Topless in Grand Park

In the heart of Downtown Los Angeles yesterday evening, there was the grand opening of the Grand Park, a project that links City Hall to the music Center with three blocks of park space. They had music, food, speeches, lots of people (yay!), and acrobatics down the side of the landmark City Hall building.

Unfortunately, the looooong wait between the speeches by various officials and the actual startup of the acrobatics (during which I was able to start and finish the sketch of purple-lit City Hall you see to the left -I painted it later, although I did have my watercolour pencils and brush with me, but had to go off to a party) meant that by time they came on I was hungry and almost entirely without humour, and so when it started off with fairly bland music, and overly sentimental biosketches in the voices of the acrobats as they did their not super-inspiring (to me) routines, my tolerance was at an end I was very ready to depart. This was compounded by the fact that there was not a lot of food variety (or quantity) available because there were only a few food trucks, one of which was having kitchen trouble, so my plan to rejuvenate and enjoy a bit more of the ceremony was thwarted a bit. Overall I was very pleased with the opening, as it is a landmark time for the city. Were I in a better mood I think I’d have found plenty to enjoy in there somewhere, as the idea of the whole show was a rather good one, and there was a great sense of community and discovery as people of all sorts came to the new Park to see what all this downtown excitement was.

(Oh… where is the legendary beautiful top of City Hall? I admit I did not plan the drawing, and it certainly is pretty far from a masterpiece!… I’d been doing a bit of a doodle, thinking that the acrobats would show up soon, but they did not… and the thing grew and grew, until I ran off the top edge of the page… I was going to include a drawing of the top next to the ret of the building later, but then the music and acrobatics started, up and down the purple face you see in the sketch…)

Two major things on the plus side. The first is that we’ve got this wonderful new space for the city and the people that is going to be wonderful for all sorts of activities. The second is that I don’t have to do huge changes to a page of The Project I did about 18 months ago, which included an overhead view of City Hall and the grounds in front. I just made up what was going to be that piece of the Park since it was not yet completed (can’t even remember if it had been started yet). My simple guesses are close enough. I’m not making a documentary after all.

Ok… Now let’s see if I can get a little bit of CicLAvia riding in before the day is all consumed by other tasks…

-cvj