Esotouric™

The following is an open letter to Councilwoman Jan Perry from Richard Schave, founding Executive Director of the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk non-profit

Dear Jan:

This is just a note to let you know that your response to queries from The Los Angeles Times about the fate of the Art Walk fell far short of anything a person in a position of leadership and who has a vision for a neighborhood would make.

Art Walk has occurred mostly in your district for six years. In that time it has undergone some amazing transformations, of which you are well aware. The biggest challenge facing the Art Walk is that it spans two kingdoms. One kingdom is the world of Russell Brown's lament: "It just costs too much for all those people to come down here. Who is going to pay for it?" The resources of this kingdom are finite—every dollar allocated to Art Walk is one less dollar for another need.

This kingdom and its needs must be addressed, but Art Walk sits in another kingdom as well, and that is the infinite, a place concerned with the higher self, notions of right and wrong, culture, a pervading sense of positive social change. Strangely, the Art Walk and the library crisis both straddle these kingdoms, so perhaps it is not surprising that you have chosen to look away from fostering both of them. It is very challenging to address something that is so far from politics as usual, but doing so is the mark of a great civic leader, and I believe you are capable of it.

What the constituents of the Art Walk need, what the community in the Historic Core needs, is not necessarily a statement from you saying that the city is going to wait and see what the Art Walk board proposes. What these groups need is someone in your position who can address their concerns about this second kingdom: who is going to foster this
intangible part of Art Walk which makes it so special? Who is going to make the Art Walk board and the competing business interests in the area call upon their higher selves for the good of the community, and lift this debate out of the muck of greed and prejudice, and find some solutions? The solutions exist, and finding one for this second kingdom (the infinite) will bring a fiscal solution (the finite). The path to success exists without a fiscal handout from the city.

I call on you to organize and oversee a series of managed community meetings, in which the Art Walk board and its stakeholders can come together to address the very real challenges facing the event, and the real solutions that they must be directed to take to correct the course of this non-profit and the cultural and business entities that rely on its success.

You have no reason to feel despondent. The hearts and minds of the community are waiting for you to make an intelligent and empathic statement on the topic of this dear event. They are waiting for you as a leader to take initiative. The Art Walk can be saved and you, Jan, can save it.

Jim Linderman, photo collector and compiler extraordinaire, wants to win Blurb's Photography Book Now contest--and we'd like to help him out. You can click below to read the books online for free, then vote for them if you're inclined.

Camera Club Girls

Bettie Page and her...

By Jim Linderman

Book Preview

The Painted Ba...

Behind the Sitter i...

By Jim Linderman DUL...

Urban historian Richard Schave's site-specific discussion series "The Flâneur & The City" is an ongoing attempt to explore some of the more important issues revealed by the constantly changing heart of the metropolis.

The core notion of the series is of culture and history as commodities that are packaged and sold to a target demographic; meanwhile, it's the ignored and seemingly worthless scraps of meaning found on the sidewalks and marketplaces where the true remnants of positive public space can be found. All interpretations and nuisances of the word flâneur are examined -- from the modern-day aesthete dreaming of Baudelaire while carried along in the human tide past the stalls and shops of Broadway, to its more recent and perhaps relevant use, someone who is loitering. At its heart this series is a celebration of the simple act of getting out of your car and walking through a neighborhood and learning to see it with all your eyes.

In this installment, held on July 25, 2010, we visited Olvera Street, the historic seed of Los Angeles and the first place where issues of urban preservation entered the city's consciousness. On this free 45-minute walking tour, we explored the site's history, from the founding of the city (1781) to the present day, with a focus on the "classic" era: Christine Sterling's nearly thirty years of preservation and reinterpretation, which resulted in the entire Plaza becoming a State park, now managed by the city of Los Angeles.

The excerpt presented here is a brief discussion of Christine Sterling's conflicting motivations in preserving Olvera Street, and her alliances with business and publishing interests.

On this informative stroll through a provocative and multi-layered space, we explored such key questions as:

* What core challenges, goals and strategies are shared by Christine Sterling at the Plaza in the early 20th century and the developers of downtown's Old Bank District (4th & Main) in the early 21st century?

* Can arts and culture succeed as a tool for economic development for reinvigorating historic neighborhoods? Was Jane Jacobs right when she proclaimed that "new ideas need old buildings"?

* Is there a point on the continuum where the creeping kitsch of a tourist attraction overwhelms the value of a vital community space? Can a positive public space be ruined by popularity and accessibility?

For more on free events held under the umbrella of LAVA - The Los Angeles Visionaries Association, visit http://www.lavatransforms.org

Come discover the secret history of the San Gabriel Valley on this provocative and occasional Esotouric architecture tour from the series Reyner Banham Loves LA. Next tour: August 7, 2010.