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Mailbag: Don’t take the ‘Fun’ out of the Fun Zone

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Re. “Balboa carousel told to mosey on” (July 26): Taking away the merry-go-round is taking the fun out of the Fun Zone. The loss of this 75-year-old center of the Fun Zone is a travesty.

It was the merry-go-round that drew me each summer to the Fun Zone with my family for fun rides and an afternoon at the arcade. So much of that has been lost. We can’t afford to lose any more.

Rumor has it that nothing will be done by the ExploreOcean/Newport Harbor Nautical Museum, the landlord, until four years or more. They have to raise the money to build a new iconic building.

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I have yet to see a grandchild dragging grandmother to see something in an iconic building. I have seen them racing to get to the merry-go-round.

When the museum first bought the Fun Zone, it promised the citizens it would keep the Fun Zone fun.

Louise Fundenberg

Newport Beach

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It’s not a business, it’s a city

If the city is a business, as some politicians in Costa Mesa claim, why don’t we hear affectionate songs about businesses? Why didn’t Tony Bennett croon something like, “I left my heart/ in Halliburton.” Or, more upbeat, why didn’t Frank Sinatra belt out, “Monsanto, Monsanto, / that toddlin’ biz.”

And why aren’t there paeans to send chills down our backs like “My Big Box ‘tis of thee/ Sweet source of garden tools/ Of thee I sing”?

We often hear exclamations, such as “I just love Laguna Beach,” and “I’m so stoked about the surf at The Wedge.” So where are the parallel outcries of “I just love Mobil Oil,” or “I’m so stoked about the aisles at Nordstrom”?

How about simple transactions? Why don’t cops ask for your credit card after arresting the guy who just mugged you? Doesn’t the chief know he’s a businessman?

Understandably, “all business” politicians may feel frustrated when they run smack into the profound differences between cities and businesses that put the lie to their intellectual conceit.

But isn’t it just a harmless affectation to view the city as a business, or to call the city manager a CEO?

In a word: no! It dehumanizes the city. Based on their actions in the past six months, dehumanizing the city appears to be the linchpin framing that the “all business” politicians rely on to justify their dismantling of what used to be the community called Costa Mesa.

These politicians already have turned a great many Costa Mesans against their neighbors, so much so that, if heated online blog comments are any indication, many neighbors are now hating neighbors.

Costa Mesans want to again be able to sing “Home, Sweet Home” about the community they’ve built up over six decades. They don’t want to hear a funeral march.

Tom Egan

Costa Mesa

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