Westwood retailers prevented great celebration

Westwood retailers prevented great celebration

By Patrick Burns

Riots in Westwood? Flashbacks to April 1992? Hardly.

Unfortunately, Bruin basketball fans got a little rowdy in
Westwood Village Monday night after seeing their team win the
national championship. But, for comparative purposes, what happens
in big cities where professional sports franchises are on the verge
of a championship?

From personal experience, I know that space is ordinarily set
aside for a public gathering, celebrations and even parades ­
all for fans sharing the victory. But as I biked through Westwood
Village Monday morning, I saw no sign that the UCLA vs. Arkansas
game would be played in a few hours. No placards, no banners,
nothing.

When Westwood Village business owners can close off streets
every Thursday for a farmers’ market, why couldn’t the village be
closed off one night for a UCLA Bruins victory celebration? Were
retailers too busy, too stubborn to give up their regular flow of
customers for one evening? Too conservative to extend a potential
congratulation to their student neighbors?

Westwood Village has catered more toward a professional class of
customers and less toward UCLA students in the last decade or so,
but how can they ignore a campus of thousands of people on this
occasion?

So, when the Bruins won the big one and UCLA fans wanted to
celebrate together, there was no space allowed or designated for
them in Westwood Village. Thus their celebrating was instead
labeled a "riot" and the LAPD tactical units were called in (more
than 200 officers, some undoubtedly fresh from their "Operation
Sunrise" gang sweep in South Central last week).

Wanton destruction of property is stupid, and I don’t condone it
among those few members of Monday’s gathering who were too violent.
But Westwood Village has become too privatized, too tailored to the
interests of retailers and land holders. What good is a community
without space for public use? As Bruin fans were corralled through
the streets, they were ordered to disperse before their celebration
had really even begun.

If Westwood Village boosters were smart, they could have
absorbed this crowd with closed streets and open, public spaces.
They probably could have profited more than on the typical Monday
night. But by ignoring the significance of the Bruins’ game and by
missing the chance to share in the potential victory, they invited
this to happen.

This will go down in the media as "a celebration turned ugly,"
but hopefully Westwood Village, UCLA students and all Angelenos
will recognize that the usurpation of public space by private land
holders leaves no place for public sharing of such a great moment
­ something every community sorely needs.

Burns is a graduate student and teaching assistant in the
geography department.