Health & Fitness
Patch Blog: How #LAwind Inspired Rock Throwing in Me
In the aftermath of the Dec. 1 windstorm, while L.A.'s city government focused on the recovery effort, our widely unloved mayor betrayed different plans.
I was trying to ration precious cell phone battery usage to find out what the City of L.A. was doing to restore electrical services during the hash-tagged #lawind when I tripped over a jaw tightening story midday that included a gem of a sentence. It read:
“Olga Garay-English, the executive director of the city's Department of Cultural Affairs, said she received a call from the mayor's office Wednesday afternoon about the [Occupy L.A.] mural.”
Can you believe it—as residents of Eagle Rock, the San Gabriel Valley and other large swaths of Greater Los Angeles were shivering in the dark from cold, brutal winds, the Mayor’s Office and the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs were able to squeeze in consideration of what to do with the mural left behind at City Hall by Occupy L.A.?
Find out what's happening in Eagle Rockwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Squeeze in consideration and give a quote to the L.A. Times?
Hundreds of thousands of Angelenos looked like coal miners in their own homes, or diced felled trees that were the City’s to trim in the first place, or tended to physically disabled residents hugely impacted by the outages, or determined what to do with ripening food bought in bulk to save money. And Administrators in our city government thought it was the right time to spend any time at all on arguably historic art/graffiti/vandalism? Talk about having your priorities mixed up.
Find out what's happening in Eagle Rockwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
I don’t care that they cared about the mural—just don’t let me know they were caring about it while residents of Eagle Rock, Highland Park, Lincoln Heights and other L.A. communities were playing Frogger in afternoon traffic between impotent traffic signals.
Don’t get me wrong. I support the arts. I believe in preserving history. And Lord knows that continuity of government is an imperative during catastrophe—natural or human. But I expect my local government—and Lame Duck Mayor—to give up the international spotlight for one whole day on such days so that the City’s streetlights are operating that night.
I’m not a fanatical rock thrower. But sometimes folks make me want to pick up the sport.
