Burbank

Leave a comment Posted on bicyclists, rules of the road

Legalizing Illegal Bicyclist Behavior

Drivers are often reminded through posted signs to “share the road” with bicyclists.  But what about “share the laws”?

If assemblymen Jay Obernolte and Phil Ting get their AB 1103 passed, this will no longer be true.

AB 1103 would allow bicyclists to run stop signs legally.

Obernolte told the Times that bicyclists’ “loss of momentum causes them to spend a substantially longer amount of time in the intersection.”  In other words, those two-ton monsters roaming the streets ruin their cardio workout.  Well, drivers could argue that stopping for bicyclists and providing a three-foot clearance for them impedes their progression as well.

Bicyclists will be the one type of vehicle traversing the highways that follows Mad Max-type of rules, leaving the rest of us drivers and pedestrians at our own peril navigating along Fury Road.

Imagine the confusion as you pull up to a stop sign, and when it appears to be clear, you press the accelerator only to quickly slam on the brakes due to a blur of wheels speeding in front of you.

If the rule of thumb is to change laws to reflect the way drivers and bicyclists operate their vehicles, then you might as well do away with stop signs and red lights altogether since so many people run through them.

Whenever I see a driver or a bicyclist speed through a four-way stop intersection as I alone obey the complete stop, I think about what would happen if the other person met someone like himself.   The result?  A crash.

Instead, these menaces count on law-abiding citizens to keep them safe.  How loony is that notion?

Once I observed a bicyclist going at least 30 mph downhill in a residential neighborhood, blowing through a four-way stop.  A driver honked his horn at him to which the bicyclist stopped, turned around, and gave him the middle finger on both of his hands.   The bicyclist knew what he did was illegal and wrong, but didn’t care, even about his own life which could have ended right there if not for the driver following the law in stopping at the intersection.

It is amazing that there aren’t double the number of traffic accidents when one sees on a daily basis blatant disregard for rules of the road.  No wonder Glendale has the distinction as one of the least safe cities in terms of traffic in America.

And before we unleash anti-immigrant venom into the discussion to explain this behavior, I have seen young and old, driving jalopies and jaguars, all perpetrators of bad driving.

The cause is complex, but much of it is rooted in the increasing selfishness of people.   They don’t care who is around them on the streets; they are determined to do whatever they want without risk of being caught or shamed.

What motivates a bicyclist or a motorist to make a complete stop when there is no one else around?

I feel embarrassed if I do something wrong in public; too many others do not feel the same.

To bring sanity back to the streets, I have three suggestions.

One, hire more parking enforcement officers.   Provide them with more training so that they can issue moving violations such as running stop signs.   Station them at four-way stops.  The revenue from all the tickets will more than pay for the additional jobs.

Two, have a public service campaign that educates the public how to behave on the road.

Three, contact Assemblymember Laura Friedman who represents the Burbank/Glendale area and express your opposition to this proposed law which will legalize bad behavior, something for which there is no drought.

Doing the right thing can’t be legislated, but neither should be doing the wrong thing.

Leave a comment Posted on Beautiful Downtown Burbank, Bob Hope, Bob Hope Airport, Brooklyn Avenue, Castrillo Matajudios, Herbert Hoover, John Wayne, Johnny Carson, Kim Kardashian, Laugh-In, NBC Studios, Tom Marshall

Thanks for the Memory, Bob Hope–Now Goodbye

There was a time when the name “Burbank” was nationally recognized.  The TV comedy show “Laugh-In” and The Tonight Show host Johnny Carson made Burbank a household name referencing it with the popular mocking proclamation, “Welcome to Beautiful Downtown Burbank!”

Though a joke, it brought attention to the city.  Now, few people under 40 years of age remember “Laugh-In” or Johnny Carson or Bob Hope.   Which explains why the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority decided to change the name of the airport from Bob Hope to Hollywood Burbank.

According to airport officials, the facility has seen a drop in traffic from nearly six million passengers in 2007 to four million in 2014.

Any Burbank resident would question these numbers by the huge amount of development that has occurred over that time period.   And now the airport wants to demolish the terminal building with an even larger one apparently believing that if you build a bigger airport, more people will come.

Quite frankly, those who live near the airport can only negatively be impacted with increased traffic who don’t desire a mini-LAX in their backyard.

In their quest for money, the commissioners have trashed history.  When the airport took on the Bob Hope moniker shortly after the entertainer died 13 years ago this month at the age of 100, it was an honor well deserved.

Bob Hope was considered by many as the most popular performer of the 20th century, achieving success in all aspects of the entertainment industry:  vaudeville, radio, film, television.   Additionally, through his USO tours during World War Two and future conflicts, he made entertaining the troops the good deed that celebrities should do for Americans fighting overseas.

Hope taped most of his television specials in Burbank at NBC Studios.  Plus, he lived most of his life in Toluca Lake.  His name attached to the airport is a tribute to his link to the city.

Sometimes changing names from the past makes sense.  It wasn’t until the 1970’s when Burroughs High revised its Injunettes cheerleader squad to Indianettes.

And just last year a town in Spain finally changed its name “Castrillo Matajudios” meaning “Fort Kill the Jews.”  Well, that only took 500 years since the Spanish Inquisition.

Other times replacing names eliminates the history of an area.

Back in 1993 the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors changed the name of Brooklyn Avenue in East Los Angeles to Cesar Chavez since the demographics went from Jewish to Spanish. In a few decades from now when a different demographic is predominant, surely there will be another rebranding.

I work at a school named after Herbert Hoover who often appears on lists of the worst U.S. presidents. Hoover High opened just a few weeks before Black Tuesday, the beginning of the Great Depression.  Even students who attend there don’t know who he is.   Should the Glendale Unified School District rebrand the school with a more well respected chief executive in order to attract more students?

I understand the appeal of the name “Hollywood” but its geographical location is Burbank, so the proper name should be Burbank-Hollywood Airport. Or, if the main reason for the change is to attract travelers, call it the Ikea Hollywood Airport since the city will soon be home to the largest Ikea store in the USA, and charge naming rights.

Glendale High recently named its auditorium as the John Wayne Performing Arts Center.   That makes sense since Wayne was an alumnus.   But if the goal is to attract people, calling it the Kim Kardashian Performing Arts Center would have been better.  Sure, she never attended the school, but she did consider running for mayor of the city once.

Meanwhile, Burbank has the Robert R. Ovrom Park and Community Center.  I wonder how many years it will take before people scratch their heads not knowing that Ovrom was a city manager.

By the way, has Burbank ever named a building after a teacher?

Tom Marshall taught history to thousands of students for more than 50 years at Burroughs High School.  Yet his lifelong dedication to kids is not memorialized.  It’s as if he never existed, his past vanished.  You would be hard pressed thinking of a worthier individual who positively affected people’s lives, not some city employee who opened the floodgates to the daily traffic jams that clog Burbank streets.

At least Burbank still has a Bob Hope Drive though it is the shortest street in town.

Every generation has a duty to maintain, not eliminate, history regardless of its marketability.

It behooves all of us to remember Hope’s most famous song, “Thanks for the Memory.”

 

Leave a comment Posted on parents, public schools, school calendar, teachers

GUSD Should Copy BUSD Calendar

January will be a busy time for Glendale Unified school board members as they tackle two of the most significant issues left over from 2015: the search for a new superintendent and a new starting date for school.

While the public has a minor say in choosing a superintendent, parents can have a major impact voicing their views on when schools should open their doors by attending one of the upcoming meetings: Jan. 11 at Glendale High, Jan. 13 at Hoover High, and Jan. 14 at Crescenta Valley High.

As reported before in this space, opening schools in early August makes no sense. The desire to finish the fall semester before winter break pertains only to 7-12th graders who have final exams.

And the idea that high school students need more time to prepare for Advanced Placement tests before the May testing period is just that—an idea. There is no proof that students have performed better on AP tests ever since school was moved up several weeks to early August.

In fact, AP test results have suffered in recent years ever since pre-requisites to taking AP classes were eliminated. Plus, this affects only a small portion of high school students. The majority of the K-12 student population does not need to follow a college calendar.

Thumbs up to parent Sarah Rush for spearheading an online petition to start school later that garnered 2,000 plus signatures. It definitely got the attention of GUSD more than this writer’s musings.

Thumbs down to GUSD for shelving this discussion even though parents expressed themselves back in August allowing plenty of time to alter next year’s calendar.   One school board member rationalized that they could not change the calendar because people already have made plans based on the Aug. 8th start date. Really?

Number one, how many parents cement August 2016 vacation plans in August 2015. And, number two, if they did, so what. School would not be starting earlier, it would be starting later.

Unfortunately, GUSD was not interested in renegotiating the already approved 2016-2017 calendar. Understandably Glendale’s school board members had their hands full with myriad issues this year including labor negotiations with employee groups, a proposed charter school (recently denied), future realignment of the district, as well as the continuing Sagebrush saga.

On the plus side, GUSD finally followed what Burbank Unified has done for years by posting an online survey for parents between Jan. 8 and 22 on this issue. And the district has formed a 27-member Superintendent’s Committee on Calendar Development that will meet five times (do we really need 27 people to devise calendar options?).

I find Burbank’s school calendar the most efficient. School opens Aug. 15 and ends on May 25. The 11-week summer allows more time not just for travel but for kids to enroll in enrichment classes or to get jobs. Conversely, Glendale schools start Aug. 8 and end June 1 with a 9-week summer.

I’m not sure why GUSD’s 27-member committee needs five meetings to devise a new calendar when their municipal neighbor already has one that they can adopt. Not having the Friday off before Labor Day, limiting the Thanksgiving holidays to three, and keeping Winter Break to two full weeks is how they do it, fitting the state-mandated 180 days of school within 284 calendar days instead of 298.

There, you can cancel four of the meetings right there.

Both cities share similar demographics and the same delicious bakery, Porto’s. So, to start the New Year right, hold a joint meeting of BUSD and GUSD and come to a consensus on the same school calendar. Potato balls, anyone?

 

Leave a comment Posted on Father's Day

Boy, do we need Father’s Day now

Sunday will mark my 17th Father’s Day, a special accomplishment for me considering that I have been a dad longer than my father was for me.

Even though my dad died when I was 14 years old, I often wonder what he would think about everything that has happened since 1973.

Warehouse-size retail stores and gridlock traffic in the Glendale-Burbank area.

The extinction of LPs and record stores and the birth of cell phones and personal computers.

Explicit lyrics in songs and violent scenes in movies.

Tattoos on people who didn’t serve time in the Navy or in prison.

The astronomical cost of living compared to 1973 when a gallon of gasoline was 38 cents, not enough for a candy bar today, and a home sold for $30,000, currently the cost of an average automobile.

The end of the Vietnam War to the beginning of terrorist attacks.

The resignation of President Nixon and the inauguration of Barack Obama.

Firsts for women including astronaut Sally Ride and Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

The legalization of gay marriage and the proliferation of children born out-of-wedlock.

The escalation of crazed individuals murdering innocent groups of people in schools, churches, and theatres.

Dad never saw the completion or destruction of New York’s Twin Towers.

He also didn’t live long enough to see any of his children marry, their children born, or his wife’s final 30 years.

A man of extremely modest means who rarely owned his own house or a new car ended up with three children each of whom have enjoyed a standard of living that would make him burst at the seams with pride.

I’d be curious to find out how my father would react to the relaxed mores in today’s society.

The blurring of what defines a person’s sexual preference, gender and ethnicity with

David Furnish, Elton John’s husband, identifying himself as the “mother” on the birth certificates of their adopted sons and ex-NAACP official Rachel Dolezal born white identifying herself as African American.

What would dad think?

He was of the generation when men were the breadwinners and protectors of the household.

Such father figures were portrayed in movies and television shows as the parent who meted out punishments to the children, but who also offered sage advice, the glue that held the family structure together.

Then the 1960’s happened and it became cool to make fun of establishment figures.

Unable to employ old stereotypes of minorities, dads nicely filled the roles for Hollywood, becoming metaphors for incompetent imbeciles.

The lowering of the prestige of being a father mirrors the decline in two-parent households.

It’s almost as if dad has become irrelevant.

The decline in fathers and their impact on rearing children cannot be overstated in terms of the residual decline in cultural standards.

We should celebrate the contributions of fathers, and encourage their resurgence in the home and in society.   Let’s build them up not break them down. Kids need their daddies.

Of all the lessons fathers pass down to their children, the one about mortality is perhaps both the greatest and saddest. Since men don’t live as long as women, their passing is the first death that hits immediate family members.   Just as there are ways to live one’s life, there are also ways how to survive a death in the family.

Often it takes the loss of a loved one for those left behind to appreciate the life they have ahead of them.

Still, I wish I didn’t have to learn that lesson until I was much, much older.