Valley Secession Is a Hair-Trigger Topic at Barbershop

By now you’ve heard the squawking from Valley folk who can’t wait to walk out on Los Angeles, and you’ve heard from the mayor who thinks they’ve been out in the sun too long.

But you have not yet heard from the gang at the most politically astute barbershop in all of Los Angeles. So here we go with the question of the day at Lawrence Tolliver’s clip joint on Florence near Western, where I’m the only pale face in the room:

Does anyone care if the Valley secedes?

Well, if it’s about a lack of services, Tony Wafford says while waiting for a trim, what do Valley folk know about getting stiffed? He leads me outside, where scrubby weeds sprout from cracks and the sidewalk is a roller coaster ride.

“You see this tree?” Wafford asks. “We paid to trim it ourselves. People around here haven’t seen a city tree-trimming crew in 10 years.”

“We got parents scared to let their kids go to the store,” says Drew Palmer, who’s getting his head landscaped by Mr. Tolliver and can’t believe it’s the Valleyites who are moaning about police protection.

Mr. Tolliver, in my experience, is a patient man. He tends to listen quietly, shaping his thoughts as artfully as he shapes heads. But when he lets loose, no one crowds his stage.

“When the Rams left Los Angeles to go to Anaheim, they left me,” he bellows, waving comb and scissors menacingly. “Then they left me again and went to St. Louis. Well, if you don’t want me, then I don’t want you! I love no one who doesn’t love me back.”

A chorus of howls and amens spurs him on.

“If the Rams played the Ku Klux Klan,” Tolliver wails, “I’d root for the Ku Klux Klan. So I say if the Valley wants to go, let ‘em go. We’ll be fine on our own. And don’t sit up in that Valley and claim the Lakers, and don’t come to the L.A. Philharmonic. Get yourself a Valley Philharmonic. I say we put up a toll booth on the 405 and charge them to come down here.”

Now it’s Tony Wafford’s turn to riff, and he cranks up the volume as he goes.

“I’d make them stay,” he says, mischief in his eyes. “Make them stay and deal with problems like I’ve got to. That’s the thing with white people. They can’t be uncomfortable for five minutes. I say take an Advil, because you know they got a pill in their medicine cabinet for every little thing that bothers them.”

I point out that the Valley no longer looks like Utah. It’s as diverse as the rest of L.A.

“I haven’t seen one [dang] Negro stand up at a secession meeting in the Valley and say let’s go,” Wafford booms. Besides, he says, if you live in the Valley, it doesn’t matter what color your skin is.

“You wake up in the morning and want to be treated like white people. You look out the window and say why didn’t someone trim my tree? Why’s my sidewalk cracked? Running is a cop-out. I say we keep them and let them see the world like other people see it.”

There’s a question on the table, Mr. Tolliver reminds everyone: What’s your vote on secession?

He casts his ballot for, and Wafford nullifies him. Now Mr. Tolliver begins taking votes by phone, as customers call to book tonsorial appointments. We’re deadlocked at 2-2 when Kevin Hooks, a marketing consultant and national trustee with the Urban League, walks in for his haircut.

Make it 3-2 for one Los Angeles.

Splitting the city in three means a loss of prestige, political clout, and business, Hooks tells the gang. A lot of the marketing deals he puts together are based on being able to pitch L.A. as the second largest city in the country.

“They’ve got a right to be upset about services in Hollywood and the Valley, but the solution is to get the leadership to make it better,” says Hooks. “If they secede, it doesn’t benefit us down here.”

Hooks glances around the room and makes a sharp observation. The vote is breaking down along generational lines, same as the barbershop vote for mayor.

The same elders who voted for Jim Hahn because they liked his late father, county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, are voting emotionally once again, telling the Valley to take a hike even if it means a loss of tax revenue in the ‘hood.

“Look,” says Wafford, pointing outside the shop. “There’s Negroes out there with shovels, still trying to dig up Ken Hahn.”

Mr. Tolliver admits that voting for Jim Hahn was the mistake of his life. “I want a DNA test on him,” he insists. “That’s not Ken Hahn’s son.”

And now, into the shop comes Rodney Taylor, who lives in Northridge and can’t wait to cast his vote for secession.

“We pay for a lot of goods and services we don’t get,” Taylor claims. He says he’s tired of the Valley being the cash cow for the rest of the city’s grazing.

“He’s a defector Negro,” Wafford says.

The final votes are cast, and when the polls close, the tally can be no closer.

By a single vote, secession loses, and the city remains whole.

But Mr. Tolliver refuses to give in. Those Valley folks are no better than the Rams, he repeats. He grills his own son, Bernard, asking why he didn’t vote to send the Valley on its way.

The Lakers are on TV now in the final game of the NBA finals, and Tolliver is waving a finger as he shouts up at the screen.

“Turn this game off in the Valley!” he says. If they don’t love L.A., “let them watch it on pay per view.”

*

Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com.