USCDL
Per USC: "Two teenage boys test old fashioned locks on Grand Canal in Venice, CA, 1956"... Not exactly canal locks, but I like the image of Venice gone to seed.
Michael, Michael, Michael... when you talk like that, my ears prick up. I've lived in Manhattan for 35 years and have seen Times Square turn into an incredibly uninteresting tourist trap--the envisioned mix of business and tourism is giving way to nothing but tourists who like the M&M store and Abercrombie & Fitch, for example. SoHo is now almost literally a shopping mall clogged with tourists. The energy of NY has changed--it is duller. With all the shadings of character being priced out of the city, it has nowhere near the street-level energy of locals it once did. The quality of life in NYC has no doubt improved by some measures--but it has definitely been diminished in terms of the city's authenticity and individuality. Twenty-somethings and creative types would rather live in Brooklyn, where, priced out of Manhattan, they have taken their energy. (When I arrived here, the outer boroughs were considered absolute Siberia.) Manhattan is pretty much all boringly affluent now, practically from the Battery to the Bronx. The future of downtown L.A. will be interesting to watch. I don't see it becoming a huge tourist Mecca, unless maybe it once again becomes a shopping district, this time inevitably mall-like a la SoHo than like the days of Brock's jewelery store, for example (be careful what you wish for, Hunter). Maybe it will be mostly residential--but do enough people really want to live in California without a yard? There certainly aren't enough parks to make downtown L.A. pleasant without leaving the area frequently--most likely in a car. Artists will be priced out eventually, if they havent been already, and take their energy with them, to the northwest of downtown, for instance. OK I'm exhausting even myself with this ramble. Out for coffee in my hugely gentrifying Village neighborhood of 35 years...where I'll be reminded that even if gentrification strips away the color, it does restore the architectural fabric of a city. As for downtown L.A.--we'll miss the noir character, but at least the upper-middle-classification of the district will save the buildings we also love.