Simon Rodia is dead and now the junk just accumulates

[Doug Millison]

http://www.sacbee.com/state_wire/story/3804673p-4830091c.html

Cameras to help keep south Los Angeles alleys clean

Published 7:10 a.m. PDT Thursday, August 1, 2002

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Police fed up with trash-filled alleys have unveiled the
first of 11 special motion-sensor cameras they hope will deter illegal
dumping and graffiti in southern Los Angeles.

A power-pole mounted camera in Watts is designed to snap a picture of - and
audibly warn - anyone spotted loitering in a junk-filled alley, police said
Wednesday.

The steel-encased camera, designed to withstand a bullet, plays a recorded
warning that police hope will act as a deterrent: "Stop! This is the LAPD,"
the recording says. "We have just taken your photograph. We will use this
photograph to prosecute you. Leave now."

Similar cameras are planned for other South Los Angeles locations, some
mounted near abandoned buildings to discourage squatters.

Legal experts say the pictures taken would be admissible in court. Those
caught 'tagging' or illegally dumping could be jailed for six months and
fined $1,000 per crime.




"A kid could come along in his bare feet and step on this glass -- not that
you'd ever know. These kids are so tough you can pull slivers of it out of
them and never get a whimper. It's part of their landscape, both the real
and the emotional one: busted glass, busted crockery, nails, tin cans, all
kinds of scrap and waste. Traditionally Watts. An Italian immigrant named
Simon Rodia spent 30 years gathering some of it up and converting a little
piece of the neighborhood along 107th Street into the famous Watts Towers,
perhaps his own dream of how things should have been: a fantasy of
fountains, boats, tall openwork spires, encrusted with a dazzling mosaic of
Watts debris. Next to the Towers, along the old Pacific Electric tracks,
kids are busy every day busting more bottles on the steel rails. But Simon
Rodia is dead and now the junk just accumulates."
http://www.libyrinth.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_watts.html