[sic]

The Memorial Day weekend was rolling strong and steady. Dodger game Friday. Errands and “Indiana Jones” Saturday. Then Sunday Susan and I rose early to drive out the 5 to the 126 all the way out to San Buenaventura to explore the town a bit and ride bikes along the awesome Ventura River Trail and back. I’m not one to rave about fastfood burgers but on the drive back home we stopped at Burger King and I couldn’t get enough of their new Angus Steakburger. Yumma.

We got back around 4 p.m. and a couple hours later I punched eight-year-old bruises watching Recount on HBO and yesterday was pretty much a bust in that I put out the flag and then was pretty much grumbling and grousing around the house rather than out on my bike riding out to Los Angeles National Cemetery and back as planned.

I managed to be somewhat productive. I got laundry done. I patched a flat on my mountain bike. I broke up and green-binned the quartet of fallen palm fronds that for whatever reason the gardeners didn’t touch. I cleaned up my singlespeeder — I even carved out a patch to plant the sunflower seeds I received last week as part of the Great Sunflower Project. Heck I also managed a late-inning sweep up of the backyard before Susan grilled us up a fine pair of porterhouses and we enjoyed Richard Widmark, Thelma Ritter and Jean Peters (and a young Richard Kiley!) in the highly recommendable 1953 Sam Fuller noir classic Pickup On South Street.

So it’s not like I just sat on my hands in some sort of paralyzed state as the World’s Angriest and Past-Dwelling Democrat, but the movie definitely took the wind out of my sails bringing back some bad memories on yesterday’s Memorial Day.

Maybe not, but this cyclist makes some noise about it.

My friend Stephen Box, tireless cyclist and cycling advocate and founder of the Bike Writers Collective (BWC), attended what he related the next day on the LAist blog to be something of a contentious March 18 meeting of the L.A. Transportation Committee regarding Councilman Bill Rosendahl’s motion to close a Ballona Creek Bikeway access gate at Culver Drive west of Sawtelle. Rosendahl put in the request in response to residents’ complaints that it made their adjacent neighborhood more vulnerable to crime.

When BWC member Eric Richardson brought the proprosal to the collective’s attention the day before the meeting, its members including myself, were decidedly put out by what we considered to be a short-sighted and ineffective solution that will remove the bikeway from its community far more than it will reduce crime. At the same time it was also understood that one gate is something of a little battle to pick. But as one gate’s closure can lead to another and another, I took immediate action the evening of March 17 to scope out the section of bikeway in question, with an eye towards identifying the various access points available and distances in between them.

Entering the bikeway eastbound at the entrance from Inglewood Avenue the first somewhat discreet access I found was a third of a mile away at Coolidge Avenue pictured below, where Culver Slauson Park is located. I then traveled under the 405 Freeway overpass to the gate Rosendahl wants closed at the meeting of Culver Drive and Purdue Avenue.

The distance from Coolidge Avenue to Purdue Avenue is a fifth of a mile. In other words, even if one subscribes to the belief that locking a gate will successfully eliminate any criminal element present from accessing or escaping the adjacent area, it is readily negated by the fact that there’s another opening just 1,000 feet away.

Next, let’s take a look at the Culver Drive gate and immediate fencing and see why even Rosendahl’s motion succeeds and the gate is shackled it will have little of its intended effect.

As pictured above, the material is simple chain link. On top of that the gate is about five feet all. The fencing that extends east and west of the gate is just as short but its built up from a concrete footing to give it a total height of about six feet. As a barrier this offers little in the way of security. Not only can the chain link be cut but with the concrete base serving as a boost step the fence is basically ready to be climbed over and quickly by any properly motivated hoodlums.

So what’s the solution? Do we close the Coolidge Avenue gate, too? Or perhaps do we spend money the city doesn’t have to increase the Culver Drive gate’s height? Surprisingly enough you can see in the following picture this has already happened on Culver Drive another fifth of a mile upstream beyond Sawtelle Boulevard at Beloit Avenue.

Beyond the noticeable difference in height between this fencing and gate along Culver Drive east of Sawtelle and the one seen in the previous image, it’s also very important to note that the gate is already closed and locked. This was not just a one-day occurrence. It was shackled shut when this picture was taken March 17, as well as when I rode by it on the 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st. While I’m not privy to the circumstances regarding its closure, it’s not hard to imagine the residents of these streets perhaps lobbying for it for the same reason as their neighbors on the other side of Sawtelle are doing now.

But wait, there’s more! A tenth of a mile eastward and one comes to the inexplicably locked gates of the bikeway exit into the southbound lanes of Sepulveda Boulevard.

Entering and exiting has been denied every day this week as well. So unless one is willing to risk clambering over the upended shopping cart seen at the left of the frame (placed there perhaps by some enterprising cyclist or pedestrian or gangmember), in order to exit the bikeway you’ll have to travel under the Sepulveda Boulevard overpass and double back to the street an additional third of a mile.

For the healthy walker, jogger or bike rider this is no big deal. But let’s take a look at the potential of a worst-case scenario that involves someone injured on the bikeway in the vicinity of Sawtelle. Whereas there should be two methods of egress available to the injured person – at Beloit Avenue and Purdue Avenue – Beloit isn’t and now an exit at Purdue is in danger of disappearing. Furthermore, the only options are for the injured person to somehow get all the way under Sepulveda, go under the overpass and double back to the entrance, or make it the other direction to Coolidge Avenue.

And what if it’s a matter of emergency personnel trying to assist an incapacitated person at that point on the bikeway. It isn’t hard to imagine the potential delays that could occur if paramedics are prevented from coming to someone’s aid because locked gates block there way and force them in opposite directions and greater distances to gain entry.

While that might seem overdramatic or an exaggeration, it all goes to the matter of accessibility and whether we want to allow this important resource to be further separated from the community it serves, under the false pretense of protecting it.

I certainly can empathize with the citizens that Stephen reported on who at the meeting expressed fear over the present conditions, and I think Councilman Rosendahl is absolutely obligated to find a way to protect them. But he should redirect his sights away from the easy target he’s focused on and instead explore proactive opportunities that can be used to reduce the level of crime purported to exist there.

With two access points already locked down, closing what would be a third in a row to the Ballona Creek Bikeway is not one of those opportunities.

UPDATED (03.25): Coincidence? I think not. On my way in to work after a doctor’s appointment yesterday afternoon I exited the bikepath accessway to the northbound lanes of Sepulveda Boulevard and found the previously locked gate to/from the southbound lanes open:

Not completely visible about a tenth of a mile beyond it is the still-shackled gate at Beloit Avenue and Culver Drive.

OK, so what you’re seeing in the crap photo above is the back of a pick-up truck driven by a troop-supporting member of the Republican Party of San Diego County (the blurry RSD sticker in the upper right of the rear window tells us so) that I snapped while driving south on Crenshaw Boulevard on the way to work earlier this week. What you’re not seeing at all (and I’m pissed I couldn’t get a decent shot through my dirty windshield while moving at 40mph) is twofold:

1) Evidence that presidential candidate John McCain has apparently gained a foothold with the ESL vote, and

2) How not to display a hand-lettered candidate support sign that could have benefited from being proofread.

First off, the sign (the shape of which can be vaguely made out centered in the campershell window and thus creating a blindspot and being illegal) is posted on the inside of the tinted glass, enhancing it’s almost absolute inability to be read. Second, the enthusiastic writer of the sign — crafted from the side of a cardboard box and written upon with dark ink — demonstrates a marked lack of command of the English language by his use of prepositions.

Instead of going with the more traditional “for,” this McCainiac went with:

MCCAIN
ON
PRESIDENT

With support like that McCain’s a shoe-in. By sure.

Photo I took of Mayor Villaraigosa at Lincoln Park autographing a girl’s t-shirt September 4, 2006, during the annual Los Pobladores walk celebrating Los Angeles’ 225th birthday.

About six weeks overdue for a haircut I finally dragged my hairy self over to Tony’s Barbershop on Glendale Boulevard, my regular place for the past four years. When my turn arrived I clambered up into Tony’s chair and told him to take about 10 pounds off the top and a couple off each side.

As he went to work whittling my mop down to a more manageable level I noticed missing from the shelf on the wall opposite his chair the pictures of him and his family with Mayor ‘Tonio that have been up for the past couple years. I started to ask him about them but I realized I didn’t have to. Their absence spoke volumes.

I haven’t felt the need to comment on the mayor and his troubles. Though I’m ashamed of how he’s comported himself so as to make his private life public, I’ve always had issues with him as a politican since his campaign for the office and never bought into him being anything but a power-hungry opportunist who’s pretty much getting by on his looks and charisma — but certainly not anything regarding accomplishments.

Moving beyond the affair itself, media coverage is now looking at the potential long-term negative effects his adulterous relationship might have not only on a second term as mayor but also on his future chances at higher office. I’m jaded enough to look at the re-elections of Schwarzenegger and Duhbya and think that if those two could keep their offices in the face of their shortcomings, a tawdry affair ain’t much of a big thing to overcome in the grand political scheme.

But then to see a reaction like that of my barber Tony eliminating the evidence of his approval and I may be wrong about that. In so unceremoniously divorcing himself from the support and pride he’d previously displayed for Villaraigosa it makes me consider that there may be enough Tonys out there who feel duped and betrayed, and repairing their trust in him will be tough if not impossible no matter how good he looks or how much charisma he projects.

Tony Pierce just posted on LAist about photographer Mark “The Cobrasnake” Hunter being on a flight to Miami and another passenger onboard just happened to be Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa who obliged the popular shutterbug by posing for a couple pix (here and here).

Wow. One could come up with several reasons why Villaraigosa’s smile is so fake (tired, busy, sick, pre-occupied) or caution not to judge with such limited evidence, but the fact is all I see is a mayor who hasn’t been in office for two years and already the smile dies before reaching his eyes. Instead of being genuine or even pretending to be it looks as if it’s become nothing more than a Pavlovian reaction, a perfunctory constriction of the maxillofacial muscles in response to a camera being pointed in his direction.

Sad, really.

It’s easy to rationalize not voting. You can couch your apathy in disenchantment with the candidates and issues or disenfranchisement from the political process. You can argue that your one vote does not make a whole helluva lot of difference. You can blame the traffic or a lack of parking at your polling place. You can even say it’s your right not to vote.

For me it’s simply shameful not to vote. Maybe it’s kinda silly but when I turned 18 in 1982 I was actually excited that two years from then I would be voting in my first presidential election. It was an honor to me. A privilege. And from that point on I made it a point to get out and cast a ballot, whether it was to help decide who would lead our country or our state or our city or our deputy sheriffs or our dog catchers.

I considered it an obligation.

My voting record does not have a winning percentage. It seems more often than not I end up supporting a losing candidate or effort. But that never stops me from stepping to my designated polling place.

Actually, I can’t say “never.” I’ve failed to vote in two elections. The first was in the latter 1990s when I was living in Encino and I simply up and forget that there were some school board and community college trustee seats and a couple city measures up for grabs.

When I heard the news the next day and realized I’d done what I vowed never to do I was aghast. I was embarrassed. I quite literally got depressed. No longer could I say “I’ve voted every time I’ve been called on to.”

Well, it happened for the second time Tuesday. Only this time I can’t cop to it slipping my mind. That morning I even picked up my barely touched sample ballot and said flatly to Susan that there was an election happening.

She was genuinely surprised.

I told her that it was “nothing big,” mainly for some the LAUSD and LACCD boards representing our district and I third-heartedly thumbed through the ballot pages before tossing it onto the desk and somewhat sheepishly deciding that I wasn’t going to be participating in it.

“Seeing as I don’t know anything about the candidates I’d rather not vote than vote for the wrong person,” I said.

But that was bullshit on several levels. First off, I may not have known who I wanted to vote for, but I knew I didn’t want any of the LAUSD candidates Mayor Villaraigosa was attempting to steamroll into office to stack the board in favor of implementing his misbegotten school reform plan. Second, it was not even 8 a.m. in the morning, which meant there was plenty of time to at least attempt to become better acquainted and informed before the polls closed that evening. But instead I’d made up my mind to do the very thing I so vehemently despise.

I wasn’t ashamed right away. I was running late to work, which kept me busy throughout the day and afterwards I was focused more on the long crosstown commute to get me to an anticipated bloggers’ get-together in West Hollywood to even let it cross my mind with anything resembling traction.

If I were jive-ass I could attribute my failure to vote on a schedule conflict, namely my attendance at this mixer. Certainly had I not made an appearance there I would have gotten home in time to walk across Sunset Boulevard and do my electoral duty. But such an excuse doesn’t hold water. I elected not to make the time.

But even with the next day’s pathetic citywide voter turnout results and the various “why didn’t you vote” posts I read online while at home nursing my slow-to-recover equilibrium and a gimpy left hamstring, the guilt didn’t hit me.

It did today though — not because my vote would have changed the outcome of any of the races or anything like that. It wouldn’t have. And I made sure of that.

Is the former first lady, current senator from New York and recently announced presidental candidate so ashamed of her last name that she won’t even put it on her campaign graphics? Is there actual concern among her managers that drawing attention to “Clinton” might be detrimental to her chances. Did she or they stop to consider that to so obviously try not to draw attention to it might seem laughably boneheaded?

For the first time in years I tuned in this morning to what had once been a television never-miss: “CBS Sunday Morning” with Charles Osgood. I’d been a fan since deep into its days hosted by the great Charles Kuralt. If I wasn’t quite sure why I had strayed away and for so long I found out this morning, which would’ve been no different from the past couple hundred Sundays had Susan not decided she wanted to see it and turned on the last 20 minutes or so of the 90-minute program.

We saw an interesting piece on Bob Seger’s return to the stage, which reminded me how much I missed the show, but that was then followed by a commentary by Ben Stein which reminded me why the weekend staple was no longer on my TV viewing plate. Shoe-horned onto my screen was Stein feeling the imperative to smack back at the “untrustworthy” media that jumped all over and up and down upon Duhbya after his state of the union address last week. In foisting upon me his opinion that the presididn’t isn’t all that bad and certainly not worth being called irrelevant and insignificant and lame by apparently every newsroom pundit in America and Merle Haggard, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Stein so worked up — certainly never on his silly game show and not since that Beuhler kid decided to take the day off from school.

At the beginning he said:

“The media is staging a coup against Mr. Bush, just the way they did against LBJ and Nixon and tried to do against Reagan. They cannot impeach Bush because only Congress can do that. But the media is doing what it can to basically oust Mr. Bush while still leaving him lifting weights in the White House.”

And at the end:

“But no one elected the media to anything. In the TV studios and newsrooms, there is a lynch mob at work. Let’s see it for what it is. Mr. Bush is the only President we have, and, with all his faults, I trust him a lot more than I trust the unelected princes and princesses of the newsroom.

In between and for whatever reason he took a potshot against alleged media darling and legendary singer Merle Haggard who “knows nothing of what’s up in America right now,” and he intimated that it was unfair to hurl arrows at BushCo for the Iraq debacle because he wasn’t the first leader of our nation to make big mistakes. “What about Vietnam? What about Korea?” Stein asks.

No doubt those are Clinton’s faults, too.

Stein cites the country’s economic boomtimes and staggering employment and the spotlessness of there being no terrorist attacks on this country since 9/11. True enough. How convenient though, that Stein had nothing to say about the continuing disaster of post-Katrina New Orleans — but hey, grating minds think alike: Duh-bya in all his questionable relevance saw that debacle as nationally irrelevant and unworthy of mention either. Stein also seems to conveniently focus his narrow field of vision on some strange media revolt occuring, when in fact the true and inarguable coup came last November when the majority of the people of these United States rose up in protest with their votes. Stein has nothing to say about that, though. The media is a far easier target to poke at than those millions of us that poked our ballots in disgust.

Via an outlet of the very media he disdains, Stein exclaims his trust of Duh-bya far exceeds that of the populations of American newsrooms. I give that a yikes, but he is certainly entitled to his opinion — just as I’m entitled to hope I go the rest of my life without hearing anything else half-baked that he might have to say. Looks like as long as I stay away from what once was my favorite TV program, I’ll be able to do that.

Wonkette is reporting that The Hill’s Congress Blog is reporting and the Washington Post is reporting that during a private post-election reception at the White House for the new batch of freshmen members of Congress a couple weeks ago things got a bit chilly quick between Presididn’t Duhbya and narrowly victorious Senator-Elect James Webb of Virginia.

According to the Post the exchange went like this:

“How’s your boy?” Bush asked, refering to Webb’s son, a Marine serving in Iraq.

“I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.

“That’s not what I asked you,” Bush said. “How’s your boy?”

“That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,” Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.

The Hill states that an unidentified source said that for as coldly as it ended, Webb got pretty hot under the collar:

Webb confessed that he was so angered by this that he was tempted to slug the commander-in-chief, reported the source, but of course didn’t. It’s safe to say, however, that Bush and Webb won’t be taking any overseas trips together anytime soon.

I’m certainly glad and relieved that it didn’t come to blows, and frankly as pleased as I am about the election of Webb and every other Republican’t-replacing Dem and how it’s made BushCo. squirm, is it too much to ask for Webb just to know when to hold ‘em for a cotton-pickin’ second? Going into a reception and spouting “bring-’em-home” at the first inopportunity strikes me as a weeee bit amateurish.

Webb would’ve been better served telling Duhbya that his son is making the best of a tough situation and leaving it at that. But in the presence of such a lack of decorum, after Georgie snapped back at his response what Webb should have said was, “Mr. Bush, you don’t care about my son or getting out of Iraq. So spare me.”

* The French phrase “L’esprit de l’escalier” literally translates to “the spirit of the staircase,” and can refer to the perfect spirited response you think up after a conversation or argument has ended.
This explanation was adapted from the excellent blog The Wit Of The Staircase.

It seems the world will be swinging around today to smooch Duhbya’s suddenly eco-friendly left buttcheek in the wake of his watching a Cousteau film and then turning a whole buncha water into a protected national monument… and even in my abject distaste for the preznit I gotta admit when I read about the act this morning it initially plucked my heartstrings almost as proud as the remarkable speech he read before Congress after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Keyword: initially.

But my distaste and distrust for the dude eventually rushes back in to fill the void and I’m left doubting his motives. Not that it wasn’t a respectable thing he did saving a whole lotta fishes and birds and coral (nevermind that they weren’t under all that much of a threat to begin with), but let’s face it a 1,200-mile by 100-mile strip of water out in the middle of the Pacific is a long way away and it way ain’t no arctic refuge. This new safety zone may be an area bigger than all other national parks combined, but the amount of foot traffic the place will see is pretty much limited to water walkers like say… oh: Jesus?

Is it my bad that I sense this earth-first about-face as a mollifying tactic to manuever approval ratings upward? Maybe, but hey I’m just a product of the environment of doubt that Duhbya’s cultivated — which means that I can’t help but think he and his peeps didn’t first extensively vet things through to make doubly sure there weren’t any resources undah dah watah there that might someday be potentially worth exploiting.