Another comment . If the trash is picked up on a constant basis there seems to be a propensity for people to not leave trash around. Trash attracts trash whether it's people or goods.
A few years ago, we spent the summer in upscale seaside St-Malo, France. Along the waterfront promenades so popular with the tourists, we noticed at least two garbage pick ups, morning and evening, which kept everything looking clean and tidy. Many places in France are quite filthy, but concrete efforts were being made to maintain the atmosphere in St-Malo. We never saw graffiti there either. I’m sure this was not done out of altruistic sentiment, but because their economy depends on tourism.
New York or LA could do the same (and even create jobs in the bargain), but they don’t.
My wife and I visited France last year. The outer banlieues can be pretty scruffy, but even a city as big as Paris is amazingly clean. The Normandy region is beautiful, and people there clearly want to keep it that way. And they honor their history.
It also means there are zero consequences for the trashers. In fact, it encourages more trash, because it's always someone else's problem. It also breeds contempt, because if someone will always pick up your trash and you never suffer any consequences for your shitty behavior, you *rightly* believe that they are beneath you.
People who trash public spaces should be hanged -- in public.
I wouldn’t go that far…yet. I wouldn’t be opposed to a little law enforcement head cracking. A certain set of people only understand a good ass whipping
That's to some extent the core of the "broken windows" theory of public order that leftist politicians and academics are trying to constantly undermine and discredit. Here's the thing though, when applied properly, it works, always. The left hates that though because at its core, the theory demonstrates the consequences of individual, anti-social behaviour which is anathema to a "progressive" (i.e. moron) sociologist who looks for systemic, macro-level causes that excuse such behaviour.
I have this elsewhere but it fits better as a response to this comment:
In my town, I see less mega crazy, (Screeching at Tesla dealerships), plenty of moderate crazy (masks, yes on Prop 50 signs), but fewer outwardly hopeful (american flags) too.
If one views large fluctuations in the stock market from a sentiment analysis point of view: 1) an unusually large drop, 2) that typically ends with a capitulation, 3) a period of sideways with plenty false starts and declining volatility, 4) until volatility becomes very low and starts to uptick.
We may be somewhere in #3. I think the left is screeched out, an important step. We don't need, and are never going to get, conversions.
Like glaucoma. A long term symptomless disease that by the time you have the symptoms you are about to go blind.
But Santa Monica, unlike those with Glaucoma, can heal.
There is nothing in the US or Canada right now that can’t heal. Even the problem of illegal immigration. For the most part they are Mexicans. Who fit in. Christians who aspire to own a nice home in a safe neighbourhood, who are willing to work for it. For the most part. Britain has Africans and Muslims whose families might after 3 generations acclimatize. Might. We don’t have the same problem.
Drug use is not rampant. Tweakers And Tranqs are not rampant. Santa Monica might have 500 homeless drug addicts. This is not an insurmountable problem. Their government has let 500 people destroy arguably the most privileged City on the planet.
I think that where the Muslim problem is concerned, we need to address it differently than as just an immigration problem. They come with their own set of rules, and we, as a country, need to figure that out and deal with it.
I get the reference, but only because Os Guinness uses it in the new film TRUTH RISING (free on YouTube) about the current “civilizational moment” for the West
I think the core of the problem was deciding that people have the “right” to be homeless drug addicts and crazies, and that it’s a violation of those rights to force them into treatment. The best thing might be to essentially “criminalize homelessness.” Get them all off the streets by force, then give treatment and other help to any who want it, out of reach of the drug dealers. I like the idea of camps near farms and forests where they could be in nature and do some real work like picking crops and clearing brush.
The core of the "homelessness is not a crime" thing has always been that actual crimes committed by homeless people also became not a crime. The police were taught to be blind.
That reminds me of a recent ( now former) Seattle mayor who said homeless people who commit crimes should never be held accountable because WE DONT KNOW WHAT TERRIBLE THINGS THEY EXPERIENCED IN THEIR LIFE EXPERIENCES. Now we have a real live communist as mayor.
That's a globalist think-tank talking point (the bolded bit). Every National Chief of Poloice, every minister of justice in Western Europe for the past 15 years have used that exact same phrase at one or more instances when challenged about some atrocious crime.
Washington state has always been corrupt , it was pretty much the last area of the lower 48 that was flooded with the guys selling swayback horses with bad teeth & tinpot mafia cappos finally given their own territory.
Mail in only was the final nail in the coffin. Now the place is firmly in the grim of the sexual degenerates , dedicated communists & deluded liberals.
The cancer has spread & Will destroy what little liberty is left in the rest of the country.
So if you took a can or two of your household garbage and spread it around the park would you be arrested or fined? (If Johnny Law saw you)
I would suspect so, but what if you didn’t shower for a month dressed like a homeless mentally ill addict and then spread your trash around? Would there be a consequence? I would think not, therefore you are looking at a two tiered justice system. Clean sane people are being oppressed while homeless odiferous people are given the freedom to run amok. Clearly your lifestyle is not being incentivized.
I think we mostly just need to start enforcing laws that are already on the books (encampment, trespassing, and loitering) that make homelessness illegal.
Also need to institutionalize the mentally ill, like we used to do, since there's probably 80% overlap b/w the two issues. Much more compassionate than letting them rot on the street.
Want to get real creative, you put the camps and the prisons and de-tox facilities right up against the Mexican border, guard the border on the Western and Eastern sides DDR-style for 150 miles at least, and make it easy to "accidentally escape" into Mexico for the inmates.
Ah, well, if they're going to be supervised like prisoners (or raw recruits in a military boot camp), I have no objection. What must be avoided above all is leaving them to do as they please.
A reactionist or whatever is I'm supposed to call myself (since post-1960s conservatism is just liberalism a few steps behind the rest of the liberals) sees a dog, a fox and wolf and concludes that while all three are canines, they are not the same and so must be treated differently.
Which in no way implies or excuses abuse or exploitation of any kind. You don't exterminate the fox or the wolf just fpr being what they are and following their nature; you build better enclosures for the lviestock and poultry and make sure not to kill off more game than that there's well enough left for the fox and wolf too.
You create order, yes, but also balance and you do this by limiting yourself to what is needed, no more.
A modern liberal and most modern conservatives instead see three canines, and insist in domesticating all three, in locking them up when they do bad, and to try and re-habilitate them indefinitely, and worst of all insist that all of them and you and the livestock and the poultry and the game live together in the same room.
And that is the fundamental difference, that holds true no matter if the filter is race, history, culture, nature or sex or class or poverty or affluence.
Which is why every civilisation ever was created by hard, harsh, brutal men who managed to achieve balance between what they could and what was necessary;
It used to be people sentenced to community service would clean up the public areas. But the DA/pubsec union axis put a stop to that by not prosecuting misdemeanors anymore.
The people who have memberships at that private dog park are the same people that will keep voting for Newsom and Bass because their houses did not burn down in the fires.
Oxycontin littered dog parks. Training Oxy sniffing dogs to find it (if you could stop Fido from eating it) sounds like a great black market idea to me. 😉🥴
BTW, I worked in Dearborn for 30+ years and have witnessed its decline first hand. It’s far from Detroit despite being next door, but it’s got a big beneficiary 😉 that invests $$ and slows its decline.
I don’t know if that’s enough to offset the 1st amendment protected extremism growing there. It ain’t nicknamed Dearbornistan for nothing.
Just an old school liberal who hasn’t figured out the left ain’t liberal anymore. She’s at the height of denial, so she is almost through. I drive her nuts by telling her she’s where I was in the early teens (I was a labor Democrat for 31 years. The left isn’t for labor anymore)
“ The left isn’t for labor anymore”. I’m a conservative and I’m not for labor either, but I recognize that somebody’s gotta work to keep the freeloader’s dream alive.
We used to have the moral courage to keep crazy dangerous people in institutions, whether asylums or prisons. In the name of compassion we let them out. All we did was move the prison walls outward to the gated dog parks, to the locked public restrooms, to the plexiglass-covered shelves in our stores, etc.
This won't change until we recover the courage to separate people from society who are incapable of following society's rules. I won't believe that any progress has been made until I see the plexiglass come down. Until then, I'll know that I'm still IN the prison with the rest of the inmates.
Thank you for satisfying my curiosity about the black jacket on the coat hanger. I don't suppose the resident of that plaza considered, I don't know, cleaning the mess up himself?
He should call for a trash bin and do the work himself. I personally clean up a mile stretch of sidewalk each week where the minions who drive by and throw trash out the window. My city responds to my request for weed control at least once a year. At 88, I do this from a mobility scooter with a plastic bag and reaching tongs.
I’m sure it never occurred to the jacket owner to clean up after himself. In fact, I suspect the jacket is hanging there waiting for his dry cleaner to pick up. You never know when a prospective employer’s gonna call with a job offer. Gotta be ready, clean and wrinkle free.
“‘A liberal society can only survive if its laws & moral scaffolding are enforced & protected.’”
The principal element of that moral scaffolding is religion. It really doesn’t matter which religion, as long as it emphasizes and enforces moral choices.
The Framers had religion in mind in the concept of “self-government” – the idea that social pressure would police the myriad aspects of human interaction too small for laws to address.
Of course, liberals conduct jihad on Christianity expressly because it fulfills this role.
I’ve driven through Lincoln Park many times (technically a “neighborhood” in Los Angeles, not a city), and as far as I can remember, it has always been filthy, neglected, and an eyesore. Chris, I’m sure you drove through the freeway underpasses and observed the humane and caring tent cities and the human detritus. I feel more sympathy for the geese in your photos than Jacket Man and his denizens.
Also, you should have taken your East Coast friend to Reseda. Now there’s a real hellhole.
Was seeing some discussion here on Substack the other day about the wonderful encampments up here in Olympia, WA. I'm sure they don't beat anything there, but it was a bit surreal to pull off at an I-5 Oly exit going to work a few years ago and see smoke from encampment shacks (yes, not tents) right on the freeway exit green areas. Which never got more than a yawn from most locals.
Your post has made me think that if your friend visits again, you all could take a road trip up and visit the Capitol of WA to see how many people from CA have made it up here, lol.
I used to live in a Neighborhood in Atlanta near a highway bridge that had a creek flowing underneath it. It was sort of a park like setting. Then the homeless moved in. Soon it was a giant encampment. After years of crime, drugs and filth, they cleaned out the homeless and covered the whole area with giant granite rip rap rocks. Now nobody gets to go there.
I graduated from nursing school in 88 at LA County Hospital. It was shocking for me living there in the dorms because I grew up in the SF valley. Boyle heights was a shit hole back then. Campus police had to escort me home after work at 0300 because of the homelessness and crime. Parts of the valley were still ok but moved out of my apt in Van Nuys after a shooting in the apartment directly below mine,( of course drug related) in 90. Far cry from the orange orchards in the 60s.
In 98 took a trip to Belgium to visit family. When we got home we went to Santa Monica Beach. Everywhere we walked ,empty trash barrels with ten feet of trash on the sand around them. Needles and condoms everywhere. Nothing like the pristine beaches of Oostend.
Reseda was my stomping ground in my teens. Still safe enough to be on the streets at night. By the time I left Cali forever in 99 there were drive bys everywhere ,even in Burbank ,where we lived at the time.
Such a pity. It was a great place in the 70-80's. Or maybe I just remember it with youthful naivete.
Theoretically not too late. But, I don’t see any steps being taken to change direction. Highly doubtful that there will be a meaningful turnaround. Very sad.
I had to read "City of Quartz" for my comparative political economy class around 1992. I abhorred it. I recall that the proposition inventory that I had to write concerning it focused on Mike Davis pondering 'what would the inner-city gang members say if they could speak.' He thought it would be commie pablum. I thought he was a giant pussy, a phony, and a dolt for suggesting that they couldn't speak for themselves, for not having the balls to speak to them while preparing to write about their motives, and for assuming that his audience was as lazy and stupid as he was. I tried selling the book back to the student bookstore at the end of the semester. I think they offered me one of the twenty-two bucks that I paid for it. I also think I took the loss and threw it in the trash for the satisfaction of knowing that nobody else would ever have to read that particular copy of that particular cretin's grift.
Yeah, same. Very much the same. But the core observation about the privatization of public space and the importance of gates in Los Angeles wasn't wrong, though his political understanding of causes was stupid.
I would love to see a book compiled from all of our beautiful memories of what Los Angeles once was, not just photos but lots of anecdotes. I’d get one for my granddaughters so they could read about the great place I remember and they may never see.
Another comment . If the trash is picked up on a constant basis there seems to be a propensity for people to not leave trash around. Trash attracts trash whether it's people or goods.
A few years ago, we spent the summer in upscale seaside St-Malo, France. Along the waterfront promenades so popular with the tourists, we noticed at least two garbage pick ups, morning and evening, which kept everything looking clean and tidy. Many places in France are quite filthy, but concrete efforts were being made to maintain the atmosphere in St-Malo. We never saw graffiti there either. I’m sure this was not done out of altruistic sentiment, but because their economy depends on tourism.
New York or LA could do the same (and even create jobs in the bargain), but they don’t.
My wife and I visited France last year. The outer banlieues can be pretty scruffy, but even a city as big as Paris is amazingly clean. The Normandy region is beautiful, and people there clearly want to keep it that way. And they honor their history.
It’s a conscious choice.
It also means there are zero consequences for the trashers. In fact, it encourages more trash, because it's always someone else's problem. It also breeds contempt, because if someone will always pick up your trash and you never suffer any consequences for your shitty behavior, you *rightly* believe that they are beneath you.
People who trash public spaces should be hanged -- in public.
I wouldn’t go that far…yet. I wouldn’t be opposed to a little law enforcement head cracking. A certain set of people only understand a good ass whipping
As my then 12 year old daughter said a few decades ago, "I think it would be good to bring back public shaming and the stocks."
Now you are talking!!!
That's to some extent the core of the "broken windows" theory of public order that leftist politicians and academics are trying to constantly undermine and discredit. Here's the thing though, when applied properly, it works, always. The left hates that though because at its core, the theory demonstrates the consequences of individual, anti-social behaviour which is anathema to a "progressive" (i.e. moron) sociologist who looks for systemic, macro-level causes that excuse such behaviour.
"Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly."
I have this elsewhere but it fits better as a response to this comment:
In my town, I see less mega crazy, (Screeching at Tesla dealerships), plenty of moderate crazy (masks, yes on Prop 50 signs), but fewer outwardly hopeful (american flags) too.
If one views large fluctuations in the stock market from a sentiment analysis point of view: 1) an unusually large drop, 2) that typically ends with a capitulation, 3) a period of sideways with plenty false starts and declining volatility, 4) until volatility becomes very low and starts to uptick.
We may be somewhere in #3. I think the left is screeched out, an important step. We don't need, and are never going to get, conversions.
That is as hopeful as I can get.
Like glaucoma. A long term symptomless disease that by the time you have the symptoms you are about to go blind.
But Santa Monica, unlike those with Glaucoma, can heal.
There is nothing in the US or Canada right now that can’t heal. Even the problem of illegal immigration. For the most part they are Mexicans. Who fit in. Christians who aspire to own a nice home in a safe neighbourhood, who are willing to work for it. For the most part. Britain has Africans and Muslims whose families might after 3 generations acclimatize. Might. We don’t have the same problem.
Drug use is not rampant. Tweakers And Tranqs are not rampant. Santa Monica might have 500 homeless drug addicts. This is not an insurmountable problem. Their government has let 500 people destroy arguably the most privileged City on the planet.
California has 25% of the homeless in America!
This is purely bad governance.
Good observations but:
We have plenty of problems with non-Mexican immigrants. Here';s just one example.
https://rumble.com/v72xtom-whistleblower-exposes-massive-somali-fraud-scheme-in-ohio.html
And a personal observation: One dysfunctional person can undo the efforts of 100 functional people.
I think that where the Muslim problem is concerned, we need to address it differently than as just an immigration problem. They come with their own set of rules, and we, as a country, need to figure that out and deal with it.
My new favorite quote: “Immigration without assimilation is invasion.”
That is exactly what the 500 homeless destroying Santa Monica is. One ruining it for 500.
Agreed re anything to
Do with Muslim
ME and Muslim Africa.
I get the reference, but only because Os Guinness uses it in the new film TRUTH RISING (free on YouTube) about the current “civilizational moment” for the West
I think the core of the problem was deciding that people have the “right” to be homeless drug addicts and crazies, and that it’s a violation of those rights to force them into treatment. The best thing might be to essentially “criminalize homelessness.” Get them all off the streets by force, then give treatment and other help to any who want it, out of reach of the drug dealers. I like the idea of camps near farms and forests where they could be in nature and do some real work like picking crops and clearing brush.
The core of the "homelessness is not a crime" thing has always been that actual crimes committed by homeless people also became not a crime. The police were taught to be blind.
Chris, the police aren’t blind but the DA not prosecuting and the higher ups busting the beat cops asses for doing their jobs is the discouragement.
That reminds me of a recent ( now former) Seattle mayor who said homeless people who commit crimes should never be held accountable because WE DONT KNOW WHAT TERRIBLE THINGS THEY EXPERIENCED IN THEIR LIFE EXPERIENCES. Now we have a real live communist as mayor.
That's a globalist think-tank talking point (the bolded bit). Every National Chief of Poloice, every minister of justice in Western Europe for the past 15 years have used that exact same phrase at one or more instances when challenged about some atrocious crime.
And your governor! My gosh…. Unbearable.
Washington state has always been corrupt , it was pretty much the last area of the lower 48 that was flooded with the guys selling swayback horses with bad teeth & tinpot mafia cappos finally given their own territory.
Mail in only was the final nail in the coffin. Now the place is firmly in the grim of the sexual degenerates , dedicated communists & deluded liberals.
The cancer has spread & Will destroy what little liberty is left in the rest of the country.
So if you took a can or two of your household garbage and spread it around the park would you be arrested or fined? (If Johnny Law saw you)
I would suspect so, but what if you didn’t shower for a month dressed like a homeless mentally ill addict and then spread your trash around? Would there be a consequence? I would think not, therefore you are looking at a two tiered justice system. Clean sane people are being oppressed while homeless odiferous people are given the freedom to run amok. Clearly your lifestyle is not being incentivized.
There's a term for that called Anarcho-tyranny.
I think we mostly just need to start enforcing laws that are already on the books (encampment, trespassing, and loitering) that make homelessness illegal.
Also need to institutionalize the mentally ill, like we used to do, since there's probably 80% overlap b/w the two issues. Much more compassionate than letting them rot on the street.
I have known people it would have helped. Now it's too late, forever.
Want to get real creative, you put the camps and the prisons and de-tox facilities right up against the Mexican border, guard the border on the Western and Eastern sides DDR-style for 150 miles at least, and make it easy to "accidentally escape" into Mexico for the inmates.
Turnabout is fair play, I've heard.
The core of the problem is the 19th amendment. Dudes don’t vote for this nonsense in sufficient numbers.
It's not enough that they've trashed our cities, now you want to put them in camps near farms and forests where they can do the same?
The camps would have whatever security is needed. California has shown how to use prisoners to fight wildfires.
Ah, well, if they're going to be supervised like prisoners (or raw recruits in a military boot camp), I have no objection. What must be avoided above all is leaving them to do as they please.
🙌
A reactionist or whatever is I'm supposed to call myself (since post-1960s conservatism is just liberalism a few steps behind the rest of the liberals) sees a dog, a fox and wolf and concludes that while all three are canines, they are not the same and so must be treated differently.
Which in no way implies or excuses abuse or exploitation of any kind. You don't exterminate the fox or the wolf just fpr being what they are and following their nature; you build better enclosures for the lviestock and poultry and make sure not to kill off more game than that there's well enough left for the fox and wolf too.
You create order, yes, but also balance and you do this by limiting yourself to what is needed, no more.
A modern liberal and most modern conservatives instead see three canines, and insist in domesticating all three, in locking them up when they do bad, and to try and re-habilitate them indefinitely, and worst of all insist that all of them and you and the livestock and the poultry and the game live together in the same room.
And that is the fundamental difference, that holds true no matter if the filter is race, history, culture, nature or sex or class or poverty or affluence.
Which is why every civilisation ever was created by hard, harsh, brutal men who managed to achieve balance between what they could and what was necessary;
Balance, moderation and doing what is right.
It used to be people sentenced to community service would clean up the public areas. But the DA/pubsec union axis put a stop to that by not prosecuting misdemeanors anymore.
Public service has been ruled cruel and inhumane per every Obama appointed federal judge*.
* almost every. I think…
Ah yes, Miss Demeanor. We sure miss her.
Misinformation’s and Mismanagement’s sisters.
The people who have memberships at that private dog park are the same people that will keep voting for Newsom and Bass because their houses did not burn down in the fires.
It's close enough to the Palisades to have members who will keep voting for Newsom and Bass after their houses did burn down in the fires.
Oxycontin littered dog parks. Training Oxy sniffing dogs to find it (if you could stop Fido from eating it) sounds like a great black market idea to me. 😉🥴
That post reminded me of my very liberal friend from Dearborn, Mi.
“I just wish it was the way it was before.”
Me: “That’s what we’re trying to do.”
Her, angrily, “Thats not what I meant!”
Either you have a Western liberal democracy, or you don’t. You can’t have this and that.
Should’ve replied, “how very MAGA of you.” That would assure she’d never speak to you again.
The Muslim call to prayer would send me over the edge.
BTW, I worked in Dearborn for 30+ years and have witnessed its decline first hand. It’s far from Detroit despite being next door, but it’s got a big beneficiary 😉 that invests $$ and slows its decline.
I don’t know if that’s enough to offset the 1st amendment protected extremism growing there. It ain’t nicknamed Dearbornistan for nothing.
So, you say your friend is insane. Huh.
Just an old school liberal who hasn’t figured out the left ain’t liberal anymore. She’s at the height of denial, so she is almost through. I drive her nuts by telling her she’s where I was in the early teens (I was a labor Democrat for 31 years. The left isn’t for labor anymore)
“ The left isn’t for labor anymore”. I’m a conservative and I’m not for labor either, but I recognize that somebody’s gotta work to keep the freeloader’s dream alive.
Nope, they haven't really been for labor for decades.
Lotta peeps are these daze.
We used to have the moral courage to keep crazy dangerous people in institutions, whether asylums or prisons. In the name of compassion we let them out. All we did was move the prison walls outward to the gated dog parks, to the locked public restrooms, to the plexiglass-covered shelves in our stores, etc.
This won't change until we recover the courage to separate people from society who are incapable of following society's rules. I won't believe that any progress has been made until I see the plexiglass come down. Until then, I'll know that I'm still IN the prison with the rest of the inmates.
Thank you for satisfying my curiosity about the black jacket on the coat hanger. I don't suppose the resident of that plaza considered, I don't know, cleaning the mess up himself?
He should call for a trash bin and do the work himself. I personally clean up a mile stretch of sidewalk each week where the minions who drive by and throw trash out the window. My city responds to my request for weed control at least once a year. At 88, I do this from a mobility scooter with a plastic bag and reaching tongs.
I am deeply impressed and grateful for the work you do.
It reminds me of the renter who calls their landlord to get a washer changed. I rented for many years, and I usually did stuff like that myself.
Would I call the landlord to come and pick up trash that the neighbor’s dog had overturned? Hardly. And in this case, the renter isn't paying rent.
As a fellow detrasher that from time to time works various areas around where I live, I salute you. Thank you for your efforts!
I´d use a riding mower, in case you have to hurt somebody.
Exactly. Why is it always someone else who has to take care of it?
I’m sure it never occurred to the jacket owner to clean up after himself. In fact, I suspect the jacket is hanging there waiting for his dry cleaner to pick up. You never know when a prospective employer’s gonna call with a job offer. Gotta be ready, clean and wrinkle free.
Of course not. He has a college degree.
“‘A liberal society can only survive if its laws & moral scaffolding are enforced & protected.’”
The principal element of that moral scaffolding is religion. It really doesn’t matter which religion, as long as it emphasizes and enforces moral choices.
The Framers had religion in mind in the concept of “self-government” – the idea that social pressure would police the myriad aspects of human interaction too small for laws to address.
Of course, liberals conduct jihad on Christianity expressly because it fulfills this role.
your description of gavin newsonme is hilarious that and perfectly true
I’ve driven through Lincoln Park many times (technically a “neighborhood” in Los Angeles, not a city), and as far as I can remember, it has always been filthy, neglected, and an eyesore. Chris, I’m sure you drove through the freeway underpasses and observed the humane and caring tent cities and the human detritus. I feel more sympathy for the geese in your photos than Jacket Man and his denizens.
Also, you should have taken your East Coast friend to Reseda. Now there’s a real hellhole.
I showed her Van Nuys, and then I became merciful.
Was seeing some discussion here on Substack the other day about the wonderful encampments up here in Olympia, WA. I'm sure they don't beat anything there, but it was a bit surreal to pull off at an I-5 Oly exit going to work a few years ago and see smoke from encampment shacks (yes, not tents) right on the freeway exit green areas. Which never got more than a yawn from most locals.
Your post has made me think that if your friend visits again, you all could take a road trip up and visit the Capitol of WA to see how many people from CA have made it up here, lol.
I used to live in a Neighborhood in Atlanta near a highway bridge that had a creek flowing underneath it. It was sort of a park like setting. Then the homeless moved in. Soon it was a giant encampment. After years of crime, drugs and filth, they cleaned out the homeless and covered the whole area with giant granite rip rap rocks. Now nobody gets to go there.
Asking for a friend, Chris was this your version of “Scared Straight”?
Need to bring that back!!
I graduated from nursing school in 88 at LA County Hospital. It was shocking for me living there in the dorms because I grew up in the SF valley. Boyle heights was a shit hole back then. Campus police had to escort me home after work at 0300 because of the homelessness and crime. Parts of the valley were still ok but moved out of my apt in Van Nuys after a shooting in the apartment directly below mine,( of course drug related) in 90. Far cry from the orange orchards in the 60s.
In 98 took a trip to Belgium to visit family. When we got home we went to Santa Monica Beach. Everywhere we walked ,empty trash barrels with ten feet of trash on the sand around them. Needles and condoms everywhere. Nothing like the pristine beaches of Oostend.
Reseda was my stomping ground in my teens. Still safe enough to be on the streets at night. By the time I left Cali forever in 99 there were drive bys everywhere ,even in Burbank ,where we lived at the time.
Such a pity. It was a great place in the 70-80's. Or maybe I just remember it with youthful naivete.
The people tolerate this and continue to vote for those who cheer the demise of the state. Glad I don’t live there anymore.
Theoretically not too late. But, I don’t see any steps being taken to change direction. Highly doubtful that there will be a meaningful turnaround. Very sad.
I had to read "City of Quartz" for my comparative political economy class around 1992. I abhorred it. I recall that the proposition inventory that I had to write concerning it focused on Mike Davis pondering 'what would the inner-city gang members say if they could speak.' He thought it would be commie pablum. I thought he was a giant pussy, a phony, and a dolt for suggesting that they couldn't speak for themselves, for not having the balls to speak to them while preparing to write about their motives, and for assuming that his audience was as lazy and stupid as he was. I tried selling the book back to the student bookstore at the end of the semester. I think they offered me one of the twenty-two bucks that I paid for it. I also think I took the loss and threw it in the trash for the satisfaction of knowing that nobody else would ever have to read that particular copy of that particular cretin's grift.
Yeah, same. Very much the same. But the core observation about the privatization of public space and the importance of gates in Los Angeles wasn't wrong, though his political understanding of causes was stupid.
I would love to see a book compiled from all of our beautiful memories of what Los Angeles once was, not just photos but lots of anecdotes. I’d get one for my granddaughters so they could read about the great place I remember and they may never see.