in the Middle East provide a stark reminder of the chaos that can consume entire nations. The scene on Bolsa Avenue in Little Saigon last week offered evidence that chaos can be overcome.

    Don’t get me wrong—chaos had a place along Bolsa as streams of drivers sought rare parking spaces, crowds gathered around impromptu fireworks displays on the streets, and shoppers elbowed their way among dozens of flower merchants who set up shop in parking lots.

    The buzz came in advance of Tet, the Vietnamese New Year celebration. Flowers are a big part of the tradition, and peddlers offered their best orchids and other selections.
    Restaurants and ad hoc vendors of various goods also aimed for some business, with everything from silk fabrics to baked goods on sale.

    The jumble of commerce, tradition and celebration that made parking so hard in Little Saigon was a relatively nice sort of problem for all involved. It was certainly nicer than the American experience in the Vietnam War, which ended in utter chaos.

    Many historians say the end started with the Tet Offensive in 1968. Vietcong forces picked the New Year holiday to unleash a campaign of attacks that sowed chaos throughout South Vietnam.

    The Tet Offensive failed to score any military victories by standard measures. Yet it succeeded in fostering a perception of chaos that struck a significant blow against the South Vietnamese government, which stumbled along with U.S. aid for another seven years.

    The chaos that started with the Tet Offensive and ended with crammed refugee boats fleeing Vietnam also led to the creation of Little Saigon. It’s a sprawling district that takes in parts of five cities in Orange County, just south of Los Angeles.

    Little Saigon is now home to the largest concentration of ethnic Vietnamese outside of Vietnam itself. It’s where refugees staked a claim to something more than—better than—the chaos they faced as their native country crumbled.

    What better place to rebrand Tet by reclaiming the celebratory sense of a new year and laying to rest darker images tied to yesteryear’s misfortunes? There are no doubt many who continue think of the Vietnam War when they hear the word Tet.

    Little Saigon’s recent hustle and bustle built around flower peddlers indicates another view, though. It shows that many others have remembered that the holiday existed before war and survived combat. They do not ignore history by considering Tet’s traditional meaning. They allow room for a larger view and an eye on the future.

    Jim Schlusemeyer, owner of Tuyet’s Orchid, is a good example. He sells his flowers to retailers and the general public, working the weekly swap meet at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa.

    Schlusemeyer was born in Vietnam and came here as a refugee, eventually taking the last name of his stepfather. He’s a competitive businessman who needs unique product, so he breeds his own orchids. Land in Orange County is either too expensive to make commercial flower growing worthwhile or too far inland to provide the cooler atmosphere that orchids require. So he breeds small lots of hybrids here and leases space at growing operations in Northern California for commercial production.

    Schlusemeyer enjoyed the big crowd in Little Saigon in the days leading up to Tet. His business has taken hits along with most others the past few years. The holiday and its call for flowers is a nice spike.

    Schlusemeyer says Tet sales get helped along each year by growing numbers of whites and Latinos who come to Little Saigon. Word has gotten around that the Tet holiday brings out the best orchids. There still aren’t a lot of shoppers from outside the local Vietnamese community, but the numbers are rising and appreciated.

    Not bad for a holiday that bears a name once firmly associated with one of the most frustrating and fractious periods in American history.

    Rather impressive for a community of refugees who only recently carved a new life for themselves as Americans.

    Any doubts about the rebranding of Tet were answered by a small booth set up amid the flower peddlers on Bolsa. It was sponsored by Sam’s Club—a division of retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. A salesperson pitched the crowd on home improvements looking to sell everything from patio covers to vinyl fencing.

    You’d be hard-pressed to come up with a better example of putting the hyphen in Vietnamese-American. Keep those hyphens handy considering events in the Middle East. There’s a neighborhood known as Little Arabia just a few miles away from Little Saigon.

    Jerry Sullivan is a contributing editor to New Geography and managing editor of the Orange County Business Journal.

  • Irvine, by Design

    Different is not necessarily better or worse. I took notice of this upon moving from the Echo Park district of Los Angeles to Irvine. Some acquaintances and casual observers viewed it as a shift from ground zero of hipster chic to the center of conformity. Neither comes close to capturing the truth about either place.

    Irvine is very different from Echo Park—not necessarily better or worse. That’s my point of view as a resident who appreciates aspects of both places.

    Here’s a viewpoint from a broader perspective: I can see why a lot of observers and even some residents of Irvine see the city as a paean to conformity. The cityscape obviously conforms to any number of standards, some of which seem to be downright capricious. Must earth tones dominate the palette of the entire city? Must opportunities for legal U-turns be so rare?

    There’s no denying that anyone who’s unfamiliar gets little help from landmarks as they find their way around Irvine. A lot of the streets have a similar look and feel. Many are bigger and busier than they seem at first glance. Cars are the boss, and it can take a while to get one’s bearings amid the slight distinctions of streetscape and zippy pace of traffic.

    It’s taking me awhile, but a few things are coming into focus. I find it helps to think of the city as a canvas and to get to know its brush strokes.

    There is a street grid, with major thoroughfares generally oriented on north to south and east to west. It helps to think of them as freeways. The housing subdivisions are like small towns. The shopping centers are downtown commercial districts.

    Get that in mind and it helps put the city in perspective. Once you put Irvine in perspective you begin to realize its design.

    Yes, the city is designed to a T—so much so that the “conformity” tag gets affixed by critics in gentrified neighborhoods filled with hipsters, including many who don’t realize that they themselves have gotten comfortable with uniformity.

    Listen closely to those same critics and you’ll realize they actually crave the sort of design that defines Irvine. Go to a community meeting in a gentrified neighborhood and you’ll likely hear all sorts of calls for strict design standards on everything from signs for mom-and-pop stores to street lights and dog parks.

    The difference between the design-obsessed enclaves of inner cities and Irvine owes to Donald Bren.

    His Irvine Company shares its name with the city. He grew it out of acreage that had been the historic Irvine Ranch. Bren’s vast landholdings have given him an unusual scope of control over how Irvine has taken shape.

    Bren is apparently obsessed with design. It’s also apparent, however, that his obsession works toward a clear purpose. He seeks a profit in the marketplace.

    The same hipsters who knock Irvine for conformity should appreciate the profit motive. Many of them look back fondly on pages of history that tell the stories of captains of industry who built company headquarters, stores and even factories as monuments and legacies.

    Ask a hipster about the Chrysler Building in New York or the Wrigley Building in Chicago. Get ready for a stream-of-conscious review of the elegance of those structures. You’ll hear about the glory days of magnates who were not beholden to quarterly profit reports and could freely direct their wealth to aesthetic pleasures for public view without questions from shareholders.

    You won’t hear Bren mentioned, but he should be.

    I know this much from my brief time in Irvine: The place is a big canvas, and much of it has been filled by Bren. The conformity that critics see actually is design. It just happens to be on such a grand scale that it requires a broader perspective than can be gained with drive through and a look around. You have to live with it awhile—or perhaps take it in from several thousand feet in the air.

    Nobody has to like Bren’s design. Fair is fair, though, and it should be understood that nothing of the scale and scope of what Bren has created can be fairly called conformity.

    Sullivan is managing editor of the Orange County Business Journal (ocbj.com), where this column originally appeared.

    Photo by maziar hooshmand

  • The Real OC: Diverse, Dynamic and — Dare I Say — Progressive

    I recently returned to Orange County after a decade’s absence, fully aware that a stereotype of all-white, card-carrying-John Birchers still exists among many who remain unfamiliar with facts on the ground here.

    I never bought that old saw in the first place.

    And now, on a second venture into OC, I’m amazed by how deeply those old stereotypes have been buried under the accumulated accomplishments of everyday folks.

    The truth is that OC can rightfully claim ground as a leader when it comes to all sorts of popular buzzwords that are falsely applied to a lot of so-called cosmopolitan places.

    Start with “diversity,” a sop for all seasons in Los Angeles and other urban centers, where ethnic communities often are treated like so many pawns.

    Then there’s “dynamic,” another adjective that many metropolitan areas seem to think is theirs simply for the taking.

    Dare I add the presumptuous “progressive” to the list of over-used and seldom-earned buzzwords?

    I shall.

    In many ways OC, with its suburban reputation and libertarian leanings, comes closer to living up to the actual meaning of those words compared to many of the so-called cosmopolitan centers that cling to old stereotypes about this place.

    How do I figure?

    Take the campaign between Democratic incumbent Loretta Sanchez and Republican challenger Van Tran for the 47th District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, an area that includes much of Central County.

    Tran has made Sanchez work hard in her re-election bid, no small feat considering her long incumbency.

    Neither candidate can count on ethnic appeal alone to propel them to the top. Latinos account for about 68% of the population in the district, which helps Sanchez. But voter registration is a different matter. Asians make up a smaller-but-still-significant base for Tran, with about 15% of the district—slightly more than whites. The winner will have to pick up a good chunk of voters outside their respective ethnic bases.

    That makes for a competitive race in a general election.

    And that’s a rarity in too many metropolitan areas.

    Consider Los Angeles, where ethnic communities too readily are factored like so many widgets into the calculus of ethnic politics. Electoral districts are carved up to turn this or that ethnic community into a lock for one political party or another.

    Candidates in these tailored districts typically get in line with power brokers before launching campaigns. There are occasional primary contests. But the differences between candidates in those intraparty affairs are usually so small that any debate is dominated by minute matters rather than any real difference in philosophies or policies.

    That’s stagnation.

    Some so-called cosmopolitan types might look at OC and say that the Sanchez-Tran race is an anomaly because of the challenger’s heritage. The local Vietnamese community ended up in OC after its founders fled a communist government, making it a natural for conservative, Republican politics here. That makes the community an outlier in terms of politics, ethnic or otherwise.

    That might hold up if it weren’t for Phu Nguyen, the Democratic nominee for the 68th District seat in the California Assembly, a territory that stretches from Anaheim to Newport Beach.

    Nguyen and Tran—Democrat and Republican— together belie any notion that the Vietnamese community is an outlier because of over-riding Republican loyalties in the local Vietnamese community.

    Nguyen’s opponent for the Assembly seat, Costa Mesa Mayor Allan Mansoor, points in the same direction as he engages in their high-spirited debate.

    Mansoor is a Republican who springs from Arabic and Finnish stock. The district that he and Nguyen vie to represent takes in parts of Little Saigon and Little Arabia, but does not feature a majority of voters of Vietnamese or Arabic heritage. There’s no big Finnish contingent, either.

    So you have a couple of candidates who can be readily identified by their ethnicities locked in an electoral battle that goes well beyond ethnic politics. They must reach beyond ethnic politics because the district in the heart of OC is too diverse for such narrow appeals.

    I don’t see any saints in the local political lineup. I’m willing to bet that both parties have tried to slice and dice the map to come up with districts that would make cynical use of ethnic communities.

    The point here is that OC attracts the sort of residents who reach beyond the familiar, pushing out here and bumping into one another there. Sure, Little Saigon is the major center of Vietnamese-American life, Santa Ana has an undeniably Latino core, and there is a Little Arabia in Anaheim. Yet those centers function more as cultural touchstones and less as assigned areas for members of those respective ethnic communities.

    The truth is that OC’s population mix is pretty well spread geographically and socioeconomically, with plenty of ambition—political and otherwise—throughout.

    That’s a different sort of diversity compared to what we hear so much about in a lot of so-called cosmopolitan centers.

    Sounds pretty dynamic.

    You might even call it progressive.

    Sullivan is managing editor of the Orange County Business Journal (ocbj.com)

    Photo by vansassa

  • Stagnation in the City of Angels: Whatever Happened to Ideas?

    It’s only been a couple of years since a red-hot real estate market had our city riding high. The market turned out to be a bubble, of course, and it eventually burst. Gone is the giddiness that comes when folks convince themselves that real estate or high tech stocks or any other trend or commodity can defy gravity and continue upward forever.

    Yet giddiness isn’t the only thing that’s been lost. Ideas have disappeared from the political landscape of Los Angeles.

    That’s particularly unfortunate because there’s plenty of work to be done after bubbles burst—everything from big efforts on the macro-economic level to the everyday challenges of mending lives torn asunder by financial strains. Local government can play a key role in such efforts. That means that politics is part of the picture—and that means that our city’s politicians have a chance to help by coming up with new ideas on how to spur a recovery.

    Yet our recovery is dragging along in Los Angeles. The federal government’s own struggles and the dire straits faced by state officials surely complicate the job at the local level, but those don’t fully explain the malaise we’re living through right now.

    It’s more likely that our city suffers from a dearth of ideas because our politicians became addicted to the red-hot real estate market. It’s looking more and more as though that became their one and only idea. They skimmed off the rising tide of real estate, used the money to buy political points, and stopped thinking about any new ideas.

    It worked for 10 years or so. The values of homes and other properties went up, and so did the city’s revenue. Developers paid fees to build residential and commercial units, buyers paid higher property taxes in the rising market, homeowners borrowed against their houses and spent freely, paying sales taxes along the way.

    All of the action sent streams of revenue to various levels of government, and much of the money found its way to the city’s coffers. Local politicians used the money to take care of donors with favorable deals, satisfy labor unions by expanding payrolls and paychecks for city employees, and provide basic services to enough voters to maintain the status quo.

    Now the revenue streams have dwindled, and there’s not enough for our politicians to finance their old scheme.

    There have been many reactions to our city’s challenges, but not much in the way of ideas. Our politicians have jumped from budget projection to budget projection, cutting here, threatening to cut there. Outside City Hall is a different story, as the populace begins to sense that this is all reaction with no basic idea. Whatever happened last week means nothing this week because the next budget report could prompt any sort of reaction from the politicians. There are no guiding principles or declared values—no ideas—for our city.

    This became clear to me when I realized that our City Councilmembers and our mayor used to send out all sorts of press releases back in the days of the real estate boom. There were notices that some project had been completed or another had just started. They almost always involved the expenditure of city funds, and went on about the politician who flipped whatever switches made the money flow.

    Now the money has dried up, and press releases are few and far between.

    That makes sense—if you accept the premise that spending money is the basis of any and all ideas when it comes to public policy.

    The truth is that more ideas are needed when there’s no money to spend. Yet I can’t remember the last time I saw a press release about an idea from the mayor or a City Councilmember on how to save money without cutting jobs or programs. I don’t recall any notices of a new idea that will maintain services without adding costs. I haven’t seen any communications that indicate our politicians have come up with any new ideas to meet the challenges our city now faces.

    It appears that we have an entire generation of politicians who see spending money as the whole idea of government.

    Well, we’re out of money.

    We need to know if our politicians have any other ideas.

    And they shouldn’t worry if they’re all out—voters are getting a few ideas of their own.

    Jerry Sullivan is the Editor & Publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly community newspaper that covers Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts (www.garmentandcitizen.com).

    Photo by: AndrewGorden

  • Another Caution on California: Golden State’s Grassroots Are Dying

    The subject line on the recent e-mail got my attention: “The Speaker wants to talk with you.”

    The message referred to California State Assembly Speaker John Perez, a Democrat who represents the 46th District, which includes Downtown and nearby districts that are part of the Garment & Citizen’s circulation area.

    Perez has been in the Assembly for more than two years, and he’s gotten plenty of publicity for being the first openly gay person to become Speaker. Some folks are vaguely aware that he’s a cousin to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and a former city commissioner.

    Perez hasn’t been what you’d call a man about the district, though. Ask beyond tight circles of political operatives and special interests—inquire among regular folks who live or work or own small businesses in the 46th District—and you’ll likely find little familiarity with him or his staff.

    Not many can point out much good Perez has done as a public servant, either. A number of observers and constituents believe that his most significant piece of legislation amounts to a favor for the Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), owner of the LA Live development near the Staples Center—and also a big political contributor. Perez championed a law that granted AEG an exception on selling alcohol advertising at the Nokia Theatre at LA Live, a potentially lucrative concession.

    I still held out hope when I saw the subject line of the recent e-mail—but that evaporated when I read the message. It came from a group called Courage Campaign, and it aimed to orchestrate some sort of mass teleconference with Perez as the star attraction.

    Courage Campaign has been active in the push to make marriage legal for gay couples in California, and I’ve got no problem with those efforts. My problems arrive when leaders of the group claim to be a “multi-issue advocacy organization” that deploys “an online organizing network that empowers more than 700,000 grassroots and netroots activists to push for progressive change and equality in California and across the country.”

    I grow wary when I see that Courage Campaign’s website on the Internet tosses tired chunks of red meat to the partisan political class, touting the organization’s efforts to help “kill” some proposal by Republicans. I get more concerned about a list of “partners” that includes assumed allies of the Democratic Party.

    The members of Courage Campaign are certainly free to engage in whatever politics they like—and so are all of their partners. So is Perez, for that matter. I just wish that all involved would be honest about “grassroots” and “netroots.” It’s obvious that Courage Campaign is part of the political power structure and the bickering that passes for government in California these days. That’s not a grassroots or netroots approach. Grassroots political movements challenge existing power structures. Courage Campaign is a cog in a political machine.

    Consider the appeal in the recent e-mail from the organization: “Hosting these special statewide calls can be very expensive. Can you help us cover the cost of this Courage Campaign Conversation with Speaker Perez? If you can contribute $10, $25 or $50, it will allow us to open this call to as many participants as possible.”

    I won’t begin to question the actual costs of hosting such conference calls. I’ll simply offer my suggestion on what Courage Campaign officials really meant:

    The Speaker wants to talk with you so he can convince you to give money to a political organization that will, in turn, provide him and his allies support in the future.

    Now here’s what I mean to say to members of the Courage Campaign and all of the other political operatives—liberal and conservative, Democratic and Republican—who dilute and devalue the meaning of grassroots and netroots:

    You are all special interests, creatures of twisted system. Getting the Speaker of the California State Assembly to shill for your fundraising makes it obvious that you are part and parcel of a political culture that has failed. You might soon be just about the only ones left who don’t realize what you have become.

    We need a new approach, fresh ideas, and bold challenges to the old politics that have done so much damage to California.

    A pay-to-play teleconference with a politician who has yet to solve one problem amounts to nothing more than the same old problems.

    Jerry Sullivan is the Editor & Publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly community newspaper that covers Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts (www.garmentandcitizen.com)

    Photo by ZSasaki

  • Memo to Big City Pols: Voters’ Suspicions on Influence Peddling Is Far Cry From Stupidity

    A significant clue on why the City of Los Angeles is facing budget deficits of hundreds of million annually for the foreseeable future can be found in the relationship between elected officials and AEG, the company that’s controlled by Denver-based multi-billionaire Philip Anschutz.

    AEG owns the Staples Center and the adjacent L.A. Live, which includes shops and restaurants to go with one nice hotel and another luxurious establishment that will be topped by high-priced condominiums when completed.

    AEG has a prime a seat on a gravy train of benefits ladled out by our city and state governments. Those hotels came with a tax break that is expected to amount to tens of millions of dollars over coming years. The city also provided attractive terms on a $70 million loan for the project. State legislators have passed laws that appear to many rational observers to have been crafted specifically to steer tens of millions of dollars worth of benefits to AEG.

    Some politicians like to say that AEG is deserving of such largesse because it has brought development and jobs to the city’s center. That’s appreciated, but let’s not forget that AEG is a private enterprise that’s in the business of making money. The company had to develop some land and hire some workers to make money on its plans Downtown. It would be nice to see the company’s investment earn a tidy profit, but there’s no case for sainthood in any of the business plan.

    Meanwhile, AEG has been a patron saint of sorts when it comes to local politics, giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to various candidates and campaigns. The company even pitched in with $137,000 – the largest of all contributors – to a ballot measure that extended term limits for members of the City Council.

    Do you see some possible connection there? Is there a chance that some corporate executives have used money to gain influence over public officials?

    Ask around and you’ll find that most everyday, working voters see a connection – or at least the possibility of one.

    And here’s where we get to the explanation on the hundreds of millions of dollars in budget deficits: It seems that members of the political class don’t ask around – and they don’t think regular folks are smart enough to call elected officials to account.

    What else to make of recent comments by 9th District City Councilmember Jan Perry, who represents most of Downtown. Perry has looked like AEG’s personal body guard during the recent fan dance over suggestions that the company should pay some re-imbursement for public services dedicated to the memorial service for Michael Jackson earlier this year, a tab that came to approximately $3.2 million. Some say that AEG should pay up because the company benefited from the spectacle surrounding the singer’s death by selling rights to film footage from his final days, when he used the Staples Center for preparations on what was to be a global tour.

    Perry recently took the opportunity of the flap to dismiss concerns that AEG uses political donations to exercise undue influence over city officials.

    “AEG doesn’t own the place,” said Perry, referring to City Hall in a recent story in the Los Angeles Times. “I think that’s a really stupid way to think.”

    Perry got away with an old political trick there, putting over-the-top words in the mouths of any mere taxpayers who might have questions about the relationship between AEG and elected officials. She ramped up the charges in a pre-emptive logical fallacy that dismisses anyone with suspicions of influence peddling as unworthy of an opinion on the matter.

    Perry must think that anyone outside of City Hall is stupid, indeed. Stupid enough to fall for that verbal twist. Stupid enough to think that there’s nothing to any suspicions unless it can be proved that AEG actually holds a mortgage on City Hall.

    The people are not stupid, though. Voters know that influence peddling is a shadowy business, and that big corporations and the executives who run them are careful about the legalities and perceptions that come with the flexing of their political muscles.

    You’d think a politician with Perry’s experience would be just as careful about calling voters stupid. After all, they’re smart enough to pay for all of those breaks for AEG – not to mention her salary.

    Jerry Sullivan is the Editor & Publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly community newspaper that covers Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts (www.garmentandcitizen.com)

    Photo:

  • Urban Youth Deserve Chance to Hear About Service Academies

    Here’s a disturbing thought as Veterans Day approaches: Some teachers and administrators of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) refuse to allow visits to high school campuses by representatives of the service academies that train young officers.

    The service academies have all earned reputations as fine academic institutions that go further on training future officers. There is the U.S. Military Academy; the U.S. Naval Academy; the U.S. Air Force Academy; the U.S. Coast Guard Academy; and the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. They all offer full scholarships and require five years of service after graduation.

    Candidates must meet demanding standards on academics, physical fitness, and extra-curricular activity. They are generally required to secure a nomination from a member of the U.S. Congress, the president, or the vice president.

    The merit involved in gaining a nomination, along with the geographic apportionment by Congressional districts, offers the chance to draw candidates from across the socio-economic spectrum. Graduation from a service academy offers young officers from every corner of society the chance to reach significant rank.

    Measure that against the LAUSD teachers and administrators who deem a career as a military officer to be unworthy of a hearing at high school campuses. Some will tell you that they object because our wars are fought by too many young persons of color. Others view the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays in the military as contemptible prejudice.

    These objections are absurd. Our civilian leadership decides the actions and policies of the military. War or peace? That’s in the hands of the president and Congress. Gays in the military? Same story.

    It’s true that our military stands ready for war if so directed by the civilian leadership of our democracy. It’s also notable that never in the course of history has any institution possessed the war-making might of the U.S. military. And never has an institution in such a position yielded so loyally to the will of unarmed leadership. This sense of duty has lasted through good and bad, gallant victories and horrific mishaps. Never has there been a serious challenge to civilian oversight.

    All of that is overlooked by LAUSD teachers and administrators—and their boycotts have an effect. Some members of Congress who represent Los Angeles have chronic difficulty in filling the number of nominations they are allowed to make to the service academies each year. They aren’t coming up short on qualified candidates. They can’t even get that far—not enough young achievers know about the possibilities of the service academies.

    It’s time that someone gave these alleged educators who forbid any discussion of service academies a lesson on the honorable history of our military. They should also be reminded that it will require representatives from throughout our society—rich and poor, all colors and creeds, town and country—to keep this line of honorable service intact.

    Keeping knowledge of the service academies away from youngsters in our city is nothing short of demographic censorship. It is time for LAUSD to put an end to the practice.

  • Property Owners Pay for City’s Dysfunction Under L.A.’s New Graffiti Ordinance

    Graffiti is a bane of urban life, a form of vandalism that demoralizes entire neighborhoods and invites worse crime.

    Graffiti is an art form and an outlet for expression amid the jumble and obvious strains of urban life.

    You’ll hear arguments from both of those viewpoints, depending on who you talk to about graffiti.

    The Garment & Citizen is of the firm opinion that anyone is free to consider graffiti an art form – but all should be mindful that such status doesn’t give anyone the right to express themselves by painting, etching or otherwise tagging someone else’s property. Pablo Picasso himself would not have had any right to create his “Guernica” on the side of someone else’s building, as far as we’re concerned.

    It would have been a loss to the world, of course, if Picasso had gone through life with no canvass for his genius. The world needs Picassos, and it’s important to remember that such talent sometimes grows on tough corners.

    It would be an ideal situation if we had a school system that could consistently engage such talented individuals…and parents with the time to nurture youngsters inclined toward art…and an overall outlook as a society that values art as something more than a commodity to be marketed.

    We’re lacking to some degree or another on each of those counts.

    Consider what goes on before some kid decides to emblazon graffiti on someone else’s property.

    First, there’s been some breakdown in the family unit. Sometimes it’s a parent or parents who don’t care enough to warn their children off such behavior. Other times they are too busy trying to feed and clothe their kids, leaving little time to teach them right from wrong.

    You can bet that many cases also involve a school that has failed to engage and educate the youngster.

    There’s probably a lack of after-school resources, too, leaving kids to find camaraderie with mischief makers while their parents are still working.

    All of these factors come into play on graffiti in our city. They all point to the dysfunction that has found a cozy spot in Los Angeles for decades.

    We live in a city where the minimum wage is $8 an hour, which will bring $320 for a 40-hour week – hardly enough for rent. Is it any wonder that folks at the bottom end of the pay scale might have to spend more time working and fewer hours on their child’s upbringing?

    Everyone knows that the drop-out rates at Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) campuses are sky high in general, and higher still as you move down the socio-economic ladder. Yet not much ever changes when it comes to expectations of how well the organization teaches our children.

    Then there’s the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), which recently came close to a roster of 10,000 officers, the highest mark in the agency’s history. Compare that to other major cities in the U.S. and you’ll see that we still don’t have enough cops. We have never had enough cops. And now there’s talk of trimming staffing levels for LAPD because the city is short on money.

    These are the pillars of the dysfunction that we have lived with for years in Los Angeles. How does a city go so far down a path of ignoring all these problems and allowing the ground for graffiti vandals to grow so fertile?

    Look no further than City Hall. That’s where members of the City Council recently passed an ordinance that will require any new commercial or residential buildings to include anti-graffiti coatings on the structures. The only exception comes if a property owner signs a lifetime contract to remove any graffiti within a week.

    There you have it – this problem rolls downhill. Failure upon failure leads to the doors of property owners. They must, under the ordinance, join city officials in giving up on any thoughts about directly addressing graffiti vandalism. They must, our elected officials say, pay good money to prepare to be vandalized.

    The new ordinance is one way to raise revenue, but it also raises a white flag of surrender – a de facto confirmation that our elected officials lack the governmental skill and political will to face up to graffiti vandals and address the various factors behind the crime.

    That’s a dictionary definition of dysfunction – and it passed the Los Angeles City Council unanimously.

    Jerry Sullivan is the Editor & Publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly community newspaper that covers Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts (www.garmentandcitizen.com)

  • Warning on Road to Recovery: Beware of dumbdowntown.com

    Big cities will eventually get through the recession.

    How much help they’ll get from the design-obsessed bloggers who are so anxious to shape urban life is open to question.

    Consider the blogosphere in Los Angeles, which bubbled with reports of decapitated chickens turning up all around town earlier this year.

    Some bloggers speculated that chickens were being killed in rituals of the Santeria cult, which has roots in Latin America. The speculation seemed on the way to becoming an urban legend.

    The Garment & Citizen suggested that the bloggers buzzing around the story—a bunch that was mostly European/American —might be leaping to some wayward conclusions.

    The blogosphere railed against the Garment & Citizen, claiming that we had played the “race card” by even suggesting that some white bloggers might be too quick to attribute exotica to folks a few shades darker.

    Then the story died, an urban legend stopped cold. Whoever had been killing the chickens and leaving their headless carcasses in public places had apparently left town quite suddenly.

    Or could it be that the whole matter had been made up by bloggers who figured that a bizarre and bloody tale with shadowy suspects would be just the thing to drive traffic to their echo chamber?

    There’s no telling when it comes to the blogosphere.

    That’s precisely our point.

    We don’t spend a lot of time looking at blogs, but we generally get word when one of them is railing against the sort of well-reasoned reporting and analysis that readers expect from the Garment & Citizen.

    That’s what happened after we noted last year’s closure of a Rite-Aid at 7th and Los Angeles streets as a sign that the red-hot run of Downtown development had ended. It wasn’t a tough call, by the way, given economic indicators at the time.

    Yet A number of those who blog Downtown twisted themselves in knots over that one, claiming a greater understanding while denying that the closure had anything to do with the souring economy—which soon crashed, by the way.

    Another piece in the Garment & Citizen sometime later mentioned the deterioration of the retail landscape on Broadway.

    Downtown bloggers got all bunched up over that one, too, going on about the many committee meetings held by members of the Bringing Back Broadway Initiative.

    Awhile later came word that the owners of Clifton’s Cafeteria on the 600 block of Broadway plan to sell the building as they fight to keep the place in business. A key to their struggles, according to reports, is the high vacancy rate for retail along the street. Fewer stores mean fewer customers coming to Broadway—and fewer diners stopping for a bite at Clifton’s, a bellwether for the thoroughfare.

    There’s no telling whether local bloggers bark so loud about any point of view that diverges from their own because they lack reporting and analytical skills. It could be that some function as boosters who see the truth as optional when it comes to promotional pitches.

    Keep that in mind if the Downtown blogosphere reaches you with talk about how some art galleries in the area of 5th and Main streets are closing because their landlord is ditching them in favor of higher-paying tenants. That outlook would seem to prop up the notion of a hot market for retail, as though there’s a waiting list of businesses willing to pay a premium for ground-floor space at 5th and Main despite the recession.

    That just doesn’t sound right, based on a street-level view of current conditions.

    Whatever is going on, watch out for bloggers who seem bent on telling a story about Downtown and the rest of our city that doesn’t match the facts on the ground.

    The truth is that the economy remains very slow, the real estate market is a long way from full recovery, and it will be more than a few months before the local job market perks up.

    It’s also true that our city, state and nation will eventually recover. Times are tough, but there are plenty of folks committed to getting through this downturn (see related photo and caption, “No Quit,” and Local Hero, both home page). They’ll need the accurate information and reasoned analysis—the truth, in other words—to chart a course to better days.

    So look for signs of progress and silver linings, which are the building blocks of momentum and economic recovery.

    Just beware of those who would show you nothing else.

    Jerry Sullivan is the Editor & Publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly community newspaper that covers Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts (www.garmentandcitizen.com)

  • Glimpsing the Good in Police Chief Bratton’s Goodbye to L.A.

    Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Chief William Bratton’s pending departure makes now a good time to give him credit for a habit that draws scant attention amid talk of his traveling ways and unapologetic ego: The guy works very hard at every aspect of his duties.

    It’s a habit that can touch other lives as a matter of course. It touched me one morning at the Los Angeles Police Academy. Bratton had invited me there to address a graduating class with a reading of a column I had written about the challenges of policing our city. I sat on the main dais with my wife, while some of my other family members were in a front row to the right, where the sun soon drew a bead on them.

    At one point Bratton had finished an inspection of the graduates arrayed on the greensward and was returning to the main dais when he stopped smartly and told my family members to feel free to move back a row or two for some shade.

    It was a considerate gesture amid a precisely timed ceremony – made all the more so because Bratton had no way of knowing that one of my sisters had recently been treated for skin cancer. This is a younger sister of mine, and it’s been some time since she’s needed me to look out for her, but I still do in small ways.

    I took Bratton’s courtesy personally, as a helping hand. It was one of those moments when someone extends themselves without knowing the full effect of their effort. It was the residue of a solid work ethic. It was the by-product of a constant dedication to the protocol that helps inform a sense of duty.

    Bratton has it – and he will be missed.

    There are also plenty of very public reasons to regret Bratton’s departure. Crime has gone down consistently on his watch. Relations between LAPD and the city’s ethnic communities are better than ever, although there’s still work to be done. In any case, the agency has seen broad reform and earned a release from federal oversight.

    Yet there’s an opportunity to be found in taking a break from the intensity Bratton brings to his work. This is a fellow who comprehends much more than the core of policing, taking pains to understand anything that could have a significant bearing on the job, including technology and statistical analysis. Lately he’s talked about using those disciplines in something called predictive policing, an effort to pinpoint who is likely to commit crimes, at what times, and in which locations.

    I think we should all appreciate the fact that substantial individuals are dedicated to an exhaustive pursuit of new tools for law-enforcement.

    We should also remember, however, that Bratton is a cop who views the world from a cop’s perspective. That is altogether appropriate for him — and it leaves us with the responsibility of considering whether a hard-charging chief who is intrigued by predictive policing could hold the potential to bring serious erosion to our civil liberties.

    It’s true that we have elected officials and a judicial system to stand guard against incursions on our civil liberties, adding more than a cop’s view to the debate.

    That’s a bit shaky, though, given political trends of recent years.

    Bratton adds to my worries because he’s as good at politics as any politician in our city. I worry about having a police chief who not only has the ability and drive to get a grasp on something like predictive policing but might also have enough political skill to sell the notion in a way that bypasses healthy debate.

    Perhaps Bratton’s departure will provide time for Mayor Antonio Villaragiosa and others at City Hall to ponder the balance of liberty and security – and to consider how much of one we are willing to trade for the other.

    I thank Bratton for his dynamic approach to reshaping law enforcement in our city, and I certainly don’t intend to diminish his success at fulfilling the mission he took on in Los Angeles.

    I address my concerns to our elected officials, all of whom should recalibrate their relationships with the sort of authority figures who possess the ability to make folks feel safe.

    It could be downright unsafe to get in the habit of relying on a top cop to handle the whole job.

    Jerry Sullivan is the Editor & Publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly community newspaper that covers Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts (www.garmentandcitizen.com)