MAILBAG - Aug. 25, 2006

Boom Boom Room loss is no loss

In an effort to voice the non-gay view (that’s non-gay, not anti-gay) about the Boom Boom Room, there are not any other areas in town set up to serve any specific adult group.

[Property owner] Mr. Udvar-Hazy knows that such an investment must serve a broad group. The city of Laguna has tax concerns as well.

Many families live nearby, and we all look forward to a renewed openness and welcome.

I don’t know how many of the 5,000-plus signatures are local, but I am pretty sure, of the 24,000 Laguna Beach residents, 15,000 would support Boom Begone.

TIM WEBER

Laguna Beach

Boom owner has rights, too

If there is historical significance, which I believe there is, then Laguna should act quickly to protect the Boom as a part of its historical past. If not, although as a gay patron I would miss the Boom terribly, the owners have a right to do with it as they see fit.

MELISSA JOHNSON

San Clemente

Sculpture would be gift to city’s children

Lew Geiser loved Laguna Beach. His house was red-tagged and he was displaced by the first Bluebird landslide, but he happily moved back to his house on Oriole. When he was ill with cancer, his house was affected by the second landslide, and he was forced to move. He was very appreciative of the city’s efforts to stabilize the area above his property so he could return home for a few months and die at home.

Lew Geiser’s second favorite city was Paris. At Place de Vosges, he enjoyed watching children interact with a whimsical metal sculpture. The life-size “humanobile” is receptive to the least movement, the slightest touch and bends, withdraws and sways, adopting vibrating poses.

Before he died, he asked if I would help him donate a sculpture by the same artist, Vincent Magni, to the city for Laguna’s children. His trust has instructions for the purchase and donation to the city of Laguna Beach.

I filed an application for the donation to the Art In Public Places program with the Laguna Beach Arts Commission. Two sets of sculptures were presented for consideration. One was a man and woman with a bird on her shoulder, and the other was two musicians playing violins.

At the arts commission meeting in July, the members raised issues about safety, liability, durability and maintenance. They asked me to return in a month with more information.

In a telephone conversation with the city arts manager, I was told that if I presented any information at that meeting that I hadn’t provided previously to her, she would request a continuance to another meeting.

The Thursday before the Aug. 14 meeting, I delivered my two-page letter, a letter from the trust, and two e-mail messages from the art gallery giving solutions and answers to their concerns and questions.

At the meeting, I expected to continue the discussion, but I was surprised that they had rejected the offer even though they had not read the information they requested.

I hope I can fulfill Lew Geiser’s last request to gift to the city of Laguna Beach statues that appear happy and energetic.

KATY MOSS

Laguna Beach

Village foes ‘out of step’ with town

This is in response to Frank Ricchiazzi’s remarks last week with regard to the upcoming City Council election and Village Laguna.

Will someone please tell me why he is so incredibly bitter about Village Laguna? Didn’t many diverse groups, along with Village Laguna, join forces and save the canyon and Main Beach, and keep high-rise buildings off the ocean? Were our accomplishments a bad thing?

Does he lay claim to being the only one who knows how Laguna Beach should be run? Because according to the results of Vision Laguna 2030, all that Village Laguna holds dear and has steadfastly stood for all these years is what most of the residents of Laguna want.

If you’re opposed to Village Laguna, you’re opposed to preserving and enhancing the unique village character of Laguna Beach. This is who we are. You’re the one who is out of step by preferring the status quo of continued policies that allow for the development of more Mar Vista and Ceanothus mega-mansions.

This mantra is tired and old. The continual beef with Village Laguna is like a cracked record — warped and useless in today’s needle-pressure market of “mansionization” and big development. Would you prefer Manhattan Beach?

Come on, don’t we all want the same thing? Can’t we all be keepers of our special town and work together on high-priority projects such as completing the repairs on the Bluebird slide and building the senior center?

Why not drop the rhetoric and character bashing and join forces with a City Council that will work to keep what we value most: our town and its own uniqueness. We can agree to disagree, but there is no need to be so disagreeable.

CHARLOTTE MASARIK

Laguna Beach

Size of homes must be fair to all

In your editorial regarding “mansionization,” you ask some reasonable questions but are not on solid foundation when stating some of your arguments for why this current phenomenon exists.

You imply that escalating property values have driven the desire for excessively large houses. This is true; however, simply because “a new class” of resident can afford to build a monolith and thus increase the value of their property does not mean they have the right to do so at the expense of established neighborhoods and residents who have invested years in their community.

Property values can rise exponentially in a small community due to this type of unmanaged growth. Those least able to afford them — longtime homeowners and those on fixed incomes — face the negative impact of this event. Where is the fairness to them?

As for the “bigness” of new homes, average household size has dropped steadily from 3.67 members in 1940 to 2.62 in 2002. It is hard to reconcile a 17,000-square-foot house and 4,000-square-foot garage, such as the “Frankenhouse” being built on Mar Vista, with your assertion that “this bigness” is being driven by “changes in the economy” and “the way people work.” That is, of course, unless one works from home and home is an army barracks.

As for “telecommuting replacing vehicular commuting,” the last time I checked, a phone, a monitor and a hard drive could fit in an average-size closet. In my case, the back seat of my car.

The real problem here is not whether it is fair to the parvenu as to whether this community or any other may restrict the size of their conspicuously consumptive abode. To reduce the conception of managed growth to a one-size-fits-all characterization is an oversimplification that does not serve to further any legitimate argument.

The fact is that communities from California to the Carolinas are struggling to come to grips with a trend that has real negative impacts where it has been allowed to go unchecked.

The effects of mansionization on a community are multifold. Larger houses consume more resources both in construction and operation. They contribute a disproportionate level of urban run-off and watershed impedance for which the community in one way or another will have to pay.

Aesthetically, a huge edifice built out to the lot line, with retaining walls looking like bunkers, disrupts and harms established neighborhood character and impinges on existing view equities. Do we really want what is the equivalent of private residence Wal-Marts cluttering our coast and canyons?

This great disparity in land-use resulting in a net negative impact to community assets has led to a grass-roots groundswell. The average size of homes in the United States over the past 45 years has grown from 1,440 square feet to 2,225 square feet, while family size has shrunk.

Reasonable controls must be in place before the 17,000 square feet approved by the Laguna Beach Community Development Department morphs into 20,000 — or heck, why not 50,000 or even 100,000 square feet. After all, “is it really fair at all for longtime residents to tell newcomers how much house they can have”? If you want to build a house the size of a small airport, go right ahead.

It is ultimately a diminution in the quality of life shared by all residents in the community. In the case of Laguna Beach — a community once dedicated through its general plan to the preservation of its uncommon historical, environmental and human resource needs — the question is not what is fair to the newcomer; the question is how the process will work to ensure the rights of all those who live and care about the place they live.

CINDALEE PENNEY HALL

Laguna Beach

City not using tools to curtail mansions

The Hobo Aliso Neighborhood Assn. joins the voices of all the other neighborhood associations and civic organizations regarding protection from the ongoing development of mansions in our “village.”

It is our sincere hope that our city government and staff are listening to our combined voices, and that they will begin utilizing the tools at hand — CEQA [California Environmental Quality Act], [the California] Coastal Act, and the city’s general plan. As of now, all of these tools are being completely and totally ignored by every single decision-making body.

The Hobo Aliso Neighborhood Assn. created the following principles and criteria for proposed development in our small neighborhood located just above the Aliso Plaza Shopping Center in South Laguna in 2003 and submitted it to the Planning Commission, City Council, city manager and staff:

For more information on the Hobo Aliso area, please visit www.savealisocanyon.org.

PENNY ELIA

Laguna Beach

Labor site degrades laborers

Gene Cooper is completely misguided in his thoughts regarding the Laguna Beach day labor site. He claims that having a hiring site does not affect illegal immigration. His argument is that day laborers came even before there was a labor site.

Logic tells me that if it is difficult to get a job here and we make it less difficult, people who otherwise would not consider coming here to steal a job will be more likely to enter illegally. This is in fact the case. The number of illegal aliens in California has skyrocketed since 1986 when we lowered our guard. They are coming in droves because they know there are sanctuary cities like Laguna Beach that support their illegal presence.

Cooper considers it an act of charity for the city to have created the day labor site. Balderdash! They did it just to get what they considered to be undesirables off the street. They contained them.

Do-gooders have a place where they can take their stale donuts to feed the poor. Homeowners can hire them there, arguing they are helping the poor. Contractors go there to get manual labor that no one else will do for $8 an hour. Why can’t Cooper and others see that what is happening there is disgustingly degrading to those laborers.

Cooper’s argument about economics is so outrageous it is hard to respond. He uses the dreaded, “who’s going to pick the strawberries?” argument: Since we cannot get Americans to pick strawberries for minimum wage, it is perfectly alright to illegally hire desperate people and then treat them like slaves. I encourage Cooper to visit the agricultural worker encampments located around virtually all large, growing areas. They are horrible. Jesus would not approve.

The argument that Laguna Beach needs illegal aliens to fuel its service and building industries is particularly despicable. Building a country on the backs of people who are not part of the society is wrong, immoral, unchristian. If there are jobs that we cannot get our own people to do for a fair wage, then they are jobs that should go undone.

Laguna must dig in and behave in a righteous, responsible manner. The day labor site is an illegal alien sanctuary. That is a bad thing. It encourages illegal immigration. It fosters the same inhumanity as the Roman Empire.

In a large way, the day labor site crushes the human spirit. It must be eliminated.

LARRY CULBERTSON

San Juan Capistrano