Los Angeles River. Part 1

once there was a wild river in los angeles and the river have the run of the place they wanted all over the la basin sometimes veterans sometimes tripoli the nearest native american villages and created a landscape that the light of the first spanish explorers who noted a very good water pure and fret that even in the nineteenth century angelenos were real estate hungry they wanted land that belonged to the river and when flooding damaged property and killed fifty nine people in nineteen thirty eight they demanded the river be changed by the nineteen sixties most of the fifty two mile long river was forced into a cement channel it became a dumping ground the conduit for waste water it was a joke that are reverent that sewer that looks like another freeway the river became essentially a way you give your guests i might play los angeles city councilman ed reyes and so it became a social economic divide that defined it as a place which just send those other people there's a chance that in the nineteen eighties a group of artists are all that concrete as a blank canvas a place for a different vision

poet louis mcadams and others founded friends of the los angeles river the basic line was to meeting people down by the river and making the river a place where people gather the reason the city is here is because of the los angeles river mcadams walks through newly plowed ground what's called the cornfields this former rail yard near the river in downtown is being turned into a state park began in swat as an evening performance fees created for the site a dancer lives a lantern to eliminate multicolored ears of corn attached to a chain link fence i can see what's out there only tourists in space to an imaginary playmate adams was talking about was the return of a real river with species that have disappeared such as the steelhead trout after legal and public relations efforts by friends of the la river local officials started to see beyond the concrete la

county developed a new master plan and spend a hundred million dollars on trees bike paths and other improvements today throughout the watershed angelinos are starting to gather in new parks experiencing the river in places that used to be fenced off as the performance concludes the audience gathers around a bonfire influenced by river laughs a group of cyclists wheels in fifty years nelson on a less eric crawford of the front of kick around ideas for the river passing this at live up i think changing your car making this used to be a railroad track which party like i love the major supplier of water for their own family because there's a mailer where in the day as the men talk of chatter and the drumming i think the pops into the dark downtown sky reading prints of

anticipation for the bikers and many others the ones selected river has become a focal point for ideas about a greener city and many angelenos now want a lot for me or parks cleaner water to fix a neglected neighborhoods and a healthier inner city la city councilman ed reyes i want a result in order to refer to as always different elements or states they're developed between early winter of the river project has gotten a boulder in the middle of the river as it braces for the support of a recreation area in the san fernando valley there's no concrete on the bottom of a river here the plastic bags auto parts and shopping carts are strewn over the riverbed as the river flows looking at the earth whirling around the

track rounded boulders racing through the grades of their shopping cart in a seemingly ceaseless inevitable hello from the los angeles river forces that fuel at nine point three in the cc