I'm furious.....

you can't fight city hall...

specially in Beautiful Downtown Burbank....

Oy Vey in a Manger!

I suggested this to squinney last year when people of different faiths started whining about christmas decor.

What don't you put up a Christian altar, a secular Christmas altar, a Menorrah, a crescent Moon, an upside down cross, a buddha, and an altar to any other religion you can think of or an altar next to a sign that says screw god and the chariot he rode in on and put a donation box in front of each altar. Whichever one collects the most money.... then their God (or anti god) gets to be the bad God (or anti god) mutha phucka of all for one year.

All proceeds to go to the poor, as long as they accept the pertinent God. (or anti god)

And all the losers have to STFU for a year.

wow... tough santa love.....

I thought this thread was a joke when I first started reading it.

It is a joke, albeit unintentional . . .

Goddamn, that burns my ass . . . i'm gonna go find a Christian an' shoot 'em full of holes . . .

then you create a martyr... wait.... are these Muslim Christians?

By Dog, that's it . . . i'll shoot a Gay Christian Jihadist Whale . . . for Jesus ! ! !

Oh sure suck up... ya still ain't getting in to heaven.....

Who wants to go to heaven anyway? BORRRRRRING!!

Re: I'm furious.....


It's only illegal if there are no other (secular or other non-Christian religious) adornments in the display.

Here's some background on the display in Berkley.

Apparently there are many more folks in Berkley who want the display than don't want it. Did it go to a vote as planned? Did you vote?

JPB, Berkley is Disneyland. Even for Cali....

Uhm, JPB . . . the joker was talking about Burbank, not Berkley . . . they're hundreds of miles apart . . .

Your problem is in taking this joker seriously . . .

Burbank, Berkley it's all CA to me!

Oh, god, another person calling it Cali. Only persons not originally from California call it that, in my belligerent opinion. I suppose it has caught on now, dadgummit. (Check the urban dictionary if you don't believe me.) I suppose it all started with some tv show, she says, snarling. It's like calling San Francisco 'Frisco' <gnashing of teeth>.


I dunno, I don't mind most of the displays. Parks are for people, and I get to say this as a sometime park designer.
I do get that it seems mostly one religion, in general, gets the displays, and I also mind that park design can be cluttered up. (See Olmsted raging about flower beds..) This brings up another point of interest to me, on whether any artist owns the right 'forever' to have his tilted arc in such and such a plaza... whether or not the art piece is religious in concept. (I think the public is the user group/client, no matter what agency repping the public does the funding. I know this is a minority view.) I think bruhahas over art are mostly good.. it's the forever there part I can have a problem with, being interested in just about anything temporarily.

Anyone who knows me over time here knows I'm an atheist of many decades standing, once a very religious catholic. So, somewhere in the late eighties or early nineties, Santa Monica had some competition related to refurbishing its rather famous (well, to some) Palisades Park. The focal point for many years, aside from the broad expanse of the Pacific Ocean from cliffside, was and maybe still is, for all I know, the statue of St. Monica.
This is at the very western end of Wilshire Boulevard, which goes from downtown Los Angeles many miles, to the seacliff, which is the park.

I entered the competition, of course didn't win, especially given my design, which involved retaining the St. Monica statue, which I like, and surrounding it with a rectangle of herbs - I forget what, probably lavender and a trimmed germander hedge - plus this sort of wrought iron concoction with a lot of candles in cobalt blue mexican glass, seaward of the statue. Corny, for sure. It amused me to do that even knowing actual candles are dumb for a public park and that the impetus was probably to get rid of the statue. This was an act of some irony personally, but also of fondness. I suppose I should google and see if the statue is gone, but I'd sort of rather not know.

I went to St. Monica's for first and second grades, you see, and part of fourth. So, whatever my glum view now about the role of the catholic church in world history, plus my lack of belief in all that, I didn't mind that the statue stayed - it relates to the history of the city and is ok with me.
I might feel differently if it was an ugly statue.

There is no Berkley in California. I don't know where Berkley, and its nativity controversy, is but it is not the same place as my famously liberal once-place-of-residence named Berkeley, a town where they would defend to the death your right to set up anything, anywhere, of any nature, on any inch of public ground within the city limits.

Osso, thanks for leading this bunch of ne'er-do-wells down a more aesthetic path.

Is that not Disneyland?

Kara, so good to talk with you, even, perchance argue. I've missed seeing you here, a lot.

I'll argue with myself, on that Santa Monica park at the end of the long corridor of Wilshire Blvd.

If someone like Calatrava - no, the scale is wrong - and so is the style..
well, I can get behind a radical design for that spot, past the old statue, depending on the design.

I suppose I should drag up some photos. There's a lot to be said for the place in simplicity, so, to me, radical would have to also be attentive to place. Lots of designer places for centuries have had water channels..
tricky. This is a cliff that has thrown off people picnicking in my lifetime.