Letters: What to make of Marina del Rey
Re “Curtailing the kitsch,” Feb. 26
With all due respect to The Times, the article on “revitalizing” Marina del Rey read as if it were in a pamphlet selling the proposed developments. There was no mention of the animals that live there or of the pollution at the marina.
Crucially, the article didn’t mention the adjacent, still endangered Ballona Wetlands. The area was once part of the wetlands, much of which were dredged to make space for the marina.
It’s not the design of fading paint on building facades that leaves parts of Marina del Rey so desolate; it is the demise of native plants and animals and the lack of attention to preserving a natural ecosystem.
Holly Wright
Santa Monica
People don’t watch Hollywood movies or visit L.A. to be bored by good taste. I say this as one who:
- Learned to crawl in a faux Spanish colonial “adobe” (since torn down).
- Rode one of the last original Red Cars from San Pedro to downtown L.A. for a party at Clifton’s Pacific Seas cafeteria.
- Celebrated his 15th birthday in a world-famous Wilshire Boulevard restaurant shaped like a hat (since torn down).
Redevelopment may be needed, but it shouldn’t be aimed at cleansing the landscape of bad taste or the untrendy. Kitsch should be embraced and its themes expanded, for it plays on the child in our minds and invites us to play.
Half a century hence, no one will be publishing photo albums of homogenized, sterile, tastefully interchangeable glass boxes.
Mike Jelf
Lomita
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