BBQ hangout on an island

Last week on 12/23, Zomzy called me up, “Hey, do you want to do a bbq on the island?”  I met Zomzy on 9/16, at an Islands of LA activity held on a large island in Glassel Park, which is across the street from where he lives and has a studio/gallery.

The next day, I rode over to the island at about 8pm to find a bunch of chairs and a little BBQ grill set up in the middle of one of the largest islands in LA.  About 7-8 people from the neighborhood came out to enjoy a potluck on a traffic island…one of the few public places (i.e. not private property) where people can legally assemble at any time of day or night without a permit.

At one point, Zomzy went across the street to somebody that was selling x-mas trees from their home.  He said he wasn’t closing…he gave us a tree for free.   Zomzy came back with a tree in hand, donated by the neighbor.  He also hand a roll of aluminum foil which he passed around and suggested that we make ornaments.  We also talked about the x-mas tree’s roots in paganism.

The experience to me, in general, felt somehow marginally homeless.  Odd.  Did this sense come from the images in media I’ve seen of homeless people living the most public life, an serving as a measure of how public, public space is (to paraphrase sociologist Walter Grasskamp)?  Is it because it was at night or in a location that we are not conditioned to use for public assembly, although there is a history of this on traffic islands?

Thanks Zomzy for organizing this and coming up with the idea!

Island Archipelago

Beneath the city there are rainwater tributaries that carry rainwater to the L.A. River, Compton Creek and other waterways in the city.  Many traffic islands are on top of these tributaries.  Alex Kenefick, Rosa Garza-Mourino and I have begun collaborating on an Islands of LA project based on an archipelago of islands along a single tributary.  We decided to do this based on a picnic discussion I had with Rosa in Pico-Union and with Alex near downtown.  After identifying all the islands and mapping a portion of Los Angeles that Alex is familiar with because of his work with the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council, the three of us met on 11/19 and visited several islands. (Map below by Alex Kenefick.)

The last 2 islands were on Central Avenue in East Central downtown.  This area is on the border of the arts district, the warehouse district, Little Tokyo and an area which is often referred to as Skid Row but many who work and live in this area refer to it as the largest recovery community. This area is marked by all kinds of diversity, immediately visible to the eye.  We could see the financial district skyline, billboards for a gentlemen’s club, a fish market warehouse, small shops, evening traffic making its way home and people hanging out in front of a rehab program.

While here a security guard named David approached us from across the street.  He said he was bored and will be joining the Marines.  He invited to give us a tour of the area, which we hope to do in the near future.  While there, a few other people smiled or chatted with us.

Earlier in the day we visited an island on 98th and flower and also on Vermont south of Century.  The island on 98th is part of a long archipelago that begins at Jess Owens park and intersects the islands along Vermont Blvd.  The one we were at was bordered by the 110 freeway to the east, an elementary school to the north and homes on the south.  And above was a flight path for LAX.  We sat here for awhile, watching as parents came to pick up their kids.  Soon after, it was quiet.  The street is lined with parked cars and little traffic.

Vermont on the other hand had 2 lanes of quickly moving cars on either side.  A group of guys working on an engine while, down the street, a guy sat in front of a small market playing guitar.  From this island on Vermot, we could see all the way North, to the San Gabriel Mountains and the Hollywood Sign up in the Hollywood hills.

Winter crop planted on island at Side Street Projects

Before we arrived the boys in the neighborhood were at Side Street Projects.  They had worked the soil, preparing it for planting seeds.  Diana Lind, editor of Next American City, was in town for a week of events for the magazine and was able to join in the activity.

We arrived with various kinds of seeds such as spinach, basil and lettuce and sat down with the boys around the island.  “How deep should we plant them?” invited us to look at the package and talk about how the body has been used to measure things for a long time and is the foundation for the inch.  We used our thumbs as measuring sticks, poking holes in the ground.

Rhythm Analysis

Traffic islands are filled with histories, sounds, sights and movements…a cacophony of relations and possibilities.  Spend a moment on an island, listen, look, learn about the history, about these spaces all over the place.  There is much to see in the Islands of LA Nat’l Park. This is just what we did tonight.  A small group of us gathered on an island in Glassell Park – Ismail, Maryam, Eva, Ari.  Some of us have visited this location before and one person went to school around the corner from here.

The activity was led by artist and urban geographer, Ismail Farouk, who is here from Johannesburg on a fellowship with the MAK Center that is called the Urban Futures Initiative.  Several years ago, Ismail came up with a methodology he calls a Rhythm Analysis for learning about a place.  It involves spending time in different parts of a place observing, reflecting and interweaving the various perspectives.  It creates a tapestry that brings together history, an understanding of social, economic and political dynamics with the sights and sounds, and relations of a place into a picture of the here, the present moment.

The advantage of this is it includes the complexity of history with what is right in front of us.  An active showing of the now.  We played with this methodology for a couple of hours, just a brief experience of this approach but one that left an impression.

After discussions of history, class, economics, population we engaged in layers of listening.  How can we listen?  We can listen and write a word.  Listen again, for duration…and now, listen for relationship, dominance, which sounds continue and which are brief, sharp, dull.  And what is the implication?  The tempo?

Look.  Have I looked the way I just listened?  Write what you see.  Look again.  Write. And again.  Write and now write a a sentence, a paragraph, a poem, a text.  Do this over and over, for periods of time and different spots.  As this collects, the analysis forms.

Island Pa…

Today I met with Alaine Azcona and Jason Neville on an island on San Vicente.  Alaine lives nearby and works around the corner at the Makey apartments where she directs the UFI fellowship.  Jason, who is an urban planner with the CRA, used to live in the area and I have driven through it countless times over the last 30 years.  We had a picnic, reflected on the space and various issues, took a tour of the island and decided to return here, interacting here over time, on the traffic island, with each other and the place.

The island had traces of pedestrian usage.

It is largely a residential area with apartment buildings, a few homes and a single shop on 1 corner.

Sometimes pedestrians criss-cross and a man walks his dog here.  On the sidewalks there is life, and signs of living.

San Vicente is a busy street, cutting diagonally through this mid-Wilshire area where the Streetcar use to run.  A few blocks east of here is a historic and current public transportation junction.  And along the street, buses and cars, a random blaring ambulance whizzing by on both sides of this 4 lane wide island.

Freshly cut grass

and trees, watered by the department of water and power while the water from the sky follows the streets into the storm drains on the side of the island to the underground water channel.

Evolving

Over the last year, islands all over LA have been visited.  There were also various kinds of activities includes picnics, art in public temporary installation, and a collaboration with Fallen Fruit to re-imagine how barren land on traffic islands that were irrigated by the city could be used to grow tomatoes.  Many signs were installed, inviting people to notice the space, and beginning a conversation with the city and its constituents.

The gestures have been a way to investigate, interact and observe.  People began sharing stories and I learned about the frequent use of traffic islands as war memorials and neighborhood placemarkers (and place makers).  One thing lead to another.  I placed a sign on an island which led to being invited to build an island sculpture for a gallery and that led to an island activity, a meeting with the Santa Monica cultural affairs department and learning that islands on San Vicente are contested (locals unhappy about outsiders coming in to exercise on them).  A lawyer began providing Islands of LA with pro-bono First Amendment advice.  It appears that traffic islands with pedestrian access are likely to be considered public forums and that they would receive additional protection under the first amendment for assembly and other expressive activities.

Beyond the legal and anecdotal there have also been theoretical and ethical questions of place, space, public, democracy, parochialism, community, discussion, art and personal agency.  Some of these ideas and dilemmas I was aware before the project began and others surfaced over time.

The conversation is now beginning to move in a different direction.  The broad geographical approach is being replaced or maybe it will dovetail with a localized approach that involves spending more time in a few locations.

Observations of an island

Yesterday, Rosa Garza-Mourino (Antioch University) and I took a tour of islands in the downtown area. I knew she had experience in developing inclusive methods and interdisciplinary tools to approach, explore and interact with urban communities in both Mexico City and Los Angeles. I wanted to introduce her to traffic islands experiences, perceive her responses and share my own.  We are both familiar with this social space.  I worked near here for a few years, and Rosa has been a volunteer docent at the central Library since 1997.

During our tour we noticed a triangular island in the Pico-Union area, tucked along 8th street as it curves sinuously, uncharacteristically in this city.

On one side a church-school under construction.  Loyola law school in the distance.  Footprints in every direction on the island as well as a path along the side facing 8th street.

The tree retained the human.

Facing it was a small fitness gym where a walker on a treadmill was looking through the window. Two store fronts were for lease.

Residential buildings.  1920s, 30s, 40s architecture. The downtown skyline, a Korean church, the union for letter carriers faced the other side of the island.

We drove around the area and returned for a picnic.  Who are the people, history, forces and futures that flow through here?  What of this space in this place?

Note: all images except the last one were taken by Rosa

Rainwater below

Last week Alan Kenefick and I had a picnic on an island near downtown, south of the 10 freeway on Hill and 22nd.  Alex is the Lower Los Angeles River Watershed Coordinator and works for the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council, a stakeholder organization which works towards enhancing the economic, social, and ecological health of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed through education, research, and planning.  Part of Alex’s work is to seek out the underground storm drain tributaries of the Los Angeles River and Compton Creek, and identify sections which might be able to be ‘daylighted’, or developed as small pockets of habitat in the otherwise paved-over city.

We talked about how we can collaborate on a project and decided to look for an archipelago of islands that lie above these underground storm drains and investigate a possible project.

The image was taken by a bus drive on his break.  This island is near a waiting area for a dash bus where drivers start their shift.  Some the of the drivers hang out on the island, chatting or sitting and reading.

Forms of Permission – Eagle Rock Music Festival

Islands of LA was invited to participate in the Eagle Rock Music festival.  This street music festival began several years ago along Colorado Blvd in Eagle Rock.  Initially, it was an informal festival but over the years it has grown more official.  Now, the Colorado Blvd is closed for several blocks, tons of bands play from 5pm – midnight and there are a cornucopia of booths from local vendors to national corporations.

Islands of LA set up 1 block outside of the official street closure at Colorado and La Roda.  Just on the edge of being out of place, most people walked by without noticing the anomaly in the banal space of the traffic island.  (click the first image for a slideshow)

One couple approached me, Robert said the small lights were a clue.  They sat down and in the midst of the drizzling rain we talked about different uses of public land including formal uses that involve street closures and informal uses such as what Islands of LA has been doing.

After about 1 1/2 hours I left, leaving a public thinking sign on the nearby signpost.  Later in the evening I set up the same chairs and lights on an island inside of the festival.

Most people didn’t notice the invitation, the slightly odd sight of someone with empty chairs on an island next to a signs saying Public Thinking and Islands of LA Nat’l Park.  They were engaged in the street festival, the ad hoc marching band, skaters, break dancers, vending booths, the ability to walk down the street with a cup of beer or wine while they talked on the cellphone.  Sometimes people noticed the sign and left and a few people approached them and we had a conversation about the use of public land.

Placemap: Public Art Studies Students from USC

On 9/18, a group of 12 graduate students in Public Art Studies at USC and their professor, Susan Gray, took a tour of public art in Los Angeles.  As part of that, they participated in an activity on a traffic island in Hollywood located at Wilcox and Franklin Ave.

They arrived at 7pm.  After an initial discussion where we shared questions about the space and project, we began a mapping activity.

The class broke up into groups of 4 and walked around the island making a map.

After about 10 minutes, I went up to each group and shared the following:

Maps are pictures
Maps are self-portraits
Maps are manifestations of perceptions
Maps are portraits of the world in the manner
in which those preparing them would like
the world to be understood
Maps are subjective
Mapping is…an act of power

(This is the opening to Chapter 1 of An Atlas of Radical Cartography – Other Worlds, Other Maps: Mapping the Unintended City which was written by Jai Sen. The Atlas is edited by Lize Mogel and Alexis Bhagat.  Note: lines 5 and 6 are supposed to be indented but the wordpress editor doesn’t allow me to do this.)

Following this the groups traded maps, and we enjoyed the food people brought to share.  Each group then shared/interpreted the map they were given to everyone else and then returned it to the group that made them map, so they could share it with everyone.  Following this we had a discussion about various issues including place, time and public art while enjoying the food.  While Islands of LA is not selling anything, groups were told that should anything related to these maps ever be sold, they would be contacted to discuss how to handle it.

Here are the maps:

Kristin Juarez, Jen Leitch, Aurora Tang

Joy Andersen, Anne-Marie Greg, Mia Locks

Allison D. Behrstock, Ashley Cart, Susan Gray

Daniella Gold, Molly Sullivan, Rachel Zylka - Note: on the back of their map the put the time and date (8:44pm, 9/18/08) to indicate the time of day and that the shadow created by the tree (the central element of their map) was made.

The students were invited to continue working on a map of a traffic island on their own or with Islands of LA, and it could be of this island or any island.