SATURDAY’S CLEANUP AT BIXBY PARK MAY BE THE BEGINNING OF RESTORATION
By Dave Wielenga
The latest call for a community cleanup of a Long Beach public space—this one set for Saturday, from 8 a.m. to noon, at Bixby Park—is not just another call for a community cleanup of Long Beach public space.
Claudia Schou, a resident who formed Friends of Bixby Park, which is co-sponsoring the event with the Long Beach Department of Parks and Recreation, hopes to eventually parlay the morning of trash collecting and camaraderie into a campaign that will restore perhaps Long Beach’s most-historic park to a state that reflects its status.
“The main thing that drove me to begin this is having a small child and not having a lot of money to go to Disneyland,” says Schou, who recently moved into the Bluff Park area of Long Beach with her husband and young son. “The park has been a free place to go and entertain our son while we relax. It’s a beautiful place, too, and can be more beautiful if we put our heads together and figure out how to improve it.”
Perched on an Ocean Blvd. bluff between Cherry and Junipero avenues since the late 19th century, Bixby Park overlooks the ocean, the Port of Long Beach and—on really clear days—Santa Catalina Island.
The first tree was planted in 1886, and over the years the park has been the site of a speech by Herbert Hoover during his successful 1928 campaign for the United States presidency, the meeting ground for Long Beach’s famous Iowa Picnic and—when I was a kid—the annual reunion of nurses like my mom, who used to work at old Seaside Memorial Hospital.
As the area’s density has intensified and its demographics have changed, Bixby Park has become more-heavily used than ever, and it is showing the wear and tear of its popularity and its age. But except for the repair of its circa-1923 Spanish Colonial Revival band shell in 2008, the park has received very little attention during the past 20 or 30 years. And it took three years to repair that band shell, which was damaged by a windstorm in 2005.
By now, the concrete is broken in many places, the light fixtures are poor and the trash receptacles are unsightly oil barrels.
But with their sights focused on infrastructure improvement, the Friends of Bixby Park meanwhile brought Shakespeare to the park last summer and a Halloween celebration to the grounds last month. Turnout for the events has been good and Schou is optimistic that the momentum will continue at Saturday’s cleanup.
“I think a lot of people were waiting for something like this to happen,” says Schou. “People have been thinking for a long time that there is a lot more potential in Bixby Park, but they didn’t know what to do. It’s much easier to get involved when there is a group to join and everyone is enthusiastic about a goal.”
14 Comments
I’ll pitch a helping hand to clean Bixby Park this Saturday on the condition Suja Lowenthal is NOT in attendance.
Otherwise, I’ll be too compelled to bag her in a Hefty garbage sack and subsequently deposit her in one of those unsightly, oil barrel trash receptacles.
Actually, Suja and Gary’s offices have been extremely involved, supportive and helpful with our fundraising efforts at Bixby Park. We hope that their involvement will increase as we pick up momentum!
I support the cause, but think the article makes the park sound much more blighted than it is. The children’s play area is new and expansive. The skate park isn’t for me, but it is fairly new and widely used. And those unsightly trash barrels…they’re quite useful as makeshift goals since pickup soccer is played here nightly.
So I’m all for helping out to improve on a community asset, but let’s give it the credit it deserves.
“And those unsightly trash barrels…they’re quite useful as makeshift goals since pickup soccer is played here nightly”
When the soccer players and skateboarders move those cans around to use as makeshift goals and jumping hurdles, they don’t bother picking up ALL the trash that spills out of them.
If you join in the clean-up, count the number of corner liqour store black plastic bags, half/full-pint cheap booze bottles and covenience store junk-food and fast-food packaging –along with some of the discarded, rotting food–the homeless and other careless miscreants leave on the ground and in the through-street (1st and 2nd St.) gutters, instead of depositing in the unsightly trash barrels sitting just a few feet or yards away.
And take specific notice of all the microtrash and cigarette butts accumulated around the benchs and picnic tables which the contracted-out garbage collection service apparently isn’t required to clean-up. Or, if they are contractually obligated to clean up around the tables and benches, they aren’t doing a satisfactory job.
I’d like the “Friends Of Bixby Park” to aggressively lobby for new anchored trash receptacles and converting part of the community center into a police substation as a deterent to vandalism, loitering and grafitti/gang tagging in the public restrooms and other structures in the park, the open smoking of pot in the park, the rampant trashing of picnic areas and general littering that happens, partly, from the misuse of unanchored trash cans.
One more thing, I noticed the contracted-out garbage service collecting the bulk trash this morning so it may not look as bad tomorrow as I describe it now. But, it usually is…and sometimes worse.
“Actually, Suja and Gary’s offices have been extremely involved, supportive and helpful with our fundraising efforts at Bixby Park. We hope that their involvement will increase as we pick up momentum!”
All fine and dandy. What pol wouldn’t be supportive of good, involved citizens volunteering their time to clean a public park?
So long as Suja isn’t physically there. Kinda hard to believe someone so vainglorious would want to dirty her delicate hands picking-up trash anyway.
Wow ‘New Cans’. A little bitter? Sounds like what you’re saying is keep the old cans but eliminate everyone who lives near the park (Bluff park residents excluded). If you were really so much better than ‘those people’, you wouldn’t live near enough them to share a park.
If you think that people drinking the hootch and smokin the weed is a problem then complain about that. Don’t hide behind litter. If people don’t use trash cans that they can move to wherever they choose, why would they use anchored ones? Take a look next time, the people playing soccer are using the park in a positive way. I realize they may be mexican and scaaaary, but get over it.
Yes, “those people”, to you, so long as they don’t litter, drink and smoke on, or near, your property. If you think I’m ethnic-bashing, you’re wrong. It’s about the trashers reagrdless of ethnicity. Why don’t you defend the vandals and taggers too?
Why don’t I defend the vandals and taggers too???
BECAUSE I AM NOT RETARDED!!!!!!!
I want things to nice as well. Dang, I even believe in the broken window theory of activism/enforcement. But I defended soccer players moving waste bins. I believe in addressing specific problems–not casting such a wide net.
As for pot smokers, I don’t want them on my property either. But when there is a dispensary every other block along Broadway and such a proliferance of “prescription” users, I am not surprised to smell the smoke from someone walking past my residence.
For the taggers and vandals, I think that lighting helps (notice I have nothing negative to say about increasing the lighting). But I adamently believe that the # 1 way to keep vandals and taggers at bay is by letting them know they are not present. Are you part of a community watch? Weird, I am. I encourage people to call 562-435-6711 ANYTIME they see suspicious behavior. And if a tagging is noticed, take a photo of it, report it to the city (and police). Ask if they would like a photo of it. These can be useful for prosecution.
I believe that making the area better (and safer) begins and ends with the residents.
But I still fail to see any connection between the trash cans that we have and the state of the park. And although I don’t play soccer, I think that a great use of the space (still). Have you seen the number of families that use this space. Check it out on a sunny Saturday. Something must be right.
I’m surprised you’ve heard of the broken window theory.
For whatever reasons, you have a weird fondness for portable oil-barrel trash cans. Far as I’m concerned, the soccer players can supply their own goal markers; those orange, sport-specific pylons I’ve sometimes spotted them using and which they can take back home with them. Also, obviously, the pylons don’t contain any trash that spills out (trash that’s subsequently left on the ground) when they are moved.
I think there is a basic structural problem with Bixby Park and that is that there are three major streets going through it: Ocean, 1st and 2nd. In essence you get four mini parks rather than one large park. Calling Brian Ulasewski for his thoughts.
Please don’t misconstrue my statements or intent. I don’t have any specific affinity towards oil barrel trash cans. I simply think they’re a low priority amongst the problems at that park.
It seems like you refuse to grasp onto that idea, instead you rely on lumping me in with vandals, taggers, “trashers”, oh and somehow you also manage a feeble attempt at insulting my intelligence with your “surprise I’ve heard of the broken window theory”. I’m really sorry you feel that way. But I have my opinions and you have yours.
What you can’t seem to grasp is how more, better design, anchored trash receptacles, strategically-placed in a way that encourages their more frequent use, will eliminate trash spill-out from them being moved, will significantly improve the park’s appearance with less trash carelessly left on the ground.
Walking the dog through the park’s bandshell on Sunday, I found one of those unanchored oil-barrel cans turned UPSIDE down, a discarded microwave oven sitting on top (can’s bottom) of the can and plugged into an open electrical outlet by a homeless person.
Perhaps such personal repurposing of those cans gets your blessing too.
Seriously?! Where do you get your bullshit condescending attitude from? You talk big, but I probably have a higher degree that you, make more money than you and would be happy to beat your ass.
I hate the homeless. If you’re telling me that anchoring waste cans will get rid of them (with some evidence Einstein)…shit-I’ll fund the project myself.
Too much trash is the problem. Too much trash lives around the park and too much trash is thrown on the ground. Oh yeah, if trash all over the place is really because of the mobility of these cans, then add that to the too much trash list.
Put all your supposed bags of money where your trash-talking mouth is and financially assist “Friends Of Bixby Park” while picking-up other uncaring peoples’ trash at the their next park clean-up event. Have FUN!