Fantasy Takes a Holiday for Watts Visitors

Even if the Happiest Place on Earth were the last vacation spot on the planet, Peter Kaufman and Leigh Weaver probably wouldn’t be caught dead there. Well, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. As Kaufman put it, Disneyland is “a gold mine of sociological inquisition,” particularly if you’re a sociology professor, like Kaufman.

But during a recent four-day stay in Anaheim, where Kaufman was attending the American Sociological Assn.’s annual conference, the Long Island couple made a point of not setting foot in Fantasyland, Frontierland or any other land where they might cross paths with Goofy or Chip and Dale. “We’re pretty anti-Disney,” Kaufman said. “Don’t get us started.”

Instead, on the last day of an extended Western swing, Kaufman and Weaver drove north to view a site nearly as whimsically other-worldly as Cinderella’s Castle, albeit on a far more modest scale: Watts Towers, the exuberantly eccentric folk-art monument that has survived earthquakes, riots and occasional public neglect.

Built from concrete, colored tile fragments, seashells, broken bottles and other found objects by Simon Rodia, an immigrant Italian day laborer, to honor his adopted country, the towers draw thousands of visitors each year. Even before their completion in 1954, the whorled structures--33 years in the making--were on their way to becoming an icon in a region where art and kitsch often are joined at the hip.

Recently reopened for public tours after a massive, long-delayed earthquake-related restoration, the towers, some nearly 100 feet high, rise above the surrounding neighborhood of modest bungalows, mom-and-pop stores and the next-door Watts Towers Arts Center. The towers have watched silently while the community has evolved from a predominantly white, then black, and now majority Latino enclave over the past half-century.

Acting on a friend’s recommendation, Kaufman and Weaver decided to stop by the landmark on a recent weekday morning en route to the Getty Center. They were less interested in the Getty’s art collections, however, than in its sweeping hilltop vistas. “We heard the art museums were better in New York,” Kaufman said, laughing. “We’re sort of New York snobs.”

Sporting the obligatory urban-tourist garb (sensible shoes, an array of natural fibers), Kaufman and Weaver give the impression of being longtime emotional bookends and intellectual soul mates. Describing themselves as “partners,” they’ve been together since their late teens and have a habit of verbally punctuating or finishing each other’s thoughts.

When they arrived at Watts Towers, the site was deserted apart from a lone restoration worker, who could be glimpsed behind the protective fence surrounding the towers. (Although there’s no charge for viewing the towers, physical contact is restricted.) Across the street, a few older residents chatted quietly on porches, while passing jets lowered themselves for landing at LAX. Snatches of ranchera music from a distant radio and the periodic horn blasts of a Metro Blue Line train were the only other sounds.

“We’d heard about it, but we didn’t know what it was,” Kaufman said as he stared at the towers. “It’s an amazing piece of work.” Weaver said she was surprised that there weren’t more sightseers around. “If this was in another place, if this was in the middle of Hollywood, a lot more people would be coming in,” she said. “And it’d be a lot more expensive. There’d be a Starbucks next to it.”

Weaver, a second-grade teacher, and Kaufman, an assistant professor of sociology at the State University of New York at New Paltz, both 34, are apparently the type of tourists for whom engaging a critical, scholarly eye is as natural as pulling out a camera. They were struck by the way that reality and make-believe converge in the manmade environment of Southern California and the West in general, and how that convergence affects perceptions. At their Anaheim hotel, Weaver said, she’d overheard a group of people talking about places they’d visited such as Paris and Venice. Gradually, she realized they were referring to the Las Vegas mega-hotels of those names. “They were speaking so literally, as if they’d been there,” Weaver said. “It was kind of sad.”

Kaufman seemed intrigued by the juxtaposition of Disneyland’s fantasy world with the lower middle-class residential streets that flank it. “The real meshes with the surreal,” Kaufman said. “Very postmodern.”

One thing the couple had enjoyed about staying near Disneyland was being able to see the fireworks displays that light up the theme park at night. “But even that was like ‘The Truman Show,’ ” Kaufman said, referring to the 1998 film in which Jim Carrey plays a man who grows up on a TV sound stage thinking it’s the real world.

The couple began their trip by flying to Denver. After visiting some of Weaver’s relatives in Colorado, they continuedto New Mexico to rendezvous with Kaufman’s brother, who works as a doctor on an Apache reservation in Arizona.

After visiting and hiking part of the Grand Canyon they went to Phoenix, where they caught a flight to L.A. Besides the majestic landscapes, they were taken by the amount of poverty they encountered along the way, and its various manifestations--rural and urban, fully exposed or partially hidden.

Between conference seminars, the couple squeezed in a visit to Venice Beach, where they watched a group of drummers and percussionists give an impromptu performance. The late-afternoon ambience was sensual and dramatic. “The fog came in, and then you couldn’t even see the boardwalk,” Weaver said. “And we had a feeling like the drummers had summoned the fog.” Weaver also hoped to visit the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, but as she put it, “Traffic happened.”

On their final day in town the couple had a list of spots they hoped to take in before catching a red-eye flight back to New York. After touring the Getty, they intended to drive through Hollywood and along Hollywood Boulevard in their rental car. “A lot of people say, ‘Don’t bother, it’s not worth it.’ But they’re the people who live here,” Weaver said.

The sun was nearing its midday position, and the couple had to get going. Before they did, they took one last look at Rodia’s sculpture--one man’s simple but extravagant gesture of appreciation toward a country and a city. “It doesn’t seem as though he created it for any reason other than for himself and his friends and neighbors,” Weaver said admiringly. “It’s like a playground. It’s the real Disney.” Kaufman picked up the theme. “It’s like if a kid weren’t influenced by the real Disney, they’d make something like this.”