I was feeling annoyed with Downtown...and then I remembered why we left Silverlake

So we're still in the process of trying to find a daycare center for Nathan (something that has turned out to be a far bigger PITA than I expected). I've been striking out at places in and near downtown, so we decided to see what was available in Silverlake. MB contacted a place called Camelot Kids and was told a) they don't like getting phone calls--all contacts have to be made through their website, b) they had no openings for 2009 c) they had very few openings for 2010 and they had a selective admissions policy. Wo.

MB decided to check out their website and discovered the following gems:

* There's a "Conflict Resolution Word of the Month," described as follows:

Conflict resolution is something that we all work on, on a daily basis here at Camelot. We have brainstormed and come up with various ways on better educating our children about conflict-resolution. We have decided to showcase a different word each month that every class will discuss during one of their school days. We hope that by doing this they may have a better understanding of that word and can formulate different tools to apply to their everyday lives.

MB and I were guessing which words they used. He came up with FAIL and I came up with CRETIN and POSEUR.

* The website includes a lovingly detailed description of their toilet cleaning routine:

* Every urinal, commode, sink and even the floor is treated with Sanis Ultra clean, followed by a fresh water rinse.
* Water is vacuumed away along with all bacteria and soil, allowing floors to dry quickly.
* All fixtures are blown dry so your restroom is ready for immediate use.

Along with this, we have Suzanna our cleaning lady who comes twice a week and cleans each and every bathroom as well as all the other rooms in the facility. The toilets have also been fitted with an anti-bacterial solution that sanitizes after every flush.

We also have an air purifier in each class-room to remove airborne particles and hopefully reduce the spread of gems between the children.

*They offer classes in organic gardening, Bollywood and "Pixies, Fairies & Imps!"

My boss has a theory that modern liberals, in the absence of a meaningful spirituality, have taken to turning their children into fetish objects. I laughed when she told me, but now I think she's on to something.

Newsflash: Silverlake still sucks

From Curbed LA:

Highlighting (once again) the deep divisions among the Silver Lake community, two fliers have been going around in response to tonight's vote on whether to extend Silver Lake Neighborhood Council term limits and push back voting from this year till 2010. Michael Ray Menjivar, co-chair of the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council tells Curbed the council voted (it wasn't an unanimous vote) to try and extend limits because some council members were voted in as early as last December. (There are about 21 members total, he says.) Groups like the Committee To Save Silver Lake Reservoirs, (CSSLR) want the 2008 elections to go forward; they are circulating one flier. On the other side: Silver Lake residents like Laurie Pepper who want term limits extended; she is circulating a flier accusing the CSSLR of "attempting to overtake" the Neighborhood Council.

Call this reason number 6.

Silverlake sucks

A post in Curbed LA asks why the Rowena Reservoir isn't open to the public. Some replies in the comments section:

rowena reservoir is encased. the water in the picture is "non-structural" - by which i mean purely for aesthetics. the space used to be open to the public, after it was first built. this being silverlake, i'm sure it was closed at the request of the neighbors.

The heartbreakingly beautiful Rowena Reservoir actually covers a subterranean water storage tank and even though the precious H2O is now protected and secure below such landscaped wonderfulness, my bet is the grounds will remain off limits long into the future. I'm gonna hazard a guess that it was fenced off due in part to the efforts and outcrying of area residents who feared it would draw the vast unwashed transient masses. That's what the Silver Lake Meadow is for.

Ugh. I'm so glad we moved.

A Park for Kidlo

One thing that's not so great about living downtown with a kid is the lack of green space. We live just three blocks from Pershing Square, but there's no playground and that big concrete hole in the center is ugly and unappealing. There's Angels Knoll Park in Bunker Hill, but it's on a steep slope, and meh. Also not appealing. There are various parks in the planning stages, but who knows how long it'll take for them to get built (if some of the ever are).

But I'd read about a park near FIDM and Ralph's, so I packed Kidlo into the jogging stroller and walked over, even though it was 95 degrees today. It's a little less than a mile away from my apartment, so not too bad a walk even with the heat. It turned out to be a little jewel of a park, with grass, arbors covered in vines, a fountain and even a playground. It was so hot that Kidlo didn't want to move from the carriage, so we sat under an arbor and enjoyed the breeze for a while. It was early so the park was mostly empty, but as I left I saw a man and his two sons ride their bikes into the park. I'm glad that Reina will be able to talk Kidlo to the park without having to drive all the way to Griffith Park.

After the park we went to Ralphs and I did a little shopping. Very little because of how farking expensive it is. Jaysus, even with the price of gas it's still cheaper for us to drive to Trader Joe's and Costco. But it's nice to have a supermarket that's a quick bike ride away in case we need an onion or something.

While at Ralph's, I saw a pregnant woman shopping and a man carrying his son on his shoulders. It's nice to know I'm not the only person raising a kid down here. I think I'm going to try and get some sort of parents group together for downtown. I'm going to email a few bloggers and see if they'll give me a little space to put out the word.

Why We Left Silverlake and Moved Downtown

Well, the main reason is that our landlord hired an incompetent air conditioner repairman who painted the inside of our air conditioner vent with a chemical approved only for use outdoors, thereby rendering our apartment uninhabitable. But there were other reasons to leave Silverlake:

1. Parking Nazi neighbors: We drive old Mercedes-Benz's. They're cheap so we have no car payments, they're roomy so we can stash baby gear without driving a mini-van or (shudder) an SUV, and they're comfortable in a rolling-sofa kind of way. One of our cars is a diesel Benz, painted brown, with a dent in the front. We call him Heinrich. Poor Heinrich has seen better days but we love him anyway. But our neighbors did not, as I discovered one morning when I put my key in the lock and a woman darted out of her house to tell me she'd called the cops to have my car towed. My reaction: "What the fuck did you do that for?" She babbled about abandoned cars but the real answer is that she didn't like having my old, ugly car parked in front of her million dollar house. She later threatened to call the EPA on my because the car leaked oil. Then there was the dude who kept chalking our tires to see if we were moving the car. He finally let the air out of one of the tires and pulled the pin out of the valve so it couldn't be refilled. Ah Silverlake, what a tolerant and progressive community, hm?

2. More neighbor nastiness: There was a protest in our neighborhood over a new apartment building going up because...I have no fucking idea why that sparked a protest. They weren't building a shopping mall or a twenty story building, just your run-of-the-mill townhouses. I guess that affects property values somehow? Then there was the crazy bitch who threatened to call the cops on neighbors who were having a yard sale. No, I have no idea why.

3. Insane earthy-crunchy parents: There was an anti-vaccination flyer posted on the Coffee Table bulletin board. Parents push around $1200 Bugaboo strollers. A friend of mine who teaches at Ivanhoe told me about a parent who protested when her kid got detention for wrapping his hands around another kids throat because, "He was just expressing himself."

4. Head-up-the-ass syndrome: One of the shop owners in Sunset Junction had a dachshund that she let roam loose up and down the block. Predictably, the dog ran into the street and was killed by a car. So how did the hipsters react? By having a candlelight vigil for the dog. Seriously.

5. Silverlake is just like San Francisco: This is not a compliment.