Parks Taking Shape for a Day

Surely this is a joke, right? Did Margaret Cho divorce Rev. Al because he has resurrected the L.A. Cacophony Society?

L.A. remains a laughing stock of any real metropolis—size does not matter, despite the sprawl of these sixty, seventy or too many more suburbs in search of a city; as such, eLAy will never be a cosmopolitan spot owing to the collective demeanour such as what Mr. Fuentes so eagerly offers above.

The harrowing irony of “Honk if you love open space” is simply astounding. Why not get your McAss out of your McHybrid, and make public transportation viable? Or work to get bicycle lanes created? Or make the wreck of wasted space, Pershing Square, something more than its most defining icon: a quarter-million-dollar public toilet that barely operates properly?

I may well have made a mistake to come back out here. Instead of wasting my time bitching about obvious hypocrisy, I could have taken the 1 uptown to 116th, walked through the gates and languished—with a good book, of course, or maybe just a fat flask of single malt scotch—under the trees on the east side of Columbia’s quad. (Or, as it is now the weekend, gone downtown from there to The Park for a car-free, HONK-free day near the Reservoir, or down to the round Orchard at Houston, to enjoy that which the hicks in this two-bit shanty-town cannot seem to do: STOP DRIVING CARS and START MAKING A DIFFERENCE.

Do I really have to belabour the bleeding obvious: that if you have to “hon if you love open space,” you contribute directly to the paucity of it as well as the ugliness of what is left in southern CA?

I can only imagine that if some bums pushed an Aggrobin—from what usta be Skid Row—into a parking space in front of Meléndrez there on Olive, and put out a sign that said, “Honk if you think I give a fuck about your open space,” the “greenanistas” would be seeing red.

In teh end, there would be just another parking space taken up, temporarily, and vacated in a more violent fashion when one of the Melendrez Sisters called the cops.

-BusTard

Honk if you love open space? Wasn’t the point to ditch cars and embrace urban parks? How much more auto reliance does LA want to get itself into? Building parks does absolutely nothing, if there is no good, viable public transportation available. That’s the main problem…not parks. Parks is one of those good “talking points”, but fails to act if no good transit is nearby. How many parks does NY have? There’s a few pocket parks, but there’s Central Park. B/c it’s so well served by mass transit, people congregate their for festivals. That’s what we need in LA…a Pershing Square turned into an actual park and with massive events. Turning parking lots into parks for 1 day, didn’t turn much heads today. Especially if they turned only ONE parking spot into a park. And, why was it on street parking that was targeted??? It should be parking garages & lots that need to be torn down.

Yeah, I also think that the Parking Day was pretty lame. The LA Times got it right. It’s a white, hipster take on something that nobody else cares about.

The people that I saw setting up a space at 4th & Main used a rented UHaul to unload trees and hay bales, making a lush, planted rectangle that actually looked pretty good. But renting a truck to fill a spot with trees for an hour or so? That’s pretty carbon-foolish. Yuck.

Despite what most of the clueless want to believe, we have great parks here. Griffith Park, the single largest urban park in the US. Elysian Park, a jewel. Cornfield and Taylor Yards parks, babies in the landscape, but huge in area.

Being downtown they are all close and accessible by transit, bike, and car. LA is a fully functional urban center if you take it for what it is. Poor westsiders, you don’t know what you are missing.

Ed, you must have one fine stringer.

Wow. I thought I was cynical, but this takes the cake. 42 parking spaces out of God Knows How Many in Los Angeles were taking up for few hours on a single day by some people trying to make a unique and bold statement that I feel holds water, and everyone hates on them! So telling of the grasp of car culture here in this city. 42 damn spaces. City wide. Lol.

My view of Parking Day was more in line with Ed’s commentary than that of the other commenters or the always biased LA Times. I visited the Downtown area parks and was amazed at how well the concept had fleshed out into reality. The smallest bit of green space really did improve the urban environment. I sat with the “greenistas” (who all happen to be bus/train riders… in fact I walked in on them having a lively discussion about their bus commutes) at their parking space park in a metered spot at 6th and Olive and I envisioned the rest of the spots on the block being converted in a similar manner. Sitting in the park really drove the idea home… on all other days of the year this was just an empty space of concrete usable only by those who own cars - stolen from those of us who don’t. It discriminates against those who can’t afford cars and those who can but don’t feel it’s reasonable . The space as a park on the other hand welcomes all and only discriminates against those who place themselves squarely in the center of the world and want to get from point A to point B with as little human effort as possible and have a storage spot for their 2-ton piece of glass and steel wherever they may wish to go.

I don’t see how posting “Honk If You Love Open Space” negates the aim of Parking Day. I see it as a commentary on the dichotomy that the car culture brings. Those in cars are people too, and the fact is people love open spaces and green spaces and parks, but these are also the same people who are going to get pissed off if 42 parking spaces in all of Los Angeles are used as open space instead of a place to put their 2-ton piece of glass and steal. The idea of “Honk if you love open space” is clearly meant to reveal this duality.

“Building parks does absolutely nothing, if there is no good, viable public transportation available. ”

How is that true? And as a reader of my blog, you should know that LA does have good, viable public transportation available, most people just don’t give a shit. For your information, NYC (303 sq. miles) has 1,521 parks, while the city of LA (469 sq. miles) has 254 parks. LA County (4,061 sq. miles) has 1,100 parks. Manhattan alone (22 sq. miles) has 286 parks - 32 more than the entire city of Los Angeles. And you can see the difference, clear as day. Although NYC is clearly more dense and urban than Los Angeles, one visit will reveal an amount of greenery and FRIENDLY open space (LA has PLENTY of open space, but it’s in the form of massive parking lots) that puts LA with it’s great weather and “natural beauty” to shame.

Park should be accessible by foot, not by car OR transit. There should be a park within walking distance of everyone, but it’s simply not the case in Los Angeles. And comparing Pershing Square to Central Park is laughable. Have you ever been to Central Park dude?

“Yeah, I also think that the Parking Day was pretty lame. The LA Times got it right. It’s a white, hipster take on something that nobody else cares about.”

I think the point was to get people to car about it. Obviously people in LA don’t give a shit about much other than themselves… but I don’t think that trying to change this makes something lame. Nor do I see how this has anything to do with being a “white hipster”. I don’t know what the racial make-up of the participants were, but if it was all white, then it’s pretty sad because poorer neighborhoods and immigrant neighborhoods in Los Angeles have the LEAST park space (the 5 poorest city council districts in LA have only 17% of the total neighborhood park space).

The LA Times criticism doesn’t surprise me at all, but I am surprised by the criticism from Downtowners. Had you visited the park at Traction (where they did indeed transform an entire parking lot to a park, at their own expense) you would have seen a true urban park and how a bit of green instead of a slab of concrete can tie a neighborhood together in a way that I thought Downtowners were all about. My loft in South park is surround on 3 sides by massive ugly parking lots… I don’t think it’s wrong or lame to imagine them as something else, if only for one day.

Fred…I totally understand the reason for Park(ing) day, however, I’m not too thrilled that people would rent a curbside parking spot and setup park there. The problem does not lie with metered street parking, the problem lies with parking lots & parking garages. The latter two take up so much valuable space, that we have to make room for these automobiles in a giant parcel of land, thus we give up an opportunity for a residential/office bldg with greater pedestrian value. Street parking is FANTASTIC! Look at other major cities, street parking adds to the vibrant street culture, and thus reduces the need for a city to create more parking lots. The biggest mistake we have in LA is “anti-gridlock zoning”, we have created miniature highways running through city streets. And, I fear, with this zoning, some businesses who have setup storefronts, would rather go to a mall, b/c their customers can find easier parking in a garage. So, I support Park(ing) day, but not when the protest is on a curbside street and not on the real problem –> parking lots/garages.

I definitely agree that parking lots are the bigger problem. But I don’t mind them taking over metered spaces for just a day. No one gets hurt. People can stop and think about something different for a minute. And you can stop and sit a spell.

But at least one Park set up for this was in a parking lot over at traction and 3rd. it was pretty beautiful. they sodded over the whole thing. it made the whole block look way friendlier.

Right. I don’t think the idea behind Parking Day was to remove street parking or metered parking. Those are just the most accessible spaces to make their point. Sure, it would have been great to convert and 200 space Joes Parking lot into a park, but it would have been cost prohibitive for a bunch of volunteers. Amazingly, the folks who made the Traction Avenue actually did pay for an entire parking lot and did just what you were talking about, but that’s out of reach for most people (I can only imagine how much it cost to rent that parking lot for the day).

Parks and transit are both critical components of public space. They are not mutually exclusive.

BTW, some of you are trying to portray these park advocates as out-of-touch, white, Westside liberals. But as a Chicano from a park-starved area in L.A. (Huntington Park), I can tell first-hand how important parks are.

People need public transit to get people where they’re going. They need nice sidewalks to finish the trip. They need public parks to rest their feet or eat their lunch. People also need transit and trees and parks near where they live.

The freeway and private-lawns mentality is the problem. Park advocates are not the problem.

If they hadn’t done this right on the street, nobody driving by would have seen them. And the whole point of this was to get people who are cocooned in their cars (the vast majority) to think just for one second about the paucity of park space we are cursed with.

DUH!

Yes, we have Griffith Park, and Elysian, etc. But those are isolated areas. We need more parks in the neighborhoods, where people live. Even if they are pocket parks. And they are likely to be pocket parks. Everything uses energy, pollutes the air.

So you’re going to bitch about a few people renting a U-Haul truck for a day so they can make a demonstrable point? Moving all that stuff out there made more of an impact than walking around holding picket signs would have, I’ll tell you that.

Seems to me the only problem with the little temporary park was that it was temporary. But I’m confused. If it was located on Joel Bloom Square, aren’t there plans to buy the parking lot and convert it permanently to a park? If so, the Parking event was a good demonstration of just how nice that land will be if it really is converted to a park.

However, if such a location is eventually taken over by homeless people, into dealing drugs, drinking booze and urinating and defecating all over the place, it will go from good to bad, and end up being a big waste and eyesore.