‘A lot of people are intimidated by the word <i> culture</i> . Well let me tell you, sir, I am not.’ : Give ‘Em Hell

Let me make perfectly clear at the outset that Melvin Perlitsh does not hate culture.

He could probably sit through a Russian ballet or an evening of poetry or a performance of I Lombardi Alla Prima Crociata without gagging or running from the music hall screaming and swearing.

He is not, as you might suspect, a man who prefers beer and television to champagne and Giuseppe Verdi.

Then why, I hear you ask, is Melvin Perlitsh campaigning so vigorously against a cultural center in the San Fernando Valley?

Because Melvin loves green acres more.

“Why in the hell,” he demanded one day, “would anyone in his right mind cover 20 beautiful acres with concrete and asphalt when we need open space a hell of a lot more than we need culture?”

We were standing in front of the Woodland Hills Post Office, where Melvin was distributing leaflets and gathering signatures on a petition opposing the aforementioned cultural center.

He was wearing a T-shirt that said “Fight the Asphalt Jungle” in bold letters across the front.

“A lot of people are intimidated by the word culture, “ he was saying, his jaw set and his face turning slightly crimson. “Well let me tell you, sir, I am not.”

No question about that.

Melvin Perlitsh, a retired postal worker, is a one-man army when it comes to articulating his point of view. And, even though he was arrested once and threatened with arrest a second time, Melvin, by God, doesn’t cower.

Let me explain.

The San Fernando Valley Cultural Foundation, which by its very title tempts traducement, wants to build a performing arts complex on Warner Park in the heart of Woodland Hills.

At present, the park is composed of trees and a vast lawn, upon which one might walk his dog or jog or sleep or drink beer or make love or whatever else one can get away with on a city-owned facility.

Melvin believes that the park was intended precisely for those purposes, even though he is not crazy about the doggie doo-doo that often intrudes with disgusting regularity upon his otherwise tranquil strolls.

But doo-doo notwithstanding, Melvin loves that park.

Forget that it happens to be right across the street from where he has lived for the past four years. If Melvin lived in Bangladesh, he would still be violently opposed to burying the verdant acreage under concrete and asphalt to facilitate culture.

“In Burbank I saved a playground from being plowed under in the name of redevelopment,” he said, “because I felt the park ought to be where it was. That’s exactly what I’m doing now.”

He was doing it a year ago in Warner Park when he was arrested.

Melvin says he was distributing leaflets opposing the cultural center when someone called the cops.

“I wasn’t disorderly or anything like that,” he said with remembered indignation, “but they lifted me off my feet like a hunk of meat, put me on my stomach and cuffed me. I spent two hours in a holding cell before I was O.R.’d.”

He was arrested under a section of the municipal code that forbids the distribution of advertising handbills on public property. The city attorney’s office, obviously having read the First Amendment, refused to prosecute.

“The arrest didn’t slow me down one damned bit,” Melvin said. “I set up a table at the Pacific Rim Festival a couple of weekends ago and got 800 signatures on my petitions. Landry called the cops but they refused to do anything.

“Someone said you can’t fight City Hall. I say the hell you can’t.”

Landry is Madeleine Landry, executive director of the San Fernando Valley Cultural Center.

“She won’t return my calls or answer my letters,” Melvin said. “Every time I call she is busy, in conference or out of town.”

I wondered if maybe she was put off by his excessive determination, to which Melvin replied, “Well, sometimes I don’t back off.”

“You mean you don’t back off easily?”

“I mean I don’t back off at all.”

While I would rather plow under an entertainment complex for a park than a park for an entertainment complex, I realize that my point of view isn’t the determining factor in these matters.

I further realize that a cultural center is better than a whorehouse, and a Verdi opera similarly preferable to, say, an auto-da-fe.

But you’ve got to hand it to a guy like Mel for shaking his fist in the faces of those who would gladly kill for culture. There is nothing more unnerving than a patron of the arts run amok, especially when there is only a Perlitsh in the way.

For that reason, give ‘em hell, Mel.

They may find you an immense pain in the behind, but you symbolize, by your individual effort, the best that we offer in a free society: one man shouting down a crowd.

Even if you lose, you’ll have put up the kind of lonely fight democracy is meant to encourage. In your case, there would even be a rewarding element to defeat.

Doggies don’t doo-doo in the aisles when Go e tterda e mmerung is on the stage.