Four Los Angeles County Parks

In other places I've written about reinventing Kaprow's Happenings. As a group, my peers and I have re-staged Scales, reinvented Burbank, and will soon recreate Easy.

In the process, I became intrigued by the pseudo-grafting in Burbank, linking together somewhat tangential and/or disassociated items and images. I've decided to riff on the form, or as Howard Singerman called it, a "Situationist" adaptation (when I described the project to him).

Before I present the documentation of Four Parks in an upcoming blog, I thought I'd type a few words on my personal/historical relationship with these places. One caveat: any information below might be speculation or misremembering on my part. If you're surfing for verifiable factoids, look elsewhere.
Towsley Canyon Park (pictured above) is located a few miles south of CalArts. It's a regular stomping ground of mine, mostly to let my dog romp and acquire a few ticks on my way out to school. It is part of the many large parcels of undeveloped land in the Santa Monica Mountains that have been set aside as quasi-nature preserves. There is a small section in the back of the canyon (called Ed Davis Park) that has traditional city park landscaping, with lawn and picnic tables and such. It's a bit of irony, as Ed Davis was the infamous fag-hating police chief for the City of Los Angeles. More can be found about his raids of gay bars in John Rechy's books.

I haven't had sex here, but the place has evidence of cruising taking place as well as institutional modifications to thwart any activity. Sections of the park that would provide visual cover for someone looking for a little privacy have "Area Closed" signs posted around them. Public access had been controlled, and I've spotted regular police patrols of the road and parking lot. On occasion I've spotted a few cars with single men sitting inside, a sign that covert activity still takes place. I also have a memory of reading about the park at one of the numerous cruising web sites, though the information could have been out of date.

Suffice to say the park exhibits potential as a public sex environment, with minimal traces of past encounters. Of the four parks listed, it's the one I know the least about.
Griffith Park is probably the most famous of the four, both as a backdrop for numerous Hollywood movies, and as a place for cruising. To thwart tearoom activity here, doors have been removed from the toilet stalls and the partitions have been replaced by cement block walls, effectively thwarting the drilling of glory holes. The residential streets about the park no longer allow parking when the park is closed, so those of us who in years past would park outside and hike in now have to find other late night venues. Older Los Angeles residents may remember scenic roads that crossed the park that are now closed to cars. I can remember driving through the park as a teenager and seeing "clones" parked along the roadside.

Having lived nearby for a number of years, the small canyons at the upper end of the Fern Dell section of the park (off Los Feliz) were a regular cruising ground for me. I have many fond memories of the place, including meeting one boy who became a temporary roommate, meeting my first deaf boyfriend, crossing paths with Ron Athey, and also some great memories of a couple of encounters with a super-hot art student. He's now someone I admire as an artist and shows at a well-known gallery.

From a visit last week, I did spot evidence of recent activity, though it looks like park-bond funds have been used to clean up some of the sexual detritus.
Nearby is Elysian Park (pictured above). At one point in the park's history it was landscaped as a proto-botanical garden, and then suffered through various eras of neglect. This has actually resulted in vistas reminiscent of Arcadian ruins. The park has another, more prosaic history. It was once home to working-class Latino families and was the proposed site of what would have been Los Angeles' largest housing project, designed by Richard Neutra. Once the mostly Mexican families were forcibly removed, and McCarthyism reared it's anti-socialist head, the land was given over to the Brooklyn Dodgers. In addition to the baseball stadium, the park also contains the Los Angeles Police Academy and an old TB ward. Even so, there are still a few hundred acres of undeveloped trails.

This is probably the most active of the four sites, as it is still located in a working-class neighborhood, where residents are often packed into sub-standard housing, and they make use of the quiet and somewhat private spaces that the park provides. It's still relatively easy to access areas of the park, even at night. Most of the cruising takes place in the area around a small reservoir and in the areas adjacent to North Broadway. Of the four parks, Elysian was closest to my former home, and a regular stomping ground of mine. Several one-time tricks pulled from the park have morphed into great and long-lasting friendships. I've also found myself on the pointy end of a switchblade there (more than once), so the place is not for the street unwise or the faint of heart. There are a few parks in Los Angeles County known as regional parks. They often consist of a mix of high-use areas (landscaped for team sports and small groups) and places allowed to grow naturally. Quite often, the local flora provides cover for encounters that require some privacy. Since the native plants would suffer from the radical pruning that takes place in the public areas, plain-clothed police officers dress and act like cruising gay men in the hopes that they can get someone to pull their dick out so they can arrest them.

I remember using the restroom at Harbor Park a few years back, and as soon as I entered, a man rushed in and stood at the sink, watching my crotch and raising his eyebrows. I left, and he followed me out. I went back in, and he followed me again. This wasn't cruising, it was more like some clumsy hetero parody. Since undercover cops don't work alone, I walked out to see if I could spot anyone else in the area. Outside was another well-built white male in shorts and sneakers, standing about a dozen yards away. I casually walked behind him, and could see the outline of handcuffs in his back pocket. From there I walked to the parking lot, and when a car entered the lot with a single male, I told him that the two guys outside the toilet were vice. With that bit of hearsay, they all quickly got back in their car and left without saying a word. After about an hour with no action, one of the stone-faced guys walked to the road, and the other got in a SUV and drove off. I watched driver leave, and then stop down the road to pick up the first guy out of sight of the tearoom.

Because of legal challenges to police entrapment, some cities no longer use plain-clothes police. Also, in times of fiscal belt-tightening, police departments focus on violent crime and leave the consenting adults in parks alone. In recent years, I can remember the months right after the L.A. riots and 9-11 when law enforcement suddenly felt it had something better to do. It was as if this great oppressive ocean had pulled back from the shore, and all the fairies rushed into a temporary paradise while the police parked their patrol cars at airports and refineries (in an attempt to thwart the next terrorist attack). I can remember right after the riots, hoping over the locked gates to Elysian Park with my fellow cruisers. We hiked past a National Guard tank and some bewildered boys in camouflage, and we made our way down the trails to frolic. But these brief episodes don't last forever.

To paraphrase someone, laws based on shifting ideas of morality are created and enforced because of the fear that someone, somewhere is having a good time.

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