from ProQuestUnreal L.A.: A synthetic city built without the bad stuff
Star Tribune; Minneapolis, Minn.; Feb 6, 1994; Chris Welsch; Staff Writer;Sub Title: [METRO Edition]
Start Page: 01G
ISSN: 08952825
Dateline: Universal City, Calif.Full Text: Copyright Star Tribune Newspaper of the Twin Cities Feb 6, 1994
In Unreal Los Angeles, otherwise known as CityWalk, everyone was having a nice day.In Real Los Angeles, the Saturday after the Jan. 16 earthquake, the usual course of disasters continued unabated. (Locals joked that locusts would be next.) Thousands of homeless people were still waiting to find new homes and the freeways were jammed.
That weekend, the L.A. Times reported that pastors would be telling their flocks to be spiritually prepared for "death coming unannounced." But at CityWalk, the quake, and all of L.A.'s other troubles, seemed distant.
Built next to Universal Studios, CityWalk is a theme park-mall hybrid, an experiment in "controlled environment." In other words, CityWalk aims to have the flavor of L.A. without the ugliness. For about $100 million, MCA Inc. built a two-block long outdoor city, a place where tourists and Los Angelenos would feel safe, where they would not have to deal with panhandlers, drive-by shootings, knife fights or any other urban hassles, if possible. It opened last spring.
Although the idea of CityWalk seems a ripe target for sarcasm, spending a few hours there isn't so bad. It's a mall, to be sure, but as malls go, it's a nice one: outdoors, with a lot of beautiful old neon signs (courtesy of the Museum of Neon Art) and creative, pedestrian-friendly architecture.
Lee Zimmerman is among the human attractions of CityWalk. He's one of a crew of street performers that Universal recruited from Venice Beach, among other places, to provide real urban entertainment.
He had just finished his puppet show in CityWalk's main square; he was packing his set when he was asked about the nature of the place: Is it Unreal L.A.?
"Yeah, it's a synthetic city," he said. "It doesn't have any of the bad stuff. No graffiti. No dog {noun} on the sidewalk where I'm performing. No hassles." He said he'd received more than one death threat from his audiences at Venice Beach.
CityWalk is an island of suburban tranquillity amid L.A.'s madness; it also is a clever bit of marketing designed to draw in those visiting the Universal Studios theme park on one end of the promenade or the 18-theater movie complex and amphitheater on the other end. About 4.5 million take the studio tours each year. About 2.5 million go to movies at the Cineplex Odeon theaters and shows at the Universal Amphitheater. But most of CityWalk's patrons are not tourists from out of town; they're from metro L.A.
A survey conducted by MCA indicated that 75 percent of the patrons at CityWalk were from the San Fernando Valley and L.A. suburbs.
By most accounts, the about 40 businesses along CityWalk are doing well. CityWalk drew 3 million visitors from May to December, and MCA is planning to double the size of the promenade in a new phase of the project. A Hard Rock Cafe and B.B. King blues club are planned.
For Mary Carter, director of the Museum of Neon Art, success at CityWalk has been dramatic. The museum, which has a collection of old neon signs from L.A. as well as other forms of neon art, was in downtown Los Angeles for 12 years before moving to its current location.
She shares an astounding statistic: Each week last summer, 15,000 people visited the museum. That's more than visited each year at the downtown location in the two years after the L.A. riots.
There's no charge for going to CityWalk, but its location (isolated from the city on a hill north of West Hollywood), parking fee ($6) and tight security are there to deter would-be troublemakers - namely gangsters and rowdy teens.
That unstated exclusivity has generated some criticism of CityWalk - that it represents yet another form of flight from urban problems.
Carter disagreed. She said Universal Studios theme park itself was built as an entertainment destination - not as an organic part of the city - and therefore it shouldn't be judged by the same standards.
"If it doesn't have all the grime and grit and other sorts of spontaneity of the city, it also doesn't have some of the problems," she said.
The architecture of the place has also generated a lot of attention, but most of it positive. The design was created to recall the best elements of Los Angeles architecture - from '50s drive-ins to modern work by Frank Gehry. But it doesn't explicitly mimic anything. It's just supposed to give you that L.A. feeling.
Amid palm trees, a gigantic TV screen, and outlandish sculptures festooning the facades of shops and restaurants, a gigantic Wayne Gretzky, stick in hand, bears down on the crowd from the wall of a sports-collectible store.
But even with all the architectural spectacles, flashing lights and street performers, CityWalk is much too orderly to really be a slice of L.A., except in its artificial nature, which sometimes makes for some vivid ironies.
As diners enjoy sushi or gourmet pizza, the rumble of explosions and distant gunfire can be heard. Not real danger, though. It's manufactured for tourists in Universal Studios theme park nearby.
Some miles away, surfers are riding the best waves of the year along America's most storied beaches.
Inside CityWalk, at a clothing store called the Current Wave, artificial waves about 6 inches deep roll through a fenced-off pool that's about 8 feet wide and 20 feet long. There are always people lining the fence, watching the small waves splash against the wall.
Other forces of nature also seem to be minimized at CityWalk.
It didn't escape the quake, but it didn't close, either. Damage was mostly superficial. Although shop and restaurant owners said their business was down, crowds still milled about the tony restaurants and frozen-yogurt stores. Some were playing a free video game at the Panasonic pavilion called "Paparazzi," in which the camera operator must attempt to film the rich and famous for points.
In Gladstone's, a restaurant that mimics the famous original at the point where Sunset Blvd. meets the ocean, the tap water wasn't drinkable, and a lot of liquor bottles had been broken, but everything else seemed to be functioning normally.
Sheldon Siegel, a daytime supervisor at the Upstart Crow Bookstore/ Coffeeshop, said that business was beginning to return after the quake, though it was still slow compared with the activity before Christmas. Siegel doesn't buy into the idea that CityWalk is an escapist enclave.
"It's just another part of L.A.," he said. "It's just another way to open a mall."
The puppeteer, Lee Zimmerman, said that CityWalk may not be the most colorful place to perform, or even the most lucrative, but it's the place he likes best.
"It's safe here," he said. "If there's anything L.A. about it, it's the efficiency of it. They took away all the bad stuff."
If you go CityWalk has a hot line that tells you how to get there, where to park and who's performing on any given day. Call (818) 622-4455.