Today was a Good Day
Cause you and I know it's the best side!
These are exciting times to live in L.A. You can feel it: the city is on the cusp of something, another blooming. My boy Villaraigosa is mayor. For one thing, he's taking on the bloated LAUSD -- perhaps in an over-reaching, Bloomberg-like fashion -- but he isn't simply paying lip-service to his voters. He's attempting deep, future-shaping changes.
And he's in serious discussions to develop park lands around the the L.A. River, and in discussion with others for what to do about the river itself, our first and foremost shame (see the past two issues of The Believer for a fantastic series of essays about Nature Writing in L.A.).
Eli Broad and other philanthropists with bottomless pockets are shelling out for major revitalization projects: witness the plans for Gehry-land, a massive revamping of Grand Avenue, with condos, "affordable" housing, hanging gardens, skyscrapers curtained with glass, a major bookstore(!).
Last week, Yuri and I saw the gifted dancers and choreographers Eiko and Koma perform a site-specific work with their students at the Skirball Center; then, on Thursday, we saw the future international stars The Calder Quartet paste the Ravel Quartet (along with Rouse No. 1 & Shostie 13) to the wall. These cats have ungodly chops. Bleeding music out their ears! They were all USC alums and just finished residency at the Colburn School. L.A. is oozing with art, haters.
A few weeks before, we caught the surviving members of Frank Zappa's "Mothers of Invention" (now the "Grandmothers") laying down his music at the REDCAT, the contemporary annex associated with Disney Concert Hall; this Sunday, we strolled around the massive campus of UCLA along with thousands of others, in the sunshine, for the annual L.A. Times Book Festival. I bought the Oulipo Compendium; she picked up a foam-core poster of a Taschen cover, a stylized cut-out of a movie still from the '50s.
And last night, courtesy of a friend of a friend, we got seats to see the Clippers eliminate the Nuggets. Which means it will be Clippers vs. Lakers in Round 2. New Yorkers call it a Subway Series when it's NY vs. NY: what do we call this? a Freeway Series?
An image emblazoned in my mind, probably for the rest of my life: driving North on the 110 to Yuri's place, in the sunshine, May 1, 2006: streams of white-clad Immigration activists crossing the bridge above me, Mexican and American flags billowing across the cloudless sky behind them. Without editorializing or politicizing this image, you have to understand that it is exactly of this time period, this moment, this stage in the development of Los Angeles.
There's no place I'd rather be.