A little more L.A. Waterfront delay info
Lot's of good Freeman quotes in this morning's Breeze story on the situation. Check it out, and don't forget today's big meeting - 5PM at the Port of Los Angeles.
life on the edge
daily musings about the oddities of san pedro, california.
39 Comments:
I was at the meeting. Dr. Ralph Appy, the Port's Director of Environmental Management, provided the primary explanation of due diligence. In other words, the port was vulnerable to lawsuits on a couple of fronts: 1) that they would proceed with interim projects in a way that bypasses environmental review processes, and 2) that proceeding with interim projects today predisposes the Port to one particular design option or the other - low density or high density – in the future. On this point, Appy was vague, stating that anybody whose preferred option wasn't chosen could effectively argue this hindsight interpretation.
June Burlingame Smith disabused the notion that she and other members of P-CAC were responsible for the delay. Even though she and other well-known proponents of open space opposed the high density plan, they were in favor of interim projects. Handouts for the meeting included older meeting minutes where the interim projects had been taken to a vote by her board and approved.
The community then commented. Angie Papadakis kicked off comments by saying how proud she was of her son for having worked so hard to get the project so far along and how shameful it was to have it stall now. June B.S. initially interrupted her to ask that Angie introduce herself, saying something like 'I hate to tell you this, but not everyone knows who you are' and later called her a 'lovely lady' when Angie stepped away from the mic. Elder statesmen of the SPYC said they were frustrated that it's taken over 20 years to get just a little patch of grass on 22nd St. and now the possibility was once again delayed. One guy offered $1000 for grass seed if they could plant the field now. Another made the point that, if the LA Coliseum could truck in thousands of cubic yards of dirt in one day for motocross, the Port could plant even a 'temporary park' that they could later tear down if sued. There was much more of the same sentiment repeated by other speakers. "I love San Pedro. We've waited for way too long". "A delay at this stage of the project could affect public perceptions, which would in turn choke the incoming stream of outside investment."
Many took the opportunity at the mic to once again argue the merits of one density alternative over another, which was extremely annoying, because we were there to talk about the merits of a DELAY, not niggle over the details of the larger B2B project. In particular Herb Zimmer - mouthpiece for the Chamber's International Maritime Village Concept www.sanpedrochamber.com/IMF.pdf - scolded the open-spaceheads for not thinking about the socio-economic health of the community. (Anybody knows more about the history of this maritime village concept, share the scoop with the rest of us.)
I walked away feeling as though the Port's claim that these projects posed a litigation risk was left largely unchallenged, while the community infighting continued. If members of the community really wanted to persuade the Port not to postpone 2006 activities for fear of litigation, they would have questioned the validity of these fears. Members present seemed instead to accept the legal challenge explanation, and countered it with 'but still... we waited too long', 'but still... can't you see what you're doing to deflect new investment'?. If there were a real possibility of a lawsuit, I’d be holding off too.
Appy said the Port will be posting the documents (letters and legal briefs) that influenced the postponement decision on their website. They also offered a CD of these documents to anyone who is interested. I wasn’t clear where they’d get posted on the website, but my guess is it will be here: http://www.sanpedrowaterfront.com/PolaEnhance/fileCabinet/downloads.aspx?site=&rId=25. It would have been useful if they had produced a few strong examples of these documents for the meeting, so we could have had the chance to read the language and weigh the litigation risk ourselves. These documents are public record. If the port doesn’t post them, keep asking for them. If you review the documents and feel the decision to delay the ’06 projects was overcautious or unmerited, make your voice heard. In my mind, the jury is out until I see those docs.
With regards to the overall B2B project, I wouldn’t give up on it just yet. The Port can pretty easily justify a delay and hold us off until the 2007 EIR release date, but there is no way they’ll get away with canceling the whole waterfront project. I’m hearing folks mix up the concept of the delay up with the cancellation of the big B2B effort; as far as I know, the EIR for that is still underway and on schedule. And in the grand scheme of things, 2007 honestly isn’t too long from now.
One final note: I wasn’t there for the whole thing and, frankly, almost fell asleep a couple of times, so please fill in any major omissions.
I was at the meeting. Dr. Ralph Appy, the Port's Director of Environmental Management, provided the primary explanation of due diligence. In other words, the port was vulnerable to lawsuits on a couple of fronts: 1) that they would proceed with interim projects in a way that bypasses environmental review processes, and 2) that proceeding with interim projects today predisposes the Port to one particular design option or the other - low density or high density – in the future. On this point, Appy was vague, stating that anybody whose preferred option wasn't chosen could effectively argue this hindsight interpretation.
June Burlingame Smith disabused the notion that she and other members of P-CAC were responsible for the delay. Even though she and other well-known proponents of open space opposed the high density plan, they were in favor of interim projects. Handouts for the meeting included older meeting minutes where the interim projects had been taken to a vote by her board and approved.
The community then commented. Angie Papadakis kicked off comments by saying how proud she was of her son for having worked so hard to get the project so far along and how shameful it was to have it stall now. June B.S. initially interrupted her to ask that Angie introduce herself, saying something like 'I hate to tell you this, but not everyone knows who you are' and later called her a 'lovely lady' when Angie stepped away from the mic. Elder statesmen of the SPYC said they were frustrated that it's taken over 20 years to get just a little patch of grass on 22nd St. and now the possibility was once again delayed. One guy offered $1000 for grass seed if they could plant the field now. Another made the point that, if the LA Coliseum could truck in thousands of cubic yards of dirt in one day for motocross, the Port could plant even a 'temporary park' that they could later tear down if sued. There was much more of the same sentiment repeated by other speakers. "I love San Pedro. We've waited for way too long". "A delay at this stage of the project could affect public perceptions, which would in turn choke the incoming stream of outside investment."
Many took the opportunity at the mic to once again argue the merits of one density alternative over another, which was extremely annoying, because we were there to talk about the merits of a DELAY, not niggle over the details of the larger B2B project. In particular Herb Zimmer - mouthpiece for the Chamber's International Maritime Village Concept www.sanpedrochamber.com/IMF.pdf - scolded the open-spaceheads for not thinking about the socio-economic health of the community. (Anybody knows more about the history of this maritime village concept, share the scoop with the rest of us.)
I walked away feeling as though the Port's claim that these projects posed a litigation risk was left largely unchallenged, while the community infighting continued. If members of the community really wanted to persuade the Port not to postpone 2006 activities for fear of litigation, they would have questioned the validity of these fears. Members present seemed instead to accept the legal challenge explanation, and countered it with 'but still... we waited too long', 'but still... can't you see what you're doing to deflect new investment'?. If there were a real possibility of a lawsuit, I’d be holding off too.
Appy said the Port will be posting the documents (letters and legal briefs) that influenced the postponement decision on their website. They also offered a CD of these documents to anyone who is interested. I wasn’t clear where they’d get posted on the website, but my guess is it will be here: http://www.sanpedrowaterfront.com/PolaEnhance/fileCabinet/downloads.aspx?site=&rId=25. It would have been useful if they had produced a few strong examples of these documents for the meeting, so we could have had the chance to read the language and weigh the litigation risk ourselves. These documents are public record. If the port doesn’t post them, keep asking for them. If you review the documents and feel the decision to delay the ’06 projects was overcautious or unmerited, make your voice heard. In my mind, the jury is out until I see those docs.
With regards to the overall B2B project, I wouldn’t give up on it just yet. The Port can pretty easily justify a delay and hold us off until the 2007 EIR release date, but there is no way they’ll get away with canceling the whole waterfront project. I’m hearing folks mix up the concept of the delay up with the cancellation of the big B2B effort; as far as I know, the EIR for that is still underway and on schedule. And in the grand scheme of things, 2007 honestly isn’t too long from now.
One final note: I wasn’t there for the whole thing and, frankly, almost fell asleep a couple of times, so please fill in any major omissions.
Hasta Luego wrote:
(Anybody knows more about the history of this maritime village concept, share the scoop with the rest of us.)
Yeah, let's see the goods. From what I can divine by reading the Chamber's uninformative little packet, it's a sort of Potemkin EPCOT Village based on a mishmash of vaguely New Urbanist planning principles, late 1990s "knowledge worker" hype, and well-intentioned but kooky "green" futurism (autos would be banned, but golfcarts would be allowed--this, on a site that takes all of five minutes to walk across lengthwise).
The problem--well, one of them--is that the booklet doesn't give many concrete details about the proposal. You get four pages concerning the actual project, and then some fourteen pages of appendices including a lengthy passage from a book by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich (!) and, of course, the obligatory study by the developer-friendly Urban Land Institute. Would it have killed them to include an artist's rendering? If nothing else, it would have been amusing to see little pastel sketches of prosperous "knowledge workers" zipping up and down the main drag of the new Village--all 2/10 of a mile of it--on electric golfcarts, their Gap khakis flapping in the breeze.
And of course there are the unanswered questions. Setting aside the basic socioeconomic premise of the Village (affluent people must be imported so that we slope-browed natives can have jobs waxing their cars and shining their shoes), just how many of these maritime "knowledge" jobs are there really? Of those, how many truly need to be located physically close to the harbor? Does an import-export number cruncher require a view of the hammerhead cranes from his office window to do his job?
Jobs of any sort are a benefit to the region, but the benefits are both short and longterm. When people talk about improving the socio-economic health in Pedro by attracting affluent or educated newcomers, the arrival of affluence isn't the end of the line. The idea isn't that the so-called natives are condemned to perform only menial jobs in servitude to the newcomers (who will always be considered foreigners) forever. A native worker's skill set is the same today as it will be if more white collar workers were to arrive tomorrow. If a guy is washing cars before the yuppies come, he'll still be washing cars after but perhaps closer to home. The benefits for him in this sense are probably shorter term. On top of that, though, new jobs may lend him the perception that there's economic opportunity right here in the region. Maybe he'll set his sights on a degree or more vocational training. And what about his kids? The next local generation could eventually be the ones filling the higher paying positions at these supposed new jobs (which I agree with you may or may not be out there). Much in the same way that the proximity of the port has served as an effective recruiter of local SKILLED longshoreman labor, the presence of 'knowledge' & tech jobs, administrative office work, operations, planning, finance, engineering... you name it... all these jobs here in the immediate area could expose young people to opportunities they may not have been previously aware of. The Stanford prison experiment - the study and not the band, as unethical as it was - did much to demonstrate how individuals are powerfully influenced by their environment. I don't see how an environment where there are high-paying jobs can do more harm than good.
The Maritime Village concept is kooky, but the intent behind it and other similar ideas is not malicious; it's more well-meaning than patronizing. Change takes time, and what initially looks like a short term cultural shock to the native population could produce prosperity for generations to come. More skilled jobs will do more for the region than parks or malls. I hereby declare myself a job-ist.
I would only disagree with you in that the Village idea is well-meaning and patronizing. And, foremost, kooky. This is Herb Zimmer's baby, right? What exactly are his qualifications as an urban planner? If I went back and copied a bunch of my old Life On The Edge posts about urbanism / architecture / transportation / my vision for Pedro's future and typed them up into a pamphlet with twenty pages of citations, would the Chamber of Commerce endorse and publish it? If I started a fake business and joined the Chamber, would they? I'm an urban planner wannabe too, dammit!
The Stanford prison experiment was about people's reactions to assigned roles. I don't remember anybody concluding from the experiment that the students who played the "prisoner" role were inspired by the presence of the "guards" to become guards themselves. And make no mistake, this Village idea rests on the patronizing (I'm trying very hard not to say insulting) notion that the role for native Pedrovites is that of service-economy labor for the imported "knowledge workers" (Pets.com stock, anybody? Spice Girls albums? Going cheap!) sequestered there.
I hereby propose that a ten-story pile of donkey feces be erected next to your house and that ten needy members of the community be paid seven dollars an hour, for eight hours a day, to sculpt and maintain it, and that five MBAs from Manhattan Beach be hired to supervise and manage the operation. What say you, job-ist?
P.S. Not trying to influence your decision either way, but the pile of donkey excrement will have a fountain on top of it. With lights. And music. Just saying.
Herb Zimmer, despite the fact that his attack on the open spacers was out of place, was actually quite articulate. And I think you need to go back and review findings of the Stanford experiment.
IMBG: this Village idea rests on the patronizing (I'm trying very hard not to say insulting) notion that the role for native Pedrovites is that of service-economy labor for the imported "knowledge workers"
Let's give the "native Pedrovites" a little more credit here. They are responsible for their own skill sets, and as I said above could benefit from a boosted perception of opportunity in this town. Help us all understand why adding jobs for Pedrans is insulting to them. What is it that you're against? Is it the very notion that some Pedrans could benefit from socio-economic betterment that you think is insulting to them? Have you seen the crime rates in this town? Or is it the influx of these dreaded newcomers, and if so please explain what exactly it is about them that offends you so much? I'm not trying to be a smartass here. I am sincerely trying to figure out why you are so absolutely against the idea of new Pedrans as part of the solution to local crime, blight, and undereducation.
IMBG:I hereby propose that a ten-story pile of donkey feces be erected next to your house and that ten needy members of the community be paid seven dollars an hour, for eight hours a day, to sculpt and maintain it, and that five MBAs from Manhattan Beach be hired to supervise and manage the operation. What say you, job-ist?
Well, as long as the ten needy members of the community agree to the jobs of their own volition and the MBAs scored at least 700 on the verbals of the GMAT, and as long as you're acting as my ever-so-diplomatic public relations guy on the project, then I guess the only question left before I agree to this arrangement is, what did the donkeys have for breakfast?
Hasta Luego wrote:
Herb Zimmer, despite the fact that his attack on the open spacers was out of place, was actually quite articulate.
I have no reason to doubt this, but what earthly difference does his refined speech make to the validity of his argument? Either his plan will solve the social problems that it is meant to address, or it will not. I strongly suspect that it will not solve them, and I've told you why.
I don't care if Zimmer is the love child of Ted Sorenson and Peggy Noonan. His idea strikes me as half-baked.
And I think you need to go back and review findings of the Stanford experiment.
OK, done. What part specifically did you think I got wrong? The SPE purported to test the hypothesis that people's behavior could be influenced to an extraordinary degree by placing them in an extraordinary situation--in this case, that of playing one of two specific roles, "guard" or "prisoner." Note well, please, that a situation (one's place or status in a larger structure) is not to be confused with an environment (one's general surroundings). Note also that no effort was made to determine the effect of the "prison" setting on bystanders or observers; it was only on those subjects who were assigned either of the two roles.
There may well be studies supporting the claim that kids who grow up in neighborhoods without a visible professional class have trouble imagining themselves as professionals, but the SPE doesn't come close to being such a study.
Help us all understand why adding jobs for Pedrans is insulting to them. What is it that you're against? Is it the very notion that some Pedrans could benefit from socio-economic betterment that you think is insulting to them?
It's the presumption that they (we) are incapable of acting as the engine of that socioeconomic betterment, and are in need of the noblesse oblige of Mr. Zimmerman and the example of his cavalry of imported "knowledge workers" that is insulting to them (us). What part of that didn't I make clear?
Have you seen the crime rates in this town? Or is it the influx of these dreaded newcomers, and if so please explain what exactly it is about them that offends you so much?
As I said before, in what seemed to me at the time to be plain English, I have my doubts about the economic demand for maritime "knowledge workers" located physically close to the harbor. Do you know what Stevedoring Services of America (SSA) did when they wanted to escape ILWU jurisdiction over their vessel planners? They set up offices in Utah, a right-to-work-for-peanuts state, and now the plans for stowing cargo aboard ships at Berth 245 in Long Beach are handled by people a thousand miles away who have never seen a ship in their lives.
See, that's the thing about some of those knowledge workers. The product of their labor can be converted to 1s and 0s and transmitted to their employers from Utah, Calcutta, or Bangladesh quicker than you can say "the Information Superhighway will provide Americans with an ever-expanding economy full of lucrative job opportunities and a stock market that will never crash." A lot quicker.
Of all the elements of the MV plan to dread, then, the superflous newcomers are way down on the list. Closer to the top is the possibility that this ridiculous thing will be built despite its utter uselessness, diverting money and valuable land from purposes that might have served people's actual needs.
Hey, maybe Mr. Z would like to pitch a Maritime Village to the folks in Provo, UT? I'll bet he could sell them on it. I hear he's really articulate.
I am sincerely trying to figure out why you are so absolutely against the idea of new Pedrans as part of the solution to local crime, blight, and undereducation.
Because I reject out of hand the assertion that the existing Pedrans are not capable of generating the solutions to those problems on their own, given the proper tools and infrastructure for the job. The Maritime Village is not that toolset or that infrastructure.
The notion that this project can make San Pedro "self-sustaining" is ludicrous. Even if it worked, it, and we, would be dependent on the fortunes of the international shipping trade. One downturn in that sector and you could kiss our newfound "self"-sustenance goodbye. How is that any different from depending on longshoring or fishing?
Self-sustaining communities have existed for thousands of years. They are not created out of whole cloth by governments or private developers gambling on future demand for some good or service; they develop organically, with members of the community providing each other with the goods and services they need and earning a living thereby. Pedro will become self-sustaining (to the extent that such a thing is possible for a bedroom community in a modern economy) when its plentiful commercial and retail infrastructure is revitalized--not yuppified, not condoized, revitalized--and the spending power of its unionized blue-collar workers and professional commuters is channeled into the local economy instead of into outlying shopping centers.
A street full of pedestrians enjoying the local stores, restaurants, and coffeehouses is not a place to get mugged. A kid with the prospect of starting his own store, restaurant or coffeehouse will not find a life of petty street crime, violence, and jail very tempting. A block of historic buildings with active, prosperous businesses in them will not tend to become an eyesore. Those seem to me like powerful arguments for local solutions to crime and blight.
(Undereducation is something else again, but the disgraceful state of education for the children of the non-rich and non-white is beyond the scope of anything I or Mr. Z can realistically propose.)
what did the donkeys have for breakfast?
Reheated bullshit, delivered daily from the San Pedro Peninsula Chamber of Commerce and the Port of Los Angeles. And shredded copies of Random Lengths, which probably accounts for the smell.
Now if the donkeys had been subsisting on a steady diet of steel and glass, we might have had a deal.
The SPE purported to test the hypothesis that people's behavior could be influenced to an extraordinary degree by placing them in an extraordinary situation--in this case, that of playing one of two specific roles, "guard" or "prisoner." Note well, please, that a situation (one's place or status in a larger structure) is not to be confused with an environment (one's general surroundings)
“Environment”/”Situation”. As far as I know, the study didn’t draw a sharp distinction between the two. I think people in general still tend to use the terms interchangeably. The primary distinction drawn by the study was between personality and environment (or disposition vs. situation or even nature vs. nurture if you like). When I use the term, environment, to describe its influence on people’s behavior, I guess I consider the environment a sort of supersituation that includes one’s status as part of his general surroundings.
What part specifically did you think I got wrong?
I’m starting to feel a little silly debating the minutiae of the Stanford prison study when the academic community is still arguing over how to interpret everything that went down. Whatever reference you used to read up on the SPE is just one interpretation of the outcome and I wouldn’t disagree with it per se. So no, you didn’t get any part wrong. But to speak further to your point, when I saw Philip Zimbardo, mastermind of the SPE, speak in the early 90’s, he was far more excited about the broader implications of the study. From what I could tell, to conclude that behavior will change with one’s ever-fluctuating situation was a fairly intuitive and uninteresting conclusion to him. However, the inference that one’s environment (my definition – not yours) could play a powerful role in influencing the choices people make and the direction their lives end up taking was far more meaningful to him, and has far-reaching implications into the debate about how San Pedro society could take shape in future generations.
I don't care if Zimmer is the love child of Ted Sorenson and Peggy Noonan.
Who told?
His idea strikes me as half-baked.
Agreed. So I won’t argue with you on any points you make against his ideas. I guess I felt the need to say something nice about him.
Grandiose visions of self-sustenance and the questionable demand for maritime-sector knowledge workers aside, I’d like to talk about the mechanism by which more knowledge/tech/white-collar jobs would undo much of the local blight. I don’t think you outrightly disagreed with whether or not the mechanism works, only took offense to the underlying premise that existing Pedrans couldn’t be the agents of their own improvement. If it weren’t insulting, do you think the addition of the above jobs located in town could reduce the inner city plagues that we’re talking about?
...given the proper tools and infrastructure for the job ... Pedro will become self-sustaining... when its plentiful commercial and retail infrastructure is revitalized...and the spending power of its unionized blue-collar workers and professional commuters is channeled into the local economy instead of into outlying shopping centers….
I’m still trying to envision your version of a San Pedro with its problems solved. Is a revitalized “commercial and retail infrastructure” what you mean when you refer to “the proper tools and infrastructure” to address the 800-pound gorilla problem of poverty?
I reread your post back in January (http://laharbor.blogspot.com/2006/01/breeze-coverage-of-pacific-corridor.html) and I’m just not convinced that your proposed changes would be enough. Don't get me wrong, an improved mass transit infrastructure and more bike paths are all things I'd be right there with you fighting for, but it would certainly be a hard sell to a community.
Besides, correct me if I'm wrong here, but aren't Pacific and Gaffey outside the "jurisdiction" of the waterfront development project?
A kid with the prospect of starting his own store, restaurant or coffeehouse will not find a life of petty street crime, violence, and jail very tempting.
Our kids have always had the prospect of starting businesses. I’d argue that those that wanted to already have done so in San Pedro, and they’re the chop shops, the stores on Pacific filled with cheap plastic imports, the bail bondsmen, the crappy fast food. Still our kids are tempted to commit crimes. I haven’t seen the prospect in and of itself acting as a deterrent.
Also, we have just a finite number of retail spaces available in town. What are we gonna do? Oust every pawn shop, every uncharming storefront, every fast food joint along Pacific and Gaffey and replace it with something quaint and attractive?
Even if we did somehow get a revamped Pacific/Gaffey corridor - and beyond the argument over whether or not a revitalized retail economy could make a dent in the poverty problem - I don’t see how this would hold back gentrification of the area and subsequent displacement of lower-income individuals. Isn't that the outcome that worries you the most?
P.S. I am gonna be incommunicado til perhaps the weekend. TTYL.
Hasta Luego wrote:
“Environment”/”Situation”. As far as I know, the study didn’t draw a sharp distinction between the two.
It didn't have to. There is one. Whatever you call it, there's a difference between the effect on a person's behavior of a specifically assigned role in relation to another person's specifically assigned role in a tightly defined and temporary situation ("You're a guard. He's a prisoner. Maintain order for two weeks"), and the effect on a person's perception of living in a general environment over the long term. The study had specifically to do with the former, and nothing at all to do with anything remotely resembling the latter.
I’m starting to feel a little silly debating the minutiae of the Stanford prison study when the academic community is still arguing over how to interpret everything that went down.
You ought to feel silly, you naughty boy/girl. You should have brought up a study that was at least remotely apposite to what was being discussed. Surely some study, somewhere, addresses the issue of kids growing up in areas of underemployment.
On the other hand, I have a really hard time believing that kids living in depressed areas are actually unaware of the existence of white collar jobs. What do you think that they think the people on Sex And The City do for a living? And what difference is moving those yuppies or their jobs physically closer to said kids supposed to make, and why hasn't it made any such difference in the cities in the Midwest and the East coast where affluent neighborhoods and poor neighborhoods are all scumbled up together?
Whatever reference you used to read up on the SPE is just one interpretation of the outcome and I wouldn’t disagree with it per se.
Aww, you thought nobody else knew about the Stanford Prison Experiment (the experiment, not the band) before you brought it up. That's adorable. Would it be inappropriate if I reached over and tousled your hair just a little bit?
However, the inference that one’s environment (my definition – not yours) could play a powerful role in influencing the choices people make and the direction their lives end up taking was far more meaningful to him, and has far-reaching implications into the debate about how San Pedro society could take shape in future generations.
So, the most meaningful result of an experiment that supposedly told us something shocking and new about human behavior under extreme (not "fluctuating") circumstances is that it reinforces something banal and well known about human behavior under normal circumstances? I hope for his sake that you misunderstood him.
I’d like to talk about the mechanism by which more knowledge/tech/white-collar jobs would undo much of the local blight.
I'd like to talk about it, too. Talking about it sure as hell beats just assuming that the mechanism exists, and discussing projects like these as though the existence of that mechanism were self-evident, which is what the IMV pamphlet, for example, does.
I don’t think you outrightly disagreed with whether or not the mechanism works, only took offense to the underlying premise that existing Pedrans couldn’t be the agents of their own improvement.
I think I implied pretty strongly that I'm skeptical of this mechanism. If bringing high-paying jobs to Pedro will reduce blight, why haven't the literally thousands of full-time longshore jobs created in the last ten years--some three thousand in the last two years alone--reduced it?
While the average longie doesn't really make six figures, as the PMA would have you believe, a typical longshoreman's yearly wages are not that far away from those of the typical tech / white collar worker. Certain local businesses jockey shamelessly for those dollars in flyers that they post at the dispatch hall and pass out in front of Local 13 meetings. Yet, empty storefronts and the perception of a dangerous downtown remain. Are we to believe that there's something special about "knowledge worker" money that will erase the blight in a way that longshore money hasn't?
If it weren’t insulting, do you think the addition of the above jobs located in town could reduce the inner city plagues that we’re talking about?
I suspect that the effect on those plagues (San Pedro isn't an inner city, but never mind) would be nonzero, but nothing that anybody would really notice. Just like the effect on those plagues of the considerable amount of longshore money flowing into Pedro. The money comes here, but somehow it ends up elsewhere. Will tech-worker money behave differently? To assume that it will is to practice faith-based economics.
Come to think of it, we've been having this conversation as though there weren't already white collar workers in Pedro. There are thousands of them. Shouldn't the existence of their money, and the example of their presence in town, have set off that mysterious blight-erasing mechanism by now?
I’m still trying to envision your version of a San Pedro with its problems solved.
It entails a lot of standing in a circle and singing "Michael, Row The Boat Ashore."
Actually, as I've been trying to make clear, many of Pedro's problems are far beyond the scope of little Pedro itself. A dysfunctional educational system, offshoring, the Wal*Martization of what's left of the workforce, the tulip craze that is the current real estate market, an economy of mindless "growth"...do you think that I think that I can solve these things with some bike racks and fixed up old buildings?
Is a revitalized “commercial and retail infrastructure” what you mean when you refer to “the proper tools and infrastructure” to address the 800-pound gorilla problem of poverty?
No; it's what I mean when I refer to the proper tools and infrastructure to address the specific problems of downtown crime and blight.
Read carefully. You miss less that way.
I reread your post back in January (http://laharbor.blogspot.com/2006/01/breeze-coverage-of-pacific-corridor.html) and I’m just not convinced that your proposed changes would be enough.
Enough to wipe poverty from the face of Pedro? Of course not. Bear in mind that I made that post in response to a post by my esteemed colleague Calimari, wherein he accused me of "cling[ing] to the status quo." The idea there was to show just how radically I would change things if I had a magic wand (or a hammer of justice, since we're in a folkie mood), the better to drive home the point that it's the ugliness, the meanness, and/or the sheer barking stupidity of the proposed or impending changes to Pedro that I dislike, not the newness.
I have more recent posts that are more on point re: crime, blight, and revitalization that I can link you to, if you really want to spend that much time reading my crap.
Don't get me wrong, an improved mass transit infrastructure and more bike paths are all things I'd be right there with you fighting for, but it would certainly be a hard sell to a community.
That's putting it mildly, especially in this community. But it was probably a hard sell in Portland, at first. And now they're reaping the benefits, while in Los Angeles we still talk about widening freeways like it's a good thing.
Besides, correct me if I'm wrong here, but aren't Pacific and Gaffey outside the "jurisdiction" of the waterfront development project?
Why, yes. Yes, they are. That's sort of the point, actually.
I think that if I've hammered any one thing home in these rants, it's that the problems of Pacific and Gaffey (etc.) must be fixed on Pacific and Gaffey. Turning the waterfront into a megamall or a great big treehugging park or a Universal Citywalk with housing for tech workers on top will not revivify historic Sixth / Seventh / Pacific, and will not uncrappify the strip of soul-crushing ugliness that is Gaffey.
I'm not the one claiming that waterfront development will make Pedro "self-sustaining," remember.
Our kids have always had the prospect of starting businesses. I’d argue that those that wanted to already have done so in San Pedro, and they’re the chop shops, the stores on Pacific filled with cheap plastic imports, the bail bondsmen, the crappy fast food.
I'd argue that the sight of one non-ghetto business after another going out of business (bye, Vinegar Hill Books!) or leaving (nice knowing you, King's Bicycles!) or never even getting off the ground (sorry, Liberty Auditorium!) is a powerful object lesson to even the most ambitious would-be Pedro merchant.
Also, we have just a finite number of retail spaces available in town. What are we gonna do? Oust every pawn shop, every uncharming storefront, every fast food joint along Pacific and Gaffey and replace it with something quaint and attractive?
That would pretty much be the goal, over time.
Or, you know, we could just cross our fingers and hope that some mythical white collar jobs will land here and work their white collar mojo on our economy without us having to do anything at all to create a diverse and interesting street life. Up to us, I guess.
Say, what exactly do they do in that gleaming Northrop-Grumman building, anyway? Something suitably techy and knowledgish, no? Shouldn't it have cast a +20 blight-erasing spell on us by now?
Even if we did somehow get a revamped Pacific/Gaffey corridor - and beyond the argument over whether or not a revitalized retail economy could make a dent in the poverty problem - I don’t see how this would hold back gentrification of the area and subsequent displacement of lower-income individuals.
The idea isn't to "hold back" gentrification, it's to revitalize without having to gentrify. There are a number of ways to hold back gentrification, which I won't get into now (but will be happy to later) because I think the blogger.com server is seriously going to explode if this post gets one word longe*#$#$#$@##^%^%^%^%[NO CARRIER]
Welcome back, IMBG.
I have to seriously hit the sack, but I'll allow myself to respond to one comment---
So, the most meaningful result of an experiment that supposedly told us something shocking and new about human behavior under extreme (not "fluctuating") circumstances is that it reinforces something banal and well known about human behavior under normal circumstances?...You should have brought up a study that was at least remotely apposite to what was being discussed.
Just so we can get off the topic that was my bad for bringing it up to begin with, I will concede that it was not the most appropriate example to support the statement that environment influences behavior, but I couldn't think of any others. I still can't think of better evidence off the top of my head.
With regards to conclusions you referred to as "banal" and unshocking, yes, perhaps they were proof of something others may have found intuitive. However, I meant that the question of whether behavior is hard-wired or malleable by one's environment has been hotly debated for centuries. Until that study, there aren't others I can think of that provided even pseudo-scientific evidence tilting favor one way or the other in the nature/nurture debate. Thus, when the study produced hard data that tested people's simple assumptions, the results were something to get excited about. In this case, the researchers set up extreme circumstances to approximate, in a non-confoundable controlled manner, a markedly distinct environment, in hopes to tease out markedly distinct behavior.
In my last defense, Zimbardo did publish subsequent work on environmental influence and behavior, citing his learnings from the prison experiment, but none of those other works are as well known as the SPE. If someone were to ask me to provide evidence that environment influences behavior (which is what I'd wanted to establish at time of first mention), I'd still point to the Zimbardo study as it is one that has entered into popular consciousness and is not some obscure, academic opus that would make me into a snob for using it as a reference. If there are others that are better suited *and* recognizable, then mea culpa.
(I guess I could have brought up Pavlov's dogs since I was aiming to support how behavior can be shaped? Somehow I think that might have been objectionable to some readers out there who would think I was comparing the "native, slope-browed" Pedrianos to animals who drink out of the toilet.)
How's about I just admit you're right about how it was stupid to bring up SPE, so we can get off this topic?
I will address much more of your latest in the next few days.
to revitalize without having to gentrify.
In the meantime, do go on about gentrification and please expand on the difference between that and revitalization in your mind.
More in response---
IMBG: Are we to believe that there's something special about "knowledge worker" money that will erase the blight in a way that longshore money hasn't?
I don't know much about longshoremen, but I think the only difference I would point to is the mere presence of pedestrian foot traffic, and more money staying in town because people's business is conducted in town and not, as I presume, in the terminals and on the docks.
I know people who would probably argue there are cultural differences between blue-collar and white-collar workers, but I don't have enough information myself to make an argument for how each group's influence differs. I suspect the difference is, as you said, nonzero.
I'll hop back on here when I can.
Hasta Luego wrote:
How's about I just admit you're right about how it was stupid to bring up SPE, so we can get off this topic?
OK, OK. Sheesh. But if you have a study that's on point (i.e., actually has to do with perceived class impermeability and environment), just cite it. I don't care how obscure it is, just point me to where I can read it.
In the meantime, do go on about gentrification and please expand on the difference between that and revitalization in your mind.
The difference in my mind is of no consequence; what matters is the definitive difference.
Revitalization is simply the restoration of a moribund neighborhood or district to use at or near its former economic level--figuratively giving it new life. Implicit in this, usually, is the assumption that the area will also be returned to something like its former physical condition, and that it will once again be a pleasant and safe place to pass through or linger in.
(In order to be a candidate for revitalization, of course, a place must have been lively in the past. A dull stretch of exurban tract "homes," for example, or a twentieth century Modernist / Urban Renewal housing project, can hardly be revitalized, as these places were never vital to begin with.)
You'll notice that I didn't say anything about who is doing the restoring of the old neighborhood, or for whose benefit. That's because it doesn't matter: as long as the above conditions are met, you're looking at revitalization.
Gentrification is a special form of revitalization that involves the restoration of a depressed area's infrastructure, particularly its buildings, for the benefit of newcomers from the economic upper class (the gentry, hence the name), often bringing with it the displacement of existing lower-class residents by eviction or pricing out.
I don't know much about longshoremen, but I think the only difference I would point to is the mere presence of pedestrian foot traffic, and more money staying in town because people's business is conducted in town and not, as I presume, in the terminals and on the docks.
I don't think I follow you. At least I hope not. You're not seriously suggesting that the failure of longshore money to reverse Pedro's economic fortune is attributable to the workers doing their work on Terminal Island, are you? For one thing, most longies jump into their cars at lunchtime and head into town--San Pedro if they're working on the LA side, downtown Long Beach if they're on the LB side.
Much more importantly, lunch- and coffee-break spending is nowhere near sufficient to make or break a local economy. If it were, downtown Los Angeles, where for decades countless thousands of office workers and businesspersons have bought their lunch and coffee and snacks during the day, wouldn't be world famous as an urban black hole.
If every longshoreman in the ports of LA and Long Beach spent his lunch money in Pedro--and sometimes it feels that way when you're trying to get some service at Big Nick's--it wouldn't resuscitate the local economy. If you added all the people in the Northrop Grumman building and the folks doing the imaginary maritime tech jobs, it still wouldn't. You can't reverse blight and build an economy on sidewalks that swarm at noon and are dead the rest of the day and night.
I know people who would probably argue there are cultural differences between blue-collar and white-collar workers, but I don't have enough information myself to make an argument for how each group's influence differs. I suspect the difference is, as you said, nonzero.
That's not the difference I was talking about. The nonzero difference would be that between Pedro with its current number of jobs (of all descriptions) and Pedro with those same jobs, plus any number of tech / white collar / "knowledge worker" (if I have to type that one more time I'm just gonna set the clock on my computer back to 1998 and be done with it) jobs added to the mix. The difference would be attributably solely to the additional money in the spending pool, to the extent that any of the people landing those jobs actually lived here.
As to the cultural difference between us slope-browed types in SP and our local pencil pushers, the only cultural trait that matters for our purposes is spending habits. That difference is, for all intents and purposes, zero: in each case, it's "a lot in outlying areas, and a little bit locally." And the imbalance in each case gets worse the farther you get away from groceries, toward things like clothing and appliances and entertainment.
There's a new stereo store going up on Pacific not far from where I live. In a non-descript storefront with more stucco on the outside than windows. It will probably do well.
It's still a bummer to see it go up. Not a sight to inspire confidence that Pacific is taking a turn for the better. My bf says maybe it'll cater to longtime listeners of K-Mozart. I suspect it'll attract clowns like the one parked in the middle of my street last night in this impossibly high giant pickup truck. His tires were literally taller than I am. He was considerate enough to leave his music blasting so it could vibrate through closed windows while he left the truck standing in the middle of the street without a driver. 3 cars had to sit waiting to pass by for about 4 minutes. I was so pissed off I almost called the cops.
When the driver and his buddy showed up (the driver was a tiny, tiny man, naturally) he didn't apologize to anyone waiting. The buffoon just got in his truck wearing a goofy grin and drove up ON THE SIDEWALK for the length of the rest of the block and then tore away. Guess that's what people do when they drive off-road trucks who aren't real off-roaders.
So a startup shop like this new stereo store probably isn't going to do any major renovations to the building that it most likely leased. A lot of people starting new businesses are tight on cash. Who knows, maybe the place will surprise me, but what's their incentive to fix it up and make it look nice?
How does the community of San Pedro have any say in the businesses that open on Pacific and Gaffey? On the other hand, I'm not 100% ok with the community imposing its definition of "quaint and attractive" onto "ghetto businesses".
I have to admit, I see why people turn to the thought of new non-crappy retail space created from scratch within the waterfront project boundaries when I see retail crappiness proliferating around town unchecked. Not saying I support the idea completely, but I feel the attraction to it.
How does the community of San Pedro have any say in the businesses that open on Pacific and Gaffey?
It doesn't. But it does have a say in which businesses it will keep open with its money. And in that, it is depressingly similar to the "community" of America, in that it will put up with just about any amount of cheapness and hideousness in its surroundings because it doesn't think it deserves any better.
I'm not 100% ok with the community imposing its definition of "quaint and attractive" onto "ghetto businesses".
You don't have to be. Nobody has to impose his definitions on anybody. Diversity, not the replacement of one monoculture with another, is key. You might be surprised at how inoffensive a pawn shop or a tattoo joint can look when it's surrounded by a grocery store, a dance studio, a bike shop, a bookstore, a lawyer's office, etc.
Really, who but a prissy-ass could object to Tattoo Deluxe on Sixth Street? It doesn't dominate the street, it's just one of a bunch of businesses. Sixth would suck if it were just restaurants, or just frou-frou boutiques, or just offices, or just anything.
I have to admit, I see why people turn to the thought of new non-crappy retail space created from scratch within the waterfront project boundaries when I see retail crappiness proliferating around town unchecked.
Never forget that crappiness is in the eye of the beholder. The proposed waterfront megamall retail looks pretty craptastic to me. Many a charmless eyesore has been sold to a community as a replacement for perfectly good infrastructure that was being underused.
Of course, bringing life and diversity back to a set of streets and buildings is complicated, takes time, and requires a certain keenness of insight on the part of the people in charge of things. Plopping down a shiny! new! clean! orderly! shopping center is easy, quick, and can be understood by the dimmest of bulbs on a city council or chamber of commerce. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: the second half of the twentieth century in America!
Crappy is in the eye of the beholder, but soul-crushing ugly is only for IMBG to decree, eh?
You people don’t get it. “The strip of soul-crushing ugliness that is Gaffey” is already home to people like me. I live off of there, I can walk to 3 markets where I get all my groceries. I can buy clothes up and down Gaffey and Pacific.There’s nothing wrong with all the places you can eat in my neighborhood. At night, my friends and me can go out dancing on Pacific. We have bars. We have nightlife. Everything we need is right here. I’m sick of idiotas telling me how ugly my ‘hood is because they don’t like Mexicans. Our businesses are not ghetto. They are orderly and colorful. Lots of familes go to them. What’s so wrong with that?
If IMBG thinks people are acting elite for wanting to change the culture that he likes in San Pedro, than he is an elitist too. I take offense to all the things he say about where I live. IMBG think you’re better than the people who want to build a mall, but you would be glad to see all the stores on Gaffey/Pacific not pretty enough for you go away. What makes it ok for you to say subjective things about ugliness? And why do you talk to the people the way that you do? You’re the only one here being an asshole? Didn’t your parents teach you how to be nice tough guy?
I say go ahead and build the stupid new malls if it means my neighborhood gets left untouched by all the jerks out there who say it’s not good enoufh for me. Especially the ones who try to tell other people they are snobs but don’t think they’re snobs too. Hypocrites. I know alot of the businessman who have what you call “ghetto” businesses on Gaffey and Pacific. Business is good for them. They raise their kids here. They are just ghetto businesses to people who want to tell people how to live.
Letty, I have a feeling that at least some of the businesses you are talking about are the kind that I wish there were more of, not fewer. You think I want to kick out the Mexicano/Centroamericano restaurants and bars, and clubs like La Zona Rosa? On the contrary: I want to grab some of the people who insist that San Pedro must have megamalls and chainstores or face eternal economic doom, and take those people down to where those restaurants and bars and clubs and grocery stores and botanicas are, and make them take notes. "This," I would say to them, "is what happens when people don't wait for a corporation to build a shopping center for them. It's called a lively, organic neighborhood. Quit ignoring these people. Ask them for advice instead."
I agreed, and agree, with Calamari (Marshall, the guy whose blog this is) when he said that:
...Olde San Pedro looks at the Pacific corridor like it's a bastion of illegal immmigrant, criminal activity, as opposed to the bustling community that it is. Every Mexican restaurant is like a sapper digging at the foundations of their false legitimacy and superiority. It's a shame that the old, fat guys from the Italian American Club who linger there during Football (American) season can't get together with the fat, old guys who linger in the Mexican restaurants during Football (the rest of the human species style) season and realise that they are the same dudes.
Think I'm bullshitting you? Then you haven't been reading here very long, or very carefully. One of my pet rant subjects, albeit one that I haven't gotten into lately, is how infuriating it is to me every time some dumbfuck makes a glib comment about the Ports O' Call and fish market area being a "ghost town" that should be torn down because "nobody" goes there (the hundreds of Latino families who pack that place to the gills on Sundays apparently counting as "nobody" in their eyes). I have called these fools out for their racism on this blog, and I have done so to their faces, and I don't doubt that I will have occasion to do so again.
Anyway, point being, don't jump to conclusions. By "ghetto" businesses I mean the tattoo parlors, bail bondsmen, pawn shops, etc that tend to spring up in downtowns that don't get any other use--and as I very clearly said in my last post, they are only a problem when they are the only, or the predominant, kinds of businesses on the street.
In general, you're confusing my extreme dislike of ugly buildings and bad urban design, to which I freely admit, with some sort of disdain for the people who eke out a living in some of those buildings, which I categorically deny. Shit, the murals on the walls of some of those restaurants and groceries are often by far the best feature of the building.
What makes it ok for you to say subjective things about ugliness?
I'm a human being, which means that I perceive ugliness subjectively. So do you. There is no such thing as objective ugliness.
I say things about ugliness because I think it's important to call it out for what it is, no matter how rich, powerful, popular or influential the people producing it may be. Ugliness persists because not enough people speak out about it. I learned that from my acid-tongued Mexican-American mother, by the way.
I also learned from her not to apologize when I'm not sorry, so I make no apology whatsoever for saying that Gaffey, with its soulless strip malls, big box shopping centers, drive-thru fast food joints, and general pedestrian-hostile layout, is ugly. In my totally subjective opinion, it is.
And why do you talk to the people the way that you do? You’re the only one here being an asshole? Didn’t your parents teach you how to be nice tough guy?
My parents taught me a whole bunch of things, thank you for asking; and yes, how to be nice was one of them. They also taught me to question authority, to think critically, and not to worry too much about public opinion because it's often wrong. And they taught me irreverence. I just don't feel, and wasn't brought up to feel, that I owe anybody--cop, teacher, architect, developer, politician--any more respect than he earns with his actions and his character.
Additionally, my dad taught me how to hammer a dent into the middle of a Piccolo Pete so that it whistles and then goes BANG, a skill that I use to this very day!
Incidentally, Letty, as I've been saying all along, if the rest of the Pedroids started living and spending their money the way you do--shopping for groceries and clothes close to home, eating in the local restaurants, getting their entertainment locally--they would have substantially fewer reasons to fucking whine about their downtown being deserted. They don't seem to understand this, though. If you get a chance, could you please inform them? Thanks.
Sincerely,
IMBG
Nice Guy
OK I get what you say about keeping all the stuff that I go to. But I still smell a little of b.s. when you say that you know how to be nice. If I get what you're saying, and you mean people have to earn your respect before you're even polite to them, then that means you approach total strangers with complete lack of respect. On top of that, you too quick to judge. How you know someone's character who just states a few opinions? But right away, you start acting hostile when someone says something you don't like. You too angry. There are other people here on this blog who think critically and question authority too but they not as rude as you. That's just my subjective opinion. And you should be fair and let other people have their opinions too without going crazy on them.
I know alot of people in my neighborhood who are happy if the big B2B project builds more than a park. They don't care what people e speculate is gonna happen to the local economy. Most people I know dont' worry about half the stuff people talk about in here. You tell them there's gonna be more places to shop and hang out and they happy. We're not stupid. We know the difference between what our neighborhood looks like and what flashy new plazas look like. I like the Santa Monica promenade. My family likes to get in the car and walk around Third Street. We don't look at that place and think our neighborhood looks like that. That's why we make a special trip to go there. So what I'm saying is, I don't mind if they wanna bring something like that over here. Maybe a big movie theater. Just the other week I heard my uncle bragging to some friends that they're gonna build something real nice here. He's proud of it. So you see, there's room for the new and the old. Just cause I live in the ugly part of town doesn't mean I have to be against building something fancy over by the water.
That's all. You sleep tight.
Letty
Letty wrote:
If I get what you're saying, and you mean people have to earn your respect before you're even polite to them, then that means you approach total strangers with complete lack of respect.
No, no, no. Just that nobody gets any extra for being powerful, a pillar of the community, making more money than I or my friends do, etc. Or, a well known lyricist once expressed in verse: "I'm never hesitant / To say 'fuck the President.'"
Or "fuck the Community Redevelopment Agency." Whatever.
Look, if you don't like my outspokenness (what you call rudeness), I'm really not losing any sleep over it. I'm not running for office. I'm just putting my thoughts out there for you to engage with or ignore, as may suit you.
I think that this place of ours can be made into something that your uncle can be proud of, without building yet another sterile corporate shopping center and killing what's unique about it. You disagree? Fine, it's America. Don't take it so personally. Debate is good.
Anyway...
We used to have a bunch of movie theaters here. When my parents and grandparents (and maybe yours too) were kids, they could see any current big movie just by walking to one of those theaters. All but one of them eventually got torn down. Not sure exactly why--whether it was a part of the general decline of the area when people started going to malls to do everything, or if it was more to do with the breakdown of the old system where the major movie studios operated their own theaters.
Whatever caused it, the lack of movie theaters in Pedro is sort of a gaping hole. Remember about ten years ago we were supposed to get a swanky Art Deco multiplex on the H2 lot (Centre between Sixth and Seventh)? Turned out the developers were flakes, the deal fell through, and nobody has really talked about putting theaters downtown since. The Warner Grand is cool, and gorgeous, but it can only show one flick at a time.
So you're right, we could use a movie theater. But why the hell put it out on the waterfront? Let's put it near where people live, and near or in the area that we're trying to revive. How about that stretch of Pacific between Third and Fourth, on the west side of the street? Right near Rafaello's restaurant (whose owners would probably appreciate having something besides a vacant lot, a motel, and a tire shop across the street). It would fill in a dead zone on the street, and help connect the commercial strip on north Pacific with all the Mexican / Central American markets and bakeries to the rest of the Pacific Corridor. People in the neighborhood could walk there from their houses, just like our grandparents could.
That's just one idea. Look around and you'll probably find other places where a theater would go well. Who goes to the waterfront to watch movies, anyway?
I think the last of the neighborhood movie houses to fall to the wrecking ball in Pedro was the Strand, where Washington Mutual Bank is now on 11th and Pacific. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong?
Also, I'm not Letty, but I think I read somewhere that the old bowling alley on Ninth is up for redevelopment. Might that be a potential place for a theater? I'm sure that if it really is for sale or whatever, the developer will want to put, sigh, more condos there...but since you asked for suggestions...
Sooooooo, speaking of silent majorities and 800-pound gorillas and downtowns, did anybody else here make it up to downtown LA for the big march on Saturday? Between a half a million and a million people in the street, to the total surprise and amazement of most of English-speaking LA? If not, and you just watched it on TV or read the coverage later, what was your reaction?
So what's the deal? Has this blog gone dead, or did somebody decide it would just now only function in this comments thread? It would be a shame to see it go dormant, as it has been one of my favorites.
If this place isn't working for you then there's always
The Chinaman Is Not The Issue
or Random Lengths News
a shameless plug, but what can i say?
I'll tell you my reaction to the march giant. I don't think 500,000 illegal aliens marching waving Mexican flags and chanting in Spanish is going to win much support for most Americans. I know it sure as hell pissed me off.
I have no interest in granting amnesty to lawbreakers who jump in front of all the people all over the world who want to come here and be AMERICANS.
Dave
Dave,
I don't think all march attendees were illegal immigrants, let alone solely Mexican.
I support a system that reflects the reality of the current situation - guest workers arriving from across the border to work legally for willing American employers. Think about the impact to the agricultural economy if we lose the labor provided by illegal immigrants. How much do you want to pay for your strawberries at the market?
I can't stand the latent racism that an issue like this unearths. While some of the Mexican flag wavers were also flashing gang signs and behaving in a generally disruptive fashion, they should not be seen as a reflection on the Mexican-American and Mexican communities. You can disapprove of them without disapproving of the marchers, or the cause they were marching for - a humane immigration policy.
I hope, if that new wave of affluent, possibly better-educated homebuyers to town who can afford to buy in this market ever arrives, we still get to keep the peaceable, hard-working Mexicans in San Pedro, and oust our homegrown redneck racists.
I didn't see anybody flashing gang signs or behaving disruptively. I did see and hear a lot of hometown / home country / favorite fútbol club boosting and boasting--"Que viva Chivas!"--in between all the "Si se puede" and "El pueblo unido" chants, but it was all in good fun. All in all, spirits among the (really, seriously massive) crowd were markedly higher than are usually evident at the lefty/antiwar marches and rallies I go to.
Mind you, there were so many people crowding Broadway (and, as it turned out, Spring, Hill, and Main) all the way from Temple down to Washington that every square inch of sidewalk and street was packed with people, at shoulder-to-shoulder and chest-to-back density. It was like that for the entire length of the march, and because of the congestion it took three entire hours to "march" (actually shuffle) all the way to City Hall. Despite these conditions, I didn't see a single fight, or anybody pushing and shoving, or even anybody complaining.
I actually saw more American flags than flags of any other country, although the Mexican flags tended to be bigger than the flags of any other country--including Honduras and El Salvador. There's just something about Mexicans and flags, man. They're kind of like Americans (or, as our friend Anonymous puts it, AMERICANS) that way.
Oh, and I have no idea about the bowling alley. Maybe somebody else here does?
P.S. Somebody posted something and then deleted it. What'd I miss? Scandal? Outrage? State secrets? Schroedinger's cat? What?
I'm not going to step into the larger debate, and I've got no idea what was said in the deleted post, but...
Here's some theorising a little about the decline of movie houses in Pedro.
I'm far too young to have seen any of this, or lived through it, so everything I'm saying is a generation seperated from the history of it. But, I think the decline of the movie houses (and the blowling alley, and the roller rink, etc...) all comes from the change in transit related to Terminal Island, after the bridge was built. I've been told by many an old timer that back when the Ferry used to move thousands of cannery workers each day (and before that, more thousands of other workers during WWII), everyone would spill out onto 6th and 7th Streets and then march or bus themselves up to their homes. So the six or seven movie houses in Pedro would be passed by, on foot, by a mass of people each day, and it was beyond convenient for them to go there. So basically the decline of the ferry (and canning jobs, to boot), the late adoption of "car culture" in Pedro (why walk to the store when you can drive for an hour!), and then the huge retail development that was the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance and the associated Hawthorne corridor (hard to believe now, but in it's day, it was the model mall, and the flagship of a whole retail paradigm, and had what the world's biggest parking lot to boot) came along and basically gutted both the business district in Pedro and led to the rapid decline of the movie houses. Everything snowballed and went into a what has been a 30+ year decline. That's the short, light on details and dates version.
The thing about the ferry theory is, it's usually not possible to sustain a business or a district on one or two daily transient bursts of activity. Like I was telling Luego, if that were the case, then downtown Los Angeles with its several-times-daily bursts of street activity from the office workers would be a thriving urban hot spot instead of a ghost town sixteen hours every day. No doubt the cannery workers using the ferry were one small part of the support system for those old movie houses and other businesses downtown, but the reason those businesses thrived was because people used the streets they were on all day long and into the evening, in a variety of contexts.
Going to work / at work / going home from work / out on a date / going shopping / getting a haircut / going to dinner / buying a newspaper / walking the kids to school / catching a movie / meeting some friends / buying some new clothes / having a beer after work / hanging around aimlessly and trying to meet girls / playing chess in the park / picking up a new faucet for the sink. That mix of uses and times is what gives businesses, including movie houses, a reason to stay open after 5:00.
Single screen movie houses didn't just die in Pedro, they died all over America. Part of it was the malls and the car culture, but a big part of it was the Supreme Court decision in the late 1940s (US vs. Paramount) that held that the practice of movie studios owning their own movie theaters was anticompetitive, and forced the studios to divest themselves of their theaters. Few theaters could make it on their own without studio backing, and over the next few decades hundreds of them were abandoned, torn down, or converted to other uses. Of course, the rise of the malls didn't help.
I think your old-timers are overestimating the importance of the ferry and the canneries to the old movie theaters. They're not wrong, exactly, but there was way more to it than that.
Oh...just one more thing. Working at the canneries, besides giving people a job and a sense of purpose, also gave them a little bonus to take home with them every day: the aroma of the cannery. My older relatives tell me that getting on certain buses in San Pedro just after quitting time at the canneries was a real olfactory adventure. Something tells me that if a cannery worker wanted to catch a movie after work, he or she probably took the bus home, took a shower, changed clothes, and took the bus back down to the theater.
Theodore Roosevelt's ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907.
"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
Theodore Roosevelt 1907
Check out Malkin's blog and tell me that the illegal aliens coming here today want to be an AMERICAN.
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004869.htm
Dave
Bro, if you take Michelle "Manzanar" Malkin the least bit seriously, I'm afraid you've got bigger problems than a stuck caps-lock key.
Did you even read what I wrote before? I wasn't sitting in front of my computer on Saturday afternoon with my finger on the F5 key, waiting for some wingnut blogger to explain the big march to me; I was there. The sea of American--excuse me, AMERICAN--flags I saw wasn't a figment of my imagination.
According to the new Random Lengths, there is an old roller rink, now a church, that is slated for development. That's probably the one I was thinking of. It didn't say the exact address, though, so I don't know if it's the current Hope Chapel or if it's something else.
I guess it won't surprise anybody here to learn that the proposed development for the site is condos. If it really is the Hope Chapel building, then this is a shame because it would have been a great site for a movie theater (since that's what we're all talking about right now) or something like that.
Is there some financial reason, other than the obvious one (real estate bubble), that nobody is interested in building anything else but condos in actual nonwaterfront San Pedro?
I hope Letty comes back and posts some more. Her dialogue with IMBG was getting interesting.
Where's Redrider? Reggie get her?
I'm guessing real estate bubble. It's not so much that developers don't want to build other things, it's just why would you build anything else when you can throw something up and parcel it out into fifty or a hundred pieces for $300-600K per? Easy money!
Of course, that's about to change, radically. But that's another story.
Back to movie theaters. I asked my parents what movie theaters they remember from when they were kids in Pedro and this is what they came up with:
The Warner. Obviously.
The Cabrillo: On Seventh and Palos Verdes, or maybe Beacon. My mom and dad both remember this theater as very grand and ornate like the Warner. Like the Warner, it had a low-key, sort of vernacular Deco exterior; the real fancy stuff was on the inside. It also had a foyer with a ticket booth like the Warner. It was a Fox theater and showed first-run films. Here's the Cinema Treasures entry.
The Strand: On Pacific between 10th and 11th, where the Washington Mutual bank now takes up the whole street. The Strand was also a Fox theater but with second-run features. If you missed a picture at the Cabrillo, wait a few months and you might catch it at the Strand. This was not a really fancy place. The Strand lasted longer than any of the other theaters except the Warner--it was still showing movies in the late 1970s. Before being knocked down it was an Evangelical church for a while. If anybody has a copy of Flipside Fanzine #25, there's a review of a punk rock gig held there in 1981 featuring the Minutemen, Saccharine Trust, and Red Cross.
Barton Hill Theater: 221 Pacific Ave. My parents don't remember that much about it except that it was there. My grandmother probably remembers it better, so I'll ask her when I get a chance.
The Globe: Sixth and Palos Verdes. The building was pretty simple. By the late 40s it showed mainly Spanish-language films. At the beginning, in my grandparents' day, it showed American films like the other theaters, but I don't know from which studio (or whether it was affiliated with any particular studio). Here's a picture from the Globe's last days, with the Logicon building in the background. The Globe building was a casualty of the Beacon Street Massacre. Thanks a bunch, CRA!
So there you go, for anybody who's interested.
Cali says there were six or seven. What were the other two, if there were others? There have to be some old-timers reading this. (There are old people on the internet, right?)
Thanks for the information. I'm a first generation Pedro girl, so I can't do that kind of research.
Since you keep advocating bringing diverse business back to Pedro, can you also ask your relatives about the kinds of businesses that used to be here but aren't anymore? Not so much for goods and services that are now considered obsolete, but more like things that people now go out of town for.
How much of that stuff did we really used to have, and is it possible to get it back? Would building an informal database of that type help?
As to theatres I've heard that there were 6 Pacific Avenue theatres, but I have no way of confirming that. Your list has all of the ones I know of directly on it. In addition to theatres, back in the day (teens- 20's), D.W. Griffith had a small studio here.
As to the cannery workers and their smell, I've always felt that San Pedro must have been somewhat like H.P. Lovecraft's Insmouth back in the day, where everyone was suspiciously fishy smelling and extremely unpleasant to outsiders.
I don't think that doing an assessment of what we used to have is a good idea. When it comes to reviving downtown and the Pacific Corridor, we need to think forward, not backward. It's about what we need now, not what worked then.
Reviving downtown is tricky - people go out of town because that's where the malls and big-box stores are. as downtown is currently designed and envisioned there is room on Pacific for some of the big boxes to return to Pedro, which is a good thing, as it would enable us to adopt to a more contemporary retail pattern without destroying the character of the street. If it's down right that is...
I think San Pedro's ripe for small specialty businesses. The community here has a nice chunk of disposable income, and we are adjacent to the PV cities, where that chunk is much, much larger. One thing that seems still working in retail are specialty businesses. Most of the existing commercial spaces are ideal for start ups of this nature, and they could generate great walking traffic without clogging up our limited parking as they tend to have fewer customers who spend more on each purchase than say The Gap.
It would be great if it actually worked that way. It would also be great if having office buildings nearby could generate enough "walking traffic" to keep a street or area from declining or stagnating. Wishful thinking in both cases.
The reason you sometimes see niche businesses thrive on otherwise dead streets is because the higher per-purchase spending that you referred to gives them an above average (but not unlimited) ability to keep going in areas that are otherwise failing. They don't need a lot of walk-in business. But by the same token, they don't create a lot of walk-in traffic either. The fact that the other shops on those streets continue to die around them kind of confirms that.
To keep an area vital, and thus avoid the need to "revitalize" it every ten years, you need a critical mass of people on the street all day long and into the evening. For that, you need the kinds of businesses that lots of people--locals, visitors, and workers--are likely to visit frequently. I'm afraid there's just no getting around it: diversity is key.
That's why the Pedro girl's basic idea is a good one. Not so we can rewind the clock and bring all those places back but because there is something we can learn from the way these underused buildings were once used, and those empty sidewalks filled.
Refusing to learn from the past is just as bad as refusing to turn away from it. We owe the loss of Beacon Street to the arrogant attitude that history didn't matter.
That's why I said, or I think I said, "services that people still need, but go out of town for." Or words to that effect. I don't think anybody's looking to bring hatblocking shops back to San Pedro, but we can learn from what worked in the past and apply it to what we do in the future. I mean, obviously we took a wrong turn somewhere and it would be nice to figure out why.
Yup, refusing to learn from the past is a bad idea in politics or in vitalizing a city, I think. I believe there was a famous saying to that effect.
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