El Pueblo

One official in the city's Department of El Pueblo has been terminated and another placed on administrative leave as officials continue to investigate management lapses in the small agency that oversees the birthplace of Los Angeles. A spokesman for Mayor James K. Hahn declined to name the employees but said the moves had occurred May 21. The department's general manager, Ed Navarro, had resigned a few days earlier, officials said.

The croissants and churros were piled high. After a conservation project that took roughly 24 years and cost about $10 million to complete, David Alfaro Siqueiros' 1932 Olvera Street mural "America Tropical" was unveiled Tuesday morning with much fanfare at an official reception. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, City Councilman Jose Huizar, El Pueblo manager Chris Espinoza, and, from the Getty, President James Cuno and conservation chief Timothy Whalen took turns speaking about the historic moment in the courtyard of an El Pueblo building nearby.

A seven-member panel overseeing operations at El Pueblo de Los Angeles is starting a nationwide search for a new general manager to run the city's birthplace, officials said. Commissioners are scheduled to discuss and finalize the manager's job description at a meeting Thursday, said chairwoman Lydia Lopez. That information will then be passed along to the city personnel department, which will advertise the opening nationwide. The search could take six to eight months.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, President Theodore Roosevelt and Bugs Bunny might appear to have little in common, but they do share one distinction: They've all mispronounced Los Angeles. Perry committed his gaffe the other day at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena when he greeted a Latino group with the words, "Buenos dias, Los Angeles!" He rendered the city's name as Loce AN-guh-leeze , as though it contained a hard G and rhymed with "fleas. " It was somewhat reminiscent of the time President Roosevelt referred to the City of Angels as Loss AN-jee-leeze during a 1903 visit, according to historian John Weaver.

A seven-member panel that will oversee operations at the historic El Pueblo de Los Angeles held its first meeting last week and began establishing priorities and a vision for the city's birthplace. The commission of five Latinos, one Chinese American and one Italian American agreed Tuesday to set up a committee to study El Pueblo's staff of 44, comprised of people from the city's parks department and contracted employees.

City Controller Laura Chick said Wednesday that the Los Angeles Department of El Pueblo has largely righted itself from the "financial disaster" it was immersed in last year. The department runs Olvera Street, in the downtown Los Angeles area considered to be the city's birthplace. It consists of several museums, a public plaza, restaurants and gift shops. More than 2 million people visit each year. In a scathing audit in spring of 2004, the department was found to be dysfunctional.

For five years, Renan Almendarez Coello -- "El Cucuy de la Manana," or "morning Boogeyman" to his radio audience -- has ruled morning radio in Los Angeles. Mixing crass, sexist humor with such populist causes as speaking out on behalf of a disputed 400-year-old oak tree in Santa Clarita or helping a paralyzed man get an electric wheelchair, he generates ratings that routinely top those of everyone who faces him, whether they speak English or El Cucuy's native Spanish.

If the city of Los Angeles were running a historic park, an annual cost to taxpayers approaching $1 million might be mildly troubling. If it were running a shopping mall, we'd want to know why the city was paying nearly $1 million to subsidize its commercial tenants. Isn't it supposed to work the other way? And if the city were operating a parking concession and still coming up short, there would be scandal.

Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros conceived and painted his Los Angeles masterpiece--an 18-foot-by-80-foot painting known as "America Tropical"--in a mere two months during the late summer and early fall of 1932. Commissioned by the owner of an art gallery on the city's historic Olvera Street, Siqueiros designed a vast painting for an exterior, second-floor wall of Italian Hall, facing a rooftop beer garden that overlooked the pedestrian zone lined with Mexican shops.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, President Theodore Roosevelt and Bugs Bunny might appear to have little in common, but they do share one distinction: They've all mispronounced Los Angeles. Perry committed his gaffe the other day at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena when he greeted a Latino group with the words, "Buenos dias, Los Angeles!" He rendered the city's name as Loce AN-guh-leeze , as though it contained a hard G and rhymed with "fleas. " It was somewhat reminiscent of the time President Roosevelt referred to the City of Angels as Loss AN-jee-leeze during a 1903 visit, according to historian John Weaver.

A feud between Los Angeles officials and business owners on downtown's historic Olvera Street appears headed for a resolution after the City Council moved unanimously Tuesday to approve a negotiated rent increase. The deal calls for rents on Olvera Street — a city-controlled venue highlighting Mexican American food and culture — to rise in steps, edging toward market level in five years. It also ensures that Olvera Street businesses, most of which have been operating on month-to-month leases since the mid-1990s, can continue operating for as long as 40 years.

If newspaper headlines were still set in lead type, we could keep this one handy and drag it out every few years: "Trouble on Olvera Street." The block-long alley-cum-marketplace is part of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, the Tut's tomb of the original city, Spanish Mexican style (Native American traces are long gone). The "birthplace of L.A." was a tumbledown mess in the late 1920s when Christine Sterling saved it and spruced it up and made Olvera Street a huge tourist draw.

To many an outsider, Los Angeles is a stage set. It's a city constantly pretending to be something it's not. "L.A. is a stand-in for the rest of the world," said historian William David Estrada. "Our local mountains have been the Alps. Our deserts have been North Africa and China. That's one of the reasons people think of L.A. as a plastic, superficial place." Estrada made this observation as we stood in the old plaza downtown, a place officially known as El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.

"The Lost Symbol," author Dan Brown's new, violent thriller, involves some strange findings at a Masonic temple near the White House (wine-filled skull and severed hand, anyone?). Brown capitalizes on the Masons' reputation as a secretive fraternal and charitable movement that has been accused by conspiracy theorists of just about everything, including plotting with extraterrestrials to take over the world. Standing in quiet contrast to such drama is Los Angeles' 151-year-old Masonic Hall.

Miguel Angel Corzo, a prominent arts administrator who has led the Getty Conservation Institute and the Colburn School in Los Angeles and the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, has been elected president and chief executive of LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, a new cultural center in downtown Los Angeles. LA Plaza is under construction in Vickrey-Brunswig and Plaza House, two 1880s buildings in El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument. The first phase of the project is expected to open in early 2010.

If the city of Los Angeles were running a historic park, an annual cost to taxpayers approaching $1 million might be mildly troubling. If it were running a shopping mall, we'd want to know why the city was paying nearly $1 million to subsidize its commercial tenants. Isn't it supposed to work the other way? And if the city were operating a parking concession and still coming up short, there would be scandal.

Calm down, Mr. Kraim. If Angelenos call their city by its proper name they will be saying El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula. Those folks in Frisco are too touchy. Thank God for L.A., and also for LAX. TROXEY KEMPER El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula

City Controller Rick Tuttle urged Mayor Richard Riordan on Thursday to appoint a commission to oversee the management of Olvera Street. The historic tourist spot lies in the heart of the El Pueblo Plaza, the city's birthplace. Shops and restaurants give the square the ambience of a Mexican marketplace.

When does the yo-yo -- the most analog toy this side of jacks-- play as a dynamic and contemporary diversion? When it's a diabolo -- the oversize, spool-shaped approach that evolved from 12th century Chinese yo-yos. Diabolists -- who actually have nothing to do with the worship of Satan -- live like pop sensations in Asia. Or at least they get adulation and sport the sorts of shiny, zany outfits that we stateside associate with stardom. "There are annual competitions. Every elementary school has a team," says Thomas Wu. "A lot of children do it, but only the good ones get on the team.

While many Angelenos took advantage of the Labor Day holiday to sleep in, Irene Sepulveda Hastings was meeting relatives she didn't know existed. Wearing a white lace mantilla that cascaded over her head and onto a gauzy, floor-length white dress, the Corona grandmother joined about 1,000 people on a nearly nine-mile journey from San Gabriel Mission to El Pueblo Historical Monument -- birthplace of the city -- in downtown Los Angeles.