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The towers on the left, visited this past weekend, put the spire in inspire. Whereas I’ve long put the dis in disdain whenever regarding the tower on the right, visited late Monday afternoon — in surprise at how almost beautiful it looked illuminated in the last rays of that day’s sun.

Both are markedly incongruous to their surroundings. The ones on the left rise from a wedge of backyard surrounded by inner-city blight, the vision and arduous 30-plus-year creation of an untrained but entirely skilled loner who “set out to do something big, and did it.” The one on the right dominates an easily mocked revision to the city’s oldest public park from an architect no doubt well trained and skilled but who set out to do… something.

From my jaded point of view that “something” was to reject any connection to the city’s downtown core and garishly set the open space apart with a color scheme that pays all its tribute to the superficial 1980s and none to the historic 1880s when its first design as a park was realized.

At one point early on in the history of the towers on the left, the city tried to reject them. With little in the way of proof, civic officials dismissed the monumental achievement as unsafe, little more than a worthless and poorly built hazard whose demolition they unconscionably ordered.

It was spared the wrecking ball thanks only to the dedicated efforts of a few citizen heroes who, realizing its immeasurable cultural value,  first purchased the site and then engineered a stress test to prove its structural integrity. Convincing the reluctant bureaucrats to allow the test to be conducted,  it ultimately proved the towers were completely safe, sound and thus saved.

Today marks the anniversary of the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. The day after that horror, as the theater critic for the Pasadena Weekly I couldn’t help but draw parallels and distinctions between such a fresh hell and the subject matter of the play I covered, whose review, follows:

Taking ‘Heart’
Political drama points finger at causes of AIDS epidemic
By William Campbell

The Whitefire Theater’s production of Larry Kramer’s “The Normal Heart” opened April 20 in Sherman Oaks, one day after the tragic and horrible bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, Okla.

“So?” you ask.

Well, directly, there’s no connection, but at the close of the show that evening, it was all too easy to draw similarities between the play’s subject matter — the first, desperate years of the AIDS crisis and this country’s slow response in dealing with it — and the terrible event that had occurred in America’s heartland.

Both have had devestating effect; destroying lives and families, causing us to question our safety and security, and dragging into the light how vulnerable and fragile we are as both a nation and as individuals.

But in watching the events of the bombing unfold, amazed at the organization and mobilization of resources, appreciative of the forces being utilized to apprehend those responsible, and proud of the countrywide — if not global — outpouring of support for the citizens of Oklahoma City, the similarities abruptly end.

Because in the opening years of the AIDS crisis, well-depicted in Kramer’s play, there was no massive mobilization of resources. The only forces marshalled were those on the grass-roots level with little or no support from the government. And as to an outpouring? “Trickle-down” took on a whole new meaning in the early-to-mid 1980s.

Just imagine it if an organized, concerted effort — comparable to that witnessed in Oklahoma — had been concentrated against this nightmare disease early-on. Dream of what such a dedication of energy might have acomplished, what advances might have been made, what pain could have been eased, and what lives might have been prolonged or even saved. Because in looking back at the AIDS epidemic, a past of might-have-beens and could-have-dones, dreaming of what never happened is all that’s left — that and a lot of pain and death.

But dreaming of the non-existent past is not what “The Normal Heart” is about at all. Instead, Kramer’s semi-autobiographical drama is about hope and acceptance, triumph over fear and death, and the search for the face of truth in a world that has turned its back.

Directed by Ekta Monica Lobo and starring an ensemble cast that features Robert Bakkemo as outspoken, opinionated, brash and head-strong Ned Weeks, “The Normal Heart” takes place in New York City between 1981 and 1984, and chronicles Weeks’ struggle to create an effective organization to lead the fight against AIDS.

The production itself has a workshop feel to it, with its bare-bones sets and close-to-interminable gaps between the numerous scene and set changes, but it is not without its passionate moments.

With the return to service of the Angel’s Flight train this week, LA Observed has been great in posting various existences of the fascinating funicular in art and popular culture, such as this favorite of mine below, the cover of an issue from last year of Black Clock magazine. I’m subscribing.

With the woman’s look, the light, and of course the dark, there’s plenty of mood and tension inside the apartment to love in this illustration by Jeff Bridges (no, not the Academy Award-winning one). But by far my favorite aspect of the image has to be the Angel’s Flight car in the background slicing across the window like a guillotine blade. Genius.

I had my biannual visit to the dentist this morning, his Miracle Mile office of which is conveniently located only a couple blocks from a freshly installed exhibit featuring sections of the Berlin Wall and commemorating the 20th anniversary of its fall.

So of course afterwards I deviated from my normal home-dentist-work route to go back over and check it out, and joy of joys you can walk right up to the panels and touch ‘em and everything. You can even get all touristy and strike a pose with or without your bike in front of eight of what will eventually be 10 panels, spanning some 40 feet — reportedly the world’s largest stretch of the wall outside its hometown.

It will be up on Wilshire Boulevard across from LACMA until November 14 when the order will come to “tear down this wall” and install it permanently at the Wende Museum in Culver City.

My Flickr photoset is here.

I had a custom plank I’d put together and purchased at the famous Val Surf back in 1977 that I rode like a crazed wanna-be Dogtowner through the rest of my junior high years. Cherished though it was, by the time I hit high school it was reduced to gathering dust in the long spaces between those rare days I’d roll it around the neighborhood or ride it to/from school. And in the end it suffered the ignominious task of ferrying the apartment building’s 10 garbage cans I’d roll out of the garage to the curb the night before pick-up day  — a chore negotiated with the landlord that gave my mom a $20 break on our rent — hey, every little bit helped us back then.

After completing one such weekly trash transfer I left the board with the cans for some unremembered reason, and learned for the umpteenth time an important rule of life: Just because one’s regard for something is low, doesn’t mean it’s held in the same depleted esteem by the rest of the world. When I returned from whatever to retrieve it, it was gone.

I never replaced it.

A few weeks ago La Mano Press in LIncoln Heights was having it’s farewell sale, and Susan and I visited the place on its last day open to the public, wherein I browsed  around somewhat noncommittally until I came upon the board you see at right (cliackable for slight biggability), the bottom of which features a segment of the awesome woodcut titled “Infinite Night” that master printer Artemio Rodriguez created (and was later used for the 2007 Dia de los Muertos festival at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where he was the featured artist.

I went into immediate WANT mode.  I think I even uttered some rather embarrassing mewing sounds and my outstretched hands made grabby gestures.

Artemio was gracious enough to autograph the other side of it and for the last few weeks it’s sat near my desk not whilst I mulled what sort of trucks and wheels to match it up with — oh hell no. I was more interested in figuring out a way how to display it — the perfect solution for that coming in my finding plate hangers at Home Depot yesterday.

Post RIDE-Arc ride, rolling back home solo I had to stop at the bright lifelessness of Chris Burden’s “Urban Lights” installation outside the L.A. County Museum of Art (click to humongify).

It may seem odd to some, but those late hours are some of the most enjoyable to be on a bike in the city.

(click to quadruplify)

Snapped from the saddle Saturday biking back home from a trip to the Sherman Oaks batting cages with Blogdowntown’s Eric Richardson. Eric wisely opted to subway it back to town from the North Hollywood Red Line station. I on the otherhand didn’t and subsequently got drenched when the rains that weren’t supposed to come until later, came early…. about a mile after I took this picture.

P.S. The only thing the batting cages showed me was that if I can’t hit for shit against a machine, how the hell do I think I can make contact against a human?

Rolling home from work yesterday I detoured up Fairfax* to Wilshire and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to see the official lighting of Chris Burden’s “Urban Lights” sculpture in the museum’s courtyard.

Flickr set here.

* Point of order: Passing all the restaurants along Fairfax through the Little Ethiopia district when you’re hungry is a hard thing to do.

Owing to my understanding that an untouched mural can be a fleeting thing and my new year’s resolution not to put off until later what one can do now, I stopped meaning to stop and snap this yesterday  and instead did (click to quadruplify):

In the lower right looks to be the artist’s name and the date — 1993.

Found on the front of Monkeyhouse Toys store on Silver Lake Boulevard (click to triplify):