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Life & Times Transcript

2/12/07

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

They were here first, but Blue Herons aren't always the best of neighbors. How far should we go to save wildlife?

Gary George>> Well, the reason they are where they are is because there is nowhere else. This is the where else. This is the last place they have. Where else are they going to go?

Denny Lund>> Well, my customers have a right to sit out in the sun and enjoy this as much as the birds do.

Val Zavala>> And then, they did more than play bongos and recite poetry. How did the Beat Generation shape southern California culture?

These stories and more next 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>> It's a case of humans versus herons, Great Blue Herons, who have taken up residence in trees along the coast after being forced out of their native wetlands. Now some people believe they should be moved again. As Hena Cuevas found out, the herons are creating quite a flak.

Hena Cuevas>> When customers come to the Schooner or Later Restaurant in Long Beach, they're always greeted with a smile, but sometimes their dining experience is hampered by something else.

Denny Lund>> We have a lot of customers that don't want an umbrella out here on the patio and we have to explain to them that you need to have the umbrella for your own protection.

Hena Cuevas>> Denny Lund is the restaurant's owner. His biggest problem? Herons, more specifically, what comes out of them.

Denny Lund>> With the height of the tree and the prevailing winds, it absolutely rains down on the patio itself. People say, well, put something right below the tree. Well, the defecation doesn’t fall straight down. It comes as a slant like a rain would.

Hena Cuevas>> He's put up umbrellas and, once a week, he hoses down the area. He says the problem began about six years ago after a flock of Great Blue Herons took up residence in these four palm trees on the edge of his patio. These are pretty big birds. I think they're about four feet tall, so I'm sure --

Denny Lund>> -- yeah, I would say three to four feet. When they release, I would say that it's probably about a cupful. It's quite a bit and it's a very milky looking substance and quite disgusting.

Hena Cuevas>> And it splatters pretty far.

Denny Lund>> Yeah, yeah.

Hena Cuevas>> And sometimes the herons drop parts of their meals, and they eat more than just fish.

Denny Lund>> We've experienced dead rats and other dead animals that, as they're flying in toward the nest, they inadvertently drop those right in the middle of the patio.

Hena Cuevas>> And that's why Lund wants to relocate the palms to another spot away from his customers.

Denny Lund>> I've counted the number of palms in this marina and it exceeds one thousand palms. What we're suggesting is moving four of the one thousand to another location where hopefully the birds will choose that location to breed in the palms.

Hena Cuevas>> Lund's problem is one that's being repeated all along the coast as more and more areas are developed.

Gary George>> The issue, of course, is urbanization of southern California.

Hena Cuevas>> Gary George is the Executive Director of the Los Angeles Audubon Society. He says that, as human demand for oceanfront property increases, animals are being displaced. Great Blue Herons, for example, live near swamps and marshes and, of the wetlands in southern California, more than ninety percent are gone.

Gary George>> They're adapting to cypress trees, eucalyptus trees, melaleuca trees, palms, for nesting and roosting habitats because their natural native habitat is gone.

Hena Cuevas>> That's the case of these herons in Marina del Rey. They've moved into these cypress trees.

Dusty Crane>> They just like high trees.

Hena Cuevas>> Dusty Crane works for the Department of Beaches and Harbors.

Dusty Crane>> Any tree will do for them. They just want to be able to look down.

Hena Cuevas>> I also heard that they also like palm trees quite a bit.

Dusty Crane>> They do, but there's not as much protection in a palm tree as there is in these.

Hena Cuevas>> The cypress trees are near this 1960s apartment complex that's targeted for destruction. As part of the development plans in Marina del Rey, two hundred new condominiums and three thousand square feet of retail space will take its place. But residents are worried about what will happen to the birds when the trees are cut down.

Dusty Crane>> There's a lot of different ways you can look at it, but we've talked about it and have considered trying to relocate these trees so that there will be trees over there for them to build their nests in.

Hena Cuevas>> But George sees a problem with moving trees that serve as nesting sites.

Gary George>> They won't do it. They're native birds. They're wild birds. They won't go. You can try to attract them somewhere, but they're faithful to their nests. They're going to come back to the same nest every year.

Dusty Crane>> They're pretty versatile in their approach on relocating, so we really don't feel that there is going to be a problem with them moving, especially if it's in the locale.

Gary George>> If there was the same kind of planting and the same kind of vegetation, they would adapt. But Great Blue Herons especially are nest-faithful, so they'll return to the same site and the same nest every year.

Hena Cuevas>> George believes these herons are outcasts from the Ballona Creek Wetlands located between LAX and Marina del Rey. For fifteen years, this land has been at the center of a battle between environmentalists and developers. In 1999, construction of the Playa Vista development began, but environmentalists were able to save a small portion of the wetlands which are now protected by a trust.

Gary George>> And as the Ballona Wetlands shrank, especially with the development of Playa Vista, I believe those birds were displaced from those wetlands.

Hena Cuevas>> His fear is the Marina del Rey birds won't be able to adapt to yet another move.

Gary George>> It's the conflict of humans versus animals and which one takes the precedent.

Dusty Crane>> We certainly like the birds and feel that they are an important component to our area and community and want to make sure that any development is going to preserve their healthy lifestyle.

Hena Cuevas>> The development company declined an on-camera interview, but told us their plans include working with the Department of Fish and Game in relocating the trees. Approval for construction is still pending.

The Great Blue Heron isn't considered an endangered species, but at one point, it was. In the early 1900s, its feathers were very valuable, so the government had to put limits on the hunting and capture of the birds. The species has proven to be so adaptable that now its numbers are back to the original levels. But even though the birds are resilient, George argues that eventually they will run out of places to live.

Gary George>> The reason they are where they area is because there is nowhere else. This is the where else. This is the last place they have. Where else are they going to go?

Hena Cuevas>> And that's the question confronting restaurant owner Lund back in Long Beach. The city has agreed to let him move the four palm trees, but he's still facing opposition.

Denny Lund>> Some people are a bit extreme and they don't want that to happen. They say no, no to everything. "Denny, if you want anything done, cover your patio." Well, my customers have a right to sit out in the sun and enjoy this as much as the birds do.

Hena Cuevas>> His problem months are coming up. December and January are the primary breeding months for Blue Herons, so any relocation would have to take place after that.

Denny Lund>> I love the birds. They're beautiful. I just see that there has to be a certain level of protection afforded to places like mine, restaurant owners and other businesses that are being devastated by this.

Hena Cuevas>> According to George, this debate will go on as long as urban areas continue to encroach on wildlife habitats.

Gary George>> We have to learn to appreciate the fact that they're here instead of wishing they'd get out of the way. They're certainly not any messier or noisier than human beings.

Hena Cuevas>> Well, maybe, except for the defecation part. 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".

Val Zavala>> The latest statistics on hate crimes show that most hate crimes are not whites against blacks or even whites against Latinos, but rather Latinos against African Americans. The recent killing of a twelve year old black girl by Latino gang members is fueling the tension, but what's at the heart of this prejudice against African Americans and what can we do about it?

For some answers, I talked to author and community activist, Earl Ofari Hutchinson. We met in the Crenshaw District not far from where a three year old Latino girl was killed in a gang shooting last year. So Earl, you've been living in this neighborhood for a long time. You've been watching black-brown relations develop. What's the latest trend that's actually quite disturbing when it comes to hate crimes?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson>> And it's been very disturbing, the trend on black and Latino, Latino and black. Or put another way, black on Latino and Latino on black, hate crime violence. We thought in the beginning that it was just gang-related, but it's much more than that. You've got so many tensions. You've got so many competing interests between blacks and Latinos and you've got a neighborhood that's in transition.

So it's almost a painful adjustment that's happening between blacks and Latinos in an area like Baldwin Village and certainly other parts of Los Angeles where you have the transition. Unfortunately, the ugly face of that, the very disturbing, even tormenting face of that, has been the hate violence and the murders and the assaults and the attacks that each group is perpetrating on each other.

Val Zavala>> But you're saying that, at this point, it's mainly Latino against blacks. Blacks are more the victim, yes?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson>> It's both. The more spectacular instances of violence that we've seen in recent days have been Latino on black, but there have also been a number of crimes, murders, attacks, assaults, by blacks on Latinos, so it's across the board. It's not just one group on another, but both.

Val Zavala>> In fact, a very sad shooting happened right here in these apartments. Is that right nearby?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson>> Absolutely. As a matter of fact, a three year old Latino girl was a victim of a drive-by shooting. Unfortunately, tragically, it was gang-related and it was two African Americans that were involved. So it really underscored once again in an area like this where you do have blacks and Latinos, but a transition is undergoing in this area where you do have these kinds of tensions.

The good thing about it, though, I will say, many Latinos and many African Americans came together. They had two or three kind of impromptu memorials on the street, so it seemed like, for a minute anyway, there was a sense of unity crossing the ethnic lines showing the sympathy, showing the empathy, and that was a good thing.

Val Zavala>> But, of course, those are just moments and then the pattern -- you know, it's like the good people come together and they say we need dialog, we need unity and so forth, but they're not reaching the ones who are creating the violence.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson>> One of the big problems over and over again when you talk about let's have unity, let's have dialog, let's have these meetings, let's bring together the community leaders, religious leaders, elected officials, those aren't the ones that are committing the acts. Those aren't the shooters. Those aren't the ones that are in the street creating the problems that they have there.

Val Zavala>> It's great that they come together. It's wonderful, but that's not where the problems are.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson>> But having said that, suppose we didn't have dialog at some level. Suppose we didn't have an attempt and an effort on the part of people of good will to bring about unity and peace. Suppose we didn't have those talks. Suppose we didn't have that outreach. It would be that much worse.

Val Zavala>> And what I found interesting that I learned recently and didn't realize is that, when Latinos come across the border from Mexico or Central America and so forth, they bring with them a bias against the blacks even before even meeting one African American here in the United States, so they're bringing that bias with them. How do we counter that?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson>> Well, you're right. There is a lot of racial baggage. When you're in Latin American countries, Mexico, Brazil, Panama, Central America, you name it, they see American television. They see many of the stereotypes, so they're not black-friendly or minority-friendly.

When you go in those countries and you really look at the pecking order there, the social pecking order, the lowest of the lowest are easily the dark skins, the Indians or the Afro-Latinos of those countries. So what happens is, there's already a mindset coming here that dark-skinned, black, African Americans, all the negative baggage that's attached to that.

How do you break that down? It still comes back to education. By that, I mean where you have community activists and community leaders working together with people of good will, Latinos of good will, the immigrants -- not just immigrants, but also those that have been here for a while, second and third generation. They have many of the same racial biases too -- really trying to get to the schools with the young people, in the workplace, in the neighborhoods. We're seeing more and more blending now in religious institutions, churches. More Latinos and African Americans are worshiping together.

How do you break down those stereotypes and all that negative baggage? People have to begin to relate to people as people and not as a stereotype, on the ground, in an interactive, day-to-day living, breathing, working relationship, getting to know people as people. I think, once that happens, you begin to break down the racial fears, the paranoia, the stereotypes and the baggage and mindset that's there that says this group is somehow terrible, bad, worse, and we can disrespect them. We can devalue them and even take their lives.

Val Zavala>> So when you talk about somebody bringing everybody together, creating a conference or whatnot, who starts that?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson>> I always felt that anytime that you have a shooting or an act of violence in any of these communities, right away there should be an instant response.

Val Zavala>> In that community, very, very local?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson>> In that community, exactly. People have to come out and say this, "This is not our community. We don't support this. We oppose this. We are in fact going to get involved to make sure that this doesn't happen again."

Val Zavala>> That does happen to some extent. You see these marches after these shootings. People say, "We're going to take back our streets" and all that.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson>> And that's good and that should be encouraged, but there's not enough of that. It has to be sustained. Then out of that energy what has to happen is a program and a plan and hopefully resources from the leadership in the city to back up what people are trying to do. So challenging and engaging people on the ground, the leadership getting involved, I think is all important and a good plan, but also sustaining that plan. A march and a walk is fine, but that's only momentary. It has to be sustained over time.

Val Zavala>> So you don't see it coming from Villaraigosa and Bratton? You see it coming from strong leadership in all these different neighborhoods that can respond to the local issues and yet get resources and support from the guys at the top, from the city?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson>> What I see here, Villaraigosa, the Los Angeles City Council, the Board of Supervisors, Chief Bratton, Sheriff Baca, all the powers that be, they have the resources. But the energy, the initiative, must come from the community. Once that's there, they have to back them up, they have to support them.

Val Zavala>> I think everyone would agree that we need to understand and get to know each other better, but what's the mechanism for that?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson>> The leadership has to step up to the plate and they have to step up to the plate in an appropriate form. We have had several black and Latino forums, dialog sessions, conferences, throughout 2006 and certainly we're going to have them in 2007 too. What do we do at these conferences? Is it just a talking session, a feel-good session?

Val Zavala>> Yeah. Do they make any difference?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson>> Well, actually, they can. They can if two things happen. One, if people commit themselves to making sure they make a difference because they have to be involved, because it can't just be empty words, rhetoric, resolutions and everybody goes away and feels good about it and forgets it. The second thing is, beyond the commitment, I think resources have to be there.

I think there has to be a strong commitment, and we called for this, summits that are sponsored by the city of Los Angeles where you bring together gang intervention specialists, former gang members, gang members, religious leaders, community activists, community leaders, where you bring them together.

You put them in rooms and say, "Don't come out of here unless you come up with some solutions and you pledge to implement those solutions and you take them back to the community, especially young people in the communities where you live and work. You cannot sit on the sidelines. You have to get involved." I feel very passionate about this (laughter). I get choked up.

Val Zavala>> Earl Ofari Hutchinson, thank you. I know you're one of the people on the street level, on the grassroots level. I appreciate your work and your thoughts.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson>> Always a pleasure.

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>> Before the Hippies claimed the spotlight, there was the Beat Generation and, no, they weren't just in New York. Cafes from the Sunset Strip to Newport Beach were stages for Los Angeles's Beat Generation scene. Vicki Curry talked to two pop culture historians at the site of a former Beat hangout in Venice.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> Southern California's Beat scene may not be as well known as New York's or San Francisco's, but local authors, Domenic Priore and Brian Chidester, say it did play a significant role.

Domenic Priore>> I think it was a bit more relaxed atmosphere in Los Angeles because there wasn't that sense of snobbery that existed in San Francisco or in New York where everybody was like there were certain rules and regulations, you know, and you could bring ideas from outside of the cult and it would sort of filter in and become a larger, grander and more dynamic spirit.

Vicki Curry>> Southern California's Beat scene started in Venice, so that's where I met Priore and Chidester at the gallery known in the 1950s as the Venice West Café.

Brian Chidester>> It's pretty much the hub of where like the whole poetry scene happened in the greater Los Angeles area. I personally think that it started out as the Beat because it was out of the spotlight. Allen Ginsberg read here and actually signed the wall.

Vicki Curry>> And just down the boardwalk was another Beat hangout, the Gas House.

Brian Chidester>> The Gas House, I would say, was less professional than the Venice West. Nobody got paid anything at the Gas House. From what I understand, it was open twenty-four hours at a certain point. You know, it had abstract art on the walls and they had a big bathtub sitting in the center of the room and that's what you read out of. You sat in a bathtub and you read poems. The Gas House was covered in Life magazine in 1959.

Domenic Priore>> When things started out here in Venice at the Gas House and the Venice West Café, you had this clutter of various different artists and writers doing all these things. They became more well-known at the Ferus Gallery on La Cienega. They started that in 1957.

Vicki Curry>> The Ferus Gallery showed works by seminal artists like Ed Kienholz, Robert Irwin and Ed Rouche. The gallery made headlines with its first show by local artist, Wallace Berman, who was arrested for displaying obscene drawings.

Brian Chidester>> Berman was also later like appropriate on the cover of Sgt. Pepper. He was one of the characters. That piece of assemblage art that was done for The Beatles' 1967 album was, in some ways, it's lineage can be traced back to Los Angeles with Kienholz and Berman.

Vicki Curry>> Ferus Gallery was also the site of Andy Warhol's first solo exhibition. It's where he unveiled his celebrated paintings of the Campbell's Soup can.

Brian Chidester>> It was quite significant to take that out of its context to say let's look at how society sort of creates --

Domenic Priore -- as a reflection of what we deal with every single day and how we are perceiving our surroundings.

Brian Chidester>> They saw the importance of pop and kitsch, you know, our contemporary society.

Vicki Curry>> As Los Angeles Beat art scene exploded, so did its music scene. Discontented with 1950s rock and roll, the Beatniks started making their own kind of music.

[Film Clip]

Domenic Priore>> That's why folk music became popular in the early 1960s because kids didn't have rock and roll to rebel with anymore, so they found this new thing that was sort of connected to the Beat Generation.

[Film Clip]

Brian Chidester>> Beatniks particularly read a lot of their poetry to bebop jazz. Bebop jazz was completely different than swing. That was like music that was created to dance to, and bebop jazz was created as something you like listening and considering and meditating on.

Vicki Curry>> Coffee houses and jazz joints popped up all over southern California. A barn in Topanga Canyon called Bob DeWitt's, the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, the Café Frankenstein in Laguna Beach, and countless places in Hollywood like the Garden of Allah, Pandora's Box, the Unicorn, the Haig and the Café Renaissance. And the setting for the Beat movie, "Dirty Feet" was the Prison of Socrates in Balboa.

[Film Clip]

Domenic Priore>> In Malibu Beach, there was Positano's Coffee House which had, you know, surfers and Beats hanging out there. So there was this extension of surfing and Beat Generation velocity going on together. The surfers were sort of like dropouts or were considered dropouts at the time, so the idea --

Brian Chidester>> -- foreigners, riff-raff.

Domenic Priore>> We went down to Hermosa Beach and there were two really great nightspots there. One of them was the Insomnia Café which was a Beat coffee house. Directly across the street was the Lighthouse Café which was a top jazz joint in Los Angeles during the 1950s and into the 1960s. It had a lot of diverse interest here because people lived in the neighborhoods that were flung out all over the greater Los Angeles area, so they brought to the scene their own version of the way they saw the world.

There were about two years there where rock and roll and folk and all jazz started to meld together. There was a place called Shelly's Mann-Hole on Cahuenga which was a jazz club. People were getting all these influences from jazz, folk and rock, you know, melding them together.

Vicki Curry>> Another hot spot was the Troubadour. Bob Dylan had a private jam session there in 1964 that critics say foreshadowed his switch from folk to rock.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> And it was at the Troubadour where the Byrds played their version of "Mr. Tambourine Man" for the first time.

[Film Clip]

Brian Chidester>> For them to play protest music and to take really expansive world music like that and put it in the setting of Beat that could be danced the Twist to, it was quite a bold move. Based on that twist, the Beatles came out to Hollywood and dropped LSD with the Byrds for the first time. So much came out of the Byrds in such a short time, so we consider that to be like the main crux of what the coffee houses in Los Angeles had brought musically.

There are two years where the explosion of nightclubs just went beyond where it had ever gone before on the strip and the Los Angeles groups are influencing all of the great pop artists of the world, so that's when the Sunset Strip really is artistic nirvana.

Vicki Curry>> Until the authorities started shutting down the clubs and imposing curfews.

Domenic Priore>> The scene had to leave Los Angeles. What had started here so incredibly strong, you know, it had to go to a place that was more accepting. So the people that were involved in all these bands and the nightclubs on Sunset Strip created the Monterey Pop Festival in Monterey, California.

Woodstock was basically an imitation of the Monterey Pop Festival for the New York side of the country. So we did kind of spread this out from Los Angeles. What ended in the Strip was the beginning of something else and that became social consciousness that spread throughout the country through pop musicals.

Brian Chidester>> It's amazing how what happened in such a small place where, you know, people would sit around and drink coffee and play chess and, you know, read those kinds of pieces of literature would eventually become the voice of the generation.

Vicki Curry>> The Beats might have started out as deadbeats, but they ended up influencing not just pop culture, but social convention.

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.

Sponsored in part by:


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