Time to Shine Again

The Venice Pavilion might be an odd starting point for reflections on Los Angeles’ bust of a millennium celebration last weekend and the meaning of community in this sprawling city. Caked with layers of spray-painted graffiti, the brick pavilion, built in 1959, once hosted evening concerts and community programs on Venice Beach. But the worn and neglected building has been shuttered for 15 years, defying sporadic attempts at renewal. Its surrounding concrete patios are home to a quintessentially Venice melange of the homeless, street musicians, sidewalk psychics and teenage daredevils on skateboards. This nexus of cool cats and the permanently stoned might not seem the likely site for a major effort to reinvent neighborhoods. But it could be.

The city wants to replace the rusting, rat-infested building with a landscaped park, children’s playground, public sculpture, a small police substation and a park maintenance office. A final go-ahead on demolition awaits approval by the California Coastal Commission, scheduled to take up the matter Tuesday. The pavilion project is part of an ambitious upgrading of the grungy Venice Boardwalk, already underway. Included are a renovated Venice Pier, new restrooms and installation of a second bike path and other recreational facilities--all scheduled for completion before the Democratic National Convention is held in downtown Los Angeles in August.

As this project moves forward--along with the construction of Disney Hall and the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, plus mega-projects in Hollywood and elsewhere--Los Angeles might finally get a few more village squares.

There was little to compare between the New Year’s Eve festivities in New York’s Times Square, jammed with up to a million cheering revelers, and Los Angeles’ official celebration--mainly a light show at the Hollywood sign that drew more raspberries than raves. With the Democratic National Convention the next big event on the city’s date book, we are nursing wounds to our municipal pride and fretting about what Los Angeles is and isn’t.

Certainly, Los Angeles is different from New York or Paris or Rio de Janeiro, with their central squares and a culture of public gathering. We’re a spread-out Western city with a leave-me-alone mentality. It’s unrealistic to think that Southern California can agree on one landmark here that defines us like Times Square or the Eiffel Tower, or that many of us would hang out there if one existed.

Instead, we tend to do our public celebrating and people-watching in the neighborhoods where we live, in spots both public and commercial--Old Pasadena, Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade and Palisades Park, Sunset Boulevard and Venice Beach and other beach spots.

Still, the 1984 Olympics demonstrated that we can make the public places we have, the Venice Pavilion among them, more attractive and welcoming. When the world was watching the ’84 Summer Games, Los Angeles shined. We put on a good show for natives and tourists alike. We did it in our own glitzy and cool and laid-back way, and we can do it again.