🚀 go-pugleaf

amk@bway.net (Andy Katz) wrote:
>"Charles P. Hobbs" <transit@primenet.com> wrote:
>
>>amk@bway.net (Andy Katz) wrote:
>>>
>>>Should this latest attempt at saying 'fuck you!' to everyone else,
>>>'I've got my little piece of suburban heaven!' succeed, the problem
>>>remains of where to put the newly liberated San Fernando Valley.
>>>Clearly it cannot remain in such proximity to the city it scorned. 
>>>
>>[...]
>>So, where are you posting this witty remark from?
>
>Brooklyn Heights, Chuck.

Kinda figures .. . 
>
>But you can run with me, okay. I was born in L.A., raised in Tujunga,
>and lived most of my adult life in the Valley. I left LA--most
>unwillingly--in the middle of '94, first for San Antonio, then NYC. 
>
>Chas, one reason LA will never be as great a city as New York is that
>it is filled with small minded people who choose to look no further
>than their own backyards. When chief Parker told Angelinos he could
>maintain order, keep the blacks in South-Central and the Mexicans in
>East LA, all for the price of policing Mayberry, Angelinos (white
>ones, that is) accepted his vision uncritically, permitting the
>creation of a tiny, elite appearing police department staffed by
>officers who personally despise Los Angeles, wouldn't live in it, and
>feel perfectly comfortable threatening not to do their jobs--but will
>still accept city paychecks--if they aren't worshipped with sufficient
>fervor. 
>
I don't know if NYC cops are better, from what I hear, some of them are
bad in their own way.


>Then there was Prop 13....
>

>One of the most striking differences between New York and LA is that
>here is very much a sense of shared destiny: Good, bad or indifferent,
>New York's boroughs are going where they're going together. We do not
>hear suggestions that the Bronx, for all of its problems, be cut loose
>to sink or swim or explode as it will. Police, and other emergency
>professionals, know how to interact with real people in real
>situations. They are not handsome, dangerous automatons.

No, but I haven't heard of any real influx of people from, say, Long
Island, wanting to move there.

Also, does the name Howard Beach mean anything to you? What about
Crown Heights? Ask on misc.transport.urban.transit why some of the
highway bridges in certain parts of New York are too low to let a
city bus pass under them . . .

>
>What LA needs, more than anything, is greater civic pride, a sense of
>shared history (and it's very much the fault of easterners who
>relocate to LA and environs and who claim LA has no history or no core
>that we lack this sense)

Again, mostly people wanting LA to be something it's not. . . 

> and, mainly, a sense of shared destiny. How
>to provide that sense is beyond yours truly. Perhaps it will never
>occur, any such impulse lost amid the howling clamour of short sighted
>sectarianism. And this is LA's greatest tragedy. It can be a great
>city, greater than New York, or any that has come before. But its
>denizens, by and large, can see no futher than their own geraniums.
>
Again, I'm not quite sure you can really have that in *any* large,
multicultural city. There are too many diverse interests competing
with one another . . .

>Ironically, or not, Chief Parker died in 1965, the very year his
>policies and philosophy were proven tragically wrong. New municipal
>borders will not prevent those who Valleyites fear the most from
>someday avenging themselves upon the elite who left them behind. 
>
Guess what, "they" are already here. If you left the Valley in
1994, you obviously should have noticed. . . 


>Because the Parkerite ideals of conformity, obedience and penurity are
>endemic to the Valley, it's difficult to imagine how Valley residents
>could create a municipal entity even marginally better than what LA
>offers now.
>

What 
>Andy Katz
>
>
>
>
>_____________________________
>So sophisticated is my Net 
>presence that I now disdain
>sigs, ascii & even urls.
>
>amk@bway.net
>amk@texas.net
>Andrewk271@aol.com
>