Recall debate is one hot topic

For most of this summer there hasn’t been a whole lot to talk about that wasn’t painful or awkward or both. Say, how ‘bout those Lakers? Um, don’t ask. What’s the latest on Liberia, North Korea, Iraq? Now there’s a sure-fire way to sow dissent at the family reunion.

And what with incendiary topics like gay marriage and pedophile priests making news, only fools or the media would dare bring up sex and religion during these dog days of August. For a few weeks there, in fact, it looked as if the only safe topic was whether Ellen DeGeneres was funnier than Albert Brooks in “Finding Nemo.” (Yes, she was.)

Thank goodness, then, that Californians now have a perfect excuse to talk about politics, politics and more politics from now until the gubernatorial recall vote on Oct. 7. Right?

“Oh jeez, no thanks,” said Mark Beckman, a communications worker, as a reporter approached him in Macy’s downtown store atrium during Monday’s lunch hour. He was talking with Antonio Castillo de la Gala, a pianist-composer, who was dressed in black formal attire, seated at a piano, entertaining passing shoppers with easy-listening tunes such as the love theme from Franco Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet.”

The men said they’d been chatting about De la Gala’s recent trip to Las Vegas. But when pressed, Beckman admitted that he’s been talking about California’s current state of confusion, “like, every hour.”

“This is serious,” Beckman said. “We’ve got problems. It’s the big topic.”

The biggest problem of all, Beckman suggested, was Gov. Gray Davis. “He has done a bad job. He took a surplus and ran it into the ground,” said Beckman, who’s supporting former L.A. Olympics honcho Peter Ueberroth.

De la Gala, pausing at his keyboard, said that he has been discussing politics at home with his spouse, though they don’t exactly see eye to eye. “My wife is to the left of Castro, and to me Reagan was too liberal,” said the Mexican American immigrant. “I’m going to go for Arnold [Schwarzenegger] because he fulfilled the American dream. He came here with no money, just like me.”At Lisa Beauty Salon, on the cusp of the fashion district, owner Elisa Garcia and her assistant, Rosa Flores, agreed that California was in a mess: terrible schools, young people with drug problems, a society “out of balance,” as Garcia put it. “No one is culpable,” she said. “It’s the fault of the organizational structure of government.”

There’d been plenty of discussions and opinions expressed inside her salon over the last several days. “The solution is for the government to take control,” said Garcia, a soft-spoken woman with very short magenta hair.

But Garcia, who brushes up on the Bible during customer lulls, wasn’t looking to Sacramento for answers. “We need humility of the heart,” she said in Spanish before she went back to perusing the Book of Nehemiah, in which the Hebrew leader challenges his countrymen to band together and repair Jerusalem’s shattered walls.

At the King Eddy Saloon on Los Angeles Street, on the precipice of skid row, inspirational stories about rising to great occasions were in short supply. “One thing about a bar, buddy,” said the bartender, declining to give his name, “politics, religion and war stories, we don’t wanna hear ‘em.” On two screens mounted above the bar, twin images of Brooke Shields flashed by in bruising blue and gray, while a few patrons sank slowly into their beers.

The late Democratic House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill once famously said that all politics is local. Yuko Aoyama Gabe probably would agree. The Little Tokyo merchant has been following the power plays of the last several days in other parts of California. But she’s more focused on joining with her fellow merchants to help revive Little Tokyo, which she says has suffered badly since tourism fell after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“I don’t know if Schwarzenegger can help us,” said Gabe, a tiny woman in hot-pink lipstick. “But I know the background,” she continued in halting English. “I’m against Bush. I wonder why he did war. Since he did war, business is getting worse and worse again.” But still she hopes Little Tokyo someday may be like Manhattan’s SoHo.

“So we dream,” she said, smiling enigmatically, as if acknowledging that while political talk is cheap, political dreams are expensive.