And, their foreboding rhetoric notwithstanding, the other candidates sometimes seem to agree. At one recent forum, for instance, each was asked to rate, on a scale of 1 to 10, how broken the city is. The absence of a galvanizing issue also emerges in anecdotal ways. At political gatherings from Sherman Oaks to South-Central, residents complain of illegal billboards and economic malaise, of traffic and parks and schools. Today, the mood of Los Angeles is harder to divine.
Residents are happy with their own finances, but worried about an impending economic downturn.
Ethnic tension is at a low. It doesn't mean things are hunky-dory, but people are fairly content. It's much easier to keep scanning the coals and catch a current that's going to sweep by than to think you're going to generate a current . . . to inspire people in a certain direction. We'd better take it seriously. If these three words don't epitomize where we are in Los Angeles, I don't know what does.