LA LOST



Follow the money.
--Mark “Deep Throat” Felt


The L.A. of my youth was splendor; a menu of geographies within arm's reach, the hub of movies, tv and music, the most diverse population on earth, a few hours from Vegas, and the greatest weather that created year-round sports playing and recreation the world envied.

Then the worst happened. EVERYONE AND THEIR MAMA CAME HERE.

It's past a joke, this over-development Frankenstein unleashed. But unlike Shelley's creation, this Frankie's real and feeding on roids. Citing stats on average commute times over the past decade or whatever other relevant number related to rats in a cage growth is pointless. We all know.

But that knowing is on a grade. If you're a native or even a transplant with say, 30+ years standing, then you have a stakeholder reference point. If you're a noob, a gawker, your reference point is wherever you're from. Big difference.

Fran Lebowitz once remarked how Times Square was created not for New Yorkers, but for gawkers (my wording; she meant tourists). That's the way I feel about L.A. only with us it's the entire thing; they come to LIVE here.

The influx of the gawkers has created the biggest urban planning experiment in history balanced upon the fulcrum of money. Think about it; a bazillion gawkers colonize L.A. and who really wins?


AN EXAMPLE: The NISEI & SAWTELLE

Consider the Nisei, the second generation Japanese-Americans that settled in the then un-coveted Sawtelle area just north of Olympic. Nisei entrepreneurs created one of the coolest Japan-towns around, full of the personality and uniqueness befitting that generation whom Tom Brokaw labeled “The Greatest Generation” in ways I'd bet Brokaw didn't have in mind.

I raised my daughter in the Sawtelle area; she went to Nora Sterry elementary, both of us going to the YMCA, eating at Hide Sushi – where she worked while in high school – walking Sawtelle after eating and saying hi to friends at Safe & Save, Giant Robot, shopping at Nijiya... being Japanese-American, it was so cool, and I loved that my daughter was steeped in the area.

Today, Sawtelle looks like something out of “World War Z”, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights. Instead of Zombies, it's skinny jeans, tats and Audis. EVERYWHERE.

And the traffic is completely, utterly and unequivocally out of control.


COLONIZATION BASICS: DEVELOPERS, LOCALS AND GAWKERS

I served on the very first West LA Neighborhood Council for several terms under the auspices of then councilperson Bill Rosendahl. For those uninformed, neighborhood councils serve as a liaison between the plebiscite and the City. As such, any stakeholder can come and present to the neighborhood council. In my over three terms with the neighborhood council, all of the presenters to us were from one constituency: developers. Their interest is in one thing only: profit machines.

And so, we see the selling off of the Nisei entrepreneurs to the highest bidders who have no history, no familial legacy … no stakeholder interest in Sawtelle. I'd say it's a coin flip that they're even Angelenos.


COLONIZATION DEMAND: LA IS DESIRABLE

The same is true with housing; for we're the city where the young, wide-eyed kids de-board at LAX with visions of being the next Spielberg. And they come from everywhere around the world. This drives up demand for housing, which drives up prices and because the gawkers have no other choice – imagine one of the skinny jeaned crowd living in East LA -- they settle here. It's all so very, tragically hip, like sojourning to India to study your naval with some guru. And if the property owners are from L.A., then double damn then, because they can't see the big picture.

That's the problem.

If you aren't a stakeholder you're not invested. Your alliance isn't into what's best for L.A., but, like any colonizer, only what's in it for you, what you can extract from the natives. One can argue that developers buy into stakeholder-ship, but that's like saying one can buy love. Money cannot buy affiliations, relationships, emotions, ruminations... history, in anything but a capital way, that is, to profit. Stakeholder-ship is not a selfie Tweeted saying "I LOVE L.A.!!!"

My daughter was once being harassed by a guy who was hitting on her, so she went to Safe & Save, where one of the guys we knew, Bobby, walked her home. That's being invested, that's stakeholder-ship, that's community.


SO HOW ARE YOUR TAX DOLLARS SUPPORTING THIS?

There's one more spoke on the wheel: The government, particularly the LA City Council and Mayorship. It begs the question, Why would they let the rampant over-development of our city happen?

Follow the money. Simply, the more people we jam into L.A., the more revenue. It doesn't get any more complicated than that, at least on their level.


WHAT'S THE ANSWER?

Solutions outside of erecting an anti-immigration wall and border patrol? Hey, at least the cops would be guaranteed jobs for a while.

If, as an Angeleno, you wanted to attend UCLA, your fee is X. But if skinny jeans from Jersey wants to attend UCLA, it's 3X (or whatever the ratio is). Simply, we care more about protecting slots in our schools for locals than we do actual Angelenos who live here.

The answer is to make 'em pay. If it's so desirable to live here – and it is – why should property developers be the only ones profiting? As a thought exercise, if you're not a local with 20+ years standing, the years 1-3 of your residency/ownership are subject to a 25% tax; years 4-6: 20%; years 7-9: 15%; years 10-12: 10% and then, if you're still here after a decade we can talk about it.

And make it retroactive 5 years.

Use the money to run natural gas shuttles, lay fiber, start community banks, provide seed funding for entrepreneurs, bike sharing, city-wide wifi... you know, public good/works kinds of projects.

If it's true that there should be a price for everything then let it ride. Living somewhere is not frivolous except when you're a kid; for us Angelenos who have been here generations, it is the silent tragedy that no one wants to talk about in any kind of meaningful way, with any kind of political action or teeth, let alone repercussions for the environmental and psychological, quality of life stresses allowing millions of gawkers into LA produces.  At the rate L.A.'s westside is growing it will be the nightmare vision of Dick's "Bladerunner," complete with the “rats in a cage” closeness we're edging nearer to.

Many Angelenos, fed up and feeling no one cares, are simply leaving, or planning to. What kind of situation is it, where the folks or ancestors of the folks who helped make LA what it is (my Ma worked for the County and dad was an old school LA Times guy), are not supported beyond some outsider with pockets of money or stars in their eyes who knows nothing about what a great city this used to be?

Locals only? I know that's not realistic, but what we have now... is simply out of control.

And this born and raised Angeleno HATES IT.

Instead, we're witnessing the perfect storm of capital with no other considerations: environmental, health, quality of life... let alone loyalty. In other words, if you can pay money, that's all there is to it. Let the market decide, right?

To that I'll hand you off to a great American, Frederick Douglass:

You may get what you pay for, but you pay for everything you get.

So true.




JP Kaneshida
Los Angeles
November, 2014