ENDZ OF ODD: Drat! I was hoping we’d at least
get a moat out of the deal — one preferably stocked with piranhas,
too. But it turns out the illegal fence the News-Press erected in
front of its Anacapa Street parking lot will probably be coming
down soon. This Monday, city planning czar Paul Casey issued a
terse “tear down that wall” note to News-Press mogul Wendy P. McCaw
and her ever-smiling paramour Arthur von Wiesenberger, noting the
fence in question required not just a permit but special
dispensation from the Pope, given the paper occupies hallowed
ground within Santa Barbara’s esthetically sanctified El Pueblo
Viejo district where even the wrong shade of white paint can get
you in hot water. For those of us who find the News-Press melodrama
even more riveting than the recent hoo-ha over Mary Worth — the
only genuine Santa Barbara-based comic strip I know of — the
illegal erection of the fence (did I mention it was against the
law?) triggered a thermonuclear chain reaction of rank speculation,
gossip, and innuendo.
To my jaundiced eyes, the fence seemed the perfect architectural
accent note to express the grim and brooding misanthropic spirit
wafting out of that historic structure on De la Guerra Plaza under
the McCaw regime. I was betting she’d regard her right to erect an
illegal fence as a deeply held philosophical principle and refuse
to comply with Casey’s cease-and-desist order, thus precipitating a
showdown standoff that would eclipse even the Iranian hostage
crisis. (Look it up in Wikipedia!) My theory is the fence — which
I’ve been told was initially intended to extend much further than
it does — was McCaw’s way of saying “Screw you!” to the City
Council for voting two weeks ago in favor of giving De la Guerra
Plaza a dramatic face-lift. (People working at City Hall park their
cars in the lot right next to the News-Press lot.) Specifically,
the council voted to begin the public dreaming-and-scheming process
to make the plaza — once the site of bear baiting and
cock-fighting — all that it could be.
Included within these very general parameters is the distinct
possibility the plaza could be declared off-limits to automobiles.
Naturally this idea does not sit well with many of the businesses
operating around the plaza’s perimeter. And it galls the heck out
of the News-Press, whose advertisers and visitors have
traditionally parked on the plaza by the building’s entrance. When
the council considered this very idea a few years ago, the
newspaper came out against it with a vengeance. But back then,
people still cared what the News-Press thought, so the City Council
tucked its collective tail between its collective legs and opted to
look into a handful of minor but necessary engineering
improvements. A menu of those minor options came before the council
two weeks ago for review, and with the exception of Iya Falcone,
the members opted to revisit the big-picture solutions to what ails
the plaza.