Monumental Move in the Right Direction

For years newspaper columnists and other dubious observers have fueled the mythical rivalry between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

There did seem to be some basis for invidious comparison: San Francisco had better theater, art, opera; it was richer; it looked more like a city, with its clustered skyscrapers on a promontory in the bay; its citizens were thought to be more sophisticated.

Los Angeles, on the other hand, was considered an overgrown cow town; a Midwestern metropolis; Zenith West; the capital of kitsch; its citizens hicks addicted to bizarre faiths and immoral pastimes; its Philistine rich living in fake villas filled with tasteless objets d’art; its culture an extension of the movies and the automobile.

But over the years, especially after World War II, San Francisco began to decompose; it developed slums; its Fisherman’s Wharf became a tourist trap; its main street turned sleazy; most of its romantic ferries were replaced by trains; its skyline became bloated; its harbor declined; it lost its status as financial capital of the West to Los Angeles.

In recent years even its ardent bard, Herb Caen, has noted its flaws and eased up on Los Angeles.

But now that Los Angeles threatens to overtake New York as the financial and cultural center of the Western world, the simmering rivalry between those two cities has heated up. As it begins to feel threatened, New York’s customary vilification of Los Angeles has intensified. We are bombarded by insults from the Eastern press. What used to be New York’s smug sense of superiority has been undermined by fear and uncertainty.

John P. Shelton, an Angeleno, suggests that before we let our intercity animosity get out of hand we consider the several ways in which we are alike. By way of introducing his comparison, Shelton recalls a New York magazine review of a Los Angeles play that quickly died in New York: “The ineptitude of the performance is best conveyed by its winning the 1984 Los Angeles Drama Critics Award.”

But look, he says: Both cities are among the few that can be instantly identified by their initials; the major newspaper in each city is The Times; Griffith Park and Central Park are two of the largest metropolitan parks in the country; New York City gambles at Atlantic City, Los Angeles at Las Vegas; New York is called the Big Apple, Los Angeles the Big Orange.

He notes also that New York is about the same distance from Boston as Los Angeles is from San Francisco, and both those cities imagine themselves culturally superior to their larger neighbors. New York has its Greenwich Village, Los Angeles has its Venice Beach, both refuges for the bohemian life. Los Angeles has its Rodeo Drive (in Beverly Hills, but completely surrounded by Los Angeles), New York has its 57th Street. Los Angeles has Watts and New York has Harlem; Los Angeles has the Music Center and New York has Lincoln Center; finally, he says, they both have Zubin Mehta.

Obviously, there are also some critical differences: Los Angeles has smog, New York has ice and snow; Los Angeles has the movies, New York has Wall Street; Los Angeles has the Dodgers, New York has the Mets.

New York does have one cultural monument, though, that Los Angeles can’t match. What do we have that can compare with the Statue of Liberty? Surely not that hideous Lipchitz sculpture at the Music Center; surely not that million-dollar jukebox in Bowron Square; surely not that rigid statue of Douglas MacArthur in MacArthur Park.

But what worries me is not that we have no monument that says to the world, “Welcome to Los Angeles.” What worries me is that we are about to have one. A blue-ribbon committee recently selected, from a field of 150 architects’ drawings, a West Coast Gateway to be built, at a cost of $40 million, over the freeway that transects the Civic Center.

The design is by Egyptian-born architect Hani Rashid. It is called Clouds of Steel. It envisions a giant Erector set structure incorporating theaters, parks, shops, restaurants, two giant oscillating aquariums, a movie screen visible from the freeway, a genealogical library and the synthesizing of freeway noise into music.

Note: The architect is a New Yorker. Ten of the 15 jurors who chose his work are foreigners.

How can we be sure it isn’t a Trojan horse?