The Singer

In Santa Monica California there is a long street promenade spanning blocks. It is a people place in a city built on cars, freeways and the isolated communities they spawned. Spaced out in increments musicians play, girls sing, clowns tie balloons and even the freakish contort their bodies in ways that defy sense. On one short stretch a young woman stood with guitar in hand. She sang from her heart, a smile piercing her lips. Her eyes were filled with joy as she seemed to turn this public space into a cathedral of her own.  With her talent on display for the world to see she was comfortable, almost serene.  There was no hesitation, no modesty, only a smile and an expression of joy painted with natural color across her lips.

Santa Monica, is a wonderful part of Los Angeles mercifully rescued from the cycle of destruction and renewal. Los Angeles is a city that in truth is quite ugly however, little by little it is remembering that it has a soul. Lost among the maze of immigrant neighborhoods and weather worn bungalows are little gems of a nearly lost urban land. Buildings that have defied time and still stand. There is sadness in the past. If only the city had followed Fredric Olmstead's plan. Olmstead was the creator of the Chicago Exhibition and New York's Central Park. Harmonious landscapes that survive to this day and molded the cities aroundthem. Los Angeles defied Olmstead's vision and chose it's own past.

As the Good Year tire company removed the last vestiges of a true public transit plan that once linked the cities neighborhoods in an effort to sell tires, LA became the equivalent of a heroin junkie.  It was and is a city addicted to cars. Rapid expansion left beauty in its rearview mirror.  Even the hills that once gave the region its sense of place vanished in the haze of smog.  The needs of the present always outweighed the vision of the past as fields of strawberries and oranges were cleared to make way for warehouses and distribution centers.  Oil pumps sprang up like fungus and the refineries that serve them act as islands of industrial ugliness. The mistakes are legendary and only as the years pass have people begun to wonder about the city and the towns that once existed.

As a child I used to travel to visit my two sets of my grandparents that lived in Los Angeles.  Both had moved to LA during or immediately following the war years seeking a better life.   Each was wild in their own right and in some way seemed to represent the wild western spirit.  One came on a Harley Davidson Motorcycle, the other, in a Silver Stream trailer.  Both started in Buffalo, New York, and both ended in a place that promised to fulfill their dreams.  Upon their arrival in Los Angeles both settled into the suburban dream that the city promised.  Their connection with the city was tentative and when I would visit it always seemed like I could never identify what was Los Angeles.  There seemed to be a city but it was only ventured to for a baseball or a football game.

Only later in life did I discover that there was a Los Angeles.  A beautiful urban city forgotten by the never ending boulevards jetting out from its core.  The streets were still there, many of the old buildings still existed yet it seemed hidden like the surrounding hills under a choking veil of smog.

Little by little from Santa Monica to Long Beach.  From Glendale to Fullerton and points beyond tiny urban centers that once formed towns are rediscovering themselves.  Little by little this process seems to be creeping back to the heart of the city.  With each renovation there is a sigh of relief by the preservationist that another little urban treasure will continue to be protected.  The city is struggling to again create a transit system against virtually all odds.  There are plans to cover parts of the freeways with parks connecting neighborhoods separated for 50 years by a chasm bigger and deeper than the most forbidden medieval moat.

Los Angeles is a place filled with so many errors.  So many misguided plans and lack of vision.  At the same time, it is a city of individuality often living under the dark shadow of it's beautiful cousin San Francisco.  Each time I visit I see the immigrant melting pot as an increasing sign of hope.  I cherish each person with green hair and an earring in their nose as a sign of personality.  I walk down the pedestrian plaza in Santa Monica, see Chelsea the singer, and know that the dreams are not gone from the city of Angeles, they will always remain in the hearts of people like hers.