Magazine Gives Local Preschools ‘E’ for Ego
The February issue of Spy magazine includes a none-too-flattering look at how rich L.A. parents scheme to get their kids into exclusive power kindergartens.
Singled out for a good thrashing is the Westside’s very own Crossroads School, described by Spy as a “funky campus overlooking the Santa Monica Freeway” with a non-traditional program that has attracted the children of Barbra Streisand, O.J. Simpson, Bob Dylan and Robert DeNiro.
The magazine also dings two other Westside institutions: the Center for Early Education, “founded by psychoanalysts,” and Circle of Children, “the preschool to the stars.”
“These are schools,” says one unnamed observer quoted in Spy, “where they can’t guarantee whether your child will be able to read or write when they get out, but their sense of self-esteem will be firmly in place.”
Crossroads Headmaster Roger Weaver, a former Spy subscriber, termed the story “shabby and pointless.” He accused the magazine of obsessing over Hollywood. “I wish Spy magazine would get over their fetish with the film industry in L.A.,” he said.
*
INCH BY INCH: If progress is measured in inches, frosh Assemblywoman Debra Bowen (D-Marina del Rey) gained a few of them last week.
In her second attempt to advance campaign finance reform legislation, two of six committee members voted to move her bill forward. That’s two more than last time around, when her legislation died in silence for lack of a motion to consider it.
But alas for Bowen, her latest measure died in a 2-2 deadlock, with Westside Assemblywoman Gwen Moore (D-Los Angeles) one of two committee members who missed the vote.
It was a disappointment, Bowen said, but not a surprise in hidebound Sacramento.
“People are accustomed to doing business under the current system,” she said. “They know where the deep pockets are.”
Bowen says she’ll make her next try after the November election, when more of the legislative Old Guard will fall by the term-limits wayside.
*
WAYWARD SITCOM: Does anyone want to be here anymore?
We’re all familiar with the exodus from Southern California, the residents and businesses fleeing for greener pastures. But now the flight has hit the situation comedies.
“These Friends of Mine,” an ABC sitcom to debut this spring, was originally to be set on the Westside. Its main characters, Ellen Morgan (Ellen DeGeneres) and Adam (Arye Gross) were to live in the Fairfax district.
But nooooo : The show will be set in San Francisco instead.
“Most people don’t like L.A. and if you’re not in (show) business why would you live in L.A.?” DeGeneres said. “(San Francisco) is a more interesting city.”
The series will still be shot on a Culver City sound stage, though. So eat your heart out, city by the Bay.