Leaping Over Those Push-Pull Hurdles in L.A.

My first job, upon coming to this great metropolis, was in that part of it that doesn’t look like a metropolis at all. “Down in Orange County,” as they say in L.A., there were few reminders that you were part of one of the world’s most powerful urban landscapes. No muscular skyline. No civic monuments, unless you counted South Coast Plaza mall.

You had to take it on faith that you were part of a big place that mattered, a place that was more than just an irresistibly livable address. But if you had doubts, you could drive north, past the pull of suburbia; just past Long Beach, you’d begin to feel the force that was Los Angeles.

Energy. That was the only way to describe it, because the freeway landscape changed in only the subtlest of ways. The asphalt got a little narrower, maybe; the smog shrouded more tire plants than tile roofs. But what you really noticed was a certain vibe, a way your heart would catch as the downtown skyline suddenly materialized before you, like Oz.

Never mind that, close up, downtown L.A. was dirty and stinky, or that, come sundown, another, more centrifugal force would send everyone in it flying back to the parts from whence they came. Like it or lump it, there was a THERE there, a thing of sheer will that pushed against the pull of the suburbs. A place built and maintained, it seemed, for no reason other than to say, Trust your senses. This is no accident. This is a metropolis.

It’s been a big week, here in the accidental metropolis, a week that has brought the natural laws of Southern California into giddy relief.

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On the “pull” side, the San Fernando Valley suburbanites cleared a new hurdle in their fight to secede by sundown. On the “push” side, L.A. civic leaders, after a long dormant period, suddenly began to look like civic leaders, landing the 2000 Democratic National Convention and forcing the National Football League to promise an expansion team.

The temptation was to call it a 2-1 win for gravity, what with power and football both theoretically being things that would make a Valley type cleave to the ol’ hometown. But on closer inspection, the coups with the DNC and NFL also smacked of this place’s ambivalence about public engagement. Both were more the handiwork of private citizens than public officials, and both featured that new California hallmark, squeamishness toward public funding. The convention, in fact, was pitched as the baby of four local moguls who promised to underwrite it almost entirely with private fund-raising--a feat that evoked comparisons with L.A.’s last great feat of private publicness, the Olympics of ’84.

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This push-pull between public and private, city and suburb, is one of the hallmark forces of Southern California. We are one place; we are many places. We want power; we fear power. We maintain this behemoth downtown L.A.; we flee in droves from the metropolitan core.

And the core eludes us too. It takes money and unity to pump up a civic center, and Los Angeles, for all its clout, is notoriously fragmented. One reason the convention and football deals ended up being personally brokered by moguls like Eli Broad--and why private players like Peter Ueberroth ended up steering the 1984 Olympics--is that you could drop dead waiting for this place’s politicians to unite behind anything bold.

“I hate to say it,” Broad told me this week, “but a lot of these politicians, excluding Mayor Riordan, just don’t have vision. They’re shortsighted. The private sector has done here what, in other cities, the politicians would have done.”

He was right. And though relying on moguls to do the work of elected officials can be uncomfortable business, you could see how important it was to have strong private players. Again, the push-pull: In a place this sprawling, a geography this potent, who but a big shot is going to feel big enough to stake a claim? In the face of 132,000 people yelping for the Valley to cut the cord already, who else will remind that there’s a reason the phrase isn’t “world-class suburb?”

No one, replies Ueberroth, who on Wednesday applauded the “rebirth of positive spirit” with which L.A.’s private sector has gone public after a long void in corporate leadership.

“Hats off,” said the last private citizen to beat back Southern California’s centrifugal forces. It was a rare public comment, now that he’s retired from public life. He spoke by phone, from down in Orange County, somewhere.

Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is: shawn.hubler@latimes.com