The L.A. C of C Defines Its Area--Sort Of

I have received a letter from Kathleen Shilkret, media relations manager for the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, advising me that the chamber’s name is exactly that--Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce--nothing less and nothing more.

“No need to add a ‘greater’ or leave out an ‘area.’ ” it says. “Simply, ‘Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.’ ”

I was surprised to read further that the name had been changed to that form from the simpler Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce in 1967--21 years ago.

“Since changing our name,” Shilkret said, “we’ve confused a lot of people. But no more! We intend to clear this word game up! Hopefully the enclosed will serve as a reminder.”

The enclosed was a pad of gummed 3x4-inch memo slips with the name Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, the chamber’s logo, and the slogan, “We cover the whole area” printed in blue.

I see the chamber’s problem. Their new name is 21 years old and yet I was not really aware of it. I must have read it hundreds of times in the paper, but it never sank in.

If I had been told that the chamber had changed its traditional name, and had to guess what the new name was, I’d have guessed that it was the Greater Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.

I have a feeling that those little pads of memorandums, no matter how widely they are distributed, aren’t really going to implant that new name into our consciousnesses.

Part of the problem, I think, is that the word area itself is so flat, undefined, unspecific, so amorphous and impossible to visualize. It is used to describe anything from a public space (“Will you please clear the area!”) to a neighborhood, to a geographical region (the Southwest).

I notice that our neighborhood newspaper, which makes no pretense of covering the world at large, but tries to cover the news in our neighborhood and several contiguous neighborhoods, constituting what is known as the “Northeast area” of the city, often refers to people in the news as “area residents.”

In headlines, especially, it relies on area to locate and define the people it features. “Area girl wins scholarship . . . Area man promoted . . . Four die in area accident.”

It would be better if the girl winning the scholarship were identified as a Highland Park girl, or an Eagle Rock girl, but of course there is usually not enough space for specific designations in a headline.

So we are stuck with area . But it is more of a necessity imposed on the newspaper by its geographical limitations than a choice deliberately made in preference to some other term.

Obviously, in 1967 the chamber felt that “Los Angeles Chamber” did not adequately cover the area it served. Perhaps they considered “Greater Los Angeles,” which has been widely used since the city’s expansion into a megalopolis, but perhaps rejected it as pompous and self-glorifying. (The Los Angeles Press Club changed its name to the Greater Los Angeles Press Club years ago, but then journalists are not inclined to be self-conscious about pomposity.)

You can’t blame the chamber for wanting to take in more than the city of Los Angeles itself. Large as it is, the city does not begin to encompass that vast, interconnected industrial and business complex that is the Los Angeles economic establishment.

The identity of Los Angeles expands in direct ratio to the distance at which its name is invoked. Travelers in Europe, when asked where they are from, do not say Covina, or City of Industry, or Simi Valley--they say Los Angeles. Even Orange County residents, much as they may dislike it, identify themselves as being from “near Los Angeles,” or “the Los Angeles area,” rather than Buena Park or Santa Ana. Despite the presence of Disneyland and the Angels, I doubt that even Anaheim is a place name that commands instant recognition on foreign continents.

So the chamber is probably right in choosing “Los Angeles Area,” though I think “Greater Los Angeles” has more force; and if there seems to be a ring of braggadocio in it--what are chambers of commerce for?

But the die is cast. Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce it is. And I will do my bit by sticking up those little memos in propitious places around my workshop.