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Life & Times Transcript

06/29/05

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

It's a way to reduce our dependence on fossil fuel and it burns cleaner than gas, so when will people take notice?

George Hopwood>> We had the forethought, I guess, to think this could be something for the future, so we brought it in and it moved slowly at first, but it's catching on strong now. There's basically a lot of the federal agencies using it and it's catching on through more local government as well.

Val>> And then, he's done movies, TV and standup. Now Cheech Marin is a serious art collector and he's a man with a mission.

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Imagine being able to make fuel for your car out of used cooking oil. Well, it's not a thing of the future. It's possible right now today. It's called biodiesel and it's cleaner and cheaper than gasoline, so why hasn't it taken off? Toni Guinyard takes a closer look at this alternative fuel.

Toni Guinyard>> Santa Monica resident, Joe Gershen, is a man on a mission.

Joe Gershen>> We're trying to adapt a cause of biodiesel really everywhere, but certainly in Southern California.

Toni Guinyard>> He's out to convince the public we can improve air quality while cutting our dependence on foreign-produced oil by using this: biodiesel. It's a nontoxic, clean-burning alternative fuel for use in conventional diesel engines. It's made from soy or other vegetable oil.

Joe Gershen>> Mustard seed here in California makes canola. In Europe, they use something called rapeseed which is sort of an industrial canola.

Toni Guinyard>> Or recycled grease and animal fat.

Joe Gershen>> It got a lot of press. People were sort of making their own biodiesel, using straight vegetable oil, you know, often recycled that they collect from restaurants, in their cars.

Toni Guinyard>> While the use of biodiesel initially received a lot of media attention, the spotlight seemed to dim over time, but when few were looking, biodiesel slowly and quietly began developing a loyal following.

Joe Gershen>> We bought a couple of cars. My wife bought one and then I bought one. We sold our gas-powered cars and we started it. We thought, well, we're not going to go out here and evangelize this great alternative fuel if we're not using it ourselves, so we started doing it and it was frustrating.

Toni Guinyard>> Frustrating because access to biodiesel is limited depending on where you are in Southern California. Consumers in the Los Angeles area looking to fill her up with biodiesel often end up here, ITL in Cudahy.

Jeff Irvin>> The only place, I understand at least in Southern California, that has that pump, the B20 at the pump.

Toni Guinyard>> Jeff Irvin is President of ITL. A few years ago, he started selling B20, a blend of twenty percent biodiesel mixed with eighty percent petroleum diesel.

Jeff Irvin>> Right now, our retail sales at the pump are only about five hundred gallons a day and that's not a good day.

Toni Guinyard>> ITL also sells biodiesel in its purest form, B100, so-called neat biodiesel, in five gallon containers. But there is a downside to biodiesel. It produces NOX, oxides of nitrogen, an ingredient in smog, and it's one issue dirtying the reputation of biodiesel.

Joe Gershen>> You know, in the other parts of the United States, the Midwest particularly, biodiesel is taking off. It's just really a going product. But here in California, the Resources Board does not accept biodiesel as an alternative fuel and that's primarily because, although there is a reduction of particulates, there's a slight increase in the NOX. NOX tends to go up very slightly, but what's encouraging is that there are all sorts of technologies and additives available and being developed right now that will bring that NOX down.

Toni Guinyard>> And perhaps make it more appealing to environmentalists with concerns. Irvin is counting on commercial sales to drive the use of the alternative fuel. Right now, the consumer market for biodiesel amounts to a mere drop in the bucket.

Jeff Irvin>> As far as the individual, I think it's just somebody that wants to reduce the demand, do their part in reducing the demand, on crude oil. I think, from that aspect, it works pretty well. There's just not enough of those people yet. There's not a lot of diesel personal vehicles out there right now, particularly in California.

Toni Guinyard>> Joe Gershen is one of those people and he hopes others follow his lead.

Joe Gershen>> I have my one hundred biodiesel delivered and I have a little shed in my back alley behind my garage.

Toni Guinyard>> Not only does he use biodiesel, but he promotes its use to anyone willing to listen.

Joe Gershen>> If you would have asked me five years ago before I got into this, would I ever be promoting diesel, I would say, you know, you're crazy. There's no way I would do that. Diesel is disgusting and, you know, toxic fumes. That was before I learned about biodiesel.

Toni Guinyard>> Gershen developed a nonprofit advocacy group called GreenDepot to help educate the public. He also founded the company, LA BioFuel, to promote improved local access to biodiesel and other sustainable fuels.

Joe Gershen>> I'm not just a guy trying to go out there and market it and get it out there. I actually use the stuff.

Toni Guinyard>> So every three to four months, the biodiesel delivery man comes rolling through this Santa Monica alley making his way to Joe Gershen's house. For Joe, this has been a lesson about perseverance, determination and perhaps even a bit of stubbornness. You see, Joe doesn't think this is easy as it should be to get the one thing he wants. What he and a growing number of alternative fuel users want is access to biodiesel at their own neighborhood gas stations from a traditional fuel pump. It's an argument managers at General Petroleum in Rancho Dominguez are familiar with. The fuel and lubricant distributor sells biodiesel in bulk.

George Hopwood>> Sales are coming on strong because the federal government is the one that said to some of their agencies like the Navy, Air Force, they've mandated its use.

Toni Guinyard>> When GP began selling biodiesel in 2000, there was very little interest.

George Hopwood>> At that point, it was unique. Nobody else was handling it in this area. We had the forethought, I guess, to think this could be something for the future, so we brought it in and it moved slowly at first, but it's catching on strongly now.

Mark Mason>> In a month, we're doing about fifty thousand, fifty-five thousand, gallons a month.

Toni Guinyard>> What is that telling you?

Mark Mason>> That the alternative fuel of biodiesel is definitely blossoming not only just in the military, but just to local people.

Toni Guinyard>> On the average, biodiesel costs more than petroleum diesel, but federal subsidies tend to make its production and use more attractive.

Jeff Irvin>> I think, if you see diesel and biodiesel come into parity as far as price, the commercial businesses will start taking a serious look at it.

Toni Guinyard>> Municipalities statewide are taking note. The city of Santa Monica already has some vehicles powered by compressed natural gas. In February 2005, they made the transition in its existing diesel fleet vehicles to the B20 biodiesel blend with plans to test the use of one hundred percent biodiesel in the future.

Javier Valle>> The city has many commitments to become a sustainable city and, even though it does cost a little bit more, the city is being sustainable so that it's worth it to all of us.

Wes Thompson>> We have ninety-four pieces of equipment currently using biodiesel and the worst we've had was a couple of clogged fuel filters.

Toni Guinyard>> The city uses an average of seventy-five hundred gallons of biodiesel every month. They're hoping this effort to cut air pollution while supporting domestic fuel production and renewable sources of energy will be replicated by other cities, but it's likely to be a slow process.

Joe Gershen>> Well, there is no magic bullet and the community, I think, sometimes looks for what's going to replace petroleum. I don't think any one thing will replace petroleum. I think it's going to take a lot of different things. Biodiesel is one of those things and it's something that we can use right now.

Toni Guinyard>> One of several alternative fuel sources available to the public, if you're willing to pay a little more and go the extra mile. I'm Toni Guinyard for Life and Times.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life and Times".

Val>> He's known best as half of the comedic duo, Cheech and Chong, but since then, Cheech Marin has taken on a whole new passion in life. He has become an art collector, but not just any art. Solely, Chicano art. He lives in a seaside home in Malibu, a far cry from his upbringing in South Los Angeles and the Valley.

Cheech Marin>> My dad was a policeman. He was born in Los Angeles as well. My mother was born in Los Angeles.

Val>> I'll bet that kept you out of trouble.

Cheech Martin>> Oh, baby (laughter). The fear of death (laughter). This is my hallway. I have a lot of pieces here.

Val>> His home is full of art, Chicano art.

Cheech Marin>> They're from San Diego and Little Tijuana, that area, and they're getting very big internationally. They just came back from their one-man show.

Val>> Now you say that you had had art training, but you're not an artist?

Cheech Marin>> No, I'm not an artist, a visual artist. I have no ability (laughter) whatsoever and I was told that. But I really liked art. I appreciated it at a very early age. Since sixth grade, I started going to the library and checking out all the art books just because I wanted to be sophisticated and I wanted to have a knowledge of art. So I worked my way through the collection at the library until I was kind of fairly knowledgeable about the artists.

Val>> He also studied the great Mexican muralists, but he didn't know much about contemporary art until he started visiting galleries.

Cheech Marin>> What I wanted to do was be kind of sophisticated, you know, be able to walk into a party and say, oh, that's a nice mural or whatever -- like that was going to happen -- but it eventually did, you know.

Val>> And the first painting he ever bought?

Cheech Marin>> The first Chicano painting I ever saw and what I bought was called "Amor Marizado" by George Yepes. I was really moved by the images and the more I saw of the various painters, the more I saw this other story emerging and that story was the experience of being Chicano in this country.

Val>> From that point on, it was like an addiction.

Cheech Marin>> I mean, first you want to buy something you want to go over the couch, you know, look nice in here and then you start picking up speed. Then very quickly, I realized that, hey, I'm starting a collection. Then I realized that I was really in a unique position. I was somebody who was Chicano, knew what the art was, recognized the significance of it and recognized how it had been denied access to the mainstream. I thought, well, this could work out. And over here, we have a little tiny Carlos Almaraz. It's Echo Park and the bridge in Echo Park.

Val>> It literally could be a garden setting, it could be a little --

Cheech Marin>> -- and turn around, a larger Carlos Almaraz painting. This guy could really put the paint on. This particular one is called "Even Bats Have Mothers".

Val>> "Even Bats Have Mothers"?

Cheech Marin>> (Laughter) Yeah, I don't know.

Val>> I'm glad you shrugged at that one.

Cheech Marin>> But the great part of this painting is how he put the paint on.

Val>> But collecting is just the first step. He has now taken on a second mission, to move Chicano art into the mainstream of the American art world, but the art market is a very arbitrary place. What is it that makes something hot? What is it that makes something accepted? What is it that makes something collectible and is there any rhyme or reason to this?

Cheech Marin>> Publicity. It's access to publicity. It's access to access.

Val>> It's a balmy evening at Plaza de la Raza, a Latino cultural center in East Los Angeles. Cheech is launching the opening of an exhibit of prints called The Chicano Collection. Los Angeles's new mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, is the special guest.

Antonio Villaraigosa>> "That's Frank, right? Frank Romero?"

Val>> But this is more than an exhibition. One hundred fifteen sets of these high-quality prints will be distributed free to fifty major art museums and universities across the United States. It contains work by top Chicano artists like Margaret Garcia, Eloy Torres, John Valadez and Gilbert "Magu" Lujan. Besides this print exhibition, a collection of more than eighty originals, most of them Marin's, is touring the country. Its final destination? The Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2008. Is this the first Chicano artist exhibition?

Cheech Marin>> Oh, yes, for many of these. You have to realize that ninety-nine percent of the country does not know what a Chicano is, much less what their art looks like. You find out when you're in museums that it's the golden rule. Whoever's got the gold makes the rules (laughter). Here's a print by Gronk, one of the Chicano artists. She was a member of a group called ASCO, which was nausea in Spanish. Everybody says they make me nauseous. This kind of becomes the first abstract Chicano artist. She's always figurative, she's always working in the background in a very abstract manner and now the background is so strong, it becomes the foreground.

Val>> But many museums realize they will have to change along with the cities and the population they serve.

Cheech Marin>> You have salsa being the number one condiment in the United States over catsup, so you have these two poles that are coming together and how do you bring them together? This art tour is a gift of here's how to do it. Here's how we understand each other, how to use your potential. Here's a piece by Patssi Valdez.

Val>> She's one of your favorites.

Cheech Marin>> She is one of my favorites. She's a great painter. She's getting better all the time. This is a study of the study in the Gamble House in Pasadena.

Val>> See, now, that's interesting. Gamble, very far from Chicano culture, but she goes in there and then she draws something.

Cheech Marin>> No, actually the Gamble House is in the middle of Chicano culture because of where it's situated. You know, it's not confronted. It is welcoming. That's what we're trying to get across. It's inclusion. Here's another piece.

Val>> Made of glass.

Cheech Marin>> Yeah, made of glass, hand-blown. It's really, really spectacular.

Val>> "Adios".

Cheech Marin>> "Adios". The story behind it, they told me, was when the missionaries first came into Japan, they were Portuguese missionaries. They were trying to get across to the Japanese this concept of Christ and he died on a cross and he went to heaven. He died and he went to heaven, so they thought they wanted to be killed, so they killed them all (laughter). So "Adios" means to God and goodbye. So here's this kind of like na�ve little symbolization of this little innocent bird, tweet-tweet, holding the head of the missionaries (laughter).

Val>> Cheech knows not everyone will fall in love with Chicano art, but he says that's not the point.

Cheech Marin>> You can't love or hate Chicano art unless you see it.

Val>> And you can't see it unless people like Cheech Marin are working to open doors, open minds and open eyes. The Chicano Collection will be on display at Plaza de la Raza in East Los Angeles through August 20.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val>> It was named after the famous city in Italy with all the canals and, in fact, Venice, California has canals. But that's where the similarities end. Since then, it's gone its own way. Vicki Curry takes a look at the city of Venice on this the occasion of its one hundredth anniversary.

Vicki Curry>> If fate had taken a different course, the Venice we know today might not have been. The city was founded by Abbot Kinney, an East Coast businessman who made his fortune in tobacco. A snow storm had delayed travel east, so he headed to a health resort in Sierra Madre in hopes of curing his chronic asthma. When he got there, there were no rooms available, so he slept on top of a billiard table.

Paul Tanck>> He said he had the best sleep of his life that night, so that's why he decided to stay in Southern California.

Vicki Curry>> He began buying and developing land in the Ocean Park section of Santa Monica, but after a falling out with his partners, they decided to split their property on the toss of a coin.

Paul Tanck>> And he won. They had had this other section just south of Ocean Park, which is now Venice. They had already developed the northern section of this and they assumed that he was going to take the developed part. Abbot Kinney was very shrewd and he said, no, I'll take the undeveloped marshland.

Vicki Curry>> He envisioned a resort called Venice of America, modeled after the Italian city. He planned a community of renaissance style architecture and an elaborate system of canals. Paul, I didn't even realize until recently that this traffic circle that we're standing in right now was kind of the heart of the original Venice. It was a lagoon with all these canals going out from it.

Paul Tanck>> Right, right. It was originally about eight feet deep and it's said they could hold almost five thousand bathers. This was the Grand Canal here. This was called Lyon Canal which is now Woodward Avenue. Main Street was called Coral Canal.

Vicki Curry>> Kinney built an auditorium for arts and learning and hoped to inspire a cultural renaissance in America, but he also included a pleasure pier and amusements and, on July 4, 1905, that's what drew forty thousand visitors to the opening of the ocean-side retreat.

Paul Tanck>> Abbot Kinney was a raconteur. He was a promoter and he realized he had to get the people here. Originally, there was a midway which was kind of like a sideshow. He had a little train engine that went around the canal district of Venice so that people could travel around and also so they could see and hopefully buy lots.

Vicki Curry>> So you were telling me that all these buildings around here correspond to what was here in the original days?

Paul Tanck>> Correct, yeah. This building over here is the original bath house. It was opened in 1906. In 1911, they turned it into a local high school, but then that burned down in September of 1914. Right now, it's called the Ace Market Building.

Vicki Curry>> In the late 1980's, local architect, Steve Ehrlich, was commissioned to design three buildings around the circle and each hearkened back to what was there before.

Paul Tanck>> The Antler Hotel was three stories tall, so he was trying to replicate in his own modern way what was going on.

Vicki Curry>> And then behind us, you were saying this used to be the location of the Race for the Clouds --

Paul Tanck>> Race Thru the Clouds. It was a roller coaster. It was built in 1911 by a company called Church and Pryor and it was the first racing roller coaster anywhere in the country. This area behind us, which was the park in 1908, they built a clubhouse called the Cosmos Club. Finally in 1916, Abbot Kinney took it over as his private residence, enlarged it and that's where he lived until his death.

Vicki Curry>> That house still exists today, but was moved to Sixth Avenue. Irving Tabor, Kinney's long-time chauffer, was given the house after his death, but at the time, blacks weren't allowed to live in that district.

Navalette Tabor Bailey>> He was more of a companion. He traveled all over the country with him.

Vicki Curry>> Navalette Tabor Bailey is Irving Tabor's niece. She moved to Venice in 1915 when she was six months old and still lives on the lot on Westminster Avenue that her father bought in 1914.

Navalette Tabor Bailey>> I was a child growing up in Venice and we had everything. The canals, the pier and the ocean.

Vicki Curry>> And the Pioneer Bakery, a local business started in 1908. It's still family-run and it's been at the same location on Rose Avenue since 1917.

Jean Baptiste Garacochea>> My great-grandfather came to California from the Pyrenees in 1880. The family lived upstairs. My grandfather grew up upstairs. My father grew up upstairs. We've always stayed on this site because our roots are really here in Venice.

Vicki Curry>> Venice thrived until Abbot Kinney's death in 1920. In the years following, local politics became mired in corruption and city services were lacking. In 1925, the residents of the city of Venice voted to be annexed to Los Angeles and the community began to change.

Paul Tanck>> In my opinion, it was because of the automobile. They didn't plan to have cars and everybody had their cars. There were also problems with the actual physical engineering of the canals and there was a lot of sewage.

Vicki Curry>> In 1929, the city of Los Angeles filled in the canals of Venice. Navalette Bailey and her father, who had a trucking company, worked on the project.

Navalette Tabor Bailey>> If he didn't have a driver, I would drive one of the trucks down there, dump a load and go back and get some more dirt. Venice never seemed to be the same after that.

Paul Tanck>> There are still some existing canals south of here. They were of a different track and they said, hey, we don't need to worry about them, and luckily, they're the ones that still exist today.

Vicki Curry>> The pier remained and popular even during the Depression and World War II. But in 1946 when the Abbot Kinney Company's lease expired, Los Angeles refused to renew it. The Venice Pier closed and the area began to deteriorate.

Paul Tanck>> Nobody wanted to live there. That's when the beats took over, the beatniks. There was the Venice West Caf�. There was the Gas House where Big Daddy Nord had his readings and spoke there.

Vicki Curry>> The city launched a revitalization effort and, by 1965, five hundred fifty Venice buildings were demolished. But before any new development could happen, the hippies moved in.

Paul Tanck>> All these lots that we see were mainly vacant, so there was a lot of people living out of their vans or, if there were houses, they were just very small shacks.

Vicki Curry>> But the city's renewal efforts continued with the building of an eighteen-mile bike path along the coast in 1972.

Paul Tanck>> Actually, in my opinion, the bike path led to the opening of Venice which then led to the people moving to the canals which then led to finally, I think it was in the early 1990's, when they redid all the canals.

Vicki Curry>> More people started coming to Venice throughout the 1970's and 1980's. Entertainers and entrepreneurs set up shop on the Boardwalk and Venice regained the carnival-like atmosphere of its earliest days.

Jean Baptiste Garacochea>> It still seems like it's hanging onto the kind of cultural values that it holds. There's still a lot of artists, a lot of really creative people. You know, I think that's one of the great things about Venice. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Val>> If you'd like information on all the events that are happening around the Venice Centennial, you can go to their website at venicecentennial.com. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

The need for more schools is a given, but what do you say to owners of homes and businesses forced to give up their property?

>> We feel like David and Goliath. Here's the community center and we've got all the services that serve Los Angeles and here's Los Angeles Unified School District which is a gigantic entity.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.

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