One More Reason Why LA Raised Writers Like Hector Tobar Are the Future of the Los Angeles Times

There are many excellent writers at the Los Angeles Times, but few as gifted as Hector Tobar and none who are better connected with our city.

His column today is about his memories of celebrating Christmas while growing up in Los Angeles. And, once again, he proves that only a life time of first hand experience can provide the particular kind of local coverage that binds together the people of Los Angeles - and attaches them to the paper that provides that coverage.

Effortlessly, Tobar reminds those of us who grew up here what our lives used to - and what it's like to live in LA today while also allowing newcomers to our city to learn about who we are - and why we are the way we are.

So, of course, until recently - the Times felt he should spend most of his time writing about national and international affairs.  Most recently,  the Times even sent him to run their Mexico City operations while they imported young reporters from around the country to write about LA.

And we all know how well that worked.

So read the first part of the below story below - or just click the link at the top and read it all at the LA Times website.  But first, let me add a little personal note to his story about how interconnected all of Los Angeles is becoming despite what the experts are claiming.

My family first came here with the English at Jamestown, Virginia, the Pilgrims on the Mayflower, the Puritans on later ships,  the Dutch in 17th Century New Amsterdam,  the Germans in the 19th Century - and a Scottish Grandmother in the 20th Century.  And a little American Indian got added along the way.

And that pretty much summed up my family tree - until they came to LA.  And now, if all my cousins were to get together - there would be a mixture of white and Indian and Asian and black kids running around - most of whom with ancestors who came over on Mayflower.

HECTOR TOBAR

An L.A. Christmas blends many traditions

'Every celebration is different,' my mother says, 'but each is beautiful in its own way.'

Hector Tobar

December 26, 2009

This is a time when some people want to leave Los Angeles.

They dream of heading off to snowy locales-- Manhattan, frosty Alpine cabins, picturesque New England towns.

"I feel left out," my 13-year-old son says after hearing a radio report on the blizzard descending on the Midwest this week. He's never actually had a "white Christmas," but he knows what they're supposed to look like: ice on the windows, frozen sidewalks and falling snowflakes.

Blue skies and sunshine set the scene for my son's holiday show on his last school day before break. He and the other kids sang carols on our school's little outdoor stage in weather headed toward a daily high of 81.

They sang about "dashing through the snow" and "walking in a winter wonderland," and celebrating a Hanukkah where "in the window you can see the glow of my menorah on newly fallen snow."

The list of songs about California Christmases and Hanukkahs isn't long. One by the Disney-created Cheetah Girls includes the forgettable line: "We never made a snowman, but we're working on a suntan."

You won't catch me caroling that anytime soon.

And yet I refuse to believe that sweating Santas and lighted palm trees somehow make my Christmas less authentic.

Christmases with tamales and temperate weather are the only kind I really know.

My L.A. Christmas memories are bittersweet. Like a lot of L.A. kids, I had one of those childhoods in which people were always entering and exiting, thanks to divorces, remarriages and untimely death.

The cast of characters was never quite the same from one year to the next. Even the food was always changing. The one constant was the jumble of it all -- with different cultures celebrating side by side and blended together.

My parents arrived from Guatemala in the 1960s. Santa Claus wasn't the powerful global brand he is today and the bearded St. Nick was foreign to them. So was the U.S. custom of Christmas presents.

In Guatemala, the climax of the holiday season is Christmas Eve, when, at the stroke of midnight, people leave their homes to hug their neighbors. Guatemala City fills with the sounds of thousands of firecrackers.

For my parents on those first lonely Christmases in L.A, there were few friends to hug and no firecrackers. "It took me years to get used to that silence," my mother tells me.

We lived in East Hollywood and I remember one or two chilly nights out on Hollywood Boulevard watching the Santa Claus Lane parade pass a few blocks from our apartment. Santa Claus cruised over the asphalt on a wheeled sleigh with an escort of horses, cheesecake elves and some movie or TV star like Ernest Borgnine as the grand marshal.

Then my parents got divorced and my mother remarried. I moved to the Eastside and I learned what a Mexican American Christmas looks like. I was about 10 when my step-grandparents, the Velascos, taught me the joys of turkey dinners, tamales and football games on the crab grass. At their East Los Angeles home, I got my first Christmas stocking.

I was an awkward adolescent when my father remarried into a Jewish family. I soon got two new siblings and went to my first Hanukkah celebration. The Gelfands took me into their Lakewood home and I watched my little sisters light the menorah.

I was a teenager when I gave away my mother at her third wedding. Then the Dotsons took me into their home for a WASP Christmas; my new relatives were Whittier natives, and they wore tartan scarves and sweaters with reindeer on them. At their house, we drank cider and ate pie.

"Every celebration is different," my mother says, "but each is beautiful in its own way."

I'm thankful to all those Los Angeles clans -- the Velascos, the Dotsons and the Gelfands -- for accepting me, a stranger, into their families at various awkward moments of my childhood.

To me, their different celebrations all conveyed the same message: things might change, young man, but the adults around you will always try to build a peaceful home for you.

Looking back, I was lucky to be born in L.A., a city filled with newcomers and transplants.

People here are more used to sharing and mixing their cultural rituals.

When I got married....

And now click on the link above to get the ending of his story.....

Why Christmas In Los Angeles is NOT Overly-Commercialized Enough!

Below is just  the opening of my latest Huffington Post Column.  You can read all of it at the above link.

Why Can't Los Angeles Over-Commercialize Christmas Better?

In a seeming attempt to surpass LA Times columnist Joel Stein in hate mail and death threats, fellow LA Times columnist Gregory Rodriguez recently wrote that this biggest problem with Christmas isn't that it's overly-commercialized - but that he has to listen to annoying people whine about how over-commercialized Christmas is.

And Greg, as usual, has a valid point, once he qualified he was talking about only one of the two different Christmases's celebrated in this country.

First, of course, there's the centuries old Christian holiday observed in the churches. Then there's the 19th Century Christmas shopping holiday observed in the shopping malls that has now become the world's largest economic event. It is also an economic event that Los Angeles must take better advantage of if we are ever going to pay for this city's coming billions of dollars of deficits.

Unfortunately, not only can't the leaders of Los Angeles ever properly implement even basic economic development projects - but we can't even properly commercialize, much less properly overly-commercialize, Christmas.

Contrasting the holiday displays in the shopping districts of Beverly Hills, Santa Monica or Pasadena will those in LA will quickly show why we are less unsuccessful in attracting Christmas shoppers and their lucrative sales tax revenues.

But still, much as Scrooge needed Marley to show him how to properly celebrate the true Christmas of his day - even I who already well knew the economic realities facing Los Angeles never fully understood how much the true over-commercialization of Christmas was needed in our city until one of the saddest days of my life.
That was the day my mother - whose favorite time of the year was always the entire Christmas season - was taken off her cancer treatments by her doctors so she could enjoy her final months in relative comfort. That was also the day I decided to take her to New York for her first - and last - Christmas Week in that city...

(the rest is at the above link)

 

Follow Brady Westwater on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bradywestwater  

Downtown Toy District In The Dumps

Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times picks up where the Downtown News left on the story of the long term decline of the Downtown Toy District and why its Business Improvement District was not renewed by the property owners. He also explains how the current already messy end situation is about to get a lot worse.

The BID expires Dec. 31, but the trash problem has been growing worse for weeks. The reason is that the Central City East Assn., the nonprofit organization that manages the BID, has been trying to husband the district's dwindling funds.

That means sticking firmly to its contractual duties -- hauling away pedestrian trash, not commercial trash such as discarded cartons, which is the landlords' and tenants' responsibility. As a result, garbage is already piling up. Come New Year's Day, when no one will be responsible for emptying corner trash cans -- watch out.

All private security currently paid for by the BID also ends that day and the already growing numbers of tents in the District at night are already making parts of Los Angeles Street almost impossible to walk along after dark.  There were also now be one less set of eyes to watch over the homeless and protect them from those who prey upon them at night and one less group of people trying to encourage them to accept the services and help they need.

Now the underlying reasons for the current problems in that area are due to a lot of changes in both the national and the international toy - and other - wholesale markets.  And those markets are never going to come back the way they were - and Toy Town is not going to be the place where they will be primarily coming back since since there are already places where it is easier and cheaper to service wholesale buyers.  If anything, the area will continue to decline into more of a lower quality and  lower priced swap meet alternative to the also declining Broadway retail district than return to being a true wholesale market.


The only good news is that this area is already starting - at its edges - to be incorporated into the adjoining Historic Downtown Business District as Historic Downtown slowly, store by store, expands down towards Los Angeles Street.   And, to a lesser extent, functions of both the Fashion and Little Tokyo business districts will eventually move into the Toy District.



But even though I am quoted as saying the Toy District has a long term brighter future - I - and everyone else in the area agrees it's going to get a lot worse in Toy Town before it gets any better.

Other downtown pros say the Toy District's overall future is uncertain. Brady Westwater, who works closely with the downtown historical district, thinks eventually it will be swallowed up by healthier adjoining retail districts where space for expansion is already in demand. "Its long-term future is bright, but not as a toy district," he says. That transition depends on its remaining clean and safe, however, which may not be in the cards. 

"It's going to be a mess for a while." 

Others say predictions of its death are premature. Pouya Abdi, a district landlord who favored renewing the BID, says the district needs concessions from the city, such as a relaxation of parking regulations. 

"This is an area where a Third World mentality thrived," he says. "Then the city started enforcing rules. A customer would buy items that cost 50 cents and get a $35 ticket for loading. So he wouldn't come back anymore."

The collapse of the Toy District BID illustrates one of the real drawbacks of providing municipal services on a block-by-block basis. The health of the entire downtown depends on cleanliness and safety, but one cluster of strapped or recalcitrant property owners can rip a hole in the fabric. 

Unfortunately, in Los Angeles providing trash pickup and security patrols through BIDs is a necessity, because Proposition 13 has left the city without the resources to deliver specialized services to downtown neighborhoods without special assessments. 

But creating and funding a BID requires a majority vote of its property owners. Downtown executives say that BIDs are a hard sell for some property owners even in good times and in upward-bound neighborhoods. 

"Unless we can prove that we're increasing property values and rents, it's hard to justify those additional assessments," Smith says. 

In districts where rents are on the downward slope, owners start to see the BID as just another revenue drain. 

"Our cash flow is very bad," says Saeed Farkhondehpour, the largest property owner in the Toy District. He says he opposed renewing the BID because "the work they were doing wasn't making a big difference." Farkhondehpour, whose under-construction Medallion project will be partially within the Toy District, told me his portion of the BID's roughly $500,000 annual budget came to $150,000. He believes he can get trash collected for less. "We're going to handle it internally." 

But unless he can get his fellow landlords to come together, there still won't be services for the whole Toy District. 

The landlords as a whole haven't shown themselves to be the most proactive bunch thus far. Many tenants occupy spaces without access to commercial trash service or even basic sanitary facilities. Some say their landlords tell them to dump their stores' refuse in the nearest pedestrian trash can. 

"The tenants don't have a clue," says Estela Lopez, executive director of the Central City East Assn. "That's a multilingual, multicultural area. Some of them have been told by their landlords that we are their trash service. We ended up being the de facto commercial refuse service simply to keep the area clean because if we didn't we'd have a vermin infestation and worse." 

The city hasn't been very proactive either. Jan Perry, whose City Council district encompasses the area, says she steered clear of the efforts to renew the Toy District BID because these districts are "a form of self-governance, and it's not appropriate to exert undue political influence." 

She says it's "shortsighted" for the property owners to let the BID expire, and that come Jan. 1 she'll seek a special detail to keep the district clean, but it will be "a full cost recovery operation," meaning it will be paired with stepped-up code enforcement -- and fines. 

In other words, an answer to the Toy District's future isn't on the horizon. But the broader question is how to find a solution to the city's powerlessness. "This is the system working as it should, in sort of a perverse way," Lopez says. "It is up to that community to decide for itself where it wants to go."

Downtown Art Walk Finds Perfect Leader

One of the reasons it's been so hard to replace Art Walk founder Bert Green is that even though Art Walk happens but once a month,  it's growing complexity and size now requires whoever runs it to have six different skill sets just to manage what it's become and another half-dozen to help it become what it needs to be.


It also also requires someone who can connect and communicate with everyone Downtown from the homeless to musuems trustees, from college kids out for a good time to property owners, from gallery owners to artists and who also has an inside knowledge about what makes our unique neighborhood work that only a local could possibly have to even be considered as a viable candidate.


Sounds pretty impossible - right? Well, read the resume of our new Downtown Art Walk Executive Director, Jay Lopez. 

Downtown Los Angeles, CA – December 15, 2009 - The Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk, a nonprofit corporation that oversees the popular “Art Walk” event held each month in historic Downtown Los Angeles, today announced the appointment of Jay Lopez as the organization’s new Executive Director. Mr. Lopez is an active member of both the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council Arts & Culture Committee and the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council Arts & Culture Committee, as well as the Silver Lake Gallery Alliance. Jay serves on the board of the Los Angeles Conservancy Modern Committee as the Education/Outreach council chair and is also on the board of directors for the Hollywood Fringe Festival 2010. Mr. Lopez is an accomplished event producer and coordinator whose recent credits include Beyond Eden, a new contemporary art fair, East of Eden, a multi-gallery exhibition and art fair at the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery, CA Boom Design Show held this year at the former Robinsons department store in Beverly Hills, The East Hollywood ArtCycle Street Festival and The Silver Lake & East Hollywood Day of the Dead Festival.

Congratulations Jay, a former tenant of the Spring Arts Tower on the floor right above me (not that I could ever recognize him, of course), and congratulations to the Art Walk Board for making such an inspired choice.  It is rare for a job description and an applicant's resume to ever so perfectly match.

CityWatch Picks Up My Huffington Post Column on Solving LA Housing & Traffic Gridlock Crisis

CityWatch just put up my first of six Huffington Post columns on how to collectively solve LA's traffic & housing problems. They will be part of my twice a week column called - An Rx for Los Angeles - 101 Way to Fix a Broken City - and by the end of next year - I will... finally.... have enough raw material for me to also... finally.... edit it all into book form. Half of the columns will draw upon projects I - and/or - others of us Downtown or in other parts of Los Angeles - have already done or are in the works of working on. The other half will be proposals for larger scale projects that should to be done.

Below is the start of the first column and the above link will go to CItyWatch which will take you to the HP site for the rest of the column. If you have any comments - or suggestions - please leave them at the Huffington Post site.

How to Save the Los Angeles Times, End Rush Hour Traffic, Solve the Housing Crisis (And Not Have to
Westwater Downtown
By Brady Westwater (Posted first at huffingtonpost.com/LosAngeles)

Two of the most important decisions any of us ever make is where we decide to live and what job we choose to accept. Rush hour traffic, however, proves how wrong we all can be.

But it is hard to make informed choices when there are so many housing options within 20 miles of any job. And if you fall in love with a house -- it's hard to know what jobs might be within commuting distance.

There are also those who are trapped in homes or jobs that are no longer right for them -- but who stick with them because they are too exhausted from day-to-day life to summon the energy to fix their lives.

But in chaos exists opportunity. Someday, a local media company -- such as the LA Times or Rubicon -- or someone such as Jay Penske -- will realize there is a need for a website that contains everything anyone in Los Angeles needs to correctly make those decisions.

A single site with every possible housing option in greater Los Angeles, and every imaginable job option.

A site with public school test scores, statistics for charter and private schools, locations of medical facilities, churches and temples -- and everything else (crime rates, air pollution, etc.) anyone needs to know.

A site that ranks every job and housing option -- based on your needs -- and then -- and here's the first killer app -- it sorts them first by the physical distance, and then by real world, rush hour commuting time distance by car and then by every different transit option -- between each job and every housing option.

Everyone will suddenly have far more options, while also being able to quickly reduce the numbers of those options to more manageable numbers.

But helping people already looking for a new job or a home is only a start.

The key part of this killer app is that everyone can input their desired jobs, housing and commute times, long before they need them.

They will then get emails with every new job and new housing opportunity that meets their needs.

And that's when the larger societal and personal benefits start to kick in. (The rest of Brady Westwater’s column here.)

(Brady Westwater is Mr Downtown. He helped found the Downtown LA Neighborhood Council, Gallery Row, Downtown Fashion Week, the Art & Fashion Walks while working on civic planning projects from the Police Headquarters to the Park 101 Freeway Cap and recruiting 50 businesses and non-profits to Downtown. He blogs at www.lacowboy.blogspot.com & www.downtownfashionwalk.blogspot.com. You can follow him on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bradywestwater . This article was posted first at www.huffingtonpost.com/losangeles) ◘




CityWatch
Vol 7 Issue 101
Pub: Dec 11, 2009

Downtown Art Walk Finds The Perfect Balance

Best Art Walk Ever! Just the right number of people, plenty of time for conversation with new friends and old, some good new artists, plenty of excitement, lots of energy and talent at the Skid Row Artists' Collective, a touch of winter in the air and the slow drizzle that began at 10:30, gently pooled the light on the streets and sidewalks, and made all of Downtown as romantic as hell.

DOWNTOWN ART WALK IS TONIGHT! Thursday December 10th, 2009 - until 9 PM!

The sun is shinning on Art Walk Day and any sprinkles are now supposed to be after 9 PM. And the ART WALK map - plus a list of special events tonight are at: http://www.downtownartwalk.com/map - or can be picked up tonight at the galleries. See you there!

My First Huffington Post Column; How to Save the Los Angeles Times, End Rush Hour Traffic, Solve the Housing Crisis (And Not Have to Pay For It)

(This is the first of six columns on traffic and housing in Los Angeles)


Two of the most important decisions any of us ever make is where we decide to live and what job we choose to accept. Rush hour traffic, however, proves how wrong we all can be.

But it is hard to make informed choices when there are so many housing options within 20 miles of any job. And if you fall in love with a house - it's hard to know what jobs might be within commuting distance.

There are also those who are trapped in homes or jobs that are no longer right for them - but who stick with them because they are too exhausted from day-to-day life to summon the energy to fix their lives.

But in chaos - exists opportunity.

Someday, a local media company - such as the LA Times or Rubicon - or someone such as Jay Penske - will realize there is a need for a website that contains everything anyone in Los Angeles needs to correctly make those decisions.

A single site with every possible housing option in greater Los Angeles - and every imaginable job option.

A site with public school test scores, statistics for charter and private schools, locations of medical facilities, churches & temples - and everything else (crime rates, air pollution, etc.) anyone needs to know.

A site that ranks every job and housing option - based on your needs - and then - and here's the first killer app - it sorts them first by the physical distance, and then by real world, rush hour commuting time distance by car and then by every different transit option - between each job and every housing option.

Everyone will suddenly have far more options - while also being able to quickly reduce the numbers of those options to more manageable numbers.

But helping people already looking for a new job or a home is only the start.

(MORE AT THE ABOVE LINK)