LOS ANGELES BRIEFING February 2005

News this month

Carnage at Glendale

The Los Angeles suburb of Glendale was the scene of a train crash in the early hours of January 26th. At least 11 people died and hundreds were injured, dozens critically, when a commuter train struck a vehicle on the tracks at around 6am and derailed, striking a parked Union Pacific goods train. The commuter train then flipped on its side, and hit an adjacent commuter train. They were double-deckers operated by Metrolink: One had just left downtown's Union Station, bound for Burbank; the other was heading to Union Station from Moorpark.

Within hours, an investigation found that the vehicle, an SUV, was left by a would-be suicide who changed his mind. The driver, Juan Manuel Alvarez, is a 25-year-old man from Compton who police describe as deranged. City prosecutors have charged him with 11 counts of murder, and are considering whether to pursue capital punishment. This was the deadliest train accident in America since 1999.

Poor marks

With some 747,000 students, the Los Angeles Unified School District is America’s second largest, and its schools have long been by-words for low standards and violence. But it seems LA can no longer be singled out for its poor quality within the state. Rather, all of California's public schools need serious work, according to a new study from the Santa Monica-based Rand Corporation. Three decades ago the state led the nation in education; today, according to Rand, only Louisiana and Mississippi rank below California in terms of student achievement—even though state spending on education is about average.

To explain such low returns on education spending, the teachers’ union often cites the high number of minority students, especially from Spanish-speaking homes, in the state’s schools. But this rationale doesn’t wash, says Rand. When corrected for student backgrounds, California’s ranking is the lowest of any state. As a fix, Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's governor, has promised to reform the wage-scale for state teachers, to pay them according to merit rather than seniority. Some suggest increasing spending per student: 30 years ago this was above the national average; now it is below.

Caught and fined

Jockeying for the mayoral primary on March 8th has become nasty. The bad news for the incumbent, James Hahn, is that the cloud of graft that has been hovering over City Hall shows no signs of dissipating. The Los Angeles Ethics Commission has announced that two-dozen people will be fined about $90,000 each for skirting campaign-contribution limits. Mr Hahn often received such illegal donations, along with several other former and current city politicians. But there is no evidence that the mayor or his rivals knew about the illegal contributions, says the Ethics Commission.

Two notable figures linked to the scandal are Mark Alan Abrams and Alan Casden, local real-estate developers. They allegedly reimbursed employees who donated to Mr Hahn's 2001 campaign, in order to dodge donation limits. The developers spent heavily on attacks against Antonio Villaraigosa, who will once again be a leading contender in the upcoming primary.

The house on the hill

The canyon hillsides of Los Angeles are increasingly limned by retaining walls, to keep the land beneath homes from sliding away. But the walls, which are more essential as more houses are built, threaten to turn the canyon's semi-rural beauty into a more concrete suburbia. One wall in Benedict Canyon, for example, is 42 feet high and runs for 2,000 feet.

The City Council is fighting back: it has just drawn up new rules limiting the height of retaining walls to 12 feet. And all walls, even dainty ones, will have to be camouflaged with landscaping. Some land-owners are complaining that they will no longer be able to develop their plots, even with new engineering techniques. But homeowners are happy: less surrounding development will mean higher property values.

Pray for more?

In the first ten days of January, Los Angeles had 21 inches of rain—more than the normal total for the entire winter. This resulted in a snarl of traffic accidents, flash floods and pot-holed roads. The weather had a similarly dramatic effect on lowering crime. According to police estimates, violent crime in the city was down 23% and property crime by around 25%, compared with a year earlier. In the Hollywood district, overall crime was down by 46%. Common wisdom has it that the rain kept criminals at home. It also deterred tourists, who are often Hollywood's crime victims. But as more people stayed in, the hearth became more fraught: child abuse and domestic violence rose 25% in January.

Boxed surprises

On January 15th at the port of Los Angeles, a crane operator spotted three men climbing out of a container. Immigration and customs officers soon found they were part of a group of 32 Chinese men who had stowed away in two cargo containers. The men were all in good health, with their containers equipped with food, water, battery-operated fans, sleeping bags and ventilation holes. That may suggest a degree of organisation that has succeeded more times than it has failed.

It is hard to say how many of LA County’s 10m residents are undocumented. But clearly there must be many thousands: California is a favourite destination of illegal immigrants from Latin America, especially Mexico. One estimate from the US Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services puts the number of unauthorised immigrants in California in 2000 at 2.2m, which proportionately puts 619,000 in LA County.

Rocking on

Tinseltown's Hollywood Forever cemetery is the final resting spot of many celebrities, including Rudolph Valentino and Cecil B. DeMille. On January 14th, it saw the unveiling of a $100,000 bronze statue at the gravesite of Johnny Ramone, the guitarist with the Ramones, a New York punk-rock band. He died last September. The monument has the rocker in a trademark pose, flailing at his favourite Mosrite guitar. Hundreds of friends and fans attended the ceremony.

In the 1970s, the guitarist and his three “brothers” (including Dee Dee, the bassist, who is also buried at Hollywood Forever) transformed the music scene with their breakneck three-minute ditties to teenage suburban angst. In his later years, Johnny, who was proud of his violent control-freak reputation, revealed an unexpected personality trait: he was a committed Republican. The idea for the statue was his own, coming to him while he watched the funeral of Ronald Reagan, his favourite president and actor, while suffering from prostate cancer at Cedars-Sinai hospital.

Catch if you can

February 2005

“Aida” and “Roméo et Juliette”

Until February 20th 2005

Bravo for Placido Domingo. In his role as general director of the LA Opera, the renowned tenor is pushing the LA team to a world-class standard. He has brought back old favourites, such as Verdi’s “Aida”, which has nine performances through February 19th. The winter season closes with Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette”, with seven performances through February 20th. After that, it is a long wait for another opera: Verdi's “Falstaff” and Strauss's “Der Rosenkavalier” will take the stage in May. For the 2005-2006 season, which starts in September and marks the opera house’s 20th anniversary, the LA Opera and the Lincoln Centre Festival have commissioned an opera called “Grendel” from Elliot Goldenthal.

Los Angeles Opera, 135 North Grand Ave. Tel: +1 (213) 972-7219. Tickets: $30-$190.
See the opera's website.