Griffith park fire – why does a potential loss of a great public space get such little attention from the press?
Last week, the Los Angeles press (with the exception of the LAWeekly) covered the Griffith park fire like any other ordinary brush fire that (very unfortunately) has become routine between the months of May to November here.The coverage wasn’t shoddy, and it wasn’t ill informed. I have no beef about how it was covered, but instead I’m surprised and saddened with what was ignored throughout the news – The lack of any concern that this integral place for the public soul of the region might be lost before our eyes. The press is primarily always concerned with human interest coverage of huddled families clinging to photo albums as the pack up the Volvo wagon; or the press is concerned with the macabre dystopian aspects of it all – the plume of smoke creeping up behind the observatory or the flames licking at the Hollywood sign. Everyone’s a budding Raymond Chandler when the city burns at night in the summer. Sure it’s an intriguing cliché. Everybody always eats up the dark stuff – including me.
But what was disconcerting to me though, was when I came up short trying to find an opinion piece or any coverage regarding the fire’s potential impending destruction of one of Los Angeles’ (and the country’s) great public spaces. There was literally nothing out there with this slant. It was at the forefront of my mind as I watched the smoke for three days, wondering what would be left. And now that we know everyone is safe, it seems the proper time to write about it.
“Smoldering surface of the moon,” is how one jogger described the scene when she returned to the park the day after the fire was contained, just as she had every morning for the last three or four years. Other cities can criticize L.A. for its lack of green space, but everyone one who has lived in places like Dallas, Phoenix, D.C. or Manhattan knows, Los Angeles’ desert, beachside and canyon living gets you feeling closer to a wilderness getaway akin to camping more than any other city life you’ve known before. Nature is completely integrated into the landscape of Los Angeles and increasingly so; here in the densest city in America (it’s true), hillsides are the last remaining places to build. But despite the fact that we live among nature in the city, we are decidedly lacking in large green areas, Griffith Park being the greatest of the few.
That’s why this fire is sadder than the others. Not because families homes were lost (very few were, thankfully), but because the places where families have birthdays and weddings and quincenieras was lost. More importantly, the places where quinceniera parties mingle with hipsters walking their custom-bred dogs, and with bums, pot-smoking teenagers, old Jewish men, and aspiring actors was lost. In L.A. few of these important places exist anymore and the ones that do are irreplaceable.
I can imagine much discussion on the subject of the loss of a great public park if, say, a devastating fire broke out in Central Park. And I wonder why that hasn’t happened here. Perhaps the rest of the country chides our hubris in spreading way out the way we did, suburbanizing ourselves and growing lazy and apathetic in our cars and drive-thrus – We’ve lived full in nature, and consumed too much of it, now to pay in lacking public green amenities like great parks. Maybe. As it turns out, Griffith park is the most prominent public green space within the nation’s densest city ¬– Los Angeles’s central park. And this fire (and the coverage of this fire by the press) deserves a shocked and contemplative pause to weigh the brevity of our city without it.
