Me and my friend BusTard were going to Alcanzando La Historia (a tour of the 4th, 6th, and 1st Street Bridges) put on by the LA Conservancy, but then we found out it was thirty dollars.

And in order to get the tickets I had to go down to smug SCI-Arc where everyone uses hyphens and parentheses for no reason and then I just was like, well how about I just do my own tour.

And killjoy, I mean BusTard was like, I’m not even doing this.

Don’t get me wrong I like SCI-Arc they are perfectly arty and shit. I love them and their little “I think interior design should be pragmatic. I made this kitchen slash bathroom while on a sabbatical in Amsterdam. My parents are quite wealthy you know, though I look as though I don’t shower. That is all for dramatic effect. So in my kitchen slash bathroom you take a shit and then the shit is put through this cleanser made from formerly used naturally clean apple scented ‘i care more the earth than you, so i drive a prius’ dishwashing liquid (20 dollars at Trader Joes) and slowly excreted into a mini kitchen garden as fertilizer, which vegetables and fruit you clean using your own urine, sanitized of course in a completely eco manner. I call it Re (U)-S-E/Re (P)-O-O.”

Yeah so I get there at around 10am after getting some coffee in downtown and using my credit card to buy a transfer, yeah I charged 30 cents. I look and there’s a line. When I look at the 4th Street Bridge I don’t see anything. I expected a banner or something; I guess they were keeping it real, anyways I decide to take pictures on my own when this happens.

I was attacked by yuppies.

I’m just minding my own business taking pictures and they yell, “We saw you taking pictures and we decided to take some too!!” So I go, “Yeah great.” Now you would think my not talking or even pretending to be social would have showed the yuppies to stop trying to engage me in conversation, but as I crossed the street to take picture of the Angels Flight cars under a blue tarp they close in on me, “Hi again.” Oh my god I hate ‘hi again’ people. And then they say, “Do you know what you’re taking a picture of?” Let’s see I guess in yuppie world morons put on shorts and tennis shoes and sun screen and pack a lunch so that they can go explore the wilds and wonders of the inner city and randomly taking pictures of whatever it is that moves and looks fascinating with no understanding of what is is they are capturing, but I am not a yuppie. I was confused as to why he assumed I was a moron like him. A moron who paid 30 bucks to take a tour that he could have taken on his own for free. I didn’t say that though, I just said “Yes, it’s the Angels Flight cars.”

Though I did just use a credit card to buy a transfer, so maybe I am a yuppie deep down inside, deep, deep, deep inside around the bottom end of my colon. I think that’s the part of me that makes me do bad things.

I bet they told their friends when they got back to Santa Monica that they talked to such a nice pretty black girl. That’s my name you know…

I have to admit I was already a little annoyed about the whole tour thing, before I even got to the event.

Reasons: Hey if you’re an environmental organization and you want to conserve LA, because several conservation and environmental type groups were sponsoring this event, what’s up with the no public transit or bike directions?

Not even bringing it up, yeah they brought up to bike or walk once you get there, but isn’t that obvious. Are there morons that drive from location to location during nature and conversation tours?

Yeah once you drive to the first bridge site (I mean park your car at SCI-Arc, Boyle Heights hasn’t been gentrified yet. Don’t want to encourage parking cars in the scary neighborhood. They don’t even have a Brewery like facility there to protect you against the townies. You know the Brewery the big art complex in Lincoln Heights where slumming future graphic artists yuppies pretend to do non-commerical artsy stuff in a place on the eastside, but they call it downtown.)

Anyways they encourage you to walk or bike along the routes, but why can’t you just bike to the event itself? It’s right by downtown. The Montebello 40 runs from Pershing Square directly to SCI-Arc. The 40 bus stop is literally spitting distance away from SCI-Arc. Their attempts at being green transportation wise were pretty freakin’ weak.

Driving a car is the number one thing in Los Angeles that is destroying the environment. Getting people to walk around the freakin’ LA River and its bridges and getting people to build houses there is not going to do anything.

Just in case you think I’m being vague. I’ll be upfront and say I am slamming Los Angeles River Revitalization Master Plan because I think the consultants running it are total bullshit (because the partners and sponsors of this event smell like big real estate to me, Linear City, Nabih Youssef Associates.)

Something about the LA River Revitalization Plan smells like bad fish. I think I first got that impression when I went to a meeting in Boyle Heights about two years ago and the consultants tried to encourage everyone to pick the plan that did not include soccer fields (codeword alert) yeah I’m pretty sure that’s what it was.

Let’s go back in time to when I wrote this”

I was at one of the LA River revitalization community talks, where the community got to “choose” what path the LA River revitalization team should take. I learned from that experience the community doesn’t have a chance in hell. And I was positive initially when I went to the meeting. I was all giddy like a school girl, until I started to realize that suit people didn’t care what regular people thought. “If you wait until we’re done, we’ll answer your question.” A person annoyed at a person asking too many questions at a meeting, which point was, to answer questions.

After a very long boring talk that to paraphrase; was about how they were going to build lovely things, many lovely things for people to buy and shop at. And lots of talk about how it was going to be like downtown. Putting forth rhetorical questions like, “Is not downtown great? It’ll be just like downtown L.A.” So apparently their dream is to turn the LA River into a place where a bunch of yuppies that like going to bars and have an obsession with their dogs can hang out and live after they get off from work in TV and movie production.

Post presentation where we were allowed to ask questions in an individual non getting people riled up way, we all circulated around a bunch tables. Each of which represented a different section of the LA River. I remember distinctly a guy at one table telling me,

“You don’t want soccer fields, vote for this one.”

“This one” was the one with all the big condo developments. This meeting was in Boyle Heights, so since I wasn’t “visibly” Latina I guess he thought I was on his team or something. The rich people team. Possibly this guy was joking, but it wasn’t a funny joke.

Browne Molyneux- 2/ 2007 if you want my full article that did not get published, even after editing out the more ‘meanie’ and ‘you suck’ parts, feel free to email me.

If you care about the environment, you don’t encourage building in places that displace working class people and encourage asshole certified eco-builders (I’m not shitting you this actually exists now and not as some kind of ironic joke) to build more over-sized and over-priced crap.

The reason why people don’t conserve things in Los Angeles, is because everyone is in their car. The reason people don’t go to the LA River or it’s bridges or it’s historical sites, is because people pass by them in their cars.

You know why I go to the LA River, Griffith Park, Hollenbeck Park, Kenneth Hahn Park (i went by Kenneth Hahn park this weekend, i saw Bernard Parks and Diane Watson because my mom made me hang out with her and my weird sister) the beach, and everywhere else is because I ride my bike and take the bus and on the way I get interested in things I see.

I’m not trying to be judgmental, not exactly, because as an individual if you’re not there yet in regards to giving up your car that’s fine, but don’t you dare call yourself an environmentalist or a conservationist of anything (and ask me for thirty freakin’ dollars) if you can’t at the very least give directions that state alternative transportation directions.

I’m not meaning to be a critic, but you know this all smells to me of a plan to try to get people to buy those lofts that around the bridges and to encourage more building around the river of yuppie cement studios (otherwise known as lofts.)

And thirty dollars? We know who they wanted to show up.

F*&k this pre-school green sh*t.

Full Disclosure– My feelings on SCI-Arc may be tainted because my former best friend used to work there. She openly flirted with my boyfriend, taking off her shirt at Pete’s Café asking him is he would like to touch her perky breasts. Just doing the kinds of things that makes you want to kick a person’s ass. I stopped hanging out with her and she was like, “You’re not mad about that breast thing? In Europe touching breasts is like shaking hands.”

That was this chick’s excuse for everything.

Post Full Disclosure– Yes this is me mocking people who write something with an editorial slant and then make it seem ok that they have a conflict of interest just because they told you they have a conflict of interest. I think that’s bullshit, but you know whatever more for me to mock…

by Browne Molyneux