No Fan of Downtown

Anastasia McAteer writes that “it’s disappointing that after so much good press, downtown is still perceived so incorrectly by the majority of Los Angeles, and people continue to perpetuate the ‘ghost town at sundown’ stereotype” (Letters, Sept. 1).

Spare me the political correctness. I worked in downtown Los Angeles for well over two years (at the bottom of Bunker Hill, 5th and Grand), and found it to be appalling, depressing and disgusting.

If downtown is so convenient, as McAteer asserts, how come there is no food to be had on downtown’s streets between 3 and 7 p.m.?

At around 7:30 or 8 p.m., restaurants are open, yes. But that is all. After the sun goes down, don’t even think about buying a new pair of pantyhose, renting a video, buying a record, a book or even a greeting card.

“An easy commute”? It’s at least 30 minutes, and often longer, in bumper-to-bumper traffic. And God forbid one’s car should break down, because the neighborhoods between the Westside and downtown do not engender feelings of security.

Go ahead, make your PC remarks. It doesn’t change the facts: We Westsiders do not feel comfortable in what we consider to be the Eastside. Period. If you think I am inappropriately fearful, go ask the LAPD what the crime statistics are downtown and in its environs, versus those on the Westside.

Of course there are a lot of free weekly concerts! The bureaucrats have to do something to mollify the poor and keep them from rising up in violence and anger at the vast economic disparity in this “city.”

It also gives the politicos a chance to take a bow at all the “culture” they’re bringing to downtown (while they steal the electorate blind and completely turn their backs on the vast homeless problem).

Cheap and easy public transit? The MTA informed me that the fastest I could get from the Westside to downtown in the afternoon was 2 1/2 hours.

I agree with McAteer that downtown is a vibrant community: of panhandling psychotic crackheads and hopeless poverty and filth. And no one in City Hall, apparently, gives a damn. It’s been the same since the ‘50s, when I grew up here. Downtown will always be my and many other people’s idea of hell on Earth.

PAMELA WELLS

Los Angeles