Category: Links

Photo:http://www.pbase.com/andrewbh/fallen_tree

This past Saturday, an enormous fir tree, perhaps 200 years old, and easily 7 stories tall, collapsed onto a house on Sutton Street in Sherman Oaks. According to the LA Fire Department: “The 2 story single family dwelling sustained significant damage, outwardly bowing the perimeter walls of the upstairs master bedroom and the downstairs garage, causing the Building and Safety Department to “yellow tag” the structure as unsafe. As the large pine was falling, a 4 inch gas line was lifted 4 feet out of the ground by the root system and the branches ripped down power lines servicing the area.”

Miraculously, nobody was killed or injured.

Later that day, many neighbors, faces powdered and hair gelled, emerged from behind their electronic gates, on foot, to inspect the damage.

The tree had ripped open the concrete curb and street, and fallen onto and crushed a two story home. The circumference of the fir was huge, about 10 feet around. People talked of lawsuits and the failure of the city to prevent this. They expressed amazement that nobody died.

What weakened the tree? It seemed to be pressed tightly against the curb for many years. It had been here for two centuries, in these open hills, before development came, when California was still officially Mexican territory.

When the city planners talk about how they envision the L.A. to come, chances are this is what they don’t want it to look like.

Do-gooders will point to the fast food, the cars, the lack of trees, the oppressive discordance of commercial crap and propose how it might be changed. Everything from obesity to global warming to our lack of health insurance seems to grow out of here.

This is the L.A. we’ve created over the last 60 years, and it is mightly ugly. There are beautiful residential areas in the city, but mostly they back up to big boulevard grossness.

What always amused me about the snobs in this city, are those who proclaim the West Side so much nicer than the Valley. But trashy scenes like the one above are all over Lincoln Blvd., Pico and National.

Billboards have gotten wose: bigger AND smaller, more ubiquitous, more vulgar. There is outdoor advertising for massage parlors, strip clubs, DJ’s who have their hands down their pants, liquor and beer. They are an evil influence, but then again they enrich such companies as Clear Channel with millions. Who cares if kindergarten children see this everyday?

Does LA have a chance to become a world class city when we face an army of ugliness that stretches from the ocean to the desert?