Reduce + Reuse + Recycle = Earth Day

Last Friday I took a hike to the top of Mount Hollywood, a place that has amazingly lovely views of Los Angeles -- unless it's a really smoggy morning and you can barely even see downtown.


I know you think your air is cleaner, but just because you don't live in the Smog Capital of America, that doesn't mean you're air is that much better than ours. A little bit better, sure. Much better? Probably not.

Fortunately though, it's Earth Day today so we can each figure out what we need to do in our own lives to make this planet cleaner. After all, it's not like we can move to Mars if this place gets too toxic. Or rather, you go on ahead to Mars and I'll stay right here and wait for your post card.

Seriously though, what are you going to change? I'm all for holding companies accountable to high environmental standards. After all, I saw Kanye West's "Glow in the Dark" tour last night but that doesn't mean I want to literally glow in the dark because of pollutants in my environment. It's just that I can't complain about toxic chemicals being dumped in the water or air if I don't do my part as well. That means it's time for us all to take a look around ourselves and think about how we're going to step up our reducing, reusing and recycling game.

There's lots of seemingly small but impactful changes you can make that will make the smog go away, not just on Earth Day but on every day. Here's some good ones if you're at a loss for what to do. Of course, I'm also happy to suggest that you make today the day you stop drinking bottled water. (Aren't I helpful?)

I firmly believe we can blame the success of bottled water squarely on the heads of the producers of the film "Erin Brokovich". I mean, it had Julia Roberts wearing a pushup bra and it made us all think about whether we could get cancer from drinking water somebody claims is safe.

Never mind that most bottled water is just tap water in the first place. Now it's too late. We're all hooked on it and the corporations that market it to us are laughing all the way to the bank. Meanwhile, tons of oil and energy is used to make all that bottle plastic -- and it's all part of a vicious cycle that sends more pollutants into the atmosphere, causes smog and thus, global warming! I won't even get into the people that throw their bottle on the GROUND after using it. Since you're reading this blog I just know you can't be a litterbug!

Fortunately, we can stop the bottled water madness together. One way is to go back to drinking the water that comes out of your sink. If you don't like how it tastes, well, get a filter. I've been using Brita pitchers for at least the past eight years and the water tastes just fine. Plus, a filter is a MUCH cheaper alternative to bottled water and it's also environmentally friendly.

What's also really cool is that in honor of Earth Day the Brita people have partnered up with Nalgene to create a campaign called Filter For Good. If you're seriously ready to take the pledge to give up bottled water, I can help two of you lucky readers out with that thanks to the first-ever Los Angelista giveaway!

Brita sent me a couple of their faucet mount filtration systems and two new HDPE Filter for Good Nalgene bottles. All you have to do is leave your best tips for green living in the comments. I'll put all your names in a hat and then pick two of you as the winners of these lovely prizes!

Let's hope the changes we all make today and every day will help next year's photo from Mount Hollywood be a whole lot less smoggy.

A Tale of Los Angeles: Smog, Racism and Police Brutality

Oh, Los Angeles. You're supposed to be the star of this little production called "City of Angels". What are you thinking? What are you doing? What in tarnation is going on?!

Los Angeles, your agent might refuse to represent you anymore if you keep acting out like this.

The first headline I read yesterday morning was, "Los Angeles Remains Most Polluted US City".

Great, just great. I'm sure my two sons are going to have the lungs of a pack a day smoker by the time they're 18. I can't say I was totally surprised about this given the brown haze that hangs over this city, particularly during the summertime. But by the end of the day, I started to wonder if it's the bad air that clouds folks judgment out here.

After reading about my reduced lung capacity, I went and clicked on the 7 am broadcast of the KTLA morning news. I wanted to see what was brewing with our scheduled immigration reform marches. A reporter standing on the corner of Broadway and Olympic in downtown popped onto my screen, saying, "I think the turnout is going to be pretty small this year. I've only seen a few protesters so far this morning." Um, yeah, moron. If it's 7 am and the march didn't start till like 10 in the morning, who's going to come down 3 hours early?

Tuesday is normally the day I'm in the office for meetings. However, since our office is located in downtown LA, we had to shut down for the day due to the marches. Never fear though, it wasn't a day off. It was a "work remotely" kind of day. So, around 10:15, I headed up Vermont to the Starbucks in Los Feliz, met with my boss, and then stayed to get a few things done.

While 10,000 people were busy marching in downtown, I got the "pleasure" of overhearing a conversation between what I'm guessing was a realtor (R) and her friend (F). I sat right next to these two and typed their conversation as they talked:

Realtor: You know what, I know I work very well with the Europeans and civilized people from New York and Chicago.

Friend: I LOVE Europe.

R: Exactly. I mean, this lady yesterday wanted me to drive around the neighborhood so she could see if she liked it, and then asked me, where are the black people?

F: Are you serious?

R: I told her, "Honey, this is Beverly Hills, there are no black people!"

F: laughing out loud at this comment.

R: Seriously, they come here and they want a nice neighborhood but they want "diversity". If they want diversity, move to Inglewood and get shot.

Sigh. I'll spare you all the verbatim of the rest of the conversation where the friend went on to discuss his three master's degrees and how he's trying to hire someone for a job, but he wants someone that is a recreational drug user. "Someone that can have a little fun on the weekend, you know." Clearly, book learning and letters behind your name doesn't mean anything.

I headed home for lunch and then drove over to another Starbucks by USC. I met with three of the teachers I supervise and it was finally time to head home again. As I drove north on Hoover Street, I heard the buzz of helicopters overhead. By the time I got to Hoover and Venice, northbound traffic was at a standstill. There was no southbound traffic.

Oh no, I'd forgotten about the afternoon march down to MacArthur Park.

Now, when I think of MacArthur Park, I don't think of a place to take my kids to play even though it's sort of pretty there. Instead, I think of drug deals, crime, fake ids, prostitution...you get the picture. It's also in one of the most congested, poor and heavily recent immigrant parts of the city, the Westlake district. Hoover Street drives by there.

Time for a u-turn and some creative driving to try to get around this march/rally.

As I drove, I turned on KNX AM1070 and heard that there was a scuffle going on with the police. The reporter said rubber bullets were being shot into the crowd, that the police were hitting reporters with their batons. It wasn't until I watched the 11 pm news that I saw the footage of what went down.

It made me feel sick. Maybe you don't come over to this blog regularly and you think I'm crazy. Maybe you come over and frequently share your thoughts. Maybe you're too shy and you never leave a comment. That's all fine. But, I want you to click this link and watch this footage.

Seeing that footage made me feel broken-hearted about this city of supposed angels. It made Los Angeles look sooo bad.

But I'm also a little bit glad.

I'm glad that we're being forced to pull back the veil, revealing once more the truths about what's really going on in this city. Change needs to happen and it needs to happen now. And I know it's not just my city. It's your city too, even if there's no media footage to show it.

A Rarity

Yesterday, I saw things that I almost never see in Los Angeles. No, not concrete freeways and not the BMW in this picture. I see both of those all the time.

Look past the car, past the concrete, above the overpass...what do you see there?

"Just some mountains," you say?

Well, let me tell you, I drive home on the northbound 110 Freeway every day and I rarely see those mountains. It was so clear in Los Angeles yesterday that it was an event worth talking about. Everyone I spoke to was exclaiming, "Wow, can you believe how clear it is?" Yeah, who knew those mountains were there. It was so pretty that I found myself thinking about what the original group of thirteen that founded Los Angeles over 300 years ago must have seen.

Yes, it was so clear that I could see downtown LA from Compton, eleven miles to the south. That NEVER happens. Usually, I can't see downtown until I'm two or three miles away. And then, for those of you who want it all, you want to ski in the morning and go to the beach in the afternoon...I could see snow capped mountains to the east. I could see the mountains in this photo from Watts. I took it while standing on the playground of a school. You all should have seen the kids pointing at the mountains and the snow. I overheard one kindergartener ask another, "Where did those mountains come from?" The other replied, "What's that on top of them?"

What do we usually see instead? Why, absolutely nothing but some pinkish-brown haze in the sky. I like to say that haze is just some fog that hasn't burned off yet. Except that I see that haze almost every single day, no matter what time of day it is. I guess I need to tack an "S" and an "M" onto the beginning of "fog" and get rid of that pesky "F". I think we all know what that spells, right?

If you follow the news at all, you know that Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth won a well-deserved Oscar this past Sunday. I saw it last May, almost a year ago, and wrote about it here. Everybody thinks it's a great film but we all still want the magic pill to make the smog go away.

I wonder if LA will every reclaim her true beauty. I wonder if twenty years from now, folks like me will still be snapping pictures of sights like this, sights they rarely see.