Left, Blimp on Target, 1969, Roger Kuntz, at Louis Stern.  Right, from Ride of a lifetime, at Virtual Tourist.

Happy New Year!  And a Good Year to you!

This past year has been, people tell me, a good year for me.  The people who read this site may not necessarily thrill to that outcome, which is fine with me; I am inclined to question it myself.  But almost all who read this site want 2012 to be a good year for the City of Los Angeles, and on that point we all agree.

With our media and our politicians all mostly owned by absentee landlords--even our timeless blimp is tendered to us by a company based in Akron, Ohio that mostly sees LA as a place to market to, while the local company got bought out--and with our cultural institutions mostly bowing to the out-of-town media--how can we get that done?

That's the question I most ponder when pondering my civic side.  To me, Los Angeles is an exceptionally vibrant place--at street level.  Our cultural side, from arts and music to fashion and entertainment, is all astonishing, even world-beating.  And Los Angeles is also a miserable maladjusted hellhole for lackeys at the institutional, workaday level.  Our absentee landlord companies and the politicians they own are rendering good life here nearly intolerable, and certainly insufferable. 

Street-hassle is evolving--a little, and in a way that I don't fully know myself.  (If you've noticed that the column is wider here, for instance, I've explained why in the one that is more narrow to the right.)   I expect to tinker with the site in a way that allows it to bear further witness to the central dilemma of the city--our cultural excellence walking hand in hand with our institutional failures--all through the early part of January.  Suggestions are welcome.