Should We Really Remove Limits on Events with Alcohol at Our Parks?

Posted on June 12, 2023 by cmaddren

How much alcohol at LA City parks is too much alcohol? It appears that the City of LA doesn’t believe there’s any such thing as too much alcohol at city parks. At the April 20 meeting of the Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners, one of the agenda items was a proposal to revise the Recreation & Parks Alcoholic Beverage Policy.

The current policy says only beer and wine can be served at public events in LA City parks, and it limits the number of events where alcohol is served to no more than one event per park per year. The proposed revisions would allow the sale of a full line of alcoholic beverages and remove any limits on the number of events where alcohol is served.

Does that really seem like a good idea? Opening up our parks to an unlimited number of events that offer booze to attendees? There are so many problems with this it’s hard to know where to begin.

First, while the revised policy requires that event organizers hire security, the security is only going to be dealing with issues at the site of the event. What happens when people who’ve had too much to drink leave the area and start wandering around the park? Or get into their cars and start driving home? Just last year a cyclist riding through Griffith Park was hit and killed by a motorist. Police said the driver appeared to have been drinking.

Second, allowing more events that serve alcohol will likely bring a lot more people to LA’s parks, but the Department of Recreation & Parks hasn’t been able to properly maintain these important resources for years. Sadly, Rec & Parks has been the victim of severe budget cuts, and has been struggling without proper staffing. Increasing the number of visitors without increasing the budget for Rec & Parks just means the Department will be more burdened than ever.

And then there are the environmental issues. If increasing the number of events that offer alcohol would increase the number of visitors to LA’s parks, it seems likely that there would be significant impacts to the environment. This is especially true if the policy change means more live music festivals, which is almost certainly the case. There’s no sign that Rec & Parks has done any kind of environmental review, and there’s no way they could claim that this policy change wouldn’t have any impacts.

One impact would be traffic. I know our leaders like to pretend that nobody drives any more and everybody takes transit, but if you believe that’s true, you should check out the full parking lot and the cars lining the street on the periphery of the LA State Historic Park. You can see the same at many of LA’s other parks. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Angelenos still drive cars to get where they want to go.

Another impact is solid waste, and again, more music festivals would be a particular problem. The City will tell you that all the empty aluminum and plastic containers discarded at these events can be recycled, so there’s no impact to the environment. Sure, they can be recycled, but they’re often not, and the City has been struggling for years to comply with a State mandate that it divert 50% of its solid waste to recycling. More music festivals would also likely have significant impacts on habitat and wildlife, and these impacts should also be assessed.

One of the motivations for this policy change may be to generate more revenue for Rec & Parks, and the Department certainly needs more funding. But the change will probably result in higher costs, too, and there’s no sign that this has been analyzed. Before even considering increasing the number of events that offer alcohol, the Department should do a study to analyze whether increased revenue would offset the increased costs.

There may be good arguments for increasing the number of events that offer alcohol at LA’s parks, but lifting the current caps to allow an unlimited number, especially if serving a full line of alcohol is allowed, does not make sense. It might make sense to allow a small increase in the number of events with alcohol. Or it might make sense to designate certain parks that could host these events. Rec & Parks should study a few different options, and weigh the benefits against the costs. They also need to do environmental review.

If you’d like to offer input on the proposed revisions to Rec & Parks’ Alcoholic Beverage Policy, you can send an e-mail to the Board of Commissioners:

RAP.COMMISSIONERS@LACITY.ORG

You might also copy General Manager Jimmy Kim and his Administrative Assistant, Desiree Ramirez:

Jimmy.Kim@lacity.org

Desiree.Ramirez@lacity.org

It also couldn’t hurt to contact your LA City Councilmember to let them know how you feel.

There may be ways to update the current policy that would provide benefits, but just opening the door to an unlimited number of events with alcohol is not a good idea.

Are Downtown Residents Really Dumping Their Cars for Transit?

Posted on September 17, 2022 by cmaddren

The pandemic wasn’t really over in April, but a lot of people, including me, were tired of being shut up at home. I wanted to get out into the world again. I’d been thinking for a while about paying a visit to Los Angeles State Historic Park on the outskirts of Downtown. I finally just got on the train and headed down there.

The park has been a work in progress for over a decade. I wrote a post about it in 2014, when many people still called it The Cornfield. Back then it was mostly just grass and dirt. Since then, it’s been transformed into a well-manicured open space….

It certainly seems popular. On the day I showed up there were plenty of folks enjoying the park, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s impeccably landscaped, with gently curving paths winding through the grass, and rows of beautiful trees. There’s a good-sized field for those who want to get a game going. It seemed like the crowd was mostly younger, with a number of moms and dads and little kids.

It also seemed like the crowd was mostly made up of relatively affluent millennials. I have no hard data on where they came from, but I suspect that many of them live in Downtown. If that’s the case, they’d have to be making fairly good money. The listings on Apartment.com show that most of the studio apartments in the 90012 zip code start around $2,000, with one-bedrooms going for between $2,500 and $3,000. Rents at the Llewellyn, a fairly new building just across the street from the park, go from $2,450 to $5,155.

The City has had a good deal of success in luring people to Downtown, but let’s face it. Downtown is not open to everybody. If we go with the standard assumption that you’re supposed to spend about a third of your income on housing, you’d need to make $72,000 a year to afford a studio apartment in the area. A small family would probably have to have a combined income close to six figures just to get into a one-bedroom.

Back in March, I was listening in on a meeting of the City Council’s PLUM Committee where Director of Planning Vince Bertoni boasted about how proud he was of the City of LA’s Transit-Oriented Development program. I can’t imagine why. While City Planning has approved numerous residential skyscrapers near transit stops over the last decade, transit ridership has been declining steadily since 2014. Even in 2014, LA Metro was actually serving fewer people than it did back in the 80s, and it’s only been downhill since then.

If you want to know how successful LA’s attempts at Transit-Oriented Development have been, take a look at the parking area next to the State Historic Park. It was packed with cars on the morning I was there. And Spring St., which is on the park’s perimeter, was also lined with cars.

Please note in the last photo above that the L Line (Gold Line) Station is visible in the background. I’m sure some of the folks who showed up at the park that day rode the train, but obviously a lot of people decided to drive instead, in spite of the fact that the station is just a few hundred feet from the park entrance.

LA City Planning talks a lot about revitalizing LA’s urban centers, but we need to ask what they actually mean by “revitalization”. The cost of renting an apartment Downtown makes it clear that living there is mostly for the affluent. While thousands of new units have been built in Downtown over the past decade, the vast majority of them are for the upscale crowd. The same is true citywide. According to LA City Planning’s Housing Progress Dashboard, of the more than 184,000 new units that have been approved since July 2013, only about 26,000, or 14%, have been for middle-income, low-income and very low-income households. To be clear, these three categories COMBINED make up just 14% of the new housing approved.

As I said before, the City has been successful in luring people to live in Downtown, and I’m glad of that. Looking at US Census data for the 90012 zip code, which covers much of central Downtown, it’s clear that the area has seen substantial growth. According to the American Community Survey (ACS), the population in 90012 has grown from 29,298 in 2011 to 37,268 in 2020.

Unfortunately, even as Downtown’s population has grown, ridership on transit lines serving the area has been dropping steadily. The graph below shows the changes in ridership on lines serving Downtown in 2014 and 2019. It includes all rail lines serving the area, but only selected bus lines.

You can see there’s been a significant drop. It’s important to point out that the biggest decline was on the A Line (Blue Line), and much of this was due to the fact that portions of the line were closed during 2019 for repairs and upgrades. (They didn’t do much good. Problems arose soon after the line re-opened.)

But even if we pull the A Line out of the chart, we still see a loss in ridership. If the City’s Transit-Oriented Development program is such a success, then why is transit ridership declining in Downtown, even as the population grows. (If you don’t trust my numbers, and you want to do your own research, visit Metro Ridership Stats. Under the heading Systemwide (Bus and Rail), click Details.)

I think the answer has to do with the kind of people who are moving to Downtown. While I hear a lot of hype about young urbanites who love walkable neighborhoods, the crush of cars I saw crowding around State Park leads me to believe that many of Downtown’s new residents own some kind of vehicle. Of course, that’s just my personal view based on my personal experience. To get a more accurate idea of how many Downtown residents are car owners, let’s take another look at the U.S. Census’ American Community Survey.

Looking again at the 90012 zip code, let’s check out the stats for vehicle ownership in 2011.

2011 ACS Data on Vehicles Available to Population in 90012
Workers 16 Years and Over in Households

No vehicle available 10%

1 vehicle available 42.9%

2 vehicles available 36.4%

3 or more vehicles available 10.7%

Now let’s look at the stats for 90012 in 2020.

2020 ACS Data on Vehicles Available to Population in 90012
Workers 16 Years and Over in Households

No vehicles available 6.6%

1 vehicle available 42.4%

2 vehicles available 40.0%

3 or more vehicles available 11.0%

You can see that the number of workers 16 years and over with no vehicle available dropped from 10% to 6.6%. The number with one vehicle available is basically unchanged. Those with two vehicles available went up from 36.4% to 40%. These are not huge changes, but they do show that percentages of workers 16 years and over with access to a vehicle has gone up, not down. And when we consider that the population in 90012 rose from 29,298 in 2011 to 37,268 in 2020, this seems to indicate that there are a lot more cars than there used to be in Downtown. Put this together with the drop in transit ridership, and it’s hard to understand why the City thinks its efforts at Transit-Oriented Development have been a success. (If you believe there are a lot more people walking and biking in the central city, feel free to show me the data. I’ve looked, and I can’t find anything less than six years old.)

I want to emphasize that I’m a transit rider and I don’t own a car. I also want to say that I believe we need to focus new development around transit hubs, in areas where jobs and businesses are close by. In theory all this is great. In reality, though, the City of LA doesn’t seem to have achieved anything. In fact, it seems like the numbers are going in the wrong direction. And if we’re going in the wrong direction, shouldn’t the City assess the situation, find out what’s wrong, and try to do better?

Unfortunately, rather than being used as a strategy to create a more sustainable city, Transit-Oriented Development seems to have become an excuse to approve residential projects that are far too expensive for the average Angeleno. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at hearings held by City Planning where staff and/or Commissioners claim that big, new residential projects geared toward the affluent are exactly what the City needs to get people out of cars and onto busses and trains. When I present data showing that transit ridership has been going down since 2014, they don’t seem to hear. I’ve never gotten a response. The projects are always approved.

I think the State Park is cool. I’m glad people are spending time there. But I don’t buy the story that young urbanites are ditching their cars for busses, trains and bikes. The cars lined up across the street from the park seem to tell a different story, one that City Hall doesn’t want to hear.

Angels Knoll

Posted on November 23, 2021 by cmaddren

I love cities. And I love Downtown LA. But the older I get, the more I think about the damage that cities do to the environment. At the beginning of the 20^th century, Downtown was largely undeveloped. In a little over a hundred years, it’s become a dense urban landscape crowded with office buildings and residential towers, crisscrossed by roads and freeways. As a result, LA is hotter and drier, the air is dirtier, and like every other urban center, we’re contributing to climate change in a big way.

I was wandering around Cal Plaza a while ago, and ran across a piece of Downtown I’d forgotten about. As I looked out over the city in the direction of Hill Street, I saw that directly below me there was a small park. It took me a minute to realize it was the same park I’d seen many times at the intersection of Fourth and Hill. It’s been fenced off for years. Much of the greenery is dry, and the trees could certainly use some attention, but it was so cool to run across a patch of green space in the middle of all the steel and concrete.

Actually, it’s not technically a park. It’s a small patch of land called Angels Knoll that had been owned by the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA). (I assume it got the name because it’s right night next to Angels Flight.) When the CRA was dissolved in 2012, a petition was circulated asking the City to turn the land over to the Department of Parks & Recreation. But that didn’t happen. As one of the few remaining undeveloped parcels in the Downtown area, the property is worth a fortune. The decision was made to put it up for sale.

A June, 2021 memo from CRA/LA, the successor agency to the CRA, sets the price of the parcel at $50 million. The buyer, Angels Landing Partners, is actually a joint venture by the Peebles Corporation, MacFarland Partners and Claridge Partners. According to the LA Department of City Panning web site, the proposed Angels Landing project involves the construction of two skyscrapers, one rising 63 stories and the other rising 42 stories. In addition to two hotels and 72,000 square feet of commercial space, the project also includes 180 condos and 252 apartments. Apparently some affordable housing is supposed to be provided, but at this point it’s not clear how much.

Of course, the project will generate lots of jobs and economic activity. According to the Environmental Impact Report, it will also generate 10,179 metric tons of CO2 equivalent during the construction phase alone. Beyond that, it will contribute to the steadily increasing temperatures in the LA area, along with a number of other massive projects planned for Downtown, Hollywood, Warner Center and elsewhere.

And we’ll also be losing one of the few remaining patches of green in Downtown. City Hall has made its priorities clear. They want the skyscrapers. Of course, LA was built by developers and politicians who prioritized growth over everything else. That’s how LA got to be what it is today. But the older I get, the more I feel that this addiction to growth is incredibly destructive. Our warming climate and shrinking water resources are a direct result of unchecked development.

We really don’t need another skyscraper. We absolutely need more parks.

Work Continues on Sixth Street Bridge

Posted on October 19, 2021 by cmaddren

*The Sixth Street Bridge’s arches rising above the surrounding landscape.*

Work on the new Sixth Street Bridge is still moving along. Originally scheduled for completion in 2019, it’s now supposed to be finished by summer of 2022. This shouldn’t surprise anyone who follows the progress of large infrastructure projects. It’s also no surprise that the cost of the project has risen from $420 million to $588 million. But even though repeated delays and cost overruns are fairly common with projects of this kind, it seems like LA is especially prone to these problems. (I guess it could be worse. Just take a look at the California High Speed Rail.)

*LA River running beneath the Sixth Street Bridge.*

When the bridge is done, there are plans to create a 12-acre park within the bed of the LA River, with public art and recreational programs. I hate to be cynical, but it will be interesting to see what actually materializes. While the FTA and CalTrans are helping with funds for the construction of the bridge, I don’t know if they’re also kicking in for the park. I mention this because the LA Recreation & Parks Department is chronically underfunded, and can’t even maintain existing parks. I’m also concerned because it seems some of the features that were supposed to be included in the new bridge have been cut. The original design had protected bike lanes. Apparently those are gone. And I’ve seen some chatter on-line about the removal of the stairs that would have connected the bridge to the park, but I haven’t been able to find any confirmation.

But the biggest cause for concern is that the completion of the bridge will bring further gentrification and displacement on the east side of the LA River. Many residents of Boyle Heights and surrounding communities are worried that the Sixth Street Bridge will bring another wave of real estate investors looking to cash in. The eviction of the seniors at Sakura Gardens is not a good sign.

Many people are excited about the new Sixth Street Bridge and its promised benefits. I hope their optimism is justified. When I first heard about the project years ago, I was excited, too. I have to say that now my hopes are outweighed by a deep cynicism. The City of LA’s leaders have been promising a more livable, equitable city for years. Instead it seems that the population is increasingly divided and increasingly desperate. Bridges are supposed to bring people together, but I’m worried that this one will end up driving people apart.

Liberty Park Saved!

Posted on March 29, 2018 by cmaddren

LP X Curve 2

A while back I wrote a post about the battle to save Liberty Park. It was in danger of being erased by a large mixed-use project. But local activists mounted a strong defense, and on March 7 the City Council voted unanimously to designate it a historic cultural monument.

The folks at Save Liberty Park did an amazing job of rallying the community behind this effort. Not only does their web site tell the story of the fight to save the park, but it also tells why it’s such an important resource for the community. If you haven’t visited the site already, check it out.

Save Liberty Park

Help Koreatown Hang On to Liberty Park

Posted on June 18, 2017 by cmaddren

LP 01 Across Med

Los Angeles is notoriously behind the curve when it comes to providing public parks for its citizens. In rating 100 US cities on their park systems, The Trust for Public Land put LA at number 74. And while the city as a whole is lacking in public space for recreation, there are some neighborhoods where the need is especially acute.

Like Koreatown. This dense urban community has plenty of asphalt and concrete, but not much green space. So it’s disturbing news when a proposed project threatens to take away one of the few parks available to residents.

Liberty Park was completed in 1967 as part of Beneficial Plaza on Wilshire Blvd.. Designed by Peter Walker, its graceful curves and striking contrasts make it a unique experience. Walker was just starting his career in the 60s, but has since been become an internationally recognized landscape architect.

A view of the park facing away from Wilshire.

The park provides much needed green space in Koreatown.

Liberty Park provides a quiet space in the middle of a busy urban area.

The park sits at the foot of the former Beneficial Plaza.

But even more important than the park’s design is the place it holds in the community. In an area where parks are scarce, this is one of the few places where people can escape to relax on the grass or read in the shade of a tree. It’s also been a gathering place for the community, whether to celebrate Earth Day or to rally behind the South Korean team during World Cup Soccer.

A tall grove of trees provides much-needed shade.

Looking through the trees toward the building that now houses Radio Korea.

The park’s design offers some interesting contrasts.

Looking up from beneath the trees.

The proposed project is a mixed-use complex rising 30+ stories, and if approved in its current version it would reduce Liberty Park to nothing more than a few scraps of green space. It’s frustrating that the City of LA only required the developers to prepare a Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND) for this new complex, allowing them to get away with a relatively low level of environmental review. It’s even more frustrating that the MND concludes that this project will have no impact on historic resources. This is ridiculous. Beneficial Plaza as a whole holds in important place in the area’s history, and there’s nothing else like Liberty Park in all of LA.

A view of the park facing Serrano.

A view of the park from the Oxford side.

But it’s not too late to preserve this beautiful and unique public resource. A group called Save Liberty Park has been working hard to raise awareness, and hopefully they can get City Hall to change course on this. They need your help. Here’s the link if you want to get involved.

Save Liberty Park

UPDATE: Liberty Park Saved!

LP 90 Red Car

The Bridge and the River

Posted on October 24, 2016 by cmaddren

A view of the Hyperion Bridge.

Sunday afternoon I took a walk across the Hyperion Bridge. I shot this short video on the way up.

I also spent some time at Red Car River Park, just next to the bridge. Here’s another short video shot from the park.

Keeping the River Clean

Posted on April 25, 2016 by cmaddren

Yesterday I got up earlier than I usually do on a Saturday. It took some effort, but by nine o’ clock I’d made it to Marsh Park so I could take part in the annual LA River clean-up event organized by Friends of the Los Angeles River (FoLAR).

This stretch of the river is bordered by a mix of older stucco homes and industrial buildings. Marsh Park seems to wind its way through the neighborhood, I’m assuming because it was planned to take advantage of unused open space. It’s nicely landscaped, and has a cool play area for kids.

The entrance to Marsh Park.

A grassy expanse in the park.

There’s a cool play area for kids.

These yellow flowers caught my eye.

The gate that leads to the river.

A shot of the river with the freeway in the background.

You’ll find a mix of residential and industrial on the streets adjacent to the river.

An artist’s effort to beautify a wall.

Dozens of people had made it there ahead of me. I got a pair of gloves and a trash bag, and after a brief orientation they set us loose on the river. The guy who gave us the ground rules said that twenty seven years ago, when FoLAR started doing these annual clean-ups, they came across all kinds of things in the river bed. In the early days they’d be hauling out mattresses, shopping carts, and even cars. These days, he went on to say, it was mostly a matter of picking up plastic bags.

A quick orientation before we got started.

Heading out to tackle the trash.

Exploring the river bed.

Looking high and low for trash.

When the bags were full, we left them along the bike path.

And this guy threw them in the back of a truck.

FoLAR has been taking care of this long-neglected natural treasure for thirty years. Unlike the Los Angeles River Revitalization Corporation, a latecomer with a pro-development agenda, FoLAR’s members have been trying for decades to realize the river’s tremendous potential as a public resource. Back when most of us were making jokes about this massive concrete channel that wound its way through the landscape, Lewis MacAdams and his cohorts saw what the river had once been and could be again. They’ve been working diligently since the eighties to protect and restore the LA River, and to educate the rest of us about its past and possible future.

Developers have realized that there’s money to be made by building along the banks.

One of the river’s current residents.

The Griffith Observatory was visible off in the distance.

Standing under the freeway you could hear the steady din of the cars above.

I spent a while collecting trash, and then I wandered off to take pictures. I’d never walked along the river bed before. It was pretty cool. I don’t know about you, but for most of my life I barely noticed the LA River. Encased in concete, bounded by industrial parks and rail lines, running beneath dozens of bridges, it’s as if the river has been buried by the city. We’re only starting to dig it out now. It will be many years before we uncover its real potential.

I’m so glad I made the effort to be there for the clean-up. It was a great day. And it’s just one of many events that FoLAR holds throughout the year. Check out their web site for more info.

FoLAR

Waking Up in the Park

Posted on November 11, 2015 by cmaddren

I’ve been going past North Hollywood Park since I was a kid, but I’ve hardly ever set foot in it. Lately, though, every time I’ve gone by I’ve felt like I needed to check it out. So I finally decided to take the time.

God knows what possessed me to go over there at seven in the morning. I’m barely awake at that hour. But it was cool because I had the park mostly to myself. The sun was just coming up and the only other people around were the dog walkers and the joggers. Not that the park was quiet. It’s bounded on all sides by major roadways, occupying the triangle made by Chandler, Tujunga and the Hollywood Freeway.

You can see the traffic backed up on Tujunga. And you can also see St. Paul’s First Lutheran Church in the background. I looked on the net for a history of the church, but didn’t find much. Their web site said the congregation has been active in the area since the twenties, but didn’t offer too many details. I was curious about the campus, because it’s an interesting mix of old and new styles.

Also across the street from the park is Masonic Lodge #542.

Freemasonry has pretty much disappeared these days, but it played a large part in European and American history for hundreds of years. Ben Franklin, W. A. Mozart, Simón Bolívar, Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie were all Masons. The history of Freemasonry is long and complex, and because it was a secret society there’s much that will never be known. Some people see it as an important fraternal organization that helped shaped democracy, others see it as a band of power mad imperialists who wanted to rule the world. If you’re into conspiracy theories, you can’t go wrong with the Masons. There are all sorts of crazy stories out there. But to get back to Lodge #542, in its heyday its members included many Hollywood luminaries like Clark Gable, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy and Audie Murphy. The Los Angeles Conservancy has a nice write-up about the building’s design.

Masonic Lodge #542 at The Los Angeles Conservancy

Inside the park itself is the North Hollywood Amelia Earhart Library. This beautiful little Mission style building was originally constructed in 1929, and it was designed by architects Lewis Eugene Weston and Lewis Eugene Weston, Jr..

The front of the Amelia Earhart Library.

A side view of the library’s entrance.

The back of the library.

In the decades since it was built, the library has undergone a number of transformations. Like so many buildings, it’s been adapted over and over again as the community around it changed. To learn more, follow the link below.

Amelia Earhart Regional Branch History at LAPL

If you’re wondering why this branch library is named after Amelia Earhart, it’s because she was living in nearby Toluca Lake at the time she took off on her final flight. There’s also a statue of Earhart in the park at the corner of Tujunga and Magnolia.

Honestly, until yesterday the only thing I knew about this early aviator was that she died trying to fly around the world. After doing a little reading, I found out that she racked up a number of impressive accomplishments in her short life. You might want to do a little reading about her yourself.

Amelia Earhart Bio

Even though there wasn’t a lot happening at seven a.m., the park is often crowded when I go by in the afternoon. Activities are offered for people of all ages, and there are plenty of folks who go there just to hang out. In spite of the cars rushing along the park’s perimeter, once you get away from the traffic it’s easy to forget about the city buzzing around you. The paths wend their way through large expanses of grass. There are fabulous old trees rising up above you.

For years I’ve been rushing past this beautiful park, convinced I didn’t have the time to stop and linger. We get so caught up in being busy that we tell ourselves we can’t take a break. We’re plugged into so many different things that we’re bombarded with stimulus all day long, and we convince ourselves it has to be that way. It doesn’t. We need to step away from the traffic, phones, TV, etc., and let ourselves walk on the grass, feel the breeze, lose ourselves in the blue of the sky.

We need to take the time for a walk in the park.

Sunday Afternoon

Posted on June 22, 2015 by cmaddren

Not too long ago I took a trip down to Westlkake/MacArthur Park. It’s a popular gathering place on weekends. Thousands of people show up there to play games, listen to music, attend worship services, or maybe just lie on the grass and stare up at the sky.

The park was created by civic leaders back at the end of the nineteenth century. It’s bounded by Sixth, Alvarado, Seventh and Park View. Originally christened Westlake Park, the name was later changed to MacArthur Park, after the five star general who played a prominent role during WWII. Some years ago there was an intense debate over which name was more appropriate. When you ride the Red Line to Seventh and Alvarado, the automated PA announces Westlake/MacArthur Park.

When I first came up out of the subway, the first thing I saw was the crush of street vendors lining the sidewalk. There were dozens of people selling everything from jewelry to DVDs.

Street vendors on Alvarado.

On the other side of Alvarado there were also people selling juices and ices from carts.

More vendors on the other side of Alvarado.

The City is currently considering new rules to regulate vending on sidewalks and in parks, and the debate is pretty contentious. Merchants in brick and mortar stores are angry because they’re competing with people who can operate with no overhead, and so offer lower prices. There are definite health concerns about vendors selling food without a license. But these people are just trying to make a buck like everyone else. This is their livelihood. I’m sure the debate will continue for years to come, and I doubt anyone will find a solution that makes everybody happy.

There was a woman at the corner of Seventh and Alvarado bellowing through a megaphone about how people should give their lives to Christ.

A woman evangelizing at Seventh and Alvarado.

I’ve gotta say, this really drives me crazy. I know she feels like she needs to preach the Gospel, but there are plenty of Christians who do the same thing without resorting to amplified rants on a street corner.

At the corner of Seventh and Alvarado you have Langer’s, a deli that’s been around forever. I haven’t been there for years. Some day I’ll have to go back and check it out.

Langer’s

Up at Wilshire and Alvarado stands the Westlake Theatre, which opened in 1926. It stopped showing movies a long time ago. For a while it was a swap meet, but it looks like it’s completely closed now.

Westlake Theatre

The park bisected by Wilshire, which runs right down the middle of it, but there are tunnels running underneath that allow people to pass from one side to the other.

A view of Wilshire facing Park View

A view of Wilshire facing Alvarado.

Now let’s head into the park.

Entrance to the park at Seventh and Alvarado.

But first, make sure you know the rules.

Sign posted inside the park.

As you can see, a lot of people are just looking for a shady spot where they can hang out and relax.

Trees provide plenty of shade.

But not everybody is kicking back. Soccer is big here, and on weekends teams of kids take turns honing their skill on the field. Families line up around the perimeter, watching, cheering, coaching.

Kids playing soccer.

Families standing on the sidelines.

Soccer stars of tomorrow.

This looks like a pretty innocent shot of a food truck parked on Wilshire. But notice the graffiti on the concrete. “MS” stands for Mara Salvatrucha, a brutal gang that has a presence in the neighborhood. Fortunately, gang violence has been declining all over LA for several years. And the crowds of people enjoying the park didn’t seem concerned for their safety. The vibe was very relaxed.

Food truck parked on Wilshire.

The Levitt Pavilion offers a wide range of entertainment, and it’s free.

Levitt Pavilion

Performers getting ready for a show.

This is one of the tunnels that goes under Wilshire, linking the two sides of the park.

Tunnel running beneath Wilshire.

Mural running the length of the tunnel.

The lake is a draw for birds of all kinds. Please don’t ask me to name the different varieties. I know some of them are ducks. Other than that, I have no idea.

Birds at the edge of the lake.

If you want to learn more about the park’s history, the link below will lead you to an article on the KCET web site that talks about its origins. Aside from the information, it includes some amazing images of the area through the years.

How a Neighborhood Dump Became a Civic Treaure

And this article on Wikipedia offers more detail on some interesting chapters in the life of the park.

Westlake/MacArthur Park on Wikipedia

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The Horizon and the Skyline

A blog about Los Angeles

Tag Archives: parks