Neighbors around Lemon Park received a letter from the city inviting them to meetings on 5/31 and 6/28 to discuss the old Lemon Park Murals. The Public Art Committee would like feedback from the community…
1. Is there one or more mural out of the group you feel is/are absolutely essential to keep and restore?
2. Is there one or more mural out of the group that you feel is/are absolutely essential to remove or replace?
3. Please rank the murals in order of importance to the park and the community. A number 1 would indicate the most important, 12 the least.
Come Back Again and La Adelita
Fullerton Clasped Hands
Girl with Car
Cross with Crown of Thorns
The Town I Live In and Brown Car
Virgin de Guadalupe
La Mujer Latina
Zoot Suit Riots
Calle Elm
Los Ninos Del Mundo
4. If we are able to produce a new mural in or around Lemon Park, what subjects/themes would you like to see depicted in the mural.
FFFF will be forwarding all comments to the Fullerton Public Art Committee, the Fullerton Museum Board and the Fullerton City Council.
Molly McClannahan used to call Alan Morton “The Conscience of Fullerton.”
At some point back in the 1990’s, the city retained an expensive consultant to design a sign to be painted on the Union Pacific bridge (my idea) over Harbor Blvd. Alan voluntarily designed the “Welcome to Downtown Fullerton” sign on his home computer, saving the city thousands of dollars.
Alan would constantly question city staff’s wisdom of using legal size paper for staff reports instead of letter size, which is what they use today. Staff’s answer was that they had no choice because the file cabinets were designed for legal size paper.
One of my all time favorite council meetings (I’ll have to YouTube it someday) was when Alan chucked an illegally placed Sa For Council sign during the public comments and the sign almost hit Sa en la cabesa. You go Alan!
I believe it was the great recall that really got Alan energized as an activist. From there, it was off to the races for Alan. He continuously ragged on the council to televise council meetings, and now they are. He would speak on almost every important item on the council’s agenda. His activism helped save Fullerton taxpayers millions of dollars.
Recently, at the ripe age of 86, Alan was having breakfast with three of his buddies. While chatting with one of the servers, Alan took a deep breath and that was it for our feisty old Friend. Alan gave of himself and asked for nothing in return. People like Alan Morton are Fullerton’s Future.
We need a prize, of course. Some junk from the FFFF gift shop? We have some T shirts left, I think. Somebody around here stole some Bad Chi signs so I think we may be able give some of those away. Or maybe the real prize is simply contributing to the glory of our city.
Anyway, here’s the first entry. That ought to get your creative juices flowing.
Entries can be emailed to us or uploaded to Tinypic.com and linked in the comments. Good luck!
Update from Admin:
Alright, I found the perfect prize…
It’s a CD from Nancy Sanchez, an awesome jazz singer. My friend Gabriel San Roman told me about Nancy and I saw her play at Steamers in downtown Fullerton. She has a great voice and is pretty cool, too. Check out www.nancysanchezmusic.com.
A while back one of our fans suggested we’d get sued by the City for use of the City seal. (we didn’t). And that go me thinking about the seal itself. So let’s talk about it.
“Designed by artist Tom Van Sant in 1962, the figures shown in the seal are stylized depictions of the qualities important to the City of Fullerton. The orange tree refers to the City’s agricultural beginnings; the man, woman and child represent families; and the open book represents the City’s commitment to providing education and cultural opportunities to its citizens.”
Nothing says 1962 like Fullerton City Hall
It’s a real, stylized period piece, alright. Just like the building it adorns. Like it? Hate it? Don’t give a damn?
Here at FFFF we like to share. So we share this – a time lapse clip we harvested off of youtube – of one of the embarrassing erections that has gone up lately at FJC:
According to an article in today’s LA Times here, the cloudy jewel in Anaheim’s ex-mayor-for hire, Kurt Pringle’s tarnished crown, ARTIC, may not be eligible for $99 million in special Measure M funding. The money had strings attached. However those strings seem to have come loose. And by loose I mean really loose. You see, “Project T” Measure M funds can only be used to “expand” existing stations to accommodate high-speed rail, not build new ones that don’t.
So far the OCTA has pitched over $40,000,000 bucks into this glorified bus station and at this point nobody can show that the high-speed rail choo-choos can even get to it; or that high-speed rail will ever even come to Anaheim. Of course the City of Anaheim (that isn’t paying for any of this) is now saying ARTIC is a “stand alone” facility, which is great, but it ain’t what the voters approved back in 2006: a stand alone facility doesn’t qualify for the $100,000,000 (yes, you read that right) Project T funding.
The hot light of public scrutiny is bound to have interesting environmental effects. The great ARTIC melt-down begins this morning at an OCTA Transit Committee meeting, where newly re-elected Supervisor Shawn Nelson is going to ask members to start reflecting upon their complete lack of responsibility in funding this Pringledoggle.
Some day we will all have a cup of coffee and laugh about it...
Last year we posted a magisterial, five-part history about one of Fullerton’s greatest Redevelopment boondoggles, the so-called “City Lights” single-room occupancy project. Our series started here.
Fort Mithaiwala
As we related, here, in October 2010, questions were being raised about the financial dealings and records of the developer, Ajit Mithaiwala, and the federal government was investigating.
Once again, according to a recent article in LA Times, here, Mithaiwala and his company ADI, are accused of sticking it to the City of Glendale, but good. More evidence is presented suggesting that ADI defrauded the Glendale housing agency out of millions, possibly building substandard po’ folks housing while receiving millions in public subsidy. To top it off, ADI was greasing the axles of local government real well, too, as demonstrated by contributions and favors to city councilmembers in Glendale.
According to the articles ADI has been involved in 40-50 projects across the Southland, so the enormity of the problem is, well, potentially enormous, if in fact, the Glendale experience proves typical.
Which brings us back to Fullerton. When the SRO was built in the late 90s, peculiar construction techniques and prolonged inspection difficulties had some scratching their heads. And now with stories of possible substandard work in Glendale circulating, we are well within the bounds of reason asking our city officials if, in fact, the building is really safe for occupancy.
Where is Mithaiwala? These articles do not say. Maybe the FBI is looking.
And just for fun backwards salute, here’s a timely quote from our current mayor, Ol’ Doc Heehaw who, when the SRO was being proposed in 1997, shot off his big yapper, got threatened with a personal lawsuit by Mithaiwala’s henchmen, and then cowardly changed his vote:
“The city would be at great, I underline great, financial risk if it did not proceed with this project,” Jones said before casting his vote for the settlement. The threatened lawsuit was “a loaded gun against the head,” Jones said.
This corner is where it all got started in Fullerton almost 125 years ago.
Now that Tiger Yang’s safely down the road, the building at the northwest corner of Harbor and Commonwealth is being remodeled, or as is more likely, given Fullerton’s history of downtown Redevelopment and design foilbles, remuddled.
Still, it’s hard to imagine anything worse than the aesthetic horror that’s there now – pure 1970s schlock.
