Ray Bradbury by The Small-Town Plaza

Author:The Small-Town Plaza
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-12-12T02:17:32+00:00

and refresh existence.

Life really beginsat dusk in Rome. In the blue hour, and late on through the idle evening, shopping continues, mixed with time to wander, linger, sit and stare.

The Plaza I have constructed here should never be built unless it opens for business at three each afternoon. Week nights it should stay open until at least 11:30. Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights the closing hour should be 1 or 2 a.m..

Will this take some real doing? Yes. Because your average small American businessman is locked into a nine to five schedule. No news hours are worth considering. So, thousands of new customers are ignored and your small business flounders for seemingly inexplicable reasons.

Your small businessman has many reasons to affiliate himself in such as amiable environmental plaza as the one I propose, where he will be guaranteed a fresh river of pedestrians every hour. And being situated on the north, south, east or west side of the plaza will not affect his business by so much as a cent.

Bring this small businessman in, into this effort to recenter our live. Give the community back to the community, to build a base for young and old, and discourage the endless miles of mindless driving as millions of people pass other millions looking for Somewhere To Go.

But, the Somewhere To Go will only work, I repeat, if it opens late and closes late.

Which brings usround to a final description of my Plaza: Bandstand at the center on which local talent can sing and play.

Four hundred or five hundred chains surrounding the bandstand, where people can sit all night, under the heavens. In winter, such as it is in California, outdoor heating can be installed.

Around this, the great pedestrian treadway. On this, real people actually working!

And around them, in turn, the shops, the theatre.

Underneath: parking. Or the next block over, hidden, for God’s sake, behind bushes and trees.

Final points:

In all eating places, plenty of booths facing each other, for conviviality. Too many places, like Baskin -

Robbins, have sits lined up against the wall. The message implied is: So Long. Get Away. Goodbye.

Again: better a small businessman working ‘till midnight than a small businessman bankrupt and relief.

If you can’t build a large plaza, build a small one with just one or two theatre and a dozen shops. The must important element that remain constant is the center, the conversation pit, the plaza walk - around concourse where people know , are absolutely sure if they bother to go, they will se someone they knew from junior high school, college or some neighborhood area.

Let’s start with one plaza such as this, and build more. Needless to say, the ones that follow must not duplicate the first in texture or color or sense of drama.

Just as in the great cities of the world, there is only one Eiffel Tower for Paris, one Tower of London, one St. Peter’s for Rome, so, on a lesser level, each plaza in all 80 lost and needful Los Angeles small town should in some way strike individual chords of the backgrounds they arise from.

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