Is LA Cursed?

Exhibit A: The Mayors Race

Photo by Alexander Ramirez on Unsplash

Yesterday, I wrote about the Los Angeles Mayor’s election for my regular Ankler column. You can read it all here.

No LA native could find the coming showdown anything other than deeply depressing, dismal…a brutal crushing of any faint hope that might still survive deep in our souls.

So writing on that subject made me wonder as I occasionally do, about various entities: is it possible that this city is cursed?

Now, full disclosure, my openness to supernatural explanations might exceed your own. I think that an active relationship with the forces of the great beyond makes life more interesting. Someday, I’ll tell you all about my experiences – which include multiple witnesses – and you can be the judge.

In any event, if the supernatural explanations are not technically true, they are often metaphorically true, and I believe the universe operates on a metaphorical level much more than a literal one.

Anyway - metaphysical detours aside - I’ve worked in or covered some places I consider to be cursed. It’s not just that bad things happen, or that they have bad managers who make bad decisions, or that they have bad luck – those things happen all the time everywhere – it’s like they are physically blocked from having any good thing happen ever. Physically! Like, even when they have good managers make good decisions, somehow it still goes horribly awry.

Back when I wore a younger reporter’s clothes, I did my time at the Times of Los Angeles, where everything bad that could happen always did. But it wasn’t just that. When you got down to it it was like the insularity, the bureaucracy, the terrible owners, the habits of mediocrity weren’t the disease themselves…they were symptoms brought about by some problem so much deeper and more profound that you almost had to turn to the supernatural to comprehend what was happening there.

I remember being at one meeting  – there were so many meetings there - when all 140 departments convened about some matter, and miraculously, all agreed on a path forward. I left the meeting walking on air because finally something good was going to happen. And I turned to my boss, and asked, “Aren’t you excited?”

He nodded and thought for a moment and then said, “Yes, but you have to remember, this place is cursed.”

And so it was. Soon enough the project went spectucularly wrong in ways that no one in that meeting could have even imagined.

It was enough to make you a believer.

But now, looking at the Mayor’s race, I’m thinking – maybe it wasn’t a curse on the LA Times, but a bigger curse on LA civic life…And the LA Times just got its piece of that. We were right across the street from City Hall, so it wouldn’t have been hard for a curse to hit us, or spill over from there - not sure the specs on how curses travel.

It certainly when it comes to LA, feels like it. Just consider the fact that no LA Mayor has gone on to higher office in A HUNDRED YEARS! And that one was a fluke because he had just been acting mayor for two weeks. And despite the fact that all of them almost have run for other offices.

(When I think about it, no Mayor of New York as far back as I remember has gone on to anything despite at least four of them running for President (Lindsay, Guliani, Bloomberg and De Blasio) and at least one (Ed Koch) for Governor. And no Mayor of Chicago either – we’ll see if Rahm Emmanuel changes that.

But at least Mayors of San Francisco (Gavin Newsom, Dianne Feinstein).have gone on to things And a Mayor of San Diego (Pete Wilson) of all places became a Senator and Governor. So go figure. Curse not disproven.

Anyway, go figure. Here’s an excerpt from my piece which attempts to explain why the Pratt insurgency should be a warning for the leaders of Hollywood, who live in an adjacent, if slightly better-furnished bubble to LA politicians.

But when people are telling you, I am worried that my city is falling apart — and you want to put homeless encampments in front of my children’s schools, if you answer their fears with talk of “comprehensive plans” or, as Councilmember Raman did in the debate, quibbles about how a law is structured, you sound either outright insane or so deeply complacent, that you might as well walk around inside of a giant soap bubble.

If you’ve been in government and you can’t start by expressing deep regret about how things have gone lately, you are signaling to voters that their concerns aren’t your priority.

In normal times, a character like Spencer Pratt would struggle to break out of the low single digits in a citywide election. But when the other candidates respond to uproar with complacency, the uproar goes looking for someone who actually acknowledges it.

Is Hollywood cursed too? Or is it that the Civic Center curse has spread down the 101?

I’m open to scientific explanations here, but I think we have to recognize that this level of f-ed uppery is beyond the understanding of political analysis.

Also in this piece: read about my youth as a high school intern for Mayor Bradley! The secrets of my past!

Also! Thursday, I will be doing my first-ever, all-advice column episode of What’s Wrong? (with Richard Rushfield). I am here and on call to tell you how to live your lives, or just give you insight into the world around you. No subject too obscure – romantic advice, US military entanglements, home decor, what to watch on TV, meeting etiquette. Leave your questions in the comments and we’ll tackle them on Thursday’s episode. (Or if you want to stay anonymous, send your questions to abby@theankler.com) Whatever is troubling you, I can fix it!