Downtown Thoughts, Awards & A Pivot: Can't See The Forest 'Cause There's No Trees (No More There, There)

More Thoughts, Some Awards And A Pivot

I'm going to take a break, got some loose ends, dangling modifiers and participles, thoughts about our personal Apocalypse Now war experience but hand out some "Gonzies."

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Gonzies' are my awards for outstanding community actionism, heroism and public speaking efforts recently.

And yes, Ms. Betty Bamberg, my 11th grade English teacher (who looked a lot like Betty Boop btw), I know you're shaking your head. My writing these days is either a thank you or a middle finger. You shouldn't have lent me those college level books on the sly out of your own personal library.

But Hey! You broke my 16 year old testosterone-saturated heart when you got married mid-term and by my 12th grade disappeared, had transferred to exotic Hollywood or maybe it was Beverly Hills High School in 1963.

Perhaps it will never coalesce or consolidate, jell under an official banner, transition into a registered organization or unincorporated association, but there is a movement afoot.

"I can feel it coming in the air tonight." And it's refreshing because it's not a politically affiliated cabal, it has a "wheel without a hub" feel to it. Kinda fractal, not structured but emerging organically. Free flowing and Laguna unique.

FYI: My alter-ego, Dr. Gonzo, is my writing muse, and please remember being not only neurally divergent but specifically schizophrenic means that neither of us is ever alone.

Like Bill Murray said in Caddyshack, so at least I got that going for me. "We think therefore we write," our columns and essays are our donation to whatever this phenomenon is.

These scrivenings all come with a warning: We'll be meandering from conversational (Gonzo) to a more content-focused informative tone, it gets a little crowded in here, k?

Since even I can't predict when we'll switch from channeling Hunter S. (Gonzo) Thompson, including his quintessentially, freak flag transgressive style of journalism back to Roger, the enviro-analyst and former eco-actionist (we prefer actionist), c'mon along for a hopefully further educational ride.

Future columns about how a 55-year resident, 80 year visitor to Laguna feels about just how bat-poop crazy and under-serving or preserving this City Council is. Fiduciary trustees they're not. We'll never forgive them or the CM, not that the trees weren't unwell.

No, it wasn't what they did so much but how they went about it--and a lot of other stuff surrounding the Promenade and obliterating of a treasured-by-all-native So Cal vibe.

The name alone sounds like them: Affectatious, insecure, lame, yearning to "see and be seen on a scene." They think this device will by association MAKE them all relevant and important. Parading. Pretentious. Fake. Disingenuous phonies.

That's soooooooo not Laguna, it's a boojie name, so they lost us and a lot of natives plus other long term residents damned skippy quick. Our surf community's not just an artist's colony: Surfers resent, hate and are suspicious of poseurs---annoying gremmies and hodaddies from inland, not true surfers.

Those 5 dorks seem like they were dropped into CC Chambers, migrated from La Jolla, Newport or Carmel. Their pilot the CM is, and how clueless can one person be? The outrage was the most predictable part, yet he's lived here off and on for decades, so add dense and clueless to his portfolio.

And like those who have nouveau riche affluence foremost on their feeble minds and a blank checkbook (ours) in their hands, our CC seems to believe that all things material are obtainable.

Extrinsic, not intrinsic, T.S. Eliot's "Hollow Men." And the conclusion of Eliot's poem is sadly resonant with the FA Fiasco: "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper."

Rip out our history (and hearts from our beating chests like Thuggees in The Temple Of Doom) on FA. Build a $7.5 million monument to themselves, an artificial gimmick that resembles rural France or Belgium? Repeat throughout Downtown? Purchase the Canyon Road? PCH?

Underwrite a faux estuary down at Aliso after being so dumb they didn't understand what a white elephant the County unloaded? "Here's $22 million, take what'll cost you an additional $100 million in the first 10 years alone. Suckers."

Sure why not, it's not like it's their money, or even their traditions, their heritage anyway. They obviously don't FEEL Laguna. They FEEL as if from elsewhere, brought in their dildonic entitled 1%-er pilot fish at key junctions, insecure sycophants who like them needed somewhere to admire each other for a few hours each week.

Duplicate some warped simulacrum of a place they visited once upon a time far away on an expensive vacation that none of the hoi-polloi can afford. WTF? Then again, we FEEL this place, it's native habitat, the vacay party was already here.

William Blake, the artistic renaissance man said it best: "The Vision of Christ that thou dost see, is my vision's greatest enemy." These 5 bozos vision 100% eradicates and supplants the real lover's vision in residence here in Laguna, not totally bogus poseur residents. A major disconnect rift that, btw, continues to widen.

I monitored the place before construction began. Almost empty from midnight to 11 am, so nearly 12 hours each day it's unused, superfluous.

We've now got a pretty long (and growing) laundry list of related, connected topics after posting a previous column here----plus one at the LB INDY as well. And no lack of ideas from fellow "trulys" (aka actual simpatico natives).

So we're ready to move on, trying to react to subsequent events regarding the 4/28/2026 LBCC meeting, plus convos with fellow community members about Laguna Breaking Bad.

And although forensic economics is not our forte, we have been challenged to explain the relationship between what we've dubbed "luxury, toy, gimmick Capital Improvement Projects," CIPs like Downtown's urban renewal, and other BIG BIG ticket X-mas wish list ones.

Why or how these CIPs are destined to be fiscal black holes to include previously undisclosed enviro-stressors, the complexities of these CIPs or acquisitions through a professional land use consultant's eyes. Ours.

Glaringly by lies of omission, the CC and CM have NOT disclosed a lot, and once again in breach of the Brown Act (1953): We have the legally established right to know the downsides to their ex-parte communications.

And before I forget, who in their right natural mind believes for a second that there weren't Brown Act violations the day/night of the FA Midnight Massacre, multiple ones by the CC and the CM? Subsequently?

Questions were asked but never answered: How did they get degraded into their various states of ill health? Don't we have anyone tasked with ongoing monitoring re our public inventory of trees? Why didn't someone at least do a close inspection of the ones soon to be surrounded by construction on FA?

I was a builder for about 35 years here and one of the first things I did was assess what was to remain if I was going to grub or denude, massively grade a project site. On FA, there was a complete lack of basic policies, procedures and protocols for public works projects. Hope the contingency %, the cost overrun budget was adequate?

As the detectives ask themselves in noir fiction, after something traumatic happens: "Qui bono," investigate who benefits/benefitted or will from the crime?

Regarding the Downtown Phase II effort, do any of the CC already have or have queued up (for personal profit speculative development) real estate purchases of properties there? Is there an undisclosed conflict of interest and civic corruption lurking there or nearby?

Into escrow the day after their last on CC, or maybe laundered already through a friend, a front, a non-related accomplice that provides cover?

The picture that's emerging isn't a good one. Our CC is intent on throwing out everything Downtown, relics that are the historical buildings, the healthy and sick trees, baby with the bath water. Like ripping off a bandaid, as quickly and widely as possible.

They consider themselves seated in Chambers residing on the Olympus dais of urban renewal gods. We needn't know anything because that would inhibit their Pygmalion-like motivation: "Why can't Laguna be more like Carmel, or Cannes, or whatever pleases Visit Laguna?"

Rebranded and re-named versions of our visitor's bureau's have been telling us who, what and where we MUST be since we began stuffing their greedy pockets 25 years ago. They finally got 5 flunkies to do their bidding, 100% funding stream unbroken.

Actually, mo' money every year and puh-leaze!"Stewardship" is so retro, so 2000, so passe. It's like wow, shucks, bees knees, cat's meow, gosh and gee willickers. Oh, and disco. We're a wild and crazy guy on a dance floor, but being a musician, we thought disco sucked. Maybe it was all of that dressing up and the sequins. Very Promenade.

BTW, I asked why the City didn't declare the FA merchants affected a "sales tax free zone" during construction, to cut them some slack due to infringement and curtailment of commerce? Or why didn't they when they closed it off several years ago? Surely that's grounds for litigation, a tort, especially the loss of grandfathered parking spaces for access? Some kind of compensation, a perk or bennie, toss 'em a biskie for the disruption, mitigation? Crickets.

I think it was Toni Iseman who brought it up at the CC meeting of the 28th: That no such idea, compensation, was even discussed or offered? Am I the only one who is thinking that our locally owned and long time operated businesses are being shuffled out the door duplicitously?

The Gonzies'

I'm not going to rank or rate them, rock stars all, deserving platinum. It's becoming increasingly obvious that we have more expertise in the audience than on CC, staff and vendors.

Maybe the 5 Gonzo recipients should be up there instead. 4 at large alternates. Like the trees, I'm a municipal failure pathologist, and via differential diagnostics, I have concluded that these CC specimens are rotten to the core.

And term limits? What good will term limits be? We don't need no stinking term limits, what we need immediately is a total recall, a purge, a coup now---treat them the way the trees were treated.

Defenestrate (toss), excise them now before their infection spreads. This CC is a pro-development cancer, like melanoma, metastacizing before our eyes. It's like they're a thief who stole our the family credit card or checkbook, on a spending spree.

8 years out, even if the Term Limits initiative passes, we''ll be BK for certain. And they'll all be gone anyway. Nothing left in their inventory or on their checklist.

At LBCC on the 28th Award Winners: Toni Iseman, Ruben Flores, Ann Christoph, Ann Krizman

At large: Les Miklosy, Mary Locatelli, Jennifer Zeiter, Joy Berry (Uncompensated forensic analysts)

Now we KNOW that if a tree falls on Forest, it makes a sound. Bury my heart at wounded tree.