DON’T DITCH THE O.C.

19 Feb DON’T DITCH THE O.C.

By Mat Gleason

Growing up on the county line revealed little difference between Orange County and Los Angeles County but illustrated the frisson of borders nonetheless. There was a place called “The Ditch” which was an open sewage channel that stunk but had great dirt hills to ride bikes. Located just beyond the fence in the back of Buena Park’s Big Tee Golf Course, was it in Orange County or Los Angeles County? When La Mirada residents rose up to complain of the stench, L.A. County said, sorry, that is in Orange County. When O.C. residents caught a whiff they were told it was in L.A. County. All the while we rode our bikes there and then outgrew the bikes and developed a quick reflex when driving in the intersection of Alondra Boulevard and Malvern Avenue – actually La Mirada Boulevard on the L.A. County side and Malvern on the O.C. side – but as fast as we would approach it we would instinctively roll up our windows – because “The Ditch” stunk.

That intersection turned out to be a deadly intersection. La Mirada Boulevard heading toward Alondra – and more importantly the county line – dips sharply and suddenly just before the intersection. One can be making a left turn onto Alondra and not see the oncoming traffic, which would only appear on the downgrade a few feet before these cars were in the intersection. Dawdle on that left turn and your automobile could have been T-boned by an oncoming, O.C.-bound driver. A left turn arrow would have been desirable but again – would O.C. or L.A. pay for it? Finally, after enough outcry – and a rising body count – the intersection was improved and “The Ditch” was made into a properly-sealed storm drain. By this time, the late 1980s, I had moved to Downtown Los Angeles. Yes, my departure from the county line roughly coincided with the end of “The Stink” from “The Ditch”.

The kids on bikes at “The Ditch” were split with their baseball loyalties. The L.A. Dodgers were perennial contenders, and so a subset of the youth at the county line rooted for the perpetual underdog California Angels. When Disney purchased the California Angels baseball club from Jackie and Gene Autry in the middle of the 1990s, they struck a stadium redevelopment deal with the City of Anaheim which, in addition to tens of millions of dollars, the team would adopt the city name in its title. The Anaheim Angels were born thirty years after Mister Autry had moved the team to Anaheim. Less than ten years and a sale to billionaire Arturo Moreno, the name was changed to “Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim” in order to (A) attract television advertiser dollars that understood Los Angeles as the second biggest media market in the country, and (B) maintain the contractually obligated inclusion of “Anaheim” in the name.

This created more derision from the fans of Major League Baseball’s other teams than any other facet of the club, its players, its legacy and its lore combined. Some self-impressed version of “The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Fullerton and Orange County on Earth” accompanied discussions of the team by every non-fan of the team and even a few of their rattled loyalists. Once again, L.A. and Orange County created a stink at the fringe, on a technicality. The ultimate resolution came when the naming contract elapsed and now the Anaheim-based team with few fans far outside of Orange County is simply the Los Angeles Angels. The fans of other teams still taunt that name while the city of Anaheim has moved past it all enough to have sold the stadium and surrounding acreage to Mr. Moreno at a discount provided he binds the team to staying in the city for thirty years. Maybe my friends from “The Ditch” and I will live to see the year 2049 and hear what the team will be called then and if they will still be seen as an afterthought in the glow of L.A.’s marquee sports franchises.

When you were on your bike at “The Ditch” you were both in L.A. County and Orange County. Neither claimed it and yet the reality of the map could plot your front tire in one and your back tire in the other. When you are in the Orange County art scene, is there any specific distinction – besides forty miles of freeway away – with Los Angeles. If a New York gallerist introduces an Irvine-based artist as being from Los Angeles to a collector, does the artist halt the proceedings to make the finer point that they are in fact not an Angeleno? If a painter from Brea says he or she is from Southern California to a curator at a Miami art fair and is told how much the curator loves L.A. artists, is there some lessening of that artist’s credibility? You would be a fool to stifle that conversation’s flow with a geography lesson.

Of course not. When you are an artist in Orange County you are at “The Ditch”. You get all the credibility of the established Los Angeles art scene while the front tire of your bike is parked firmly in Orange County. You are a Los Angeles artist of Anaheim, or Yorba Linda, or Santa Ana, or Aliso Viejo, or you get the picture.

When I think of contemporary art in Orange County, there is no style, no school, no institution and no artist that comes to mind. In a way, this is an accomplishment as the O.C. art scene is not confined to a particular iconic standby. There is no clique seen as important enough that other participants and contributors to the cultural life of the county cannot even get the table scraps. Years ago,when Dave Hickey was at his apogee of power and influence, no offer about doing anything involving contemporary art came to anyone in Las Vegas but him. The resentment built among the artists and curators who were not Dave’s supplicants as more and more of them got shut out. Dave was run out of town but the town then lost its center of art gravity. Orange County has no center. This is seen as a weakness by some but I am here to tell you it is a stealth strength of the art scene here. When an opportunity comes to the Orange County art scene, it comes from Los Angeles but you can make it your own. All my favorite people in the Orange County art scene became successful this way.

I think of a raconteur named Stuart Katz who in the 1990s curated shows and imported curators to curate shows in a tiny space upstairs in a Laguna warehouse during the bottom of a recession just to get something going down behind the Orange Curtain. I think of Phyllis Lutjeans – already famous in the art world for being the unwitting subject of Chris Burden’s brutal performance “TV Hijack” piece – forming an open forum in her living room called “The Art Crowd” and bringing a monthly speaker there for locals to meet and experience in person. Burden’s first major retrospective was at Orange County’s Newport Harbor Museum of Art curated by a then-unknown young curator named Paul Schimmel who would go on to be the most important contemporary art curator of his generation. The late great Greg Escalante was from Huntington Beach, his younger brother was the drummer for the Vandals if you need any deeper O.C. credentials. Greg helped start Juxtapoz Magazine and was a curating legend who put the Lowbrow genre of art on the map.

The greats in Orange County, the ones who make a difference, don’t wait around for things to come to them, they go out and do them. They don’t complain about being in L.A.’s shadow, they appreciate the shade like a comfortable umbrella and thrive with what L.A.’s proximity can bring them. The second biggest art audience in the United States is forty miles up the road, quite easy to attract if you are interesting and embrace anything other than derivative attempts to go with the flow.

L.A. and Orange Counties solved the sewage stink at their border and fixed a deadly intersection when they cooperated as one. The two counties keep an historic underdog of a baseball team of Anaheim in the top five in attendance year in and year out despite being mocked for the geographic incongruity of their name. This pair of contemporary art scenes populate a Southern California art world where independent spirits thrive best in a synergy with the neighbors.

–Mat Gleason was born in Fullerton. The longest he has ever held a job was eighteen months in 1984-85 at the Buena Park K-Mart on Beach Boulevard. Google him if you don’t know the rest.