SOME BENCHES

Some inhabitants of Los Angeles (I’m one of them) regularly complain about the lack of public space.  Oh sure there’s are biggish parks – Griffith Park is over 4000 acres – but going there can be a major expedition, especially when all you want is somewhere to sit for twenty minutes and eat a sandwich.  You need a little area – doesn’t have to be fancy - with a bit of grass and a bench, the kind of thing you find all over London and other cities.  This kind of thing:

For a long time there used to be a bench in my neighborhood.  It wasn’t strictly public, I think, because it was on a long thin strip of land that actually belonged to somebody’s house.  Clearly it was unusable as part of a garden, and there was no point fencing it off because that made it even less usable.  And so the land was left open, and a bench placed there for the public weal.

In ten years of walking around the local streets I believe I saw the bench being used exactly twice.  I sat on it a couple of times myself because I felt it should be embraced, but nobody could pretend it was a great local resource.  And in any case, it’s now gone.

--> Of course I noticed this a while ago on one of my daily walk, but I’d never got around to photographing the bench’s absence (for obvious reasons).  Even as a bit of negative space I realize it’s not much of a picture, but here’s the beauty part.  Until I tried to photograph the absence of the bench I hadn’t noticed the presence of that shiny new, white, replacement wooden fence behind it. 

        

Walking: I do believe it sharpens up the powers of observation.  But sometimes you need a nudge.

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