Wee'ze in tha Paper Again & LPGA News
From this morning's Times, an article about the Bridge to Breakwater development and the uncertainty of the Villaraigosa era. This looks like one of the first public questionings of the future (or not so future) of the $700+ million Bridge to Breakwater project. Could this be the first (outside of Pedro) rumbling that brings the project down in scale to better serve the community? Or will the Port steam ahead, its finger on the mute button when the community speaks out about the project?
On to the LPGA controversy. Sounds like this one has been much ado about nothing. Basically the LPGA tournament at Trump National is going to be using existing parking in San Pedro and shuttle buses up 7th, to Gaffey, up 9th, to Western, to P.V. Drive to get the fans of women's golf to the ever-so-special Trump National golf course. Port properties along Harbor Blvd, including Ports 'O Call will be used to store their cars while they watch people golf (bring your eye pillow, it's nap time). No wetlands parking involved, no secret deal to pave over anything for the event. Just ladies in comfortable shoes and yuppies wearing their sweater capes.
Regardless of the lack of conspiracy to pave, I still end up feeling like a parking garage. Maybe we could schedule a big biker convention and have everyone park in P.V. to even things out?
On to the LPGA controversy. Sounds like this one has been much ado about nothing. Basically the LPGA tournament at Trump National is going to be using existing parking in San Pedro and shuttle buses up 7th, to Gaffey, up 9th, to Western, to P.V. Drive to get the fans of women's golf to the ever-so-special Trump National golf course. Port properties along Harbor Blvd, including Ports 'O Call will be used to store their cars while they watch people golf (bring your eye pillow, it's nap time). No wetlands parking involved, no secret deal to pave over anything for the event. Just ladies in comfortable shoes and yuppies wearing their sweater capes.
Regardless of the lack of conspiracy to pave, I still end up feeling like a parking garage. Maybe we could schedule a big biker convention and have everyone park in P.V. to even things out?
11 Comments:
Wow. It's not often that I wake up to read potentially good news about San Pedro in the newspaper. And isn't it interesting that it's the Times, not the Daily Breeze, that finally begins to take a hard look at the absurdity of this project?
If the B2B is killed or massively downscaled, because of Villaraigosa's lack of enthusiasm or due to media exposure of Port hanky-panky, it will be the best thing to happen to this town in decades, and the funny thing is that most people won't even know it. (Picture a cartoon character walking blithely down a street while a piano drops from a tall building and falls directly behind him.)
I've been enthusiasticly awaiting some kind of outside pressure on this project. From my perspective, it looks like the Port & the community are battling it out over this thing in a fishbowl, and some bright lights shined upon both the project and the process might bring it in line with what the community wants to see down there.
if/when Villaraigosa cuts off the cash for b2b, a half finished, dead end walkway on Harbor blvd. would be a perfect companion to the two tone bridge lights (at least the lights that are still working by then) and Ghosts 'O Call.
actually, i'd like to see the walkway finished in my lifetime, as that will be kind of cool. it's the rest of the plan that's seems so profoundly retarded. non-organic, prefab development as a means to attract people (or rather people's money) from outside the area is rarely successful in an area that doesn't already have a "draw" of some kind. not that the "dingy public housing project with barred windows [and] rail tankers bearing chemicals" isn't draw enough on its own.
props to the Times for the first paragraph of the article though. it's just those kind of knuckle sandwich images that ignore the beauty of the place that keep the riff raff away.
We used to always be "gritty" in these superficial newspaper and magazine articles. Now we're "shabby." We're clearly moving in some direction, if not necessarily up.
BTW, I've gone down to Ports O'Call a few times in recent weeks and found it fairly well bustling with people. Thing is, they're brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking, working-class people. So now I think I understand why pushers of the yuppification agenda like to claim that it's deserted: to them, it might as well be. Everybody knows that blue collar Mexicans don't spend their money (what little money they have left after customizing old Chevies, the better to smoke pot and cuss next to them) at upscale galleries and boutiques! It's, like, a law of physics or something!
Yeah, POC is always hopping on the weekends, but the weekdays are rough. Every time I've been down there on a weekday in the last five years it's been tumbleweed time.
Apparently in the early days of the Bridge to Breakwater forums there was a lot of overt racism regarding Latino use of Ports O' Call. A lot of people bitching about the Latino use on weekends, or bitching that they didn't feel "safe" down there on weekends around the "crowds" (aka - brown skinned thieves and murderers, and their families). And of course since many of the weekend users come from out of town, most likely have no idea about or have had no input into any changes that will be occuring at Ports O' Call.
It's dead as shit on the weekdays, the last time there was any real non-weekend life was the oldtimer's circle of Croats that used to hang at the coffee shop (too bad the coffee shop's business plan was to stop paying rent and stop maintaining their machines).
Well, then, can we all agree that the POC problem is solved if we can just get people--either the same people who go there now on weekends or a different crowd--to start coming down there a little more on weekday nights? Weekdays during the day are always slow at places like that, no matter how successful they are, so no need to worry about that too much as long as everybody's paying their rent and making a living.
If we can do that--get some weekday night action going there to augment the massive weekend crowds--can we then stop jibbering about how it's a big icky eyesore and must immediately be replaced with something big, brand new, shiny, trendy, expensive, and (generally unspoken but clearly implied) attractive to upwardly-mobile white people?
I'm still going to advocate the total demo of Ports O' Call. It served it's purpose, and it's no longer doing so. I still feel that the faux cape cod buildings are an insult to our community and an eyesore. Sure we're all used to looking at it, and we all have fond memories of it, but it's time for it to go.
It doesn't need to be and shouldn't be turned into POLA's giant mall (what is it 2.7 million sq. feet of retail?), but it does have the potential to be a part of the community's daily retail & dining life. I'd rather see it get developed enough that us locals actually have reasons to spend some time there. It's sad, I have lunch meetings all of the time, and in years of "doing lunch" I've not once suggested or been suggested to go down to the waterfront and eat at any of the Ports O' Call restaurants, which says something. The only reason I'm ever down there is when I bicycle through it in the mornings. It's just not serving us by being there anymore.
The sad thing that a lot of people don't realise is that it's not just white people who are looking for content. All of the weekend Latinos are upwardly mobile too. They don't come down here in their nice cars and pay $10-20 a head to crack expensive shellfish because they aren't doing well.
Erm...so the answer to my question is "no," then? And just what sort of structures will be put in its place that won't be an insult and an eyesore?
Or, to put it a different way, what exactly are the odds, given everything we know about contemporary "architecture" as it applies to retail and dining facilities, that the replacement won't be substantially worse? (You might want to use orders of magnitude for your answer, as it may cause eyestrain to look at all those zeros.)
I mean, I understand by now that you're one of those who still cling to the old "urban renewal" model of city planning (if something is being underutilized, tear it down, put up some flashy new shit, and cross your fingers that somebody will want to use it), but...really, now.
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