Griffith Park, Interrupted » Silver Lake

When Prison Break clashes with the Los Angeles DWP.

Donna Barstow — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:58:38 +0000

Prison Break had a very intense episode this week. The title,”Greatness Achieved” apparently refers to my favorite character, Brad Bellick. Formerly a very scary, mean prison guard in Fox River, who delighted in throwing together newbies and hardcore homos, some viewers hated him because he MAY have killed a cat belonging to one of the inmates. I am pretty sure that was never proved.

Wade Williams as Capt. Brad Bellick. RIP. Photo from Wentworth Miller Fansite.

But because the super writers of Prison Break knew what a gem they had in the actor, Wade Williams, they found ways to keep him around in all the next seasons! Bellick was fired from the prison after the boys escaped, and he became a freelance bounty hunter chasing them. His team up with Geary was brilliant, and so funny! Then he got thrown in the Panama prison, Sona, along with everyone else. When we saw him there at the end of Season 3, he was on the floor, beat up and filthy, with only a diaper as clothing. Obviously he had been raped. The boss of them to the lowest of them. That’s drama!

We knew from earlier episodes that he lived with his Mom (at 40!) and had some kind of drug problem at one time. (Posters at TWOP thought it was so funny that this butch, mean prison guard lived with his Ma – great writing! Then the moderator on the forum stepped in to say that in her family it was ok to live with your parents, so stop making fun of him! At 40? Really? Hello, it’s called Television without Pity, ding-dong.) He didn’t have much of a life except for his job. But he was street smart and in Sona, after being so humilated, he learned humility – and that he didn’t ever want to be with criminals again, or be like them. He gained morals we didn’t think he had.

Prison Break is a very fast-moving action packed show, with great characterization. You really get a lot for your money. But they killed Bellick this week, so I’m crossing it off my favorite list. He wasn’t the best looking, nor the most macho, but he was the only person on the show who hadn’t yet killed anyone. And because he showed fear, he allowed all the other guys not to. I think he was essential to keep the show grounded.

But that’s not why I’m writing this, nor will I go into how Mahone tortured Wyatt so badly, it’s guaranteed he’ll die this season, too! No redemption for him. Here’s what I wanted to share today: The plan was for the guys to get into the DWP water system, move huge pipes, and divert millions of gallons of water and water pressure. Oh, okay. And part of the plan was to dig into the ground with jackhammers and some kind of blasting pipe cutter. But they had to stop after just a few minutes. Why? Because it was GRANITE. And Michael said it was impossible to dig through. And Michael knows.

And that’s what we have to run on, in Silver Lake! I wrote before that our walkway/running track around Silver Lake is solid granite. So very healthy for knees and backs and feet .

And they are just now finishing the rest of the walkway on the east side. I met a couple of people at a Halloween party who also run at Silver Lake, and they asked, But will the pathway on the other side be rock, too? Oh, yes! When I had my private tour inside Silver Lake, I saw the Bureau of Engineering grading the earth for the dg to be added. (This is just part of Silver Lake’s plan to tear down trees, kick out animals and birds, and strip our former sliver of nature into a “park”, called “The Meadow. “)

Even though this is Councilman Garcetti’s area, Councilman Tom LaBonge seems to be overseeing it! Internecine warfare, or secret handshakes?! I wrote to Councilman LaBonge’s office with my concerns after seeing the “Meadow” plan of damage. (Several people in the Bureau of Engineering told me they get all plans and instructions directly from the evil Council.) I included links to my extensive research into how bad dg (decomposed granite) is to run or walk on. And links that explain how decomposed granite turns into solid rock, which is equal to, or worse than, concrete for your joints and bones.

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I live about a mile from the lake. Usually the water’s as flat as a bathtub, but for a short time every year the sun hits it the right way, with a bit of a breeze, and it looks like sharp glass.

Their reply? A cut and paste Google definition of decomposed granite! Not an explanation of why LaBonge approved putting it there, not an engineer’s report, no planning study, no promise to look into it, or consider alternatives, nada. Well, the B of E itself didn’t know what dg was for at least a month – they had to look it up, too, when I kept asking. Jullian’s Googleness came up with this, too:

More over, it’s cheap, only a fraction of what hardscape materials cost, and it lasts forever.

That’s the ticket! But Councilman LaBonge, guess what’s even cheaper?: dirt! It’s dirt cheap! We would love to walk and run on dirt. It can’t be any dustier than the dg, which gets inside my shoes every time, and which I have to shake out after every walk. And it would drain better. The walkway floods during every rain, sometimes closing down half of Silver Lake Blvd with it.

But that’s it for now, gotta run. On the hardest surface around – the Silver Lake granite walkway. Ooh, that hurts.

Or were you looking for one of these?

I live in East LA, but I am not Latino.

Donna Barstow — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 22:00:50 +0000

Came across an interesting story by the AP a couple of weeks ago:

East L.A. — birthplace of the lowrider, Los Lobos and Oscar de la Hoya — is to Mexican-Americans what Harlem is to the black community. Now it wants to become its own city. Commonly mistaken for a part of Los Angeles, East L.A. is actually an unincorporated section of Los Angeles County, with more than 130,000 people — 96 percent of them Latino — packed into 7.4 square miles.

[CLIP] While outsiders often see the area as gang-plagued and poverty-ridden, East L.A. possesses cultural and political symbolism for Mexican-Americans.

I live in Silver Lake, right next to Los Feliz, which is certainly the East Side of Los Angeles. (My favorite story is how the former writer of the Green blog for the LA Times – www.latimes.com/emeraldcity – said she lived “all the way in Santa Monica, so I know nothing about Silver Lake…”) Hee! Yet, so far I don’t identify with this East LA article. What symbolism in Silver Lake? Let’s read on.

For decades, East L.A. has been a first stop for immigrants just over the border, though these days there are nearly as many Salvadoran pupuserias selling filled tortilla patties as Mexican taquerias selling tacos.

Photo from netstate.com. We could rename the California Poppy, the Western USA flower!

I don’t like Mexican food, can’t comment on this.

East L.A. is a fusion of cultures north and south of the border. Spanish is the predominant language, but it is a hybrid version, Spanglish, punctuated with Hispanicized English words: “breka” for break, “marqueta” for market, “cora” for quarter.

While nortena music booms from downtown stores, East L.A. has also produced artists such as Los Lobos, who have combined Mexican oompah sounds with American rock rhythms. Lowriders, often with customized Chicano-theme paint jobs, cruise the streets.

No, English is spoken in Silver Lake and Los Feliz, quite well, actually. I have seen lowriders in Hollywood, and I have heard of Los Lobos, however.

Auto dealer Louis Herrera said local officials would be more motivated to attract businesses like the Starbucks that opened last year. That would boost the downtown shopping district, which is dotted with 99-cent stores, dusty windowfronts filled with gowns for first communions and “quinceaneras,” or Latin sweet-16 parties, and signs advertising Western Union money transfers to Mexico.

I’m not sure what downtown they are talking about. Not Silver Lake, obviously, because the Starbucks on Glendale Blvd did nothing to boost that shopping center. But I happen to like the 99-cent stores. And I notice a lot of dust in my apartment when the windows are open.

The same week I read this article a new blog started up, called the Eastsider, by Jesus Sanchez, formerly part of one of the few LA Times blogs that seems balanced to me, LA Now. The Eastsider includes links and articles about Echo Park, Silver Lake, Atwater, and even Griffith Park!

(Unfortunately, it’s part of Google’s damned Blogger, so that means Google itself can’t find it, and Technorati ignores it, and when you leave a message, you have to sign in each time if you’re not on Blogger, and you can’t return to the original post or blog, because Google stops you with a pop-up each time. Can you tell that I hate Blogger?) So anyway, Jesus knows east means east, not just some arbitrary area a particular group has staked out.

(Although he had a comment on there that has since disappeared, which said he shouldn’t be including these different areas, because they’re not the REAL East Los Angeles. Territorial, much?)

So let’s agree, by East LA, we do mean Silver Lake and Los Feliz. I wouldn’t mind being my own city!

This isn’t a half-bad idea for other regions, too. I think the state of California could benefit from this strategy: we could declare ourselves Western USA. The other states (what states?) can go to hell.

Or were you looking for one of these?

Tom LaBonge believes there’s a bogeyman in Silver Lake.

Donna Barstow — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:11:07 +0000

EXCLUSIVE REPORT: Inside Silver Lake!!

The Silver Lake monster reported in the fifties(?) turned out to be…not so much, so let’s hope this works out as smoothly.

As I investigated the composition of the Silver Lake walkway, on the east side of Silver Lake (finding out in the process that instead of soft dirt, it’s dangerous granite) I had several conversations with the LA Bureau of Engineering. Eventually this led to an invitation from the BOE project manager, Michael Haddadin, to examine the new walkway going in Silver Lake right now. (And this is their opportunity to make the new walkway healthy, instead of rock.)

This is as close as I’ve ever gotten to the Silver Lake water. It’s about as exciting as a bathtub, but it’s still a treat to stand at the edge of a big body of water. Refreshing to look at, too!

Getting in was a struggle. I’ve never been inside the Silver Lake gates, nor have most people, and there’s a good reason: this is protected drinking water for several hundred thousand people in Los Angeles. The two BOE men were with me at all times. (Nor will I go into the fact that the biggest danger inside Silver Lake is one they put in there themselves, the black bird balls, which are just plastic, and have never been tested for heat, cold, nor for any length of time beyond 17 days! No, I won’t go into all of that again, because, you know, I hate to repeat myself.)

Two stands of juniper trees. Yes, they look like bushes, but they are really very low-lying trees, part of the cypress family. These have probably been there for 100 years, since Silver Lake was built. They are extremely drought-tolerant.

So Michael Haddadin came to the guard gate to pick me up in his big bouncy truck, and immediately two LADWP guards got mad and started shouting. Apparently they were supposed to have some kind of advance notice about visitors, but he kept saying he was responsible for me, and they got even madder, and moved to stop me, and to block the truck. He started to wave frantically at me, and opened the truck door. I had to run and jump in!

The stand of junipers on the right that makes Tom LaBonge anxious. Apparently the other trees have already been vetted.

Here was the annoying, sexist part: no one would let me speak, (including Michael) nor did anyone address me directly, ask for the ID and LA Press Club credentials I offered, or anything. I was just… a woman. I am quite sure they don’t do that to men who could be coming in for construction, etc.

Closer look at this group of trees. (or is it just one low-lying one?) The orange traffic stick shows that the trees are less than 3′ high.

After that, we drove past the bird-balled Ivanhoe. That is so full of balls now that some sit on top of others, like little black sentinels. (I am mad that I forgot to take a picture of that, but it’s hard being a reporter! I had to balance notebook, pen, camera, my big purse, a map he gave me, and not get carsick as we careened all over, and he talked a mile a minute.)

As close as my lens would get. Scared yet? I don’t think anyone could play hide and seek in here.

We drove directly to the section that will be called The Meadow. I would call it a big patch of dried crabgrass with a path that will soon be rock, if they use decomposed granite again. Let’s call it “The Lawn”. They have certainly stripped it down. There are hardly any trees left – haven’t gotten a call back from their landscape guy about how many, but whatever was there is GONE. Michael said they are keeping the palms; I love palms, but they are the least environmentally friendly trees, and the city of LA no longer plants them on streets.

He pointed out how they are encasing the roots of some trees along the walking path with concrete curbs, to protect them, and that looked like a good idea, however.

On the phone Michael had said, “Tom LaBonge does want some trees taken down because he’s afraid someone will reach out and grab a runner.”

This group of a couple of trees and some bush is the only spot of shade there. The Bureau of Engineering plans to take it all out (or has taken it out) because LaBonge and the CSSLR would rather have the privy than the trees. The spots of white in the center are the daylight because this is only one thin line of trees.

This was such a strange thing for someone to say that I wasn’t sure I had heard him correctly. Tom has anointed himself the Mayor of Griffith Park. He hikes there nearly every morning. Has he noticed that GP has quite a few trees and bushes? Yet I don’t hear of ANY runners being accosted. Does Griffith Park have a hidden crime wave that the public isn’t privy to?

So I asked Michael to show me the trees that Tom is concerned about, while we stood on The Lawn. Michael quoted what Councilman Tom LaBonge had said to him:

Take out that whole stand [of junipers]. I don’t want strangers pulling young girls into the bushes.

Michael said Tom was quite concerned about little girls.

Tom, NO ONE wants men jumping out of bushes to grab little girls. (And I am pretty sure that these madmen pursuing little girls would be more comfortable in cars than in 2′ high bushes, not that I’m trying to help them or anything.) Say, Councilman, have you ever been to Griffith Park? Lotsa bushes there, I’m just sayin.

Michael said these bushes are really junipers, and as you can see by the traffic cone near the clump of trees, they are about 2 1/2 feet tall, at most. They are so dense that no animal bigger than a mouse or a bird could possibly enter them.

And Tom (and the CSSLR, which has kept an iron school-marm hand on every detail of The Lawn) are also concerned about the other groups of trees I photographed here. They’re not big enough to be groves – you can see the spaces through them. But they’re just too WILD for Silver Lake denizens, so they, too, will be taken out. Anyone go to a park to cool down? No shade to be found in The Lawn, sorry.

Other plans for the future of The Lawn: to put in hardscape (park benches) and botanical gardens (which I assume will never be tall enough to hide a scary man, even a short scary man.). And a big fancy gate, to be closed at dusk, which CSSLR has apparently put a lot of thought into, as opposed to anything green.
Poor Silver Lake.

Or were you looking for one of these?

The Silver Lake walkway is bad for runners. (Hint: it’s not dirt.)

Donna Barstow — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 22:50:23 +0000

I’ve been running around the Silver Lake walkway for almost a year and a half, since the May ‘07 fire in Griffith Park. This summer I got shin splints so bad I couldn’t even think, and the pain would stay for days. I took aspirin, and tried to massage my legs, or stretch them, but nothing helped. I finally realized I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I was afraid maybe I had broken something! I dug deep in my pockets and went to a store that sells only running shoes. No more Mervyns! ($100 is the low end of most good running shoes, but that was all I was willing to spend.)

Running stores at least pretend they know what they’re doing, look at your gait, old shoes, etc. Better, and I also tried different stretches which seemed to help. Still, I knew how LADWP had lied about the bird balls in Ivanhoe: how they never tested them for heat, or for longevity (anything over 17 days!) And how they didn’t even try alternative measures before dumping in this big oil plastic.

Fascinating photo of REAL dirt, before decomposed granite ruins it. Engineer measures.

So I did a little homemade scientific test, about the same as the DWP did when they lowered little beakers of water into a reservoir to test for bromate: I stuck my finger into the dirt track.

The path looks like dirt. It sprays when you run. It has a crunchy sound. The top layer is about 1/4 inch of sand, or dirt. But underneath that 1/4 inch, is solid rock. THAT is what we are running on.

After many phone calls and emails, when the DWP said they couldn’t “divulge” the makeup of the path, I found out that although the LADWP is responsible for this walkway, it was really built (and subcontracted by) the Bureau of Engineering. Not that the B of E was forthcoming either;

The thickness of decomposed granite (D.G.) is three (3) inches, and it is constructed over compacted fill material.

(This was after they informed me that all the specs of this project built less than 2 years ago are “buried in a big binder in the basement, so we can’t get them.”) Compacted fill material isn’t even listed in Google! But when I called the subcontractor who actually built the path, he said that is just dirt and sand; they didn’t import anything, just used what was there.

I pointed out that there is no 3 inches of decomposed granite there, and I finally agreed to meet with Michael Haddadin of the B Of E to observe the dirt in question. (I also got an exclusive tour of the inside of Silver Lake, which I’ll report on later, so it’s all good!)

Michael said,

Councilman LaBonge specifically told me that he wanted runners to be able to run on soft ground, so he wants the new path inside The Meadows [which they are building right now] to also have 3 inches of the decomposed granite.

Thank you, Tom, for the intention, but sometimes Councilmen don’t know as much as they think they do. Which is why they shouldn’t tell contractors what to do.

I am certain Michael didn’t know any more than I did about what decomposed granite (dg) was until now. But as we sweated in the hot sun and stared down at the earth, he said that d.g. is loose to begin with, then as people run, stroll, wheel baby carriages, bike, it becomes like – well, like granite. Within a year it’s solid rock, with a little bit of scuffed silt on the top. (and this turned to stone long before a year was up.)

So I’m running on what my kitchen counter would be like, if I had a granite one.

The path would have been GREAT if they had just used the compacted dirt and sand below, instead of throwing on the granite. The reason they did? Someone thinks sand and dirt would blow around. How often have you had sand blow in your face at the beach? How about dirt in Griffith Park, does that rise up and smack you? This is stupid non-runner and non-walker thinking. This is the thinking of people who build sidewalks. Which is what this is now.

I called the subcontractor and also the guy who laid the decomposed granite, who both confirmed that the decomposed granite turns into solid granite. I also called granite and concrete companies, to compare the hardness under Moh’s hardness scale. I wanted to see which would be easier to run on, for my knees and joints and back, the walkway, or the road. In an amusing testosterone way, both manufacturers claimed they were harder: 9 on the the Moh’s scale of 10. (The granite company said they were harder because granite was formed in searing heat under the earth; the concrete guy said they were harder, just because (although I notice they need rebar).)

I did another one of my scientific studies: I ran half my run on the decomposed granite walkway, and half on the asphalt road. I noticed that on the road I could feel the outside edges of my (new, expensive) shoes better, like they were bouncing. I am not sure if that means the road is softer, but I think it does; maybe more experienced runners can help with this.

All the contractors said we could use dirt, sand and or a rubberized decomposed granite, instead. There are LOTS of choices. ANYTHING would be better than running on rock!!

Message to Councilman Tom LaBonge: I hope I don’t sound too liberal here, but did you stop to think about the women (runners) and children? (And we have something else to be concerned about: this is not how women want their breasts to jiggle!) Did you think how all generations to come will be running on STONE? Please make the new walkway inside Silverlake out of a gentler, softer material. Don’t be afraid of regular dirt!!! It’s in most parks, Mayor Tom! That would be 10 times softer (on the Moh’s scale of Runner’s Hardness) than this crap we have now.

Also, please tell me who I should send my invoice for my new shoes to.

Or were you looking for one of these?

Noise pollution – who needs it?

Silver Lake goes for the gold!

Donna Barstow — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 00:18:42 +0000

The LAFD is at it again, and Silver Lake is there to help. No, I don’t have the LAFD blog bookmarked, but I live on the crest of the hill, so the water helicopters fly right over on their way to the lake, uncomfortably close, and so that’s a heads up to me. (Fortunately they’re good fliers, and don’t clip our building.)

Helicopter lowers stinger into Silver Lake to pick up water.

This is the third day this month that the LAFD has used Silver Lake as a source of water for several wildfires, all near the zoo. I’ve lost count at the number of helicopter water pick ups today, but it’s at least 15 as I write this.

It only takes about one or 2 minutes for the heli to load up with water!

The first fire in gp this summer, near the zoo, was on July 27, and I asked Officer Humphreys at the time if they had used slk for water, as they were flying overhead constantly. He said no at first, but conscientiously followed up a couple of days later and said, yes, they did indeed use it. They also used it for the 2nd gp fire on Aug 5, and then today for the fires, suspected to be arson.

It’s pretty smoggy today – almost like Beijing! – so the pictures are smoggy as well – but I think you can see the helicopter as it dips the stinger in the water and slurps it up to go fight another fire. As I wrote last month:

…once a helicopter picks up all that heavy water it has to drop down after it flies up, and so for that reason, they can’t hold as much water picked up from a heliport, [as it can from slk] since it can’t exactly drop down over the school and houses…

This is why it’s so so important for slk to remain an open body of water, as I wrote in May, when I interviewed several LAFD Captains about this issue. (dwp replaced the water in slk within a week of me writing that.)

Unfortunately, Ivanhoe is now a sloshing pit of black leaching plastic balls, which are highly flammable, so that is closed as a source of emergency water. And we’ll have to keep our fingers crossed that the wall that separates Ivanhoe and slk doesn’t break, like in an EARTHQUAKE, God forbid, because then we’d have NO usable emergency water, as the balls flood over to the slk side. (H. David Nahai lives in Benedict Canyon, so thank goodness he’ll be spared any such emergency, and can continue status quo as the leading LAdwp leader.)

Helicopter loaded down with precious water over a very smoggy Glendale. It’s at the top near the branch of the tree.

Or were you looking for one of these?

The original lie by DWP about Silver Lake, and geeky stuff like Celcius.

Donna Barstow — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:33:22 +0000

The last thing a blogger wants to do is write about him or herself, but sometimes it becomes necessary to use the “I” pronoun.

For instance, last week I wrote about a press release that NSF issued about the bird balls in Ivanhoe. Because the manufacturer, Orange Products, emailed it to me, I thought that meant that they paid for the NSF release.

Cat, but not LOLcat.

However, in response to my inquiry, Cheryl Luptowski of NSF called me today to clarify that OP did not request or pay for the PR. (I corrected this.) She said they issued it because they have been getting an unusually high number of inquiries about the bird ball test, and NSF wanted to put the facts out there. I asked her how many people contacted NSF, and she said 3 or 4 dozen. Most were email, but she suspects that the majority of the questions were from Los Angeles. (H. David Nahai, the Time-Waster Police called for you. They said to GET OFF THE COMPUTER and fix things.)

And here’s where I come in! I’m the only writer anywhere who actually chose to investigate what this NSF test really included. This means a lot of people have been reading my blog! Sadly, apparently 3 dozen of them didn’t trust me, and wanted to confirm the NSF test for themselves. That’s either cartoonist bigotry, which I highly doubt, or a hella lot of people concerned with water safety. As I searched Google to see if anyone else had written about NSF in connection with the bird balls, I came across this blog, 37signals.com. Some very interesting scientific comments there, but again, they are quoting my research with NSF.

Devil in the dwp?

So because of the number of questions, NSF issued the press release July 1. She also thanked me for bringing to their attention last week the fact that the temperature wasn’t listed in the release. She said most scientists would know, however, that meant that the balls were tested at ambient, or room temperature, which is 30 degrees C, or 73.4 degrees F. I asked if Orange Products could have requested the balls to be tested at a higher temperature. (I knew from my other conversations with her that they can, but just reconfirming.) She said yes, but they didn’t ask (or failed, as all failed tests are secret.)

The dwp of course had to stick its big fat nose into the release with a puffed up statement by Dr. Pankaj Parekh that says nothing of interest. I love what he said in LA Now, though:

As for leaching chemicals into the water, Parekh said that the balls, manufactured by Allentown, Pa.-based Orange Products, are environmentally safe to be placed in drinking water and will withstand the chlorine and sunlight.

Curious people.

He wrote this lie a month ago. Knowing full well that that wasn’t in the report at all, and the PR says only that the balls are tested at one temperature, for 17 days. Chlorine is not mentioned. In fact, no one except the manufacturer and the dwp had read the report at that time. But that’s what got me to call NSF myself that day to get the facts.

So I guess it all works out for the best, especially if you want the truth! Even if it comes from a cartoonist!

Or were you looking for one of these?

Silver Lake heron photographer found alive and well!

Donna Barstow — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 05:40:54 +0000

Well, looks like I was right! How very satisfying.

After I posted my second blog last week about the missing great blue heron photographer, who posted her photographs publicly on the slk reservoir fence, she wrote in my comments this weekend! Go here to read all by Joan M. Harrison, the photographer.

Once again, ye olde heron poster.

Basically, she is an artist who really cares about these birds, and doesn’t care at all about slk politics. How interesting that the CSSLR dragged her into the Meadows fight, without any proof or even logic. CurbedLA stepped up the fight to ringside status.

Some of Joan’s thoughts:

I appreciate your thoughtful remarks about the herons and the artwork. Public art has its own life…sometimes that includes a sticker or two. They just become part of the documentation of the piece…

Today, as I visit CurbedLA, (other boards) I find that the artwork is still being erroneously politicized and linked to non-related issues.

I attended the May SLNC meeting when I found out (the day before the meeting) that others were being “blamed” for creating and hanging my artwork. (I signed the pieces along the edge of the photo…) People who had nothing to do with the creation or installation of the artwork had received hateful e-mails and had been ridiculed online. Ouch again!

I purposely kept the text neutral, so that viewers would have their own experiences and thoughts. If anyone had asked me when I made the work, however, I would have told them that the draining of the lake was probably, in my opinion, the tipping factor against the herons’ return.

Here’s some funny fallout about the missing herons: After she mentioned the Los Feliz Ledger in her comment, I went to check out their July issue; she isn’t mentioned there, but other familiar characters are. Marty Adams, “some kind of scientist,” is quoted (reality check: he’s an engineer and PR spokesman for the dwp), along with our old friend cb, with his monthly column, “Greetings from Tom.”
On page 3, in an article about “return of the herons”:

The great blue herons at the Silver Lake Reservoir, which had gone missing earlier this year, have been spotted again. According to Marty Adams, Director of Water Quality and Operations for the DWP, their return is more than likely due to the replenishment of water in the reservoir.

Hmmm. He’s not the first expert I’d call about birds, as he is the instigator for our $2 million fiasco of bird balls, now rolling all over Ivanhoe to pollute the lake and keep birds AWAY from the neighborhood. Love how he takes credit for their “return,” though, if they even HAVE returned-nobody seems to have seen them- because dwp FINALLY refilled slk after 3 months of empty!

Here’s what LaBonge had to say about the same subject:

The Silver Lake Walking Path is another favorite outdoor spot because I get to see my Silver Lake neighbors and friends, including the great blue herons who nest in the eucalyptus trees.

This is hysterical. I’ve written before that cb worked in the dwp for a few years right before he became Councilman. So these old boys club members are bird lovers, too! It’s really nice when men have a shared interest, like city jobs…or plastic balls…or big blue birds that have been eliminated. That they might be blamed for.

Or were you looking for one of these?

Now playing: Silver Lake Meadow will be split in half!

Donna Barstow — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:46:45 +0000

Or will both sides be happy? Given a choice, I like to err on the negative side.

I just talked with Julian Calvin-Harris at cb’s office yesterday. I haven’t written anything about the slk meadow here until now because a) I didn’t know enough about it, and b) I’m already working on behalf of gp, which is 800 acres as opposed to the 6 acres of slk Meadow.

But, big news. Garcetti is actually in charge of that 6 acres, with only a thin wire fence separating him from his bff, Tom LaBonge, in charge of Ivanhoe; they both got “hundreds of letters,” protesting turning the Meadow into a public park. See, sometimes someone does read your letters! So Garcetti decided to split the child of divorce in two: only half of the park, or 3 acres, would be for roustabouts, as a public open park, and the other 3 acres will be kept as native preserve. For the animals, and nature. As if anything is left there.

The CSSLR has been very vocal about wanting the whole Meadow to become public park land. The SLNC has been against it, as have many homeowners in the neighborhood.

What do I think? Here’s a hint: the volunteer group I work for in gp is called Parks, Rivers and OPEN Space. Meaning, left alone, not tampered with. CSSLR has already picked out their precious park benches and curly-cue “upperclass” gate, LaBonge’s office told me. Give me your dirty and your poor, we’re open for business!

Need more? slk already has a new wide walking path on the west side which is extremely popular, and looks like the boardwalk or the promenade in England. Joggers, walkers, lovers, baby carriages – it’s quite the place to be seen. And it has benches, too! The city has 484 parks and playing fields. gp is the LARGEST urban park in the country, and isn’t a 5 minute walk from slk, but it’s literally a 5 minute drive. Quit yer whining and go play there.

And last but not least, I want to include a comment Heather made here yesterday:

My beloved bird baths are empty. I live a few blocks from the Silverlake Reservoir and since it’s draining and ball filling my backyard birds have basically vanished. I’ve lived in the area since June of 1999 and during the Spring and Summer months I’ve always enjoyed daily visits from Robins, Orioles, Band-Tailed Pigeons, Blue Jays, Mockingbirds, Wild Parakeets, Ravens, Woodpeckers and even the occasional Hawk (Morning Doves and Sparrows have remained). The wonderful horn sounding squawks of ducks and geese flying over my home each morning and dusk have completely ceased. My heart is broken.

And here’s what I wrote last Feb, before the draining:

Near the full moon, very late at night, I heard a Canadian goose in Silver Lake, honking about something important. Then some coyotes chimed in, in a very beautiful song that I wish I could have recorded. Actually, the coyotes near the lake have the best voices I’ve ever heard; perhaps they’ve become inbred, inside the park. Then, not to be outdone, two Great Horned owls almost above my head joined in the ~~noise~~ singing. It was almost funny, but more like awesome.

I don’t know if it’s the construction and destruction of habitat, or no water for months, or both, but I don’t hear a sound anymore at night, not a blessed sound. They’re all gone, as Heather says. Office of Historic Resources, WHERE ARE YOU???

Or were you looking for one of these?