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Life & Times Transcript
08/14/06 This program is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- There's a change in the air along Venice boardwalk. Will character give way to commerce? Dave "Zuma Dogg" Elliott>> The bottom line is, they want to turn Venice Beach into Manhattan Beach. They want to turn it into Third Street Promenade. Linda Lucks>> It was out of control. Everyone agreed that it was out of control. Val Zavala>> And then, you'll find them draped on a door, rolling off a wheel, or piling on a pegboard, but you'll never find them boring. They're members of the Diavolo Dance Theater. It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times. Announcer>> 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 Zavala>> The fun and funky characters we've come to expect along Venice Beach are under pressure to conform. There's a feud brewing between unregulated vendors and more conventional businesses. But what is this feud about and does it spell an end to the wacky Venice Beach we all enjoy? Hena Cuevas takes a closer look at this culture clash. Hena Cuevas>> It's Los Angeles's second most popular tourist attraction after Disneyland: Venice Beach. [Film Clip] Hena Cuevas>> Every year, thousands of people visit its famous boardwalk filled with funky performers and unusual wares. Even these unconventional canals built more than a hundred years ago gave Venice its name and its reputation for the unusual. But the carnival-like atmosphere that made it so famous around the world is slowly changing and performers like Dave Elliott, or "Zuma Dogg" as he prefers to be called, don't like it. Dave "Zuma Dogg" Elliott>> They want to turn Venice Beach into Manhattan Beach. They want to turn it into Third Street Promenade. They want to raise the property values and that's all well and good, but there's that little thorn in their side called the First Amendment. Hena Cuevas>> For years, Venice has tried to regulate the large numbers of vendors and performers on the boardwalk with mixed results. Residents who wanted more control were frustrated. Linda Lucks>> This is a beach. This is a public park. It has to be fine for all the people. Hena Cuevas>> Linda Lucks is a member of the Venice Neighborhood Council. She's lived in the area for more than thirty years. She says attempts to limit what was sold, preached and performed were challenged in court. Many past ordinances were struck down as unconstitutional. Linda Lucks>> As of last summer, there were no regulations and the police just threw up their hands and said, you know, we don't have any operating instructions, so it pretty much was a catch-all and it was out of control. Everyone agreed that it was out of control. Hena Cuevas>> Too many vendors were pouring in. Linda Lucks>> There were people coming from all over the city selling things on the beach side of the boardwalk, which is public park. They were buying things downtown and selling them here. They were selling clothing. They were selling furniture, I mean, everything. There was no order whatsoever and no one was happy with that. Hena Cuevas>> Especially merchants like Steve Heumann who runs Sidewalk Enterprises. He says the businesses he manages were having a difficult time competing with the growing numbers of street vendors. Steve Heumann>> There are certainly people who want to be able to sell what they want to sell out there and they want to be able to have a store on public property, pay no rent, compete with people across the way on private property. Hena Cuevas>> Also, there were so many vendors that artists were pushed out of the available spaces. So on March 25, a new ordinance went into effect. It basically limits sales to just art. Anything handmade is acceptable. Anything commercially or mass-produced is banned. Steve Heumann>> They have largely gotten rid of the unfair competition, the people that go buy products and come out here and try to sell them. Yeah, it's drastically reduced and, from my perspective, a hundred percent better. Hena Cuevas>> But along the way, it has also limited what some performers can sell. For example, rapper "Zuma Dogg" can't sell his trademark t-shirts anymore. Dave "Zuma Dogg" Elliott>> To try to appease the stores on the other side who are paying the taxes, which is perfectly understandable, they're trying to get all the commercial merchandise off the beach. Now unfortunately, that sweeps up a whole bunch of people protected under the Constitution of the First Amendment under the rug along with it. Hena Cuevas>> So he's taken the cause to City Hall. >> "Our next speaker is "Zuma Dogg". Dave "Zuma Dogg" Elliott>> "I'm Zuma Dogg. We're going to break it down. Everybody pay attention right here. I got an important announcement. First of all, if you want to find out the problems happening at Venice Beach with illegal, unconstitutional police activity, tune in to Comcast. . ." Hena Cuevas>> He's a performer and treats City Hall like a stage. His crazy rants even got the Los Angeles Times to cover the story and he knows his antics are a way to bring attention to the problem. Dave "Zuma Dogg" Elliott>> If you go to the City Council and you talk into the microphone with a bunch of boring legalese in a monotone quiet voice, nobody's going to pay attention. They're going to continue to sip on their coffee and look on their computers and not pay attention until your two minutes are up. But when Zuma Dogg comes up with the heat -- [Film Clip] >> "Thank you. Time is up, Mr. Dogg." Hena Cuevas>> How much of an impact he's having is still to be seen, but Lucks says Zuma Dogg is in the minority and most support the new law. Linda Lucks>> I think this is the best we've done so far. I've seen less opposition. More vocal, but many fewer people are complaining than have in the past. Hena Cuevas>> A lot of the complaints, however, are coming from another area and has to do with how spaces along the boardwalk are allotted. [Film Clip] Hena Cuevas>> Every Tuesday at 8:30 in the morning, vendors wait to hear their names called and find out what space they'll have for the week. [Film Clip] Hena Cuevas>> Victor Jauregui works for Los Angeles Parks and Recreation. He says the lottery was established a year and a half ago as a form of control. Victor Jauregui>> There was some infighting among each other as well and then you had other individuals that would take large portions of the boardwalk and just kind of hog them up and not want to share with one another. So there's a lot of problems out there. Hena Cuevas>> Enforcement is up to the LAPD. Hayden>> And when I set up, I just keep everything inside the line because you can be ticketed for that too. Hena Cuevas>> Hayden, who didn't want to use his last name, is an acrylic painter. He says the police make doing business a lot tougher. Hayden>> There's been a lot of police harassment of artists, ticketing for really, really minor things, things that they could just give a warning to and people would comply. Like I was here like 8:30 in the morning. My car was completely packed up and they still gave me a ticket. Hena Cuevas>> For what? Hayden>> For being in the space before nine o'clock. Hena Cuevas>> And the performers are also aware of the consequences of going outside their given limits. >> "Excuse me. If Parks and Recreation come by, they're going to give me a ticket for the grass. Come this way. Come in some more." Victor Jauregui>> Our budget has gone up obviously almost double from what we normally would do on a daily basis due to the lottery. We have to keep individuals, personnel, on work duty until about six or seven in the evening to ensure that people out on the boardwalk are following the rules. Hena Cuevas>> So is this a case of Venice Beach tightening its rules so much that it may lose some of its traditional flavor? Dave "Zuma Dogg" Elliott>> It does take a lot of the luster off. You know, you don't have the bands, you don't have the music. They're enforcing the sound ordinances way too strictly. You know, you don't have the nice artistic displays that people used to make. It has lost a lot of the funky flavor. It really has. Linda Lucks>> No one has any intention of stifling creativity, stifling the performers, stopping any of what makes Venice, Venice. It's a question of monitoring and being able to regulate per the Constitution time, manner and location. Dave "Zuma Dogg" Elliott>> "Here's Zuma Dogg, y'all. Welcome to Venice Beach. We got a free concert right now. . ." Hena Cuevas>> Why not go somewhere else to sell your stuff? Dave "Zuma Dogg" Elliott>> This is the place, that's why. I mean, tell me where else I can go where there's half a million people coming by on the weekends where you can just set up on the sidewalk because the federal government says you're allowed to. Where else is that? I'll be the first one to go there, y'all. Hena Cuevas>> It's precisely this anything-goes quality that has made Venice Beach so popular. Now merchants, residents and artists alike are trying to save that spirit each in their own way. [Film Clip] Hena Cuevas>> I'm Hena Cuevas for Life and Times. Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times". Toni Guinyard>> Each year, there are approximately ten thousand earthquakes in the southern California area, but most of those are so small that we don't even feel them. But we do talk about the "big one", when a major earthquake is going to take place. Recent reports state that the San Andreas fault is overdue for a major earthquake, so we wanted to find out more. We came to Caltech and spoke with staff seismologist, Dr. Kate Hutton. Dr. Kate Hutton>> I don't think our view of the southern San Andreas has changed because of the studies that have been talked about. We knew that the last earthquake on the Coachella segment was probably around 1690 and that's a long time for accumulating strains on a fault like the San Andreas. What that story from San Diego did was add some weight to what we already knew. But, yes, strain is accumulating on the San Andreas and it has been a long time. As far as worrying, I think, well, we need to consider it seriously as a hazard, but remember that we're talking about geology here. We really can't say next week versus ten or twenty years from now. We couldn't tell. Toni Guinyard>> Can we assume that the stress is building up? Dr. Kate Hutton>> We know that the stress is building up because there's a motion that we can measure between the North American plate and the Pacific plate and the boundaries of the San Andreas fault. So the faults are creeping along like this. The fault is stuck shut and the stress is accumulating as deformation in the crust. When it reaches the breaking strength of the fault -- the last time it did that was in 1690 -- it will cause an earthquake that will break the whole section of the Coachella Valley segment of the San Andreas like from the Salton Sea up to Palm Springs. Then maybe or maybe not, it will extend farther north into the Riverside-San Bernardino area. We don't know if that's part of the scenario or not. It makes a big difference on the size of the earthquake. Toni Guinyard>> What does it say to the general public when we read stories or hear explanations from geologists, seismologists, geophysicists, and you disagree? You don't see the same data the same way. Dr. Kate Hutton>> Well, I think it's like any science. You know, we're on the cutting edge and we're trying to gather new information and interpret it. The first interpretation may or may not be right and you may have to go and gather more data to answer questions that are raised by your study that you finished. That's normal for science. So in a way, I think the public should not expect pat answers from science because, if it's interest to science, it's on the cutting edge and everything is not known. Toni Guinyard>> Now behind us, this is one of the new tools you have available to us in the media and also to the public. Explain what we're looking at. Dr. Kate Hutton>> Well, what we're looking at is a movie of the seismic waves passing out from an earthquake in the Palm Springs area and passing out across southern California in real time pretty much. So you can see, for this particular quake, if you'd been out here, the shaking would be over, but if you're out here, you're just beginning to feel the earthquake. Toni Guinyard>> Now what can we learn from this, though? We're sitting at home and we can access this on our computers. Dr. Kate Hutton>> Well, this is a graphic display of a simulation that was produced in our super-computing center downstairs, okay? So this display itself may not give a lot of information, but the waves here, for example, stay around a long time in this Coachella Valley because they're sort of trapped in there. The waves enter the soft sediment and they amplify and they can't get out again, so the shaking lasts longer and they're stronger in sedimentary basins. The Los Angeles basin is actually a very big hole in the ground which is a couple of miles deep. It's filled with dirt, if you will, that has been washed off the San Gabriel Mountains and it's very soft. It's like if you have a bowl of Jell-O and you shake the bowl a little bit. The Jell-O moves a lot because it's soft. The same thing is true of these basin areas. Toni Guinyard>> We've become familiar with those big drums. What happened to them? They're no longer here in this room. Dr. Kate Hutton>> Well, basically they became outmoded. First of all, they're not made anymore, so when they break, they're hard to fix. Toni Guinyard>> So you were doing this for our benefit? Dr. Kate Hutton>> And they have been basically movie props for ten years. Toni Guinyard>> Okay, that's not a good thing to know at this point (laughter). Dr. Kate Hutton>> The work is done by our computers, okay? So what we did was we replaced them with a type of display like this where, instead of seeing a quake that was recorded hours ago, you can see it -- oh, it's going to start over in a minute -- you see as it happens as if it were just coming in. So this is a quake that happened a couple of years ago in 2003, but it's very photogenic and you can see how the data comes in to the station that's feeding this display. We can take any quake and make one of these, so next time there's a magnitude whatever that you come out here and cover, we can take that one and we could put in on this display and you can see it as if it were just happening. Toni Guinyard>> Now one of the things you're also doing is you're making it accessible online to the general public and what is it you want us to understand as we access all of these different maps and the data? Dr. Kate Hutton>> Well, I think it's good to have people just generally familiar with all the small earthquakes that we have because it's sort of a reminder that we live in earthquake country and it's nice to be prepared. Toni Guinyard>> Are we getting closer to the point where we can predict earthquakes? Dr. Kate Hutton>> Well, I think we've learned a lot and we've learned a lot about where the hazards are, what type of quakes happen in different areas, how the effects happen in different areas. What we don't have, and is the most difficult, is the date. If, in terms of earthquake prediction, you're expecting the date and the hour, you know, of a quake way in advance, we still can't do that. Another thing I think people don't realize about earthquake prediction is, like weather prediction, it's statistical, okay? People would seem to be expecting exact dates in advance. If we were very lucky, we might be able to do as well as the weather service. But with weather, you can see what's happening in the atmosphere. You can take measurements. With earthquakes, it's five or ten miles below us where the key things are happening. So we have a long way to catch up to get to the point where weather prediction is right now, and we know that that's not great sometimes. Toni Guinyard>> Dr. Kate Hutton, thank you so much for unscrambling all of this for us and thank you for spending some time with Life and Times. Dr. Kate Hutton>> You're welcome. Thank you. Announcer>> 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 Zavala>> They defy traditional notions of a dance company. Diavolo is a cross between dancers and acrobatics and they'll thrill you even if you aren't a dance fan. Vicki Curry met artistic director, Jacques Heim. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> It's part dance and part acrobatics with maybe a little circus act thrown in. It's called Diavolo and the man behind it is Jacques Heim. Jacques Heim>> I want to touch my audience. I want them to be inspired. I want them to have fun. Vicki Curry>> Heim is founder and artistic director of Diavolo Dance Theater. He's trying to redefine dance so that it's more accessible to mainstream audiences. Jacques Heim>> Modern dance for a lot of audiences, for general audiences, is very strange. It's very obscure. Dance is on the way to be instinct a little bit and I think why Diavolo is great is that it's mixing the art and entertainment together. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> If anyone is going to have a non-dance dance company, it's Jacques Heim. Growing up in Paris, he never thought about dance, but when he went to Middlebury College in Vermont, he took a class that changed his life. Jacques Heim>> I was going to go into theater when I arrived in this country in America, but then because my accent was so strong, people would say, "Jacques, I'm sorry, but you cannot do Tennessee Williams or Shakespeare. Nobody will understand you." So then my friends told me, "Why don't you come in and take some dance class? You don't have to speak." I really discovered the power of movement. For me, it was another form of theater. Vicki Curry>> Heim got a Masters in choreography at CalArts and, when he graduated, he decided to start his own company. Jacques Heim>> And I wanted to do something different, so I look what is out there. And because I'm very fluent by texture, by environment, that's why I want to mix movement in structure. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> Diavolo's signature is large set pieces like this wheel. The dancers use it as a springboard for a flurry of hyperkinetic movements and athletic feats. Jacques Heim>> I'm not a traditional choreographer because I'm not a dancer, so I want to create pieces that are very visual, very organic, very visceral. Vicki Curry>> When Heim wants to create a new piece, he starts with a new structure and then asks the dancers to just play around on it. Ken Arata>> He just said, "Get on it and go" and about half an hour later, I had to show him a couple of things I had on it and we kind of collaborated on what I could do here and there on it, going over it, around it, through it, and it's a great feeling to be able to just create. [Film Clip] Jacques Heim>> So if I had to create a salad that is a Diavolo salad, it would be a little bit of everyday movement, pedestrian movement. It would be a little bit of gymnastics. It would be a little bit of acrobatics. You add a little ballet, a little bit of modern dance. You put structures. You put music, costumes and lights. You mix it and you have a Diavolo. Vicki Curry>> To make a Diavolo salad, you need ingredients you don't usually find in a dance company. Jacques Heim>> So I have dancers from the ballet background, modern background, gymnastic, acrobatic, theater backgrounds and we all come together in our space and collaborate. [Film Clip] Jacques Heim>> I've said artists are all very abstract. What we do is live abstract paintings. I tell my audience that actually that, as they watch the piece, they're actually in a way creating fifty percent of the piece. They have to create their own story. In a way, it has a theme underneath our pieces, but it's still very abstract. So therefore we do this piece called "Trajectory" which is sort of the abstract boat. That's a piece about destination and destiny. [Film Clip] Jacques Heim>> We have a piece called "Detour", this twelve-foot high wall with the pegs coming out and it's very intense. That's a piece about the cares of everyday life through an abstract military obstacle course. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> Most Diavolo dances are dangerous to perform, but Heim says that's not just for show. He thinks danger forces people to work together. He first experienced this after the Northridge earthquake in 1994. Jacques Heim>> I did not know my neighbors, but it's only when the earthquake happened, when we became in a state of survival, that all my neighbors came out. Suddenly, we were talking with each other. We were sharing water and food and blankets and we were helping one another. There I realized suddenly a small community on our street started to form and that's what I wanted with my dance company. Vicki Curry>> The audience not only sees this teamwork in action, they hear it. The dancers call out to each other during the performances. [Film Clip] Garrett Wolf>> The flyer will not see her catchers until the very last second, so she really needs to know before she jumps off into space that her catchers are there. So that's the reason why there's so much communication on stage. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> As a gymnast in the group, these kinds of athletic acts are second nature. But for the classically trained dancers, it takes a little more time to adjust. Crystal Zibalese>> Some of the bigger flies are a little nerve-wracking at first, but you always feel pretty comfortable with the group. Everyone is really focused and, you know, works together and, if you're ever in trouble, they're there to help you. Jacques Heim>> "Guys, help each other, talk to each other, communicate to one another because you don't want something negative. I want to see touch." Vicki Curry>> Heim teaches that same sense of teamwork in Diavolo's education program. Jacques Heim>> I love teaching because it's a way of sharing. It's a way of collaborating with students and teaching is dear to me. With Diavolo, I wanted all of my dancers to be able to teach because it is very important for them to understand about communication and understand about sharing ideas. [Film Clip] Jacques Heim>> Education is very important and I believe it's very important to inspire kids so eventually, you know, kids can see that art is not really a very strange thing and it can be part of their whole life. [Film Clip] Vicki Curry>> It's all part of the mission of Diavolo Dance Theater. Take the mystery out of dance, make it exciting and, hopefully, win over new fans. Jacques Heim>> Diavolo is a sort of mixture between the art form and the entertainment form. That's very valuable because then people can realize that dance is not so strange after all. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Announcer>> 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. This program was made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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