cahwyguy | Entries tagged with wbt

userpic=tallit Yesterday, there was a very interesting article in the LA Times concerning the need for a park in Koreatown. Quoting from the beginning of that article:

The people of Koreatown were on the brink of getting something urban planners and psychologists said Los Angeles’ most densely packed neighborhood desperately needed: A public outdoor space for respite in a booming urban corridor increasingly smothered in concrete and glass.

Now, five years later, a 346-unit luxury apartment building dubbed the Pearl on Wilshire is taking root where Koreatown Central Park was slated to go. It will have a dog wash, yoga room, putting green and spa, but not so much as a park bench for public use.

And as heavy equipment roars and beeps at the once-vacant lot at Wilshire and Hobart boulevards, people familiar with the abandoned project are left to wonder: Who’s to blame for letting a park die in this neighborhood where residents have about one-hundredth of the park space as the average Angeleno citywide?

Most people read this and moved on. Me? My eyes stopped on the phrase “the once-vacant lot at Wilshire and Hobart boulevards”. I grew up at Wilshire Blvd Temple (WBT). WBT is located on Wilshire Blvd, between Hobart and Harvard. Next to it to the east is a major catholic church. Wilshire, in fact, now owns all the land betwen Hobart and Harvard, between Wilshire and Sixth, and operates an outreach and support center for the community on the Sixth Street end.

Here’s my question: What is the Jewish obligation in this issue? Should WBT (and its neighbor, St. Basil’s) be speaking up for the park. Should they have been lobbying for the park. Going back to when I attended Wilshire in the 1970s and 1980s, that land was vacant. Should Wilshire have tried to purchase it for the community? How does one balance the responsibility to your community of faith with the responsibility to the community at large?

I’m not sure I know the answer, and I’m not sure they could have made a difference. But I thought the question was an interesting one.

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Crossposts: http://cahwyguy.livejournal.com/1829427.html

Observation Stew It’s Saturday, and that means it is time to clear out the links for the week that didn’t theme. This week brings a number of items related to history and Los Angeles:

Living in the Past. Suppose your kids just can’t put that modern technology down. What do you do to teach them a lesson? How about forcing your family to live as they did years ago for a year? That’s what one family did. Now they didn’t go back to Elizabethan or other really historic times — they chose the glory days of… 1986. No Internet (so they say). Cassettes. Vintage Encyclopedias. Hard-wired phones. Banking in person. Paper maps. My only problem with this is that they did have Internet back in 1986. I know; I’ve been on the net since 1979. Of course, they would have had to restrict themselves to USENET, Gopher, and Email, and dial-up connections unless they could afford a T1 line. Oh… and Unix. At that point, I don’t think MS-DOS was networked (Windows 3.1 was 1992).
Clowns Will Eat Me. Here’s an odd article: Smithsonian explores the history of Scary Clowns. Now I’m not the type that is scared by clowns, but there are a number of clowns that are intentionally scary. The history and many forms of the clown itself is quite interesting.
Running Away. When you’re scared, you want to run away. That’s just what one county in California wants to do: Siskiyou County has voted to secede from California. They want to get a number of other Northern California and Southern Oregon counties to join them. Never mind the fact that they would never get the legislatures of California and Oregon to go along with their scheme, and they certainly wouldn’t get Congress. Never mind the fact that they would have no major cities or industries to provide the state with a sustainable income. Facts don’t matter. If you recall, a few weeks ago, I wrote about a county in Northern Colorado that wanted to do the same thing.

Chatzi Kaddish. Etsy Problems. OK, this one didn’t theme anywhere, unless you can figure it out. Here’s an article on why the Esty Economy is Crumbling… in the face of Chinese knockoffs. Perhaps this link is like the Chatzi Kaddish — a rest between subjects.

Licorice Pizza and Stinky Cheese. Turning to Los Angeles. Here are two interesting finder lists. The first talks about the best place to find Vinyl (i.e., LPs — Long Playing albums, once sold by a store called “Licorice Pizza”) in Los Angeles. I’m familiar with some of these: Record Surplus on the West Side is great, as as Amoeba in Hollywood. Orphaned CDs near us is good, but it is hard to find things. I’ve always meant to stop by Record Outlet in T.O. All these stores tend not to price used vinyl like new CDs (which is what we saw in San Diego). As for cheese, here’s a list of the best cheese shops in Los Angeles.
A Temple Restored. This Rosh Hashanah saw the return to service of the main sanctuary at Wilshire Blvd Temple in Koreatown. I spent many years at WBT, and knew its depths well.. but I never really explored the main sanctuary. It was lightly used even in the early 1980s when I was there. They’ve also installed a fascinating new art exhibit.
Saving the Neon. Here’s an interesting article about another attempt to save a sign in Los Angeles: They are attempting to save and restore a Chinese Dragon neon sign that used to be at Graumann’s Chinese. They’ve even got an Indegogo to raise funds. This comes on the heels of the rescue of the Tiffany Theatre sign, and the rescue of the Henry’s Tacos sign.

Chatzi Kaddish. Owl Suits. Our last chatzi kaddash — something to close the Los Angeles theme. Did you know that Italian has a word meaning the-jacket-left-hanging-over-the-back-of-your-chair-in-the-office-while-you’re-gallivanting-around-town? It is “Giacca civetta“, which means “Owl Jacket”. I’m sure we all have our Owl Jackets that we leave out for others to see.

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Crossposts: http://cahwyguy.livejournal.com/1659050.html

userpic=los-angeles This collection of news chum all has to do with my home town, Los Angeles:

Los Angeles History. Like Los Angeles history? Here’s the history of Los Angeles as told by 232 (and perhaps a few more) Objects.
The Los Angeles That Wasn’t. A number of articles this week on the new book “Never Built Los Angeles”. I particularly like this article because it includes a number of different rendings of what might have been. I like this article because it includes a lot of highway information. The Times also has a good review. Yes, the book is on my Amazon wishlist.
Wilshire Blvd Temple — Revitalized. I spent much of my youth at Wilshire Blvd Temple. I worked in the storage areas under Piness, sang in Warner Youth Center, and attended services in the main sanctuary. They are just about to reopen after a multi-year revitalization, and it sounds beautiful.
Unintended Results. Many people pushing for term limits have championed them as a means to get the entrenched out of office. The problem is: it doesn’t work — it becomes a game of musical chairs. Case in point: The Los Angeles City Council, which is a new home for termed-out state legislators. Not only do they get to keep working for the public, they can get more salary and bigger pensions. Was this on purpose? I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.