Some of us LA urbanists like to complain about the lack of public space. Yes, there are parks – Griffith Park being the main one – 4,210 acres – and it’s a fabulous resource, and of course there’s MacArthur Park op cit, but it’s not the same as those little, unspectacular, out of the way parks I know in London (and to a lesser extent in Paris), places where you can go and read a book or eat your lunch or just sit and think, or not think.
A couple of weeks back I found myself in the Bank of America Plaza, in downtown LA - it's the green rectangle in the photo above - formerly Security Pacific Plaza - and the very name encapsulates all the issues. It’s public space in the sense that anyone can walk in there and nobody stops them, but it’s obviously not part of the public weal because it’s got the Bank of America’s name on it.
Even so, on a Friday afternoon, when there’s a farmer’s market with food stalls, it seemed a pretty decent place to hang out for a while and have something to eat, a break from the Nicholsonian drift. There’s grass, places to sit, a nice water feature, and you get a million dollar view of the Bonaventure Hotel.
I bought my lunch from the Happy Inka: Peruvian food, you won’t be surprised to hear. I had the fish and rice plate, and yes, I did have to dig around in order to find the fish.
It went down pretty well and then I went home, and for most of Friday night it came up – and down – from both ends, and I took to my bed for most of Saturday. I can’t absolutely swear that it was the Peruvian fish that was the cause – I ate other things as well that day - but the next time I’m offered Peruvian fish, the memory (which is coming back strongly as I write this) will definitely make me hesitate.
Researching matters later I discover that the Bank of America Plaza is where Richard Gere wanders barefoot in Pretty Woman – a movie I’ve never been able to face watching – though I often feel as though I have seen it.
And that got me thinking of Barefoot in the Park, the Neil Simon stage play turned into a movie with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. She’s a free spirit, he isn’t, though in the end he becomes one, and he walks barefoot (and indeed drunk) in New York’s Washington Square Park as a sign of his newfound free-spiritedness. In this picture Jane keeps her shoes on. The cops look on.
