MAILANDER’S LA - Mayor-Elect Eric Garcetti, who in 2011 pleaded civic poverty and a lack of police power in cancelling the thirty-year LGBT celebration that was Sunset Junction Street Fair, did not move to cancel a costly celebration yesterday that celebrated only the political life of the City of Los Angeles, even while the Westside of the city wrestled with fear through much of the day.
According to the Los Angeles Times, "Mayor-elect Eric Garcetti was one of the most effusive" at CelebrateLA downtown yesterday, appearing with other politicians mere hours after the killings in Santa Monica.
"You have allowed us to dream for eight years. And they have been sweet, sweet dreams," he crooned to outgoing Mayor Villaraigosa.
But today's top headlines center on an event twelve miles west: "Five Dead in Santa Monica Rampage," the LA Times also reports.
A whole section of Los Angeles became terrified in the wake of the rampage, even as the President, visiting Los Angeles, altered travel plans to duck the chaos. A top radio station even went off the air. But downtown, the band played on, too readily demonstrating its often-criticized distance from all things Westside.
I feel obliged to say that it's hard to imagine Wendy Greuel making this kind of decision, beaming through the ill-timed political celebration despite the terrible news of the day.
(Joseph Mailander is a writer, an LA observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He is also the author of Days Change at Night: LA's Decade of Decline, 2003-2013. Mailander blogs here.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 47
Pub: June 11, 2013
