The New York Times declares war on Encino

The headline is from Kevin Roderick’s blog LA Observed, where he is referring to an attack on Encino, by New York Times journalist and ex-resident, Katie J.M. Baker. Here is a sample:

Encino’s most treasured commodity (is) expendable stuff. The most miraculous event that ever occurred at the Encino Commons shopping center was when a fledgling restaurant managed to stay open for more than a year. Even though I had moved away four years earlier, it embarrassed me… Few move there expecting a culturally enriching environment. Why couldn’t we just quietly acknowledge our inferiority, taking solace in our swimming pools and parking spots? Why did we have to pretend Encino was something it wasn’t?

The article (here) is a pleasure to read but it’s really a love letter. The writer is a softie at heart. Why else would she write about how much her crooked heart secretly loves Encino? This is mild stuff, just like Encino itself, but she has to be snarky because this is in The New York Times Opinionator, after all, and that means pretending to hate the place she grew up in and repressing the fact that her cynicism and her outsider status – which are to be treasured, by the way – were formed by growing up here.

One complaint: if she spent her college years worrying that Encino was not Beverly Hills, then there is not much to be done about that. If people turn up their noses at the Valley then they are simply idiots, so why internalize any of it? Maybe she is implying those people are just oblivious and not worth worrying about, in which case I would agree. We all feel this way about where we grew up – home is the place we leave. But it’s also true that going back home has the easy assurance of reminding us of who we are and where we came from.

I agree with a lot of what she has to say. I have called Encino an assisted living facility myself, which is obviously mean and unfair, but the place is run by tired old people. She apparently consulted a few of them. None of them care that teenagers or people in their Twenties think it’s boring and can’t wait to leave. None of them are willing to entertain ideas that might draw younger people or creative businesses here. I think we have a videogame company, but that’s it. I live in Encino because I can have a decent garden and fruit trees, because of the birds and butterflies, native oak trees, the clean air and the bike paths. You can’t have everything in life but that seems like a lot to me. People with young families agree with me.

She picks an odd symbolic target though – that archway sign across Ventura Blvd at the Town Center. Now I like the archway myself and I cannot see why she is so ticked off by it. Who cares what Encino Neighborhood Council thinks? It should be just the beginning. I want a town square next! We should carve a trench for a Ventura Blvd underpass as it goes past Encino Town Center and create a town square above it, on all the land we would have to play with. Wouldn’t you like that? We could put in a few more coffee shops and lure some more videogame companies and an Apple store. Yeah!