L.A. 2000: A Remade Metropolis

The 1984 Olympics linger in Los Angeles’ collective imagination as a time of triumph--when freeways opened, skies appeared to clear and strangers joined together to produce a winning international pageant.

An Olympic afterglow seemed to extend beyond the event itself. People in the city have not felt so good since about the economy, the local government, public schools or the place they call home.

With next week’s Democratic National Convention, Los Angeles invites the world back, hoping to evoke that distant time before earthquake, riot and recession seized the civic psyche and reputation.

Truth is, L.A. 2000 is neither that mythic Olympic city nor the seething dystopia of current imagination. It is a little of both, and something more.

It is a metropolis that has welcomed five new cities since that Olympic apex, squeezed in nearly 2 million more inhabitants and yet somehow managed to make its filthy skies and ocean cleaner. It is a place of safer streets, 400,000 more jobs and two ports that have surpassed New York’s to become the busiest in the nation.

It is a determined cultural hub that has built 10 new museums, opened many of the world’s best restaurants and created vibrant street life in once-moribund downtowns, from Santa Monica to Pasadena to Huntington Park.

Yet it also is a place of progress so wildly uneven that it can conjure images of the Third World. Since 1984, about 800,000 additional people have fallen into poverty. City schools leave 70% of parents dissatisfied, where once the same number were confident of their children’s education. And overwhelmed freeways are crammed with as much as 50% more cars, offering barely any respite between rush hours.

The once-acclaimed Los Angeles Police Department, humiliated during the O.J. Simpson case, is now contending with scandalous allegations of drug-planting, frame-ups, violence and profiteering by some of its anti-gang officers. With municipal secession movements boiling from Hollywood to the Harbor area and the San Fernando Valley, the city itself is in danger of coming unglued.

“In the broad sense of one huge city . . . it doesn’t seem to be working,” says Rafer Johnson, the Olympic decathlon champion who in 1984 ignited the caldron high above the Coliseum. “But when people get zeroed in on a small neighborhood or community, they take ownership. And it can still work.”

The civic mood has improved slightly in the last few years, but it does not approach the heights of the post-Olympic era. Months after the Games, nearly three in four county residents said things in Los Angeles were going well. This year, locals were slightly more likely to say things were going in the wrong direction.

Some civic leaders say Los Angeles will learn to see its evolution in a more positive light, given a few more disaster-free years.

“I think we are at a moment of great potential energy,” says Barry Munitz, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust, which opened its showcase museum on a Brentwood hillside 2 1/2 years ago. “But that energy has not yet been pulled together. When it is, the ball that’s now poised at the top of the wall could be kicked along and become real, kinetic energy.”

The Centrifugal City

In that often-winning Olympic summer, thousands of young people flocked to the one place to take a bicycle rickshaw ride, line up en masse to see movies like “Amadeus” in a huge, single-screen theater or pogo dance the night away at a club called Dillon’s.

It was Westwood Village.

More important than any single attraction, the Village had the allure of the rare L.A. locale where people strolled and lingered, just to be with each other. The world’s athletes thronged there from the Olympic Village at UCLA--recognizing at least one urbane niche amid the confounding sprawl.

But Westwood faded badly, saw storefronts go empty, only to rally a bit. Other suburban “downtowns” stood dormant even during that Olympic high--their customers siphoned off by giant, indoor malls.

Today, revivals styled on the old Westwood have become the rage. The prototypes are Santa Monica’s teeming Third Street Promenade and the hopping Old Pasadena.

Other cities soon recognized just what movie theaters, sidewalk cafes, storefront awnings and a few street performers did for those two tired downtowns, known mostly in 1984 as havens for the homeless.

Now the return to the sidewalks has re-created a sense of community in places as far flung as Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, Pacific Boulevard in Huntington Park, Pine Avenue in Long Beach and Myrtle Avenue in Monrovia. The trend reaches its faux-urban culmination along the crowded “streets” of Universal CityWalk.

For Angelenos who can’t get enough of one another, farmers markets have flourished as well. The street fairs promote fresh produce and amiable lingering at 60 locations today, five times the number that were in operation in the early 1980s.

“You can drive through miles of unremarkable, depressing dreck and suddenly arrive at these remarkable oases,” says Azusa City Manager Rick Cole, who has studied the revived downtowns and presided over one revival as a mayor of Pasadena in the 1990s.

Like many of the changes on the Los Angeles landscape today, the regional downtowns bring the city back to the future. A city of centrifugal forces does what it always has done--push development outward and away from a single core.

Once dismissed as an anomaly, the city and region are now pondered by urban theorists worldwide as models of the fragmented and diffuse megalopolis of the future.

“People are hungry for some kind of urban experience, even if it is sort of fake or manufactured,” says William Fulton, an urban theorist and author of “The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles.” “There is still an appetite out there to be fulfilled.”

The cosmopolitan appetite has been fed, as well, by a two-decade boom in museum construction.

The new, $1-billion Getty gets most of the acclaim because of its enormous endowment, its audacious, sun-lit galleries and its sweeping views of the Westside. But the post-Olympic period also has seen the construction of the California Science Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Armand Hammer Museum of Art, the Japanese American National Museum, the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum and the Museum of Tolerance, among others.

Two architectural gems downtown will soon cap the cultural renaissance--a new Catholic cathedral and the undulating, stainless-steel-wrapped Disney Concert Hall.

That building aspires not only to make better music, but to boost civic optimism and, perhaps, create a new icon, says Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s music director.

“Now the visual symbol of L.A. is the ‘Hollywood’ sign. Can you imagine a more boring symbol for the city?” says Salonen, the Finnish native who only made his debut here in 1984. “I think Disney Hall will become recognized the world over and immediately act as the new visual symbol of L.A.”

Buenos Dias, L.A.

Say goodbye to the top spot in local radio for Rick Dees and his Top 40 pop, the ratings leader of 1984. Now Dees and KIIS-FM (102.7) have slipped to No. 3, behind the new king of the hill, Spanish-language KSCA-FM (101.9) and outrageous host Renan Almendarez Coello.

A Honduran immigrant known on air simply as “El Cucuy,” (The Boogeyman), he thrives on ribald humor, claims to have fathered 19 children and is proud that he has triumphed speaking solamente espanol--only Spanish.

Almendarez arrived in 1982 with “only a knapsack full of dreams,” rode the bus each day to a small Spanish-language station and gazed in awe at the giant Rick Dees billboard at Hollywood and Vine.

Now his own studio is headquartered at that quintessential L.A. crossroads. He has twice as many local listeners as Howard Stern. And he is preoccupied with perfecting the linguistic and cultural nuances of the cubano, the mexicano and the puertoriqueno.

“I don’t speak English, and I want to keep it that way,” Almendarez, 46, quips in Spanish. “I think learning English will make me want to eat hamburgers instead of beans. . . . I have dedicated myself to bringing together all members of the Latino community.”

L.A.’s ethnic make-over has become so pronounced today that even the most determined homebodies can’t ignore it. Some chafe, others thrill, at the explosion of new cultures.

The Latino population has outstripped all others. After making up less than one-third of the county’s population in 1984, it will soon become the majority.

The white population has actually dropped, not just in proportion, but also in real numbers. There were 400,000 fewer whites in the county in 1998 than in 1990, the last year for which statistics are available.

A new generation has discovered salsa music, lining up at the Conga Room to dance to bands such as Makina Loca, a Cuban-inflected combo.

A restaurant scene that was only emerging from obscurity in 1984 now commands world renown, because chefs such as Austrian-born Wolfgang Puck had the verve to meld the tastes of Asia and Europe in a California skillet.

“There is no doubt now that we are living in a really great, great urban place,” says chef Susan Feniger, who, along with partner Mary Sue Milliken, has gained national acclaim for their Border Grill restaurant and “Too Hot Tamales” television program.

But others seethe about being crowded by immigrants, from the freeways to public health clinics. They bridle at the additional 200,000 limited-English speakers that Los Angeles city schools must teach. They point to abysmal test scores as proof that the public schools are being dragged down.

A few watched the melee outside Staples Center--when the Lakers won another basketball championship in June--and came to one conclusion: It was the newcomers, running amok again.

But those who believe that Latinos are just tying up traffic haven’t been following the headlines. Latin roots, in place since the days of El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora La Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula, now flower in dozens of vivid forms.

This spring, janitors--most of them Latinos--won higher wages and better health benefits from building owners with a strike that reinvigorated the local labor movement and gained national acclaim.

Latino voters and elected officials are now ascendant, with 216 Latinos countywide serving as school trustees, city council members, judges and in other posts, all won at the ballot box. That is nearly double the number who had been elected in 1984.

A Latino Mayor?

Come next year, Los Angeles might even elect the first Latino mayor in its modern history.

The city’s ethnic tapestry, however, contains dozens of other threads that had only been thrown on the loom in 1984.

There are now larger concentrations of Mexicans, Iranians, Samoans, Filipinos, Salvadorans, Armenians, Guatemalans and Koreans here than anywhere else in the world, outside their native regions. Many of those groups were only beginning to mushroom in the 1980s, the product of revolution and economic strife in their homelands.

One measure of the change: In 1984, nine languages were spoken among LAPD officers, compared with the 32 that the force can communicate in today.

Even for a single individual, the ride along this great ethnic divide can provoke a welter of emotions.

At AAA Flag & Banner near Culver City, Howard Furst recalls how his company manufactured most of the ubiquitous pastel street banners that seemed to unify the city during the Olympics. The work helped put his company on the map.

Today, he throws an arm around many of his 200 employees--who came from Ethiopia, the Philippines, Latin America and many other places. “These people made me what I am,” Furst says, lauding their hard work and family loyalty. “I wouldn’t be nearly the success without them.”

Yet he is sure the government and his hometown are paying the price for those who don’t pull their share. “There are the ones who run across the border just to drop their babies without being active or paying taxes,” Furst says, voicing sentiments many others don’t dare repeat. “That is what bothers me.”

An Economy Lost and Found

Cruising through downtown Los Angeles on the Harbor Freeway, you might scan the skyline for some clue to the true roots of power in the city.

Forget it.

The corporate logos atop the high-rises change so often, few locals can name even one of them.

But back in 1984, an extremely popular Mayor Tom Bradley was building the downtown skyline with millions of redevelopment dollars. The city core was positioned to become the center of the booming Pacific Rim.

Then everything changed.

The Berlin Wall collapsed in the late 1980s, soon to be followed by the end of President Ronald Reagan’s military buildup. Defense and aerospace jobs that had been the region’s foundation came tumbling down by the tens of thousands.

Even after that sector bottomed out, Los Angeles continued to lose corporate giants to a worldwide merger mania. Gone are Security Pacific Bank, Bullock’s department stores and Getty Oil. Arco still has its name on one of the behemoths downtown, but it too packed up its corporate headquarters and hundreds of employees this year after a buyout by Britain’s BP Amoco. Times Mirror, once parent company of the Los Angeles Times, also disappeared from the scene after being bought by Tribune Co. of Chicago.

That completed the exodus, leaving downtown Los Angeles today without a single Fortune 500 headquarters.

One of the area’s leading fund-raisers recently bemoaned the many losses, saying the ripple effect would be like “philanthropic death by merger.”

If there is a miracle about Los Angeles 2000, it is that the economy took those hits, and many more, and remade itself with entrepreneurship in hundreds of unexpected places.

Today, the region’s commerce and leadership are so dispersed that they defy description. Entertainment, biotech and fiber-optic communications labs bristle with new ventures, not far from garment sweatshops and low-wage furniture factories.

“We have an economy something like the Internet, with a bunch of random connections and poles that are always re-creating themselves,” says Joel Kotkin, a senior fellow at the Davenport Institute for Public Policy at Pepperdine University.

Despite the seismic shifts, Los Angeles County improbably retains its central place in world commerce. Its total economic output today outstrips those of Taiwan, Switzerland, Austria and all but 15 other nations--roughly its position in the midst of the defense boom. The ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles last year handled more than four times as much cargo as they did in 1984.

The multiplicity of new workplaces may be less stable than before, but they offer more chances for creativity and opportunity, Kotkin believes.

Still, some economists worry about how the new debt-dependent enterprises will survive the next economic slump, or even a few more interest-rate hikes. They note that the surging economic engine can feel much rougher to the average worker who rides in the back of the bus.

A soaring number of low-wage jobs has helped create the massive run-up in the ranks of the poor. Two of every five Latino children in the county live in poverty. One in four children of all races goes without medical insurance.

Without a better education for their children, many may be permanently trapped at the bottom.

“If you have a job, you can afford to live in a pretty nice place in L.A. and your office is not far away, your life is great,” says Fulton, the urban theorist. “If you can’t afford to live in a nice place, have a low-wage job or your commute is too long, then your life is miserable. It’s almost that simple.”

Where to Now?

Los Angeles seems today, more than ever, to embody the reluctant metropolis.

* The city plans a New Year’s Eve party, but shrinks from a single, giant celebration. Five regional parties present such a lackluster spectacle for the world--from line dancing at the Van Nuys Airport to a low-voltage “Hollywood” sign lighting--that Jay Leno has joke fodder for weeks.

* It elects Mayor Richard Riordan twice in a row, but then finds up to 30% of his constituents at times unable to summon an opinion about his tenure. (Imagine a New Yorker without a lot to say about Mayor Rudy Giuliani.)

* It completes a subway and rail line to Universal Studios, Hollywood and Long Beach, but has no concrete plans for reaching the airport, the Coliseum, Santa Monica or dozens of other places.

Such an ambivalent city will have to seriously pull itself together to live up to its oft-repeated “Capital of the 21st Century” title, many academics and politicians agree.

Neighborhood Watch groups can organize foot patrols and chambers of commerce can revive a dozen suburban downtowns. But they can’t find homes for the 7 million people--enough to fill two Chicago-sized cities--who are expected to arrive in Southern California in the next two decades. They can’t get hugely disparate communities to agree on how to import water and electricity to power the state’s economic engine. And only regional cooperation and planning can drive the much-needed cleaning of the air and ocean water--both already cleared of tons of pollutants by earlier collaborations.

Perhaps most important, how will Los Angeles answer the question posed by a bruised Rodney King as the city burned: “Can we all get along?”

It’s not often that such a helter-skelter place can pause to take an accounting. If not at this week’s massive media and political gathering, then when?

Many of the organizers of the 1984 Olympics will submit, by year’s end, the city’s initial bid to host the Summer Games again in 2012.

“Great things can happen in small steps or they can move ahead exponentially, with a single event,” says Deborah Sussman, the designer who created those ubiquitous lamppost banners for the Summer Games. “We need something. The Olympics is one opportunity. But I would hate to have to wait another 12 years for something really big to happen.”

*

Times staff writer Lorenza Munoz, researcher Maloy Moore and librarian John Tyrrell contributed to this story.

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L.A. County Then and Now

Seismic changes have swept the Los Angeles Area in the 16 years since the seeming apex of 1984, the year of the Summer Olympic Games. Los Angeles County by the nyumbers, then and now: