ANT FARM by Robert Lloyd | |
Art and Leisure |
L.A. Weekly, October 11, 2002 |
IT BEGAN WHEN THE LOCAL BRAND-NAME COFFEEPORIUM closed
for renovations -- they are going to make the cash box bigger, I guess --
and I decided to bike three miles for a cappuccino. In this way, I could
not only continue to drink reliable brand-name espresso, but would in the
bargain get some "exercise," a thing I have been meaning to try for quite
some time. Therefore I tucked my left trouser leg into its neighboring
sock -- the poor man's bicycle clip, though I don't suppose there's any
such thing as a rich man's bicycle clip -- and headed out into the world,
past the big houses of the well-heeled, and on into more ordinary
neighborhoods, down the street where my granny used to live, then skirting
the mystical and perilous city of The Grove risen apparently full-grown
from the earth that seemed so much nicer before, and finally to Farmers
Market, where I drank my caffeine. Then I rode home. I felt quite a sense
of accomplishment and an encouraging illusion of
health. ONE OF THE PRIMARY REASONS TO LIVE IN A CITY, even as
suburban a city as this, is the proximity to "culture." Unlike his country
cousin, the city mouse requires the nearness of museums and theaters
(where the plays sometimes feature real TV stars) and access to the kind
of movies that will never come to the Hooterville Fiveplex -- even if he
does not actually patronize them. Indeed, the frequent upshot of having
something close at hand is that you ignore it completely. Yet one likes to
know it's there; one could go. One could. There is always that
possibility. And one might if nothing else come into contact with other
city mice who have gone to see Scoopy's new paintings or Blooey's
new film or Floofy's latest performance, the one where he cut off his tail
with a carving knife. Did you ever see such a sight in your
life? SO, WHERE ONE DAY I BICYCLED TO FARMERS Market, the next
I bicycled to the art museum. I went first to LACMA West, which used to be
the May Co., an appropriate conversion given that a museum is after all a
kind of non-retail department store -- there are even plates and cups and
clothing and furniture on display -- and museum-going a rarefied form of
window-shopping. I was admiring a Diego Rivera landscape when swarms of
schoolchildren began to arrive, in waves, insufficiently overseen: The
guards had disappeared, and their adult keepers distracted or possibly
just confused -- perhaps they thought it was still the May Co. -- the kids
stroked the paintings with impunity, making literal the concept of a
"hands-on" museum. (I might have appreciated this as a revolutionary
gesture, but detecting none went and told the proper authorities.) Back in
the old LACMA, soon to be Rem Koolhaused in pursuit of NYC-style art
tourism, it was quieter. The guards, looking trapped and bored,
outnumbered the patrons. I asked one whether they moved him from room to
room from day to day, and he said, yes and a good thing too or he'd go
crazy. |