A Post Modern Street & The Disappearance Of Legitimate Public Space

On a Thursday, I journeyed via Metro bus to CityWalk. Part of the Universal Studios Hollywood complex perched atop hills in the southeastern San Fernando Valley, CityWalk was designed in the early 1990s by Jon Jerde as one of the first of it's kind: a city street that's safer, cleaner, and "better" than the real thing. It's also designed to be Los Angeles in a condensed form. A synecdoche-whereupon a piece represents and becomes for all intensive purposes, the thing or the whole. A visitor to LA could stay at the Universal Hilton or Sheraton, visit Universal Studios, visit CityWalk, and with only the lack of the beach and Disneyland (yet another stimulating simulation simulacra hyperreality), the visitor would feel they pretty much "got the gist" of Los Angeles. [This of course would be a tragedy, as there is infinitely more to LA than just the Universal City complex, but that's neither here nor there]. The complex is stimulating. Visual variety is ominpresent to the point of saturation. Los Angeles landmarks are reproduced (simulacra) and become better than the orginal or are so close to the original that the original is no longer important. Have you ever eaten at the first and original McDonald's? If not (which I assume to be pretty much everyone who reads this), did you feel like you didn't have "the real deal" or did you still accept that you had McDonald's? This is also hyperreality. I can eat at the Pink's Hot Dogs at Citywalk and avoid the epically long lines of the original Pink's at Melrose and La Brea. I can eat at Tommy's at Citywalk without the epically long lines of the original on Beverly and Rampart. CityWalk has come to resemble a mall. Or do our malls resemble CityWalk? The same way our suburbs and theme parks resemble cities, our cities resemble suburbs and theme parks. You won't find people observing humanity, drawing, nesting, playing chess, lounging, picnic-ing, writing, etc like in a public space. There's nothing to invite casual loitering. According to the security guards (more on that later) if someone is not buying something, they can be asked to leave after a certain amount of time.  Legitimate public space disappears more and more. We don't even have enough parks per capita in LA. The urban street used to (and in many places in the world) function as a community "living room". Increasingly all "hang outs" and destinations and activity centers and entertainment centers are privately owned and operate almost soley for the pursuit of profit. It's a consumer- capitalist world. If you were to stage a play on a sidewalk for example, you would be cited for obstructing the flow of traffic and pedestrian impediment. Everywhere there is private property that we cross an invisible line onto and without knowing it, "agree" to abide by their rules and to spend money. Barriers are a consistent theme at CityWalk. The whole place feels like it is on lockdown or people are cattle being corralled this way and that way. The entire site is constantly under surveillance with the ever present private security guards and the Los Angeles County Sheriff; LAPD does not patrol CityWalk as it is not within Los Angeles City Limits. From an architectural standpoint, CityWalk references almost every conceivable modern style (as well as classical elements) and even has a simulacrum of the black and gold Art Deco Richfield oil building that used to exist in Downtown Los Angeles before it's demolition in 1968/1969. Being a "mini-city" (albeit one that has no over-night residents, save for the dwellers of the hotel towers), CityWalk has some division into "districts". CityFood is the upper level area with the Pink's and Tommy's and a handful of other fast food. CityLoft is the "entertainment district" with nightlife options like Howl At The Moon (a chain of dueling piano bars), Jon Lovitz Comedy Club (the interior is designed to look like an old hall though it can't be more than 5 or so years old), Infusion Lounge (a transplant from San Francisco that is Asian-themed with Top 40 mashups), a Mexican cantina, and a brewery restaurant. The CityLoft area is enclosed by a massive "cage" cover : stay in here and pay for parking, pay cover charge, buy expensive drinks. Not fitting into the specific "districts", are several Los Angeles staples such as a Dodgers store, a Raiders store (despite the fact that they are in Oakland, Raiders fandom persists among the inhabitants of Los Angeles County), a Wolfgang Puck L.A. Bistro (LA's most famous chef, one of the inventors of California style cuisine), Coffee Bean (an LA original with ice blended coffee drinks that predate Starbucks' frappuccinos), a spa and oxygen bar (for Midwest tourists to fawn over the alleged vanity, vapidity, and inherent trendiness of Angelenos?), and a restaurant boasting "the best sushi in LA" (which is a bit of a boast considering LA has arguably the best sushi outside of Japan and even more so considering that less than a few miles away on Ventura Blvd is a "sushi row" with some of the world famous chefs in Katsu-ya and Nozawa). Billboards and lights to reference the Sunset Strip. As I journeyed around the outside of the complex, I was confronted with the falsehood and the horrors of the mundane aspects of the operation, delivery doors, artist entrances, etc. As in the previous post, any implied disgust or elitism is not deliberate. I am not better than this. I do not attempt to escape this. I merely observe and make my observations known. I am a ghost that wanders and is detached. I am neutral.
I walk back down the hill, taking note of the smog-hued sunset and the blanket of city lights in the San Fernando Valley. I board the Metro to go home. End

Some Of The World Outside CityWalk: