Get a seat for the Ford’s “The Mercy Seat”

The John Anson Ford Amphitheatre is one of the county’s best-kept secrets: a miniature outdoor venue that’s a charming cousin to the much larger Hollywood Bowl, located across the Hollywood Freeway.

But down below its main floor, the Ford reveals another secret: an intimate interior performing space for experimental productions. And there, as part of the

[Inside] the Ford New Play Series, you’ll find the Vs. Theatre Company’s presentation of playwright Neil LaBute’s “The Mercy Seat,” now running through April 24, 2011 in its Los Angeles premiere.

Described as “a caustically funny examination of opportunism in the wake of tragedy,” LaBute’s play offers a post-modern twist on a classic theme: what if a sudden calamity offered you a chance to step into a new life? Would you take it?

Performances run Wednesday-Saturday evenings at 8:00 p.m. plus a Sunday matinee at 2:00 p.m. Buy your tickets online here. And here are the driving directions.

Posted 3/31/11

Arlo Guthrie at UCLA Live

He’s “coming into Los Angeles…”

Folk musician and storyteller Arlo Guthrie plays UCLA Live’s Royce Hall on April 8. He’ll be joined by the harmonies and instrumental accompaniment of his son, Abe Guthrie, and The Burns Sisters.

Guthrie, the son of legendary Woody Guthrie, was part of the pantheon of folk heroes who made their bones during the cultural tumult of the1960s.

Guthrie first came to prominence in 1967 with “Alice’s Restaurant,” an autobiographical 18 minute story/song that humorously and lightheartedly touched on the trials and tribulations of the anti-war movement. His stage performances have now spanned half a century, including an appearance at Woodstock.

The concert begins at 8 p.m. at Royce Hall on UCLA’s campus in Westwood. Tickets range from $33 to $53 and are available online or by phone at (310) 825-2101. UCLA students can attend for the discounted price of $15. Avoid the $10 required for parking by planning your trip with Metro.

Posted 3/31/11

Explore historic Union Station—on foot

The Studio for Southern California History, located in the heart of Chinatown, is a non-profit community resource dedicated to sharing our region’s colorful social history as a way to help modern-day Angelenos rediscover a sense of place.

Where better to start than Union Station, opened in 1939 as one of North America’s last, and grandest, old-fashioned railway stations?

On Saturday, April 2, from 10:00 a.m.–noon, the Studio will host a free walking tour exploring not just Union Station, but also the rich history of the communities and rail lines that predate its construction. Meet at the front entrance on Alameda, but you need to RSVP with the names and number of guests, either by phone at (213) 229-8890, or by email at thesocalstudio@gmail.com.

Boom times on the L.A. River

When the heavens open, as they did epically last month, the Los Angeles River becomes a roaring, churning testament to urban junk and waste.

With a collection area of nearly 900 square miles, it carries in its rain-swollen waters anything that can be chucked into flood-control channels or pushed down curbside catch basins—sofas, stereos, soccer balls, spray paint cans from taggers, whatever.

Then there’s the trash, layers of plastic bags and Styrofoam mixed with tangled vegetation mowed down by fast moving waters on the river’s channel bottom, where it’s been allowed to grow wild again.

At the end of this mucky 51-mile journey to the sea is Jared Deck of Los Angeles County’s Public Works Department. He oversees a multi-million dollar operation in Long Beach to corral all that junk in a boom unfurled across the river, just north of the Queen Mary and the harbor. Think of it as a goal line stand.

At first, it’s hard not to be caught off guard by Deck’s youthfulness in a bureaucracy in which some guys have been on the job longer than he’s been alive. But then you learn that the 26-year-old is a Hermosa Beach surfer with a unique feel for the value of his job—and those of his colleagues in the Flood Maintenance Division—every time he paddles into the water.

“It’s fulfilling,” Deck says. “My playground is the outdoors so I enjoy doing anything I can to make it better.”

In March, the stakes were historically high for him and the boom, which was first placed across the river 11 years ago as a pilot project. More dammed up debris—460 tons of it—was hauled out of the water than at any time before, tangible evidence of the severity of the March storms. The tonnage included full, uprooted trees. (See video below of the boom in action.)

To be sure, the county, along with its private and government partners, has worked hard to significantly reduce the amount of debris and pollutants flowing into the Los Angeles River from a watershed area of nine million people.

Among other things, county officials have installed 11,000 catch basin screens and other devices in unincorporated areas and have encouraged cities across the region to do the same. They’ve also launched ad campaigns to discourage dumping and educate the public about the relationship between the ocean and what they wash down their driveways.

Still, during the storm season between October and April, all bets are off. Those catch basin inserts, for example, are designed to unlock so greater loads can be accommodated and street flooding can be reduced.  And, with as much as 330 million gallons a day flowing through the river, there’s little to do but wait for the debris to hit the boom.

Formerly called the Los Angeles River Trash and Debris Collection System, the boom is operated by a private contractor, Frey Environmental of Newport Beach. On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors renewed Frey’s contract for an annual sum of $795,000, with a 66-month maximum of about $4.4 million.

Since Frey first got the business in 2003, Dave Duncan has been there for the company as one its site operation managers. During the past eight years, he says he’s seen it all, including the sad discovery of a 35-year-old woman’s body. “I thought it was a mannequin,” he says.

Duncan says he understands why there’s so much old junk that ends up at the boom, where it’s lifted into dumpsters by cranes with “grab buckets.”

“If you’re on the low end of things, making $8 an hour and you don’t have money to go to the dump, what do you do? You throw it in the channel and hope for the best,” he says.

The experience and continuity that Duncan has brought to the operation gave a sense of confidence to Deck, who, in 2008, was assigned by the county to work directly with the contractor. “Whenever I’m on the site, Dave is always there,” says Deck, who was promoted last fall and now supervises the person who got his old job.

Deck grew up in central Maine—“in the middle of the woods”—and attended an engineering school in Worcester, Mass. Deck says he was quickly recruited by Los Angeles County before hiring freezes ended such efforts.

The recruiter, a Boston native, took him straight to the beach. “I was sold from there,” says Deck, who had learned to surf while studying abroad in Puerto Rico. An avid skier, too, he now lives in a Hermosa Beach apartment.

In his short number of years here, Deck says he’s had a great vantage point for seeing the success of efforts to keep the ocean cleaner by diverting runoff and trapping debris. “When I go surfing,” he says, “the water quality is significantly better…It’s great to see the system functioning and working.”

The boom in action

And here’s something you can do: Join the Friends of the Los Angeles River’s 22^nd annual cleanup on Saturday, April 30^th, from 9 a.m. to noon. The details are here.

Posted 3/31/11

Grandparents beware…

One of the best things about technology is the way it can keep families connected. But in recent weeks, consumer agencies have issued a warning:

Grandparents beware.

A longstanding wire fraud scam has been taking a national toll on loving relatives, particularly seniors, to the point that authorities in recent week have decided to make an all-out assault on it.

“It’s become a big issue,” says Rigo Reyes, acting director of the Los Angeles County Department of Consumer Affairs. “Last year, the Federal Trade Commission got over 60,000 complaints on it.”

Here’s how it works:

A senior citizen gets an urgent call, email or Facebook message from someone claiming to be a police officer or an adolescent grandchild. The message says the grandchild has been hurt or arrested or is otherwise in trouble, and needs hundreds or thousands of dollars to be wired immediately via money order or Western Union. And one more thing: Don’t tell mom and dad.

“The grandparents don’t want anyone to be in trouble, so they wire the money without checking first with other family members,” says Reyes. “In one case, the grandmother told the caller, ‘You don’t sound like my grandson,’ and the guy said ‘I broke my nose in a car accident, so I sound different’.

“But in many cases, the crooks can fool you because they hack into Facebook accounts and get enough information about the family to drop names and birth dates and so forth. They get marketing lists with specific details, names and addresses.

“They can be convincing, but once that money is wired, it can be picked up by anyone with a password — and good luck getting it back.”

The Department of Consumer Affairs and the Consumer Federation of America offer these suggestions for seniors to avoid being scammed:

–Always check with other family members if you get an SOS from a family member.

–Be proactive. Create a family code word to signal emergencies to each other

–Never wire money without being absolutely sure of the recipient and the reason.

And this goes for you, too, Mom and Dad.

Posted 3/31/11

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