Los Angeles Public Facilities

Short-handed and strapped for cash, the manager of the Ramona Gardens Recreation Center recently turned to a most unlikely source to help rid his aging Boyle Heights facility of graffiti: gang members. The result was even more surprising. The gang members agreed to help and used donated paint from the adjacent housing project to cover scrawlings in the bathrooms, weight room and main entryway.

In Elysian Park, the current hot controversy, for a change, has nothing to do with the Dodgers, whose stadium has been a sore point with area residents for years. This time, the hassle is about bikes. The 580-acre park of steep hills northwest of downtown Los Angeles is ground zero in a battle over a pilot program that could lead to the eventual introduction of mountain bikes throughout the city's park system.

It's not every day Richard J. Riordan makes a public appearance in green swim trunks, but the Los Angeles mayor was in a swimming mood at the North Hollywood Park pool Tuesday. Riordan swam, spoke with about 120 kids and served scoops of free vanilla ice cream at the pool, where officials publicized a program that allows children to use city pools for free this summer. Officials said attendance at the city's 53 pools has jumped more than 60%.

Natalie Navarette enjoyed digging, shoveling and watering the soft soil at Memory Garden. She spent several years helping bring the flowers and trees back to life. She and her husband, Felix, spent nearly every Saturday on their designated plot of land at Brand Park, pulling weeds and joking with other volunteers from Friends of the Memory Garden. When Natalie suffered a heart attack last month, she went to the hospital and learned she also had cancer.

When the city sought ideas for revitalizing Little Tokyo, a group of kids submitted their proposal on a sheet of notebook paper. It was a drawing of a gymnasium, with a handwritten caption: This is what we want. Leaders at a national conference on the future of the Japanese American community in Los Angeles had the same idea. Basketball has for generations been one of the most popular pastimes among Japanese Americans.

The long-delayed restoration of Hansen Dam Recreation Area--the site of a once-popular lake done in by sediment and neglect--is expected to be completed by midsummer, officials said Monday. As a result, swimmers, anglers and boaters will be able to enjoy two new lakes, which will cost $15.8 million. They will be completed in June and are expected to open by late July or early August, pending approval by the Los Angeles County Health Department, officials said at a news conference.

Community Redevelopment Agency officials granted a temporary reprieve this week to a downtown Los Angeles community garden that is scheduled to close to make way for an affordable housing project. Esperanza Garden, a 2-year-old community project at Olympic Boulevard and Hope Street, was scheduled to be closed by Feb. 15. The lot would have remained vacant until late summer or fall, when construction of a housing development is expected to begin.

More than a year after a fluky and dangerous design flaw forced the closure of two public swimming pools in Los Angeles, the facilities remain closed--to the dismay of hundreds of swimmers, divers and aqua-aerobicists. Recreation and Parks Department officials say it will take three to four more months to reopen popular pools at Cleveland High School in Reseda and the Westwood Recreation Center.

Gov.-elect Gray Davis may have the same name as an achromatic shade, but he's no painter--at least not a professional one. Which means he won't be allowed to slap some paint on a city recreation center when he and his wife, Sharon, spiff up a small part of Los Angeles on Saturday. The Davises will instead paint the Wilton Elementary School--picked because their first choice, the Echo Park Recreation Center, gave them a last-minute brushoff.

Sashaying and swirling on the ice to blaring pop music with Mayor Richard Riordan, about 30 children Tuesday inaugurated the new outdoor skating rink at Pershing Square downtown. "This is Rockefeller Center West," Riordan said, referring to the famed New York City ice rink, "but in the best city in the country." The temporary 50-by-80-foot rink, seemingly out of step beneath L.A. palm trees, is the latest effort by the city to breathe new life into its oldest park.