home Articles My home My Ancestral home More about LA The food in LA More suburbia - In LA Yet Another Rant about LA Loyalty contact me at: justin (@) deepdrift dot com Comments GyozaQuest is a non profitable site,	More about LA The lettering on the Santa Monica pier doesn't make any sense. There are no fishing boats which leave from there anymore. Although you can fish off the pier, thanks to the pretty sucessful "Save The Bay" campaign, a lot of people are still skeptical of eating anything out of Santa Monica bay. "Sport Fishing" usually involves a boat. And although sitting on the end of a pier, with a rod is both fishing and a sport, it's not exactly "Sport Fishing" Second, the breakwater was washed out to sea a while ago, and all the moorings were abandoned, so there really is no yachting or boating per se going on at the pier. So calling it much of a yacht harbor, isn't too applicable. However the Santa Monica pier is a cultural fixture. And one of the things in LA with some sort of history, that hasn't dissapeared. So it's only fitting to use this as an example of what might be wrong with LA A cannibal that devours it's own history. If Los Angeles is, as some have said, a cannibal that devours its own history, then the Ambassador Hotel where RFK was shot, is the foot du jour. How it came to this, no one can say with certainty. Chalk it up to changing times and changing tastes. Los Angeles is a town that likes to tear itself down, at a rate of about three buildings a day, The Los Angeles Times reported in a study last year. Los Angeles sits far back in the line of major cities that have documented their architectural past Los Angeles is so consumed by its desire to be the city of the tomorrow, that its citizens hardly recognize that is has a past, said Ken Bernstein, director of preservation issues for the Los Angeles Conservancy, which is leading the fight to save at least significant portions, if not all, of the Ambassador Hotel. "What happens with the hotel is a defining moment for Los Angeles," Mr. Bernstein said. "Will we see it as an asset for the future? Or treat it as another piece of disposable history?" Dallas has made a museum of the book repository from which Lee Harvey Oswald is believed to have shot President John F. Kennedy. Memphis has preserved the Lorraine Motel, where King was killed. Why does Los Angeles insist on destroying its monuments, Mr. Bernstein asked. "Historic Site May Vanish in the City of the Young," Charles LeDuff, NYTimes 6/6/03 - Full article A city without a memory LA is often "rightfully so" said to be a city without a memory, La La land, LA is the home of Disneyland, the pinnacle of the fake envornment. It's been called Lotus land, where Odyseuss's men forgot about what they were supposted to be doing, falling under the spell of the narcotic plant. LA is a city built on fabricated dreams, what other place could be where the rockets that took the men to the moon, and where movies which provide such an intoxicating escape from the reality that is our lives are. A city of actors and scientists. A city with a diverse spectra of ethnic enclaves. A city without a center. A city that counts itself as the home of religious revivals, the Pentacostals got their start here on Azusa Street, but also where Hefner, Flynt, and a thousand other more obscene pornographers peddle their wares to the world. The fact that LA is a city without a memory is also a good thing, in that it can re-invent itself. It is not stuck in the past it's not hindered by trying to conform to a historical memory which never really existed in the first place. Of course it's built on fantasy, but you realize that those fantasies become peoples dreams, which inspires them to invent new things which change the world. Is it any wonder that Silicon Valley, and Hollywood would come from California. Updated 7.15.2003