Hollywood Freeway Offramp, Western Av., Homeless, 2020 
Old Post Office 
Homeless, Bus Bench 
Homeless Trash 
Homeless on Aetna St. Feb. 2016 
Van Nuys Boulevard, 2018, at the height of prosperity, before the pandemic.
The possible, rumored appointment of Mayor Eric Garcetti to a post in the Biden Administration has provoked protests at the mayor’s house in Hancock Park, daily, for the last week.
Black Lives Matter and other leftwing groups are angry at him for everything that ails this city. He hasn’t disbanded the police, he hasn’t legalized illegal trash camping on streets, he seems to sympathize with those powers who wear uniforms and carry guns and enforce laws against lawbreakers. Appalling.
And those who are not protesting, but living here in this city, under the Garcetti years, are also angry.
We are disgusted with encampments that burn up the parks, that litter the freeways with tents, shopping carts and garbage, that destroy the environment as if it is their right, befouling beaches, streets, sidewalks, bus benches and the urban region.
We are aghast that a state, whose economy is the seventh largest in the world, cannot manufacture housing to house the unhoused. We are appalled by the sight of squalor everywhere and the abandonment of the most ill, helpless and lost people who are permitted to turn the entire city into a mental institution.
We are bitterly laughing that a new lamppost contest was initiated by Mayor Garcetti in the midst of an unprecedented housing crisis. Who would devote city resources to the redesign of streetlights when there are people living on mattresses under all styles of outdoor illumination?
We know 2020 has been a year unlike any other. But we also know that all the other years that lead up to 2020, when Los Angeles was allegedly prosperous, humming along happily, these were the years when this city fell apart, way before a virus arrived.
So we cheer the protesters at his house, and hope the new administration does not promote him to a position undeserved.
Somehow Eric Garcetti has brought the people of this city together, all the people who disagree, for they all agree that he has destroyed the quality of life in Los Angeles and should not be called to Washington for any high title or undeserved honor.
Eric is just a symptom. That old Van Nuys P.O…..built with grace and beauty of the Spanish Colonial style in 1935, an acknowledgement of the past and hope for a grand and better future. In the foreground at right, note the plain block wall (of TWO styles of concrete blocks, no less) that was likely added for an ADA ramp. Even then there was no consideration to weave it into the building’s architectural style. Just throw something up quick and cheap. No….this has been a long time coming. Victor Davis Hanson speaks to how we have completely squandered the gifts our grandfather’s bestowed.
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Yes, sadly I agree. What we built, in the depths of the Great Depression, what we can’t build now, the ignorance that goes around as enlightenment, and look at what Los Angeles is now. I don’t think this city, in 1935, would have tolerated the barbarism we live with now.
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