Remaking the Scene

Los Angeles’ Street Scene was in so much trouble this year that the City Council, acting on Mayor Tom Bradley’s recommendation, voted unanimously to postpone the nine-year-old event --an action that the mayor promised to take after last year’s festival was marred by violence.

It is a shame that Los Angeles has to wait another year to celebrate its cultural heritage. But the forced administrative absence of Sylvia Cunliffe, the Street Scene’s producer, was the final blow for this year’s festivities. In the few weeks that remained before the Street Scene weekend, the program could not have been revived and staged successfully. The mayor and the City Council have prudently turned the Street Scene over to a citizens’ committee that will investigate the possibility of hiring a private concern to plan next year’s celebration.

Fortunately, the Street Scene already has a plan to prevent a recurrence of last year’s tragedy. Among other things, the plan notes that alcohol from the outside, not the controlled sale of alcohol within the festival area, was the Street Scene’s main problem. Reinforced perimeter security and restricted alcohol sales properly and adequately address the problem of liquor control. Additional safety measures propose to aim the music program at more “mainstream” tastes in order to discourage rock-induced gang violence, and to close the event well before sundown. Chicago’s enormously popular Taste of Chicago festival, which traditionally attracts twice the crowds of the Street Scene, has used these guidelines with much success.

But the Street Scene also needs guidelines to avoid a repetition of this year’s planning fiasco. The Street Scene must disentangle itself from the predicament of Sylvia Cunliffe, the festival’s one-woman production team. Cunliffe is currently under criminal and civil investigations, and her absence made staging the Street Scene this year out of the question. It was a mistake to allow the event’s fate to hinge so closely on one person. Next year’s Street Scene should be planned by a committee, in the best sense of the word.