KPCC reporters on Driving While Black, be happy in downtown LA with kids, Getty Foundation director assesses Pacific Standard Time, and why restaurants are so damn noisy.
Mom, activist, & LA trial junkie Linda Jay hopes to get her own justice in the courtroom
High-profile court cases can suck a lot of us in - heck, there's even a whole television channel devoted to broadcasting trials. We're drawn to lawyers' fiery words, jurors' sympathetic faces and the judge's strong voice echoing over them all, deciding a person's fate.
One woman goes as far as to call herself a "trial junkie." She doesn't just watch trials on T.V., she goes to see them in person.
Linda Jay is 55 and she lives in South Central Los Angeles. She’s been going to high-profile court trials for 20 years.
“I’m a mother and just, your everyday housewife - or, I shouldn’t say that. Wait, I’m gonna take that back - every day person," she said.
Jay has lived most of her life in L.A. She was a court clerk, and loved the “judge shows” on T.V.
“I like Judge Mathis. I like Judge Maybelline. I like Judge Judy - all of ‘em," she said. "Basically, I’m hooked on anything having to do with the justice system.”
It didn’t take long before Jay’s enthusiasm for all things justice led to her first court trial as a spectator.
It was the case of the state of California versus Lawrence Powell, Timothy Wind, Theodore Briseno and Stacey Koon - four Los Angeles police officers charged in the beating of motorist Rodney King.
Jay said she followed the L.A.P.D. officers’ trial for months on T.V. and wanted to see it in person.
“I was just trying to see, were they going to give Rodney King justice this time because so many times in the neighborhood, back in the 90’s, we had police brutality. People were telling the community leaders and the politicians that we have injustice going on in our community, but nobody was listening," she said. "This was one time we had a tape to prove it. With the Rodney King tape, we felt we would be vindicated.”
Jay said she packed up her mom, sister and daughter to drive up to the courthouse in Simi Valley. Weeks of testimony were about to wind down.
“As soon as we got to the courthouse, we saw reporters run out there, coming to their cars, saying ‘we got a verdict, we got a verdict, the verdict is in, we’ve got a verdict!’ My heart starting pumping, adrenaline rushing and I said ‘I want to be in that courtroom, just to see what was going to go down,'" she said.
The jury ultimately found the four officers - Powell, Wind, Briseno and Koon - not guilty. Those verdicts weren’t just hard for Jay to swallow. They were the fuel that sparked the L.A. riots.
“Right after that verdict was read, when I walked out of that courtroom, I was so despaired, I felt so discouraged – dismayed -about the whole system that I didn’t want no one talking to me," Jay said. "I felt like me, being a black lady with young children, what do I have to tell my children?”
Jay said she didn’t let her experience at the L.A.P.D. officers’ trial stop her from attending more in the future.
“Just because one jury made a mistake or did not rule on a verdict that I believed in, I didn’t hold it against the whole justice system - even though that was a really infamous time and it was well known and the world got to see that verdict, I still like trials it doesn’t stop me from wanting to go to trials," she said.
Jay didn’t attend another trial for a few years. But when she did, she picked another biggie. It was the murder case of O.J. Simpson in 1995. A jury found him "not guilty" of murder.
You can see Jay in old T.V. broadcast reports of the trial. She wore a sparkly gold and black top hat and shook up and down in the back row.
Next up, she sat in on Snoop Dogg’s murder trial in 1996, and then Michael Jackson’s molestation trial in 2005.
Jay said she stood in a screaming crowd outside the courthouse where a woman released doves every time a "not guilty" verdict was read.
The last time Jay attended a trial was last year’s trial of Conrad Murray, the doctor found responsible for Michael Jackson’s death.
“He has absolutely no sense of remorse. Absolutely no sense of fault and is -and remains - dangerous," said Judge Michael Pastor after the jury read their verdict.
Jay says she remembers Pastor's words vividly.
“When the judge was kinda chastising Conrad Murray, 'you was negligent' and this and all. I enjoyed being there, listening to him, looking at him - not through a television - just looking at him pretty much give him the third degree and I could just look around the courtroom and see the looks on people’s faces, and that, to me, that was exciting," she said.
Jay said she probably won’t be going to any more high profile cases any time soon because she has to attend the trial of the man accused of killing her daughter, Brittany.
“She was murdered in 2007 - gang violence, my 16-year-old. And they just found the murderer, four or five months ago," she said. "So that’s coming up and that’s going to take a lot of me, but I’m gonna be there.”
The trial’s set for this summer and Jay hopes a jury will help her get her own piece of justice.
Eat LA takes on noise: When is a restaurant too loud?
And so it goes at many LA restaurants and bars. The food’s good, the décor is smashing, but the noise level is on a par with Runway 24 at LAX. This time on Eat LA, we’re setting our taste buds aside in favor of our ears: does too much sound ruin an otherwise good meal? Or does it make it even better? And how do restaurateurs deal with noise?
"I’ve been writing about LA restaurants since the ‘80s, so I know this is nothing new," said Eat: Los Angeles publisher Colleen Bates. "But I’m still baffled about why people put up with it. Sure, going out to eat or drink is as much about the conviviality as the quality of the comestibles, so I get that people are drawn to liveliness. But when you have to scream so your date can hear you, what’s the point?"
"The most baffling of all has been downtown’s Bottega Louie," Bates continued. "I love the place in the off hours. But oh my god, the noise level at peak times is crushing. Even my teenage daughter couldn’t wait to get out of there. And yet big groups meet there to eat every night. I guess they don’t have much to say to each other. "
But how loud is loud? Bates met Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson at Seventh and Grand, just outside Bottega Louie. To be as scientific as possible, they brought along our very own decibel reader.
In this episode, Eat LA also talks with restaurant owner Yassmin Sarmadi, of Church & State, another cacophonous downtown dining destination about how she tries to walk the fine line between conviviality and din. Luques, AOC Wine Bar and Tavern co-owner Caroline Styne talks about how difficult it is to keep her three popular restaurants quiet. And Aidan Demarest, bartender and co-owner of Glendale's Neat Bar, explains that loud music and noise actually encourages patrons to drink more.
PST PM - Post Mortem on Pacific Standard Time with Getty Fdn Director
The body is still warm (there are still a couple exhibits ongoing) but Pacific Standard Time, perhaps the world's most ambitious art endeavor, wrapped up at the end of March. All the numbers aren't in yet - the official post mortem isn't until this summer - but it seems clear that PST was a success.
It began as an effort to preserve fragile archives of art created in Los Angeles in the post-war period, and blossomed into a full-scale celebration of the region's creativity and impact on the greater art world, involving scores of museums and galleries - and radio stations including 89.3-KPCC.
At the Getty's annual press luncheon, Deborah Marrow, director of the Getty Foundation, said she's already looking forward to the next huge collaboration... in a few years, please.
In brief, two of the things Marrow said went right:
-- They allowed time and resources for research - about five years.
-- The joint marketing campaign worked. Everyone was saying "Pacific Standard Time."
"And I would say our initial goal, which was to rescue an endangered history, has been met. These exhibitions told the story - told many many stories - of art in LA int he post-war decades, and now there are 30-some odd catalogs that remain to document that history, and archives that are accessible for future research."
What didn't work? Too soon to tell, Marrow says, since all the museum and gallery attendance figures won't be in for months.
Marrow says many of the organizers have already been contacted by other cities and organizations to explain how it happened, and how it might work for them.
Navigating Downtown LA with kids
(Off-Ramp commentator Jon Regardie is the executive editor of the Los Angeles Downtown News.)
Two things stood out the other day in the line waiting for a Clippers game outside Staples Center. One was the usher who was playing Sudoku. The other was the grown man and little boy playing “Ring Around the Rosie.” That was me and my 3-year old son George.
You don’t have to make your own fun downtown. There’s a lot for kids, as long as you don’t expect it to be a bubble-wrapped suburban playground. There’s the Central Library, Grand Hope Park, Grand Central Square and the summer concerts at Cal Plaza. We’ve seen Heidi Duckler’s site-specific dance company three times and we’ve eaten sausages and fries at Wurstküche. We’ve wandered through festivals in Chinatown and Little Tokyo, taking the Gold Line when possible.
Once, on the way to MOCA, we saw street performers dressed as Mary Poppins and Bert – that’s when the musical was at the Ahmanson. Our then 3-year-old Vivian had no idea it was not the Mary Poppins from the movie. She was so awestruck she couldn’t speak to Busker Mary.
Once inside MOCA, I told Vivian to let me know if she was interested in one of the artworks, and I’d lift her up so she could see it closely. That was a great idea for the splattered Jackson Pollock paintings. But it didn’t work so well for the photo of a junkie shooting up.
“What’s he doing, Daddy?”
“Umm …” I said, “He’s taking medicine.”
I took Vivian to her first Clippers game when she was 2, which in the pre-Chris Paul-Blake Griffin era might have been tantamount to child abuse. She made it through half the game and insisted on introducing herself to people next to us. She’s been to five games by now, knows who Griffin is, and, after yelling “De-FENSE! De-FENSE!” always asks, “Did I help the Clippers that time?”
The kids have also seen the Harlem Globetrotters at Staples, and while they laughed, they didn’t get all the nuances. Vivian was worried that the Globetrotters might lose.
I’ve learned a few things about visiting Staples Center with the under-5 set: you can’t get there early enough; you can’t underestimate how appealing the souvenirs are; and you have no idea exactly what will capture their attention. Vivian’s favorite part of her first Clippers game was the cheerleaders who, she said, “dance real hard.”
There’s another important thing I’ve learned about Staples and kids: The restrooms are nice. Unlike Dodger Stadium, which has metal troughs and conditions more fitting for Visigoths than visiting families, Staples’ restrooms are clean and well-lit.
George fared pretty well at his first Clippers game. He wasn’t very conversational with our neighbors, but he was intrigued by the Kiss Cam, and when other kids were shown waving on the Jumbotron, George usually waved back. He made it through the whole game, didn’t cry once, and the Clippers won. When I asked later what his favorite part of the game was, he answered, “Not anything.” But during dinner the next evening, he couldn’t stop chanting “De-FENSE!”
Secrets under LA's 7th Street Bridge
Most of the bridges that cross the LA River are your standard single-deck bridge. They might be pretty to look at, but one of the bridges has a secret world beneath it, and there's a plan, at least, to open it up to the public.
Before 1927, crossing the 7th street Bridge was a traffic nightmare. Train tracks blocked traffic on both sides and city planners knew they had to build over them. But instead of tearing down the old bridge, they built a new span on top of the old one, and the space beneath has been sitting idle for 80 years. Arthur Golding, an architect who’s always had a passion for bridges, recently began a project to convert the unused space below the 7th Street Bridge into an open-air marketplace.
“It can be a kind of Mercado – I call it the Mercado del Rio – where there are shops, restaurants, and craft and art venues.”
Golding has put together a lengthy proposal full of drawings and measured floor plans - but he’s never actually been inside the space. He’s only looked at archived material from the L.A. City Bureau of Engineers, and some photos taken by a blogger named Joe Linton, one of the few people to have gone inside the bridge.
“We came out here one afternoon," Linton says. "And by hook or by crook, kind of a figured out a way in. From the outside it looks like this tiny space, but once you get in you realize it’s not small. And the views are incredible.”
Golding’s plan still has many obstacles before it breaks ground, including building at least one entry that doesn’t require risky climbing. But city officials think it’s an inspired idea, and have added it to a growing list of projects for the L.A. River.
Marc Haefele: Mark Twain autobio a "magnificent browse"
The first volume of Mark Twain's autobiography - embargoed by Twin himself for a century - isn't especially revalatory, says Off-Ramp commentator Marc Haefele, but it's a worthwhile book.
Violinist remembers posing for huge freeway mural, and Kent Twitchell recalls painting it
If you drive the Harbor Freeway, you've seen Julie Gigante, the LA Chamber Orchestra violinist. You can't miss her. She's eight stories high. She's one of the most prominent LACO members depicted in Kent Twitchell's mural, "Harbor Freeway Overture," which was begun twenty years ago. Gigante is still with LACO, and until just the other day when she talked with Off-Ramp host John Rabe, hadn't stood at the foot on the mural. Rabe also talked with Twitchell, who is still proud of his monument to the musical artists.
Trayvon Martin's death raises questions about the risks of being young and black in America
In her article “Trayvon: Murdered for walking while black,” activist Marian Wright Edelman writes, “Every parent raising black sons knows the dilemma: deciding how soon to have the talk”. The talk is about how to walk, what to say and how to act in public to avoid suspicion. But ask a black man in America and chances are he still has a “Walking or Driving While Black” story to tell.
In late March, as people across the country began to protest Trayvon Martin's death, KPCC news editor Nick Roman talked with black reporters Brian Watt, Stephen Hoffman and Corey Moore about the advice their parents gave them and their personal experiences with overt or covert racism in America.