All They Are Saying Is Give L.A.’s Downtown a Chance

Ordinarily, I’m a troublemaker, not a peacemaker. That’s my job: I get you good people in a lather over something, and you storm the citadels of power with pitchforks or e-mails, to put a stop to whatever it is I got you riled up about.

But just this once, I tried it another way.

Among the recent letters to the editor was one from Lisa Magdaleno, of Tustin Ranch in Orange County. Lisa had decided to “do something different” and, two days after Thanksgiving, she drove up to do what L.A. begs people to do: to shop in downtown, to “stimulate the economy” and support local shops.

The upshot--Lisa got thrashed. She wound up on skid row, looking for a working parking meter. When she found one, it ate her money and gave her back nothing, which only in Vegas passes for fun. The pavement was deep in drifts of trash. A crazy man bore down on her, gabbling angrily about an “English-speaking church.” Lisa is not a timid woman, but she drove off to find a safe parking lot. She got lost, and got a ticket for driving in a bus lane that hadn’t been marked as such. Whereupon Lisa found the nearest freeway and went to Long Beach, where she uneventfully and pleasantly spent about $300 that could have been L.A.’s dollars.

“I do not plan,” she wrote, “to return to Los Angeles to shop or dine any time soon.” And some of the million people who buy this newspaper read that and said, “She’s right--place is a pit.”

Two things had to happen: the affront to Lisa’s intentions could not go unanswered, and I had to stick up for downtown, the funny-looking runt of L.A.’s litter of neighborhoods. This time, I am the peacemaker. Lisa, come back. Give us another chance. Meet the Honorable Jan Perry, council member for downtown L.A. Jan, meet Lisa Magdaleno. Charm her. Persuade her. Change her mind about us.

I set up the blind lunch-date at Pinot, on the grounds of the Central Library, six blocks and a million miles from where Lisa nearly came to grief.

They sat across from each other, Lisa and Jan, as Lisa told her tale. She and her husband have a 7-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son and they moved to Tustin Ranch because in south Orange County, “every home looked the same. It’s great for some people but for us, we like to look at beautiful architecture, interesting people. A place like this”--she gestured out the window--”it’s gorgeous, it has character. I like diversity and I like to see different things.”

That’s what made the bad trip doubly terrible; “I was so excited,” says Lisa, “and then I felt just deflated.”

Jan Perry can work with this. She’ll say later that she was a bit apprehensive about making L.A.’s case until she saw Lisa, a pretty young woman dressed in black, and thought, with relief, “loft girl!” She’d expected someone prim, a bit rigid--”I wasn’t sure I could explain it to you, but now I think I can.”

It turns out Lisa is not a hard sell, even after her disastrous sojourn. Her mother and grandmother used to shop downtown, and from childhood she remembers the blazing Christmas windows of 7th Street’s vanished grand stores.

Jan too had gazed at the same shining windows in the 1970s, and 25 years later, she is selling Lisa on the glowing alabaster windows of St. Vibiana’s, on its way to becoming an arts center, and on the new high-tech pay toilets, and her labors to do right by everyone, merchants and shoppers and loft-folk and the deranged and displaced, and not just surrender downtown to street people and movie crews.

Lisa is nodding. “That’s why I wrote the letter. I discussed it with my husband and I thought maybe something could happen. I know it’s an overwhelming task.”

Jan is nodding now. “People who do what you do should be listened to because you took the time to raise our level of consciousness.”

I’m not about to win the Nobel Peace Prize for setting up a 90-minute lunch, but I’m feeling pleased at the way things have gone. Jan and Lisa are exchanging shopping tips--the Mart, the places in Artesia where Madonna buys saris--and Jan declaims with comic pomposity, “Through shopping we can solve many of our problems.” They pledge to arrange a shopping date, and a chance, as Jan says, to “show you downtown from my perspective.”

What about the traffic ticket? I ask.

Jan can’t fix a ticket, especially not with me sitting there with a tape recorder, but she can write a letter about the virtues of outreach and being helpful and giving visitors a positive experience.

And then she is off, the Honorable Ms. Perry, and Lisa and I make our way out, among the faceted skyscrapers glittering against the ridiculously blue sky, and as if we’re in a movie, and Lisa, in the role of country ingenue speaking home truths, says her line: “It has so much potential; it could really be spectacular.”

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Patt Morrison’s column appears Mondays and Wednesdays. Her e-mail is [email protected].