From the Los Angeles Times:
Los Angeles helps the wealthy but not the little guy
Columnist's tour of L.A. Live area and nearby neighborhoods shows the increasing contrast between Los Angeles' haves and have-nots.
The Ritz-Carlton can be seen behind low-income housing along 10th Place in Los Angeles. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times)
By Hector Tobar
August 12, 2011
About a five-minute walk separates the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in downtown L.A. from the old brick tenements on West 10th Place.
At the Ritz-Carlton, $449 plus tax will get you a room with a king-size bed and a bathroom with Italian marble vanities. Pleasant clerks at the front desk promise "beautiful views" of the L.A. cityscape from a room on the 22nd floor or higher.
On West 10th Place, $550 will get you a one-room apartment for a month. The view includes rusty fire escapes on the building across the street, discarded mattresses and the back door of a garment factory.
Approaching one of the residents, I informed him of the room rates over at the nearby Ritz-Carlton, which loomed over us in blue and gray glass.
"Well, I guess it really is cheap here," said Oscar Montiel, a 50-year-old scrap-metal collector and native of the Mexican state of Guerrero.
Talking to Montiel there on 10th Place, amid the still-occupied relics of low-cost housing built in the first half of the last century, I arrived at the sad realization that L.A. is indeed becoming a Third World city.
But it's not the presence of so many people from tropical climes that makes L.A. resemble the underdeveloped regions to the south. It's our increasingly brazen contrasts between wealth and poverty.
In L.A., as in Caracas or Rio de Janeiro, the rich can enjoy views of the poor, puttering safely in the distance.
And we have our elected officials to thank for it.
The Ritz-Carlton is part of a gleaming new entertainment center of Los Angeles that was built thanks to city tax breaks worth hundreds of millions of dollars, as my colleague David Zahniser reported in May.
This week, the L.A. City Council voted to add another expensive jewel to that complex by issuing $275 million in tax-exempt bonds to help make way for a new football stadium.
"Finally: Farmers' Field," several screens proclaimed all at once Wednesday afternoon at L.A. Live.
I made L.A. Live the starting point for my own private walking tour of L.A.'s class divide.
L.A. Live oozes celebrity. Kobe Bryant loomed over me, several stories tall, making a pitch for a Turkish airline. Money can fly out of your wallet at L.A. Live. The more you spend, the more special you feel.
In the lobby of the JW Marriott, bellmen in their smart uniforms reminded me of my father, who funded my college education with a job at a Beverly Hills hotel.
That, of course, is the main argument in favor of public largesse for private interests: It creates jobs. But there was something perverse about seeing our city leaders fall over themselves this week to issue public debt in favor of what is, after all, a profit-making venture. Especially when bulging deficits and economic stagnation are eating away at public education and other services.
I wondered: Will the next generation of hotel workers be able to send their children to the University of California, where my family sent me?
On the other hand, it certainly didn't feel like lean times as I walked through the Marriott's front lot. I admired a parked Aston Martin, and weaved around a couple of purring German luxury vehicles. Then I stepped onto Olympic and headed west.
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) and stucco is used as an excuse and a cheat nowadays. I have seen nice stucco buildings. Pure Spanish Revival in stucco generally looks nice. Historic stucco buildings generally look nice. Sometimes, modern buildings using clean, smooth, stucco sparingly even look nice. However, 99% of buildings going up in L.A. use stucco in a poor manner. The worst place for stucco is downtown. Historically, downtown is built with stone and terrecotta. When stucco is placed next to these much more expensive materials, it looks cheap and out of place, even when done in a way that would look nice in another place. Yes, stucco has the capability to look nice, but when it comes to downtown, keep it out.
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