Tony Castanares: Preserve Griffith Park Access скачать в хорошем качестве

Tony Castanares: Preserve Griffith Park Access

Tony Castanares, a 35-year resident of Beachwood Canyon and avid hiker, explains why he supports preserving public access to Griffith Park and the Hollywood Sign. Credits: Interview shot by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman: http://jacobhg.com/ B-roll shot by Andrew Murphy Davis Produced and Edited by Andrew Murphy Davis Interview Begins: 3:05 Tony starts the interview by explaining his personal reasons for wanting to preserve access. “I use Griffith Park at least five times a week. It’s a matter of interest to me to preserve our access to Griffith Park because I think the ability to walk out my front door into Griffith Park is one of the really nice amenities of living here.” Tony then validates his neighbors’ concerns about public safety. 3:48 “There’s no question that a number of my neighbors has been inconvenienced by the increased traffic and increased popularity of the sign. Those people definitely have a point. I’m hopeful that relief can be brought to them without necessitating the closure of access to all of us here.” Next, Tony explains why trying to send selfie-seeking tourists to more remote Hollywood Sign viewing locations is unlikely to keep them out of Beachwood Canyon. 5:24 “I think people aren’t happy with pictures that show the Hollywood Sign as a little, tiny thing in the distance and so efforts to make them go get pictures from the Observatory or from Hollywood and Highland…aren’t going to work.” Tony also suggests that those who profit from the Hollywood Sign’s popularity—the city, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, and the Hollywood Sign Trust—should commit to helping Beachwood Canyon find viable, tangible solutions to the ongoing sign issue. 6:03 Tony believes that the first step in finding a solution is for the city to conduct a “first rate professional traffic study of the whole situation and the possible solutions” because, according to Tony, most of the arguments put forward—including those about public safety and the necessity of shutting down access to Griffith Park—are “currently based for the most part on speculation and not on facts.” In the next section of the interview, Tony talks about three of the neighborhood’s crisis points (i.e. the neighborhood’s biggest tourist magnets). The points are the Beachwood Drive trailhead 7:45, the top of Deronda Drive 12:32, and the Scenic Vista 13:40. In stark contrast to calls from anti-access residents to shut down all of these crisis points, Tony provides a perspective that embraces keeping these points open. Tony also challenges anti-access residents’ claims that keeping these points open violates state environmental law. Tony then explains that the increased traffic in Beachwood Canyon may have just as much to do with the increased popularity of Griffith Park’s open space as it does with the Hollywood Sign--adding that this increased popularity may be a good thing. 14:55 “This isn’t just an issue of the Hollywood Sign. If I go hiking in this park…on a weekday or a weekend these days, it used to be I’d go up and hardly see anybody. Now, the trails are flooded with people. People want to use this park, and personally, I think that’s something desirable. I have always thought it’s just an absolutely wonderful thing that we have this park--which is about as close to wilderness as you can get [in Los Angeles]--that’s right plunked down in the middle of a city, right in the middle of the urban core. And that’s true despite the fact that the studies seem to show that Los Angeles is one of the least well served cities in terms of park acreage per capita.” Tony next explains how complex solving this Hollywood Sign issue can be, listing the large number of stakeholders invested in the issue 16:21 and expressing regret that the residents of Beachwood Canyon have not conducted themselves more respectfully when interacting with authorities and the media. 17:56 “I think that the approach that we have taken in this canyon so far has been to display anger and loud voices.” Tony says this tactic has given Beachwood Canyon “a bad reputation”, making people think that the canyon’s residents are “all selfish and NIMBYs”. “I think we have been rude and nasty to city councilman and journalists and people who are actually in a position to helps us.” Tony concludes the interview by laying out a different mindset for dealing with the Hollywood Sign issue, advocating that residents leave behind the combative politics Beachwood Canyon has become known for in recent years and instead try to recognize that 1) everybody is making their arguments “in good faith” and 2) that “every interest is a valid interest”. 18:42 “Ultimately we are going to have to come together and try to present a reasonable and unified voice, and I think what we have been presenting--which is loud voices and anger--has been counterproductive to actually solving the problems that we’ve got up here.” 20:31