Month: July 2013

For the past ten days the eastern San Fernando Valley became, overnight,  a swing county in Ohio in a presidential election.  Which is to say, we were under the full siege of the Cindy-Nury political telenovela: door knockers, door hangers, mailers, phone calls, yard signs, tweets and texts.  Amidst this cacophony of the democratic process I received a knock on the door from my neighbor Walter, a Montanez volunteer.  Would I like to meet Cindy? ‘She’s gonna be in the neighborhood’ today. Of course I would. He promised to bring her by ‘sometime after 4pm.’  We put some wine in the fridge to chill, cracked open the hummus, and called my friend Andy Hurvitz, of the HereinVanNuys blog. ‘Cindy Montanez is dropping by. You want to meet her?’  Certainly. At 4pm, there the three of us were, glasses of rose in hand, snack bowls on the credenza, cameras and questions at the ready….

4:30 rolls around, no Cindy.  I check in with Walter. ‘It’ll be another hour or so. She’s still at the office.’  The hour goes by, the bottle of wine empties out.   We begin to fool around with cameras. I fire up the grill.  I call a second time for an ETA.  ‘Andy is here’, I offer as an inducement, ‘and he’s ready to blog.’ ‘Let me get back to you.’  Ten minutes later he calls back with regrets. ‘Cindy won’t be able to make it tonight.’  We wander out into the evening air and take snaps along the Metrolink tracks.  We happened upon this lovely couple on the Bridge of Sighs, who were happy to pose:

Three days later, returning from yoga, I get another message from Walter. Please call.  Cindy will be back in the neighborhood tonight. I’ll bring her by. When? Six to seven-ish.  Andy returns.  A bottle of gewürztraminer and garlic crackers are laid out. More hummus.  Seven o’clock, no Cindy. Eight o’clock, no Cindy.  Now, the drill here is pretty simple. The candidate knocks. We exchange pleasantries. She declines the wine, but takes a cracker.  Looks us in the eye and lies to us about how she’s going to clean up Sepulveda Blvd. Everyone shakes hands and she goes on her way. Five minutes and it’s done. She gets a promotional photo from Andy and maybe some good copy.  Of course we both have fever dreams of beautification schemes we want to pitch, and maybe after a long day, the gewürztraminer might bribe some additional face time with the candidate…..but only if the candidate shows up. On the her hand, if she chooses not to come, for a second time…..by 8:30, we’re in the car, heading to Angel City Brewery for a flight of IPA and then to Wurstkuche for some exotic sausage.  Downtown east of Alameda, an area not long ago as run-down as the east Valley is today, was positively en fuego with nightlife, cuisine, commerce.  Joyful young and not-so young people out and about, enjoying t-shirt weather after midnight.  Quite another city,  yet entirely within my own.  Up in the valley, we’re still working on the basics, like awnings for bus stops and getting the police to arrest hookers plying the trade in broad daylight in front of schoolchildren:

Driving home to our colonial outpost in the Valley, I was in a bad humor. Mrs. Upinthevalley took a more generous view. It’s the middle of an election. Walter was simply over-promising.  Perhaps. But he wasn’t inventing. Cindy knew who we were and she knew we were waiting, and she….made other priorities.   An avalanche of mailers and five more canvassers would hit our house in the final days, including three on Tuesday afternoon, in a scrambling panic as the poll watchers reported the grim news: people weren’t showing up to vote.  Her margin of defeat would turn out to be smaller than the combined traffic of our two blogs.  Enough said.

Cindy spent in excess of $100 a vote.  Her signs and foot soldiers were ubiquitous in Van Nuys. Cindy herself was a no-show.  Nury Martinez walked Sun Valley and Arleta door-to-door, in person. As Woody Allen put it: ‘90% of life is showing up’.   In politics apparently, there’s no substitute for shaking someone’s hand and bullshitting them.