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Absence makes the heart grow fonder as I found Tuesday when I returned to an old haunt, Los Angeles City Hall.
I had spent several years there, off and on, for the Los Angeles Times and was happy when new assignments—columnist, city editor—took me elsewhere. How many budgets and planning beefs can a person cover? Five years as a post retirement city ethics commissioner gave me a real inside look and strengthened my resolve to stay away from city hall as much as possible.
But I needed to return to gather material for a profile I am doing for the UCLA magazine Blueprint on City Council President Herb Wesson. I realized I couldn’t understand Wesson without observing the council and the committees he controls.
I sat down toward the back of the chamber, behind the five or six gadflies who annoy the council members by haranguing them on many isssues. One wore a Batman mask. Another’s face was covered by strips of cloth that looked like bandages, as if he had suffered a serious injury. One, a ventriloquist, carried a small teddy bear up to the podium. He let the bear speak in a squeaky voice. I had known the dean of the gadfly corps, John Walsh, for years and used to receive many angry critiques from him. John looked older and walked slower than the last time I saw him. But so do I.
The big issue before the council was a $1.2 billion bond proposal for the November ballot designed to help build housing for the homeless. It passed 14-0 and I thought the council members were a bit too self congratulatory about their action. Another council vote would be needed. Left unanswered was how to finance to treatment, rehabilitation and education services for those in the housing. And who would build the housing? But some congratulations are in order. City hall is rousing itself from years of inaction and beginning to do something about homelessness.
At lunchtime, I checked out the Grand Central Market on Broadway, another old haunt. I’ve heard and read how the old place has been transformed into a foodie heaven. It’s not heaven but vendors sell oysters, fish and chips, craft beer gourmet-sounding hamburgers, McConnell’s Fine Ice Cream, and deli from Wexlers. Being a traditionalist, I had a beef torta and diet Coke at Roast to Go, in business there since 1952. Quite good. On the way out, I passed up the Press Brothers one-day juice hybrid cleanse for a mere $30.
I encountered my friend Patt Morrison near the Times and chatted briefly. I had no desire to visit the paper, now under the corporate name Tronc, and didn’t feel any emotion walking past a place where I had spent so many years. In this particular case, absence hasn’t made the heart grow fonder.
Back in city hall, I attended a meeting of the council’s Planning and Land Use Committee. In my day, it was known as the PLUM committee, because the council members were assured of plum campaign contributions from developers. I’m sure such crude behavior is scorned by this generation of lawmakers.
By chance, housing was the main item on the PLUM agenda. Hollywood residents unsuccessfully appealed the council decision to allow a boutique hotel to be built on the site of an old apartment house on Cherokee Avenue near Franklin.
Protesters objected that the action was symbolic of city government’s allowing the loss of affordable apartments, thus worsening the affordable housing shortage.
In the morning, I had seen the big picture, with discussion of the big housing bond issue to build housing In the afternoon, I had seen the flip side from the ground up in Hollywood, with the council permitting badly needed apartments to be eliminated.
As expected, there are no magic solutions. Still, It was an interesting, enlightening day and I’ll make it a point to come back.
