Despite Recent Killings, CityWalk Remains a Safe Spot : A recent visit to the attraction reveals no threat to security. The double murder was the result of a domestic dispute and could have happened anywhere.

The Mother’s Day murders at CityWalk, which is a few minutes from my house, got a lot of press attention. So when I had some time on my hands on the Memorial Day weekend, I went up to CityWalk to get out of the house, read a paperback at an outdoor cafe and tried to get a sense of how safe the place feels.

I sat, I walked around, I watched people, I chatted with security and law enforcement people. I know there have been incidents there, but I’m inclined to think they are isolated and rare.

I’ve visited CityWalk often in the two years since it opened, sometimes with my family, who go to a movie while I sit around and feel a little as if I’m in a sidewalk cafe in Europe.

In the Upstart Crow, my hangout, I was reading “Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson, which depicts a Los Angeles a few years from now full of wandering bands of narcotized killer scum. From time to time I looked up at a scene that was actually quite nice.

The recent real-life murders weren’t much on my mind, nor apparently on anyone else’s, judging by the huge crowds and the jolly expressions on their faces. The parking structures were full when I arrived after a late lunch, and I had to park all the way up on the roof by the cupola that overlooks the lines for the 18 movie theaters.

Anyone who has followed the murder case closely will recognize that I had gone right to the site. I didn’t know it at the time nor did I find out until just before I went home.

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One thing on my mind was the press coverage of neighborhood activists saying CityWalk is a dangerous neighbor and the murders prove it.

When I told my wife I was going there while she gardened in the afternoon cool, she said, “Stay away from anything that looks like an extended family.” My brother said, “If a family feud breaks out, find some gang kids and apply for asylum.”

The killings were a domestic tragedy and could have happened anywhere. There was nothing that I believed connected them to my particular island of tranquillity up on the hill.

Some people talk about gangs, and kids in general, congregating there. I find fewer loitering kids when I go up there than I do at the corner shopping center near my house. At CityWalk I spotted four groups of teen-age boys wearing baseball caps backward, supposedly a gang tipoff. They and their girlfriends looked cheerful and scrubbed enough to be on their way to a Benetton ad audition.

Even the traffic runs smoother around CityWalk than near my corner. I don’t know how they do that. There’s a subway under construction in each situation, but I get more inconvenience in my neighborhood.

I asked a deputy at the CityWalk sheriff’s station about traffic (he was the one who told me where the murder scene was), and he said MCA Inc.’s engineers have installed lots of traffic signals on the streets around Universal City. I didn’t know corporations did that. Now I wish MCA owned property on Magnolia between Tujunga, Lankershim, Vineland.

The other place I go sometimes is Old Pasadena--where, by the way way, traffic is terrible and parking costs the same.

Yes, let’s talk about parking because some people say the six-buck charge at CityWalk is somehow a bad thing--anti-democratic or elitist. My brother would say (and frequently does), “It keeps out the riffraff.” My personal theory is that the feeling of safety you get from going there is worth the money. I don’t go to Santa Monica’s 3rd Street Promenade much anymore, even though the ocean air environment is better than CityWalk’s, because I don’t feel comfortable in the human environment. In any event, you don’t have to pay the $6 to go to CityWalk. You can park below and catch the shuttle bus up to the entertainment complex.

By the way, you find at CityWalk that people still dress . Not everybody, but lots. Also, the ethnic mix pretty much matches the county’s census statistics. At night the crowds are predominantly local, I’m told.

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Last weekend I went up to CityWalk twice, the second time to see what it was like at closing time. Maybe there was a witching hour or something. My first visit, though it ended well after midnight, gave no clue because the restaurants were still bulging with people and the last movies were still showing. There were still cars coming in through the parking gate. Anyway, on my second visit, I was able to see and reflect on what things were like at 11 p.m. when the murders took place.

All I saw was a young Latino motorist giving a white couple a jump-start because they had left their lights on during a movie. I know this is what happened, though not whether the husband or wife was responsible for the problem. They were having an argument to decide that.