Palm Trees

If you let your mind run wistfully through a fantasy list of faraway places that have beckoned you to pay them a visit, sooner rather than later this gorgeous island will surely rise to the surface. For most of us, Bali's name has always rung most of the chimes: romance, unbridled beauty, handsome and happy people dressed in riotous colors, palm trees, pristine beaches where swimming by moonlight washes away any thoughts of another world.

Perhaps the biggest surprise as the Oscar nominations were announced was the inclusion of a name familiar to few American audiences. As those early morning viewers waited to hear the expected announcement of Leonardo DiCaprio, they heard instead the name Demian Bichir. But the inclusion was baffling only to those who haven't seen his performance in"A Better Life. " As Carlos Galindo, an undocumented Mexican gardener desperate to achieve some tiny slice of the American dream for his son, Bichir gives poignant life to an invisible man. He's famous in his home country of Mexico, with dozens of film and stage credits to his name.

IN most cities, buildings make the skyline. Paris has a tower, London a clock, New York an island-long roof-scape. Only Los Angeles signed the sky with trees. Tens of thousands of palms tower over the city like flagpoles, their arching trunks and rustling fronds marking the progression of the California dream. It takes a circling eagle to do a better job catching the last rays of a Western sunset.

Return to David L. Ulin's review of this essay. PARADISE I shall attempt, in this piece, an appraisal of the civilization of Southern California, but it occurs to me that before I begin I had better give you some idea what the place looks like. If you are like myself before I came here, you have formed, from Sunkist ads, newsreels, movie magazines, railroad folders, and so on, a somewhat false picture of it, and you will have to get rid of this before you can understand what I am trying to say. Wash out, then, the "land of sunshine, fruit, and flowers": all these are here, but not with the lush, verdant fragrance that you have probably imagined.

There are no customers at Hawaii in the Valley this afternoon. Margarite Auda sits alone in the Sherman Oaks boutique, surrounded by racks of Hawaiian-print muu muus, sarongs and short-sleeve shirts--clothing that bursts into shades of aqua and fuchsia and sunset pink. Thatched-roof awnings hang over the aisles. Synthetic palm trees sway in the air conditioner's breeze. Outside, a low-lying smog covers the San Fernando Valley. Traffic has slowed to a standstill on Ventura Boulevard.

Our city of Los Angeles is a very beautiful city, and I am always very proud to show visitors around. One reason that makes L.A. so beautiful is our trees, tree-lined streets and avenues. Not only do our trees give our city wonderful (vistas), they help combat our smoggy environment. Therefore, it is with extreme anger I write! Throughout our city, a cable company is hanging a cable, several feet below existing wires, using existing telephone poles. In hanging this cable, the company is beheading our palm trees.

Work began this week to trim decaying palm trees in Capistrano Beach. About 55 of the 275 palm trees in the area have been diagnosed with Fusarium Wilt fungus, an incurable disease. Over the next six weeks, those trees and 40 other healthy palms will be trimmed. The main streets where trimming will occur are Calle Fortuna, Avenida Las Palmas and Palisades Drive. Residents will receive notices regarding the project before work begins on their streets. Information: (714) 248-3596.

The government is trying to halt an alarming decline in palm trees on the Persian Gulf island state in recent decades, a government official says. Sheik Mohammed ibn Abdul-Wahab al Khalifa, director of research for the Ministry of Commerce and Agriculture, said Thursday that in the past 30 to 40 years the number of Bahrain's palm trees has dwindled from about 1 million to a little more than 250,000.

More than 900 palm trees at four Westside beaches will be trimmed in August, Supervisor Deane Dana said last week. Contract bids will be opened May 6 for the work on 110 palms at Zuma Beach, 190 at Will Rogers Beach, 315 at Venice Beach and 300 at Dockweiler Beach.

An abundance of palm trees on the Nobel Middle School campus in Northridge has left the school a little bit richer and a little less green. After a number of tall palm trees began to obstruct views of buildings and caused school administrators to worry about them possibly falling on school buses, Nobel's Leadership Council voted to sell the trees.

The Beach Natalie, 10 Torrey Pines Elementary La Jolla Palm trees swaying side to side as the coastal breeze swept by. Feet running along hot dry sand, the tide coming in. Children jumping over tall waves and splashing each other, adults under umbrellas lying on towels, and the sun shining bright yellow. The Four Elements Carlos, 12 Hargitt Middle School Academy Norwalk Water — Flows through river spilling, dropping, flowing — an element that brings life.

Welcome to the City of Fallen Angels, Mike Brown. On behalf of the Welcome Wagon of Los Angeles, we'd like to offer up this basket of oranges while urging you never to eat anything you buy from folks standing at a traffic light. Buy it, just don't eat it. Better yet, send it to the Spurs. You have landed in a very special place, a town that really embraces outsiders. John Wooden was from Indiana. Tommy Lasorda, Pennsylvania. Heck, even our teams are from somewhere else. Minnesota.

I'm on the city's surface streets, heading from downtown to Hollywood. Only a few cars share the road. I don't bother to pull onto the 101. Because it's not there. No, this isn't 3 a.m., or the apocalypse. It's L.A. Noire, the latest interactive world from Rockstar Games. In a dark suite at the Roosevelt Hotel, I'm test-driving this single-player detective thriller set in 1947 Los Angeles. Launching May 17, the graphic procedural takes place before Miranda rights and DNA testing.

Javier Prado marks his turf with a plastic folding chair. Ramon Alvarez guards a concrete bench. Efren Castellanos, the one they call La Hormiga ("the Ant"), brazenly goes wherever he pleases. He should, he argues. He's been here the longest. "Just let them try and tell me something," he says. "I've earned my spot." The Polaroid photographers of MacArthur Park are old-timers, the last of a dying breed. They've been sparring under the palm trees now for nearly 40 years.

Financially speaking, California is circling the drain. But the sun-kissed image of the state isn't losing its currency -- even in France, the capital of chic. This fall, French jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels is launching "California Reverie," a collection of one-of-a-kind pieces inspired by West Coast icons -- both real (sunsets, palm trees, poppies) and Euro-imagined (flamingos, toucans, pineapples).

The parents had the best of intentions. They planted 80 palm trees to spruce up a forlorn hillside at Malibu High School, between the athletic field and the asphalt parking lot. A number of volunteers spent two days over the Thanksgiving weekend putting in the tropical Queen palms. Now, it looks as if they are going to remove them after a raft of Malibu Park neighbors weighed in with complaints about obscured views and fire danger.

It may be bad or it may be a blessing that a bunch of palm trees are dying in Capistrano Beach ("Palm Tree Plan Axed to Dismay of Homeowners," Feb. 19). But one thing is for sure, and that is that their mayor is showing a lot of common sense in not wanting to spend about $100,000 of taxpayer money to replace 12 trees in just one neighborhood. It's too bad more government people can't demonstrate such care with the taxpayers' dollars. On the other hand, it was all too typical to read in the same article that a representative of a Capistrano community association who wanted the city to spend the money is quoted as saying, "Now we just don't know what we are going to do."

Palm trees that members of the International Palm Society recommend for Southern California: * Fishtail palm (Caryota mitis): Multi- or single-trunked, fairly slow-growing and can be used indoors or outside. Frost hardy to 27 degrees. Trees die at maturity, about 30 years. * Kentia palm (Howea forsteriana): A slow-growing, versatile feather palm that can be grown indoors. In an outside landscape, does best along the coast. Frost damage occurs below 28 degrees. Effective as a group planting.

In the hot sun, Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood spreads out wide and flat, the granite fronts of office buildings glistening in the light. Austere sentinels of palm trees tower over the street. The community was named in hopes of catching a whiff of the glamour conjured by Hollywood to the south. And, as with a life devoted to chasing stardom, the rhythms of this swatch of the San Fernando Valley are both prosaic and poetic.

Kenny SCHARF'S pop-surrealist paintings will be shown on a different kind of canvas this summer. The artist (and L.A native) has collaborated with designer Elie Tahari on a limited-edition collection that went on sale Saturday. The collection features a fantastical print developed from a Scharf painting called "Floatungle," and it swirls across a silk chiffon caftan ($248), a cotton voile pareo ($168) and, most fabulously, a surfboard that at $15,000 is unlikely to ever hit salt water.