This Week: Purchase and Destroy

PHOTO by DANIEL DE BOOM

Tues | JULY 22 Who ya gonna run to?

Wed | JULY 23 George W. Bush drops the stuffy professorial façade that’s characterized the final months of his presidency and explains the sub-prime mortgage crisis to an audience at a private Republican fundraiser: “Wall Street got drunk,” he says, after cautioning attendees to turn cameras off so he can make his gaffe in peace. “It got drunk and now it’s got a hangover.” He then recommended Wall Street just take a shot and go to work anyway, which around the Texas Air National Guard was known as “evasive maneuvers.”

Thurs | JULY 24 Hate crimes reach a five-year high in Los Angeles County, but officials are happy to find that the actual crimes themselves involve an unprecedented level of diversity in victims and perpetrators. “What we’re seeing is the democratization of hate crimes,” explains the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, also known as the Center for the Study of Having to Live in San Bernardino. “We’re not only seeing a diversification of victims but also increased diversification of offenders.” Officials credit a diligent new generation of haters—mostly trained as anonymous commenters on the Internet—for pushing the limits of the traditional hate crime, and cited recent Jew-on-Eskimo and Irish-on-Bigfoot incidents (the last alcohol-related) as examples of the sort of paradigm-busting hate work they hope to see in 2009.

Fri | JULY 25 As the Museum of Art worries over a $3 million debt and Acres of Books enters its closing weeks, Long Beach opens a new front in a never-ending war on literacy and culture with a proposal to shutter the Main Library—part of a new city budget which also criminalizes kindergarten and recommends fining anyone using polysyllabic words aloud in public without a permit. Although the library—designed by Bankum, Yankum and Splitte—is apparently in less-than-perfect shape, repair or renovation is not treated as a realistic option: “We already spent all the word money tearin’ down that bookstore,” explained one city official on the condition that the word “anonymity” be spelled out to him on his desk using colorfully lettered blocks. City hall representatives urged citizens to consider the bright side of living in a city with no library, bookstore or art museum—no homework!—and noted that if they could just close one of the colleges, Long Beach would finally be eligible to officially become part of Orange County.

Sat | JULY 26 Good news in the real-estate treachery department when Rep. Laura Richardson gets her foreclosed house back even though someone else already bought it and fixed it up. “I’m not supposed to say anything,” suddenly former owner James York told the P-T, clutching a wad of filthy bills in a throbbing red fist. “I think you guys can figure out what happened.” Involved bank Washington Mutual denied that Richardson had been afforded any special treatment: “In these financially uneventful times when the FDIC is leaving even the most unstable lending institutions completely alone, why would Washington Mutual have any interest in publicly rescuing a sitting member of Congress?” asked one spokesman. “It just doesn’t make sense.” He added that Washington Mutual cares just as deeply for all its borrowers who hold elected office above the state Assembly level, and slightly less deeply for those borrowers’ blood relations, and encouraged struggling borrowers to at least not leave heel marks on the floors when the repo men have to drag them out. In related news: Can Laura Richardson come work this trick on Acres?

Sun | JULY 27 Visiting dragon boat racers marvel at the BEACH CLOSED SEWAGE CONTAMINATED WATER signs—more common in Long Beach than even CRUISING IS DEFINED AS THREE TIMES PAST THE SAME POINT IN AN HOUR signs—as they tip-toe through beer-bottle ends, cigarettes and used condoms—exactly as common as CRUISING IS DEFINED AS THREE TIMES PAST THE SAME POINT IN AN HOUR signs—on their way to yesterday’s race in the Dragon Boat Festival at Marine Stadium. At press time, no survivors had been found.

Mon | JULY 28 More on Acres in what must be the fourth story to be called “The Final Chapter”: RDA head Craig Beck tells the P-T that it’s basically the bookstore’s own fault that it’s going to be closing: “We tried to work with them over what their future business model would be,” he said. “Everything was discussed. All possibilities were explored during the real estate transaction. Their decision to have this sale and to move forward with liquidating their inventory is their business decision.” Strangely, bookstore co-owner (and granddaughter of founder Bertrand Smith) Jackie Smith—whose store for months displayed a sign noting that Acres was “forced” to take the RDA deal—is somehow less than happy about Beck’s generosity, telling the P-T that even if she could have moved the store, every potential new location was under threat of RDA redevelopment, “and then we’d be going through the same thing in two or three years.” (“The same thing” is explained in further detail on p. 103 of the 1970 paperback edition of The Martian Chronicles, no longer available at Acres of Books.) Beck—on vacation overseas looking for rare books to purchase and then destroy—was unavailable for further comment at press time.

Tags: acres of books, laura richardson, Long Beach, martian chronicles, President Bush