Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Santa Ana needs more gay people.
There, I said it.

Having grown up in San Diego, I've seen first hand how the (GLBT) community can refine once rough urban areas like Hillcrest and further expand its positive gentrification into surrounding neighborhoods such as Normal Heights and North Park into desirable pocket destinations.

Don't take my word for it–here's an exerpt on Gay Villages from Wikipedia (yeah I know, Wikipedia isn't de facto, but I strongly agree with what is written).

These neighborhoods are also often found in working-class parts of the city, or in the neglected fringe of a downtown area – communities which may have been upscale historically but became economically depressed and socially disorganized. In these cases, the establishment of a gay community may eventually turn these areas into desirable, upscale neighborhoods, a process known as gentrification – a phenomenon in which gays often play a pioneer role.

That first sentence in the above quote sure sounds like both the Lacy and French Park (are you listening Santa Ana/Related California) neighborhoods, wouldn't you say?

So...who's with me on giving the water tower a fresh coat of rainbow paint this weekend?

Street Lake at 6th and Mortimer

Back in March of last year, a few friends and I began walking to The Gypsy Den for an early morning cup of coffee. On the way there, we stopped at the corner of 6th and Mortimer and took note of a street lake taking residence in this high-density residential neighborhood.

The next day we took the same route and lo and behold, the stagnant water was still there. "I think I found my new pet project", I said to my fellow caffeine whores.

Later that day, I headed back to take some pictures to send to Santa Ana Public Works when I encountered a gentleman by the name of Juan waiting for a bus just a few steps away from the street lake. Juan told me that he's lived in the neighborhood for over eight years and has yet to see a dry gutter.

Just then, he motioned me to turn around as a Mamacita was carefully pushing a stroller through the puddle, trying not to make too much of a splash. Juan was shaking his head in a sad, frustrated manner.

I thanked Juan for his time and told him that I'd be making some phone calls to get problem fixed.

"Thank you, and I wish you luck", Juan replied, as if he somehow knew that over the next few months, I'd be leaving several unreturned phone messages left on answering machines and operators down at Public Works.

Not until late in August did I finally have the wherewithal when placing a follow-up call to ask to speak directly with Jim Ross, the Executive Director down at Public Works.

At first, the operator seemed hesitant to connect me to him, but after briefly talking it up as if we had old business, the call was patched through.

When Jim Ross answered the call, I was immediately delighted with his "can do" attitude. It was a very refreshing experience and he assured me that he would have someone out the next day to survey the location.

Sure enough, Jim called me back the very next day and assured me that he'd have the pooling problem fixed by the end of the year.

October came and went, and November was flying by with no sign of progress. I was beginning to feel stood up. Then, one night as I was walking back from Monday Night Football down at Tommy Pastrami's, I noticed some orange cones that read "SAPW" set up around the lake. Later on that week, I headed down to the lake and snapped these photos below:


As the year came to a close, so did another one of my pet projects. Jim Ross down at Public Works did an amazing job and now this intersection is no longer a problem for those that walk, ride, or drive through this intersection.

And for once, I was actually glad to see my tax dollars being thrown down the gutter.


James G. Ross, Executive Director
20 Civic Center Plaza, M-21
Santa Ana, CA 92702
click for webpage

Emergency Repairs
714-647-3380

General Maintenance and Repairs
714-647-3380

Project Bid Information
714-647-5680

Public Works Information
714-647-5690

Can We Bring This to Santa Ana?

A Downtown Santa Ana Luchador/Luchadora Battle Royale would be so sweet.

"For A Better Santa Ana"

Six months ago I began a little pet project known as the Santa Ana Pub Crawl–A little sociological experiment designed to change the perception of Santa Ana in the eyes of those who have never stepped foot in our town, while at the same time, boosting restaurant sales from the hours of 5PM through 8PM. In essence, a self-funded public relations campaign for the city of Santa Ana and free advertising for the downtown restaurants.

And what better way to lure people into Santa Ana than to offer food and drinks at great prices on a Saturday? When I approached each of the participating businesses with idea of a Pub Crawl, I only asked three things of them:

1. Offer drink/food specials one Saturday a month

2. Distribute, stamp and collect the Pub Crawl Cards

3. Contribute a prize to make the event more exciting

Over the next several Pub Crawls, someone in our "Crawl Group" would run into someone who has never set foot in Santa Ana's downtown. After saying how much fun they are having, they usually follow up with something to the likes of "Wow, I never knew Santa Ana was this cool" or "This is nothing like what I thought Santa Ana was like".

Mission accomplished. Well, kinda. No matter how many good things people like myself try to do for this city, the OC Register still sits in our backyard spewing fuel for brown hatred and ignorant stereotypes, but I digress.

Last week, I decided to extend the experiment and tie it into The Broken Window Theory. In the spirit of the election season, I created a handful of signs reading "Ben Dayhoe: For A Better Santa" with the Pub Crawl URL listed below the tagline. Under the cover of darkness, we set out to stake them around town (example below).

With the help of two awesome neighbors, we successfully "politically vandalized" the city of Santa Ana in an effort to promote the Pub Crawl to residents of Santa Ana, and maybe get a laugh or two (bonus points for offending).
What I found to be interesting was that the signs that I placed adjacent to official candidate and proposition signs remained untouched (with the exception of the sign we placed on the SW corner of Sycamore and Main that was mysteriously removed and replaced with yet another "Michele Martinez for Mayor"), and the signs that were placed on Broadway and E. Seventeenth Street where no other campaign signs resided were quickly removed.

Does the removal of my signs prove the Broken Window Theory? Not at all (but it does make me wonder how much "political graffiti" will remain post-November 4th). But I did notice that once political signs were removed, they were very slow to come back in that very same location.

David Hastie, the General Manager down at Memphis thinks that someone may have actually stolen my some of my signs. He told me in an email last week that people were actually running out into the center median and to take pictures with my signs. How rad is that?

Stolen or not, I'm very flattered. In my six+ years as a professional designer, NO ONE has ever taken a picture with anything I've created, let alone stolen my work. I say awesome–awesome to the max!

This Wednesday, I'm hoping to meet with the Downtown Business Council in hopes to receive funding to further promote the Pub Crawls. It's been a fun and humbling experience for me and I hope that the Pub Crawl continues to grow, chipping away at the stigma that's associated with our great city of Santa Ana.

The next Pub Crawl is this Saturday, November 8th. I hope you'll join me for a drink.

One last note, I'd like to thank my neighbors Dallas, Chris and Krissy for letting me "politicize" your front yards, as well as "Lando" and "El Diablo Blanco" for helping plant the signs.

www.santaanapubcrawl.com

Making It Really "Work"

Live, Work, Play.

That was one of the marketing slogans that original sold me on the Santiago Street Lofts.

Three years later, I Live here, I (sometimes) Work here, and if you're a reader of this blog, you sure as hell know I Play here.

The "Live, Work, Play" slogan dreams big for this community, but has still yet to be fully realized. With the Renaissance Plan on the back burner until election season is over, and any developments that were headed our way postponed until the next real estate cycle, I figured in the mean time, the Work element was something that could use some fine tuning.

As someone who runs a part-time business out of their store front, I've witnessed firsthand how difficult it is to do so. On several occasions, my clients were unable to find a suitable parking space nearby. With gas prices on the rise, even the parking lot at the train depot can be packed with increased ridership. Also, it doesn't help that the city of Santa Ana previously designated ALL parking around the Santiago Street Lofts as No Parking/Stopping.

Currently, the city is looking the other direction and not enforcing the No Parking on Poinsettia Street until construction is completed here at the lofts. But once the construction crew is out at the end of the year, the plan was to make that entire block No Parking/Stopping.

And why are there so many streets designated “No Parking/Stopping” around the lofts? For years, the Logan neighborhood has battled irresponsible overflow parking from some of the neighboring businesses, which prompted the city to act with their usual kill a fly with a shotgun method by restricting parking on entire blocks.

While this method has prevented trash and tow trucks from taking up residence on nearby public streets, it has also put a stranglehold on many who've decided to run a business from within their unit.

This dilemma prompted me back in January (2008) to approach the city of Santa Ana with a plan to install parking meters around the Santiago Street Lofts–allowing guests and clients easy access during normal business hours to the businesses residing in the lofts. These meters would only be enforced Monday through Friday, 9AM-6PM.

After speaking with countless individuals and getting the runaround several times over, I called Scott Kutner of the Community Development Agency for Santa Ana and he was able to put me in touch with Frank Orellana, a Senior Engineer with the city of Santa Ana's Public Works department. Frank had just recently been assigned to identify options to improve on-street parking in our area due to upcoming developments with the Santa Ana Street Car plan.

Though we're currently not in an area that allows (is zoned) for metered parking, Frank and I worked out a plan that will now allow non-metered 1-hour parking in the green areas, indicated in the graphic below. This 1-hour rule will be in effect Monday through Friday from 9AM-6PM.

But why metered/1- hour parking at all you ask? That's a great question. The plan is to prevent long-term parking on the loft-side of the street from adjacent businesses, as well as overflow from the depot parking lot–a problem that has crept into our own "visitor parking" stalls here at the lofts. The goal is to create circulation, and not stunt businesses. Not to mention, preventing any future issues with abandoned cars near the lofts.

If things go well, Frank said there’s a good possibility that the 1-hour limit can be increased to a maximum of two hours. The ultimate goal of this pet project is achieve metered parking around the lofts, but with the city of Santa Ana, it's always baby steps. But hey, it's a start.

The debate on whether or not parking should be allowed on Civic Center Drive (loft side) is still going on being that the "Go-Local" streetcar scheduled for completion in a few years would just end up taking any allotted spaces away from that side of the street.

In the mean time, these added parking spaces should help out not only the daytime businesses that are blossoming in our community, but nighttime activities including our monthly Art Walk, which, by the way, is this Saturday.

Planting a Seed in Hopes of a Tree

Every Monday night, friends, family and neighbors gather at Tommy Pastrami on Fourth Street in downtown Santa Ana to celebrate the end of another Monday while enjoying the last football game of the week.

As I was chaining my bike to a puny birch tree, one that was just recently planted out front of Tommy Pastrami blocking their $8,000 sign, I wondered if the city of Santa Ana would ever install bike racks, or if myself and other bikers will forever be chaining our bikes up to fences, light posts and trees.

It was that moment that I remembered reading about the Bike Tree–a solar powered, medium capacity bike rack that safely stores bicycles above ground, protected from the elements and away from those looking for a “free ride”.

From Treehugger.com: Rather than hitching your bike to a post at street level, swipe a smart card, enter your PIN, and your cycle is taken up the “trunk” of the tree to a dome that protects it from thieves and the elements. The tree’s footprint is minimal, which helps keep space open for pedestrians (and the dome shields them from rain, too).

In a recent conversation I had with Mayor Pulido, he stated that he wants Santa Ana to keep looking for ways to be a Greener City. If that were truly the case, one would think that bike racks would be a good start; Bike Trees an even better one.

David Hastie, the general manager of Memphis Café and fellow biker once told me that Santa Ana did indeed at one time have bike racks throughout the downtown, but being constant targets of graffiti, not to mention bicycle thefts, prompted the city to remove them all together. “A typical solution of the city by throwing the baby out with the bathwater”, he stated.

David has lobbied the city to allow him to install a single bike rack in front of Memphis, and has even offered to have the restaurant pay for it. No word yet on whether or not the city will permit this crazy idea.

In my humble opinion, the Bike Tree coupled with Thomas Gordon’s notion of bringing bike sharing to our town would be a bold statement about our town to the rest of the county, and could truly set the pace for a greener, more pedestrian/biker-friendly and multi-transit Santa Ana.

Check out the Bike Tree in action below.

Hope

One of the best things about living on Santa Ana Boulevard is the convenience of being able to spark a conversation with any of the many pedestrians that pass through here daily.

People who’ve lived in this area of Santa Ana are happy to see something as nice as our lofts finally come to their neighborhood. Joggers and dog walkers are popping up everywhere and it's great!

Having spoken with several high school students that transverse these sidewalks (upwards of ten times a school week), these lofts represent what these students could achieve should they choose to continue on their paths for higher education–in other words, these lofts represent hope.

In a city touting an “Education First” motto, but only supporting a painfully low 56% graduation rate among high school students (source: Civic for Civic Innovation), hope is something this town and these students desperately need.

And what of the 56% of students that do graduate from high school and move on to pursue a four-year degree? Do you think that Santa Ana has what it takes to retain these educated individuals once college is done?

No. They end up moving to real cities with real downtowns such as Los Angeles, San Diego or Long Beach.

The remaining 44% of students who don’t graduate from high school statistically end up in low-wage jobs, with very few options or ways out of this city.

Having spoken with a friend that once worked at Latino Health Access, 8 out of 10 teenage females will get pregnant in the city of Santa Ana.

As a good friend put it, Santa Ana has created a wonderful system of dependency.

Growing up, I didn’t have much, but I did see a lot of wonderful things happening in downtown San Diego that aspired me to continue on with my education.

Though the Broadway One tower (terrible website design) is riddled with controversy and shenanigans, I welcome that development in that it too brings hope. Once built, the tower will not only bring in new faces to Santa Ana, but also large corporations that could help retain the educated students who would normally make an exodus from this town.

Currently, downtown Santa Ana does not allow standard (R2) residential living. As stated in the Renaissance Plan, this restriction would be lifted offering new living options to current residents and outsiders seeking the urban lifestyle.

Anyone who knows me personally has probably heard my rant as to how important this zoning change is to this city. With such limiting restrictions on residential developments, our downtown currently operates as a dismal 10-hour downtown when it could easily be an 18-hour downtown full of restaurants, activities and a wondrous nightlife.

Employment opportunities will blossom from every corner. Restaurants such as Memphis, Jason’s and Tommy Pastrami could support a full 7-day schedule with the influx of hungry urbanites. County workers that normally stampede out of the city come five o'clock now have a reason to hang out and spend some time and money in our fabulous downtown. The increased foot traffic would create a better sense of security for those who before, would never step foot in Santa Ana, and now would do anything to be here.

What Would You Build?

I think it would be safe to say that the residents living at the Santiago Street Lofts moved to Santa Ana because they wanted to experience a true downtown lifestyle.

Unfortunately, as days go by, that dream seems to be drifting farther away, and this community, nearly two years into the first move-in, is already light years behind what City Place has already established (not including the Main Place Mall).

So forget about the Renaissance Project for a second and journey with me to the land of "Wouldn't it be Nice"; a SimCity Santa Ana–where our daily needs could be realized in an instant!

Here's my (growing) list:

1. Borders or Barnes & Noble
2. Chipotle
   
3. Henry's, Tesco or Trader Joe's
4. Coffee house (with Wi-Fi)
5. Citrus Cafe (or similar restaurants)
6. Old Navy (or even Gap)
7. Cold Stone (or similar ice cream parlor)
8. Dry Cleaners
9. ....more to come

What would you build?

Should Santa Ana Impose a (Harsh) Curfew?

Many feel that the idea of a curfew violates constitutional rights and that the government has no right to dictate how parents raise their children. Several youth-rights discussion groups feel that curfews drive the wedge between teens and authority figures even deeper.

When I was a teenager, the thought of a curfew angered my peers and myself. Not because we thought it was unconstitutional or questioned the possible social ramifications a curfew could cause, we just didn't like anyone telling us what we could and couldn't do.

I personally think that Santa Ana needs to impose and enforce a curfew to help alleviate some of the issues plaguing the city. Not to say that all teens are out causing trouble when the sun goes down, but honestly, are adults the ones lurking around the city and vandalizing at night?

And no, I don't think that parents should be told how to raise their kids, but at the same time, what kind of parent lets their kid run loose in the neighborhood when the street lights have been on for hours? There isn't much for adults to do in the city of Santa Ana after hours, so why are there so many kids out late on school nights?

Many parents aren't home at night being that they work two jobs to support their families. By no means do I imply that this makes for bad parenting, but it does afford their kids the opportunity to wreak havoc in the city.

Santa Ana is fighting a lot of uphill battles and doesn't seem to be winning them anytime soon. Tougher measures are needed to help the city get a grasp on its many problems.

Take the poll and post your comments!