We’re Out of Crises; Have a Doughnut

Every once in a while somebody says something that becomes the definitive quote of a certain time and place.

“There it is. Take it.” Historians love what William Mulholland said as the first wave rushed down his aqueduct for the way it seemed to sum up the spirit of Los Angeles’ early empire builders. Generations later, “Can’t we all just get along?” summed up L.A. in the Rodney King Years. More recently, L.A. lurched into the Age of O.J. It may be hard to agree on a definitive remark, but the rhyme of “fit” and “acquit” isn’t easy to forget.

Now, it seems, we have moved into another era--calmer, contented, a little dull. Crime is down and the economy is humming right along. Now that the Menendez brothers are in prison, now that O.J. is on a golf course and Mark Fuhrman is up north doing talk radio, our courthouse cameras are left to focus on the travails of a pregnant actress fired from “Melrose Place.” The other night, a quake measuring 3.2 was the lead story on the 11 o’clock news. I’ll admit that jolt got my attention, but didn’t we survive about a million aftershocks bigger than 3.2?

Now, all this could change faster than you can say, “the Big One.” But these last few months have reminded me of those placid years after the 1984 Olympics. And though I never read “Love in the Time of Cholera,” I think of this period as L.A. in the Time of the Mini-Mall. Councilman Joel Wachs, decrying the “hideous” proliferation of these small shopping plazas, uttered the definitive quote:

“I simply can’t imagine who eats all those doughnuts.”

*

OK, so maybe Wachs’ quote didn’t stick with you the way it stuck with me as I covered the City Council debate. But mini-malls were high on the public agenda back then, much as leaf blowers are now. Yes, this is L.A. in the Time of the Leaf Blower.

Consider what happened in Chatsworth last Thursday. A friend of a friend of mine named Cliff was bringing his daughter home from school, turned a corner and was alarmed to see three police cars rushing through his neighborhood. When Cliff arrived at his house, his gardener was hosing off his driveway, having hid his newly illicit leaf blower in the backyard. Another gardening crew down the street hid their leaf blower as well.

The gardeners and Cliff were convinced that someone had called the cops. But Sgt. Geri Weinstein, watch commander of the LAPD’s Devonshire Division, assured me that three units weren’t ordered to respond to a leaf blower complaint. Although it wasn’t readily apparent why Cliff saw so many patrol cars on his street, Weinstein said that police had received a report of a “man causing a disturbance” at that time four blocks away.

It may not be obvious just how much the mini-mall and the leaf blower have in common. But there are certain parallels in the way each has raised “quality of life” concerns.

Both were created in the name of convenience--mini-malls to provide a quick, nearby place to drop off dry cleaning, rent a video, buy a doughnut and so forth. For a long time, people didn’t give mini-malls a second thought.

Leaf blowers, meanwhile, conveniently allow a gardener to do his work faster and cheaper, which in turn enabled more of the landed gentry to turn over these chores to the gardeners. It isn’t just easier for the gardener but the customer too.

In both cases, the convenience factor was more obvious than the annoyance. Many mini-malls had been built before people started noticing how poor designs worsened traffic problems and generally uglified their neighborhoods. These complaints were especially loud in affluent areas. The proliferation of the leaf blower triggered a backlash among residents--again, especially in affluent areas--who objected to the noise and dust.

Another similarity was the way both the mini-mall and the leaf blower touched upon class differences in Los Angeles.

There were never hunger strikes over mini-malls, but developers liked to emphasize that the small businesses who filled their plazas were often run by immigrants seeking a foothold in free enterprise and the American Dream. That’s who’s selling all those doughnuts.

But the class differences were obvious in the leaf blower debate. Gardeners--mostly Latino, mostly immigrants--organized to protest a law they said would impoverish them. They marched miles to City Hall in bare feet, and eight gardeners staged a hunger strike to dramatize their concern.

But even Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, the ardently pro-labor champion of the city’s “living wage” ordinance, didn’t buy into the notion that the leaf blower ordinance was at heart an insidious kind of class warfare waged against immigrants. We’re much more obvious about that sort of thing. Remember California in the Time of Proposition 187?

But of all the parallels between the mini-mall and the leaf blower, perhaps the most striking is the sense that ultimately the focus on these controversies implies the absence of something weightier to distract us--no riot, no earthquake, no Gulf War. That doesn’t mean that trouble isn’t lurking just beneath the surface. Rodney King wasn’t just talking about himself and four cops.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.