As Convention Nears, Fears and Hopes Collide

Los Angeles is acting like the couple who decided six months ago to throw a big party.

It seemed like such a great idea at the time. Now the remorse moment is upon them: The doorbell is ringing, the cat has knocked over the sushi platter, the kids are fighting over the TV and he turns to her and says, “What in God’s name were we thinking?”

Reluctantly ready--that’s LA.

The city lured and enticed and ultimately helped to bankroll the Democratic National Convention, and now we act almost as if we’re sorry we did.

At the same time that L.A. wants the world to believe what a swell place this is, we’re bunkering in like it’s Slobodan Milosevic coming to town, not Al Gore. (How much of this angst could have been spared us if the Democrats had admitted more dissenting voices within the hall, rather than fearing them outside the hall, we’ll never know.)

After Seattle, after Philadelphia, the protesters are fearful of the cops, and the cops are wary of the protesters. Some people seem to be spoiling for a fight, baiting the other side, hoping that the adversary misbehaves to prove all the direst predictions about them.

A city on edge? You tell me: On Thursday, two young women and a kindergarten-age little girl were crossing a street near Staples. The child began playing with an orange traffic cone, rocking it back and forth, and from some dozen yards away, a policeman sitting in a patrol car blared at them over his loudspeaker, “Knock down my cones, and you’re putting them back.”

The city’s pathetic showing on New Year’s Eve, its stillborn small-d democratic party for ordinary Angelenos to parallel the invitation-only Democratic party--that’s a track record that led Beverly Hills to put lush ads in the New Yorker bleating, “The convention is downtown, but the party’s in Beverly Hills.” Rich, clean, safe Beverly Hills.

What is it L.A. is out to prove next week? That, OK, maybe we can’t throw parties, but we are world class when it comes to handling riots?

The pool at Pershing Square, drained of water, is now filled with sand, like a big ashtray. Or a litter box. At the Fire Department’s request (and with the city expected to foot the bill for replanting), Staples Center has cut down or dug up the shrubs and saplings growing in the “protest zone,” lest they be used as weapons or set on fire. There’s a run on Army surplus store gas masks. An auto dealership savaged by the Laker fans’ riots in June didn’t even bother taking down the plywood, knowing the convention was coming to town.

At one LAPD briefing, word went out that anarchists can sometimes be recognized by their black clothes and backpacks. Manhattan, you’re under arrest!

*

Still and all, a cautious jollity has crept into the week.

Traffic has a holiday-light feel to it, unless it’s your offramp that’s been shut down.

Mayor Richard Riordan has been cutting more ribbons than a pregnant woman at a baby shower. Carried away by civic enthusiasm at a “blessing of the posters” ceremony, he temporarily lost track of base-10 math, declaring, “I just want to say those three magic words: Welcome to the City of Angels.”

He’ll be cutting another ribbon today as Olvera Street unveils its primped and primed self, many months in the beautification. Alas, the eternally under-renovation Watts Towers can only be viewed, says a recording, “from outside the bordering fence”--like so many of the events at the convention.

Downtown, the city has been repaving streets and “hotstamping” crosswalks to look and feel like brick pathways. Brooms have been applied to pavement. Limp heaps of freshly bagged trash lie awaiting pickup. “Los Angeles,” the mayor intoned Thursday, “has never looked better.”

There lies the risk and the promise. Don’t get L.A. used to looking good and running well if you’re only going to do it for company. A language professor I ran into downtown this week was gazing around and wondering, “Why can’t it be this nice all the time?” I put that question to Riordan on Thursday, and he said he hopes to keep the place at “95%” of its convention-day best.

At the 1984 Olympics, we surprised ourselves. We pulled it off. The Olympics taught the city new patterns and possibilities.

The most important thing the convention can bring to Los Angeles is not tens of millions in hotel and restaurant and tourism dollars. It’s a restoration of confidence--not in the police, although that is certainly the yardstick the city is using--but in its ability to get the hard things done.

The convention may even be the making of the new transit system. Who knows? For the duration of the convention, at least, that great Los Angeles myth, that everything is 20 minutes away from everything else, may finally come true.

*

Patt Morrison’s column appears Fridays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com.