Hansen: Anglers have the right idea

It’s usually unfair to do a compare-and-contrast between public and private events, but let’s do it anyway.

Two community events were held Saturday, the public Pop-Up Downtown workshop and the fish fry fundraiser put on by the Laguna Beach Anglers.

Two completely different events. One is a long-term effort to improve downtown. It’s a BIG JOB, capital everything. Meetings upon meetings, consultants, committees, budgets, environmental reviews, bickering, compromise.

The other is an annual benefit picnic. Festivities, music, adult beverages, kids running around, lawn chairs, neighbors, friends, hugs and stories. Oh, and direct donations to the Glennwood Home, which helps people with developmental disabilities.

One has high overhead; the other has no overhead.

One is self-important; the other has no ego.

One may never get done, despite good intentions; the other is already done.

Granted, the downtown plan is a huge public exercise, and the other is a simple donation. But here’s what the two worlds have in common: What if?

What if we could improve things? What if we did things better?

What if we updated areas of downtown that have languished for too long?

It’s the possibility of a vision. For now, it’s not tempered by reality. That will come. On this day, we can ignore the naysayers, obstructionists and wonky planning pessimists. We are given a whiteboard and asked to fill it with ideas, cover it with dreams.

The anglers, meanwhile, live their dream. They just do. They cast and reel and feed their neighbors. It’s not what if something happens in the future. It’s what if we can do something good today, and then we just do it?

It’s a direct, frictionless act. There is no middleman. It’s an immediate statement of community giving.

In some sense, this model of direct outreach is the intent of the city’s public event. Previously, similar events were held at the high school and during Art Walk.

“This workshop will be very innovative and allows the city to obtain valuable community feedback while the community enjoys some food, music and conversation about the vision of downtown,” said Greg Pfost, community development director, in a prepared statement.

As expected, there is no shortage of ideas. At Saturday’s event, the whiteboards were filled with proposals:

• More biking

• Less biking

• More parking

• Less parking

And so it went.

If you looked around at the crowd, there were pockets of insiders, cliques trying not to be obvious — businesses giving away something, politicians in jeans trying to appear open-minded, activists staying close to their agendas.

One bicyclist made a commotion after his bike fell near a lamppost.

“Where are the bike racks?” he yelled, just a little too loudly.

In Laguna, everyone has an issue.

So what can we learn from these two events? Could the private best practices be applied to civic projects? Absolutely. Can we streamline processes and help reduce the churn that plagues our committees? Yes.

But the real challenge we’re going to have with the Downtown Specific Plan is not going to be solved with feel-good picnics or brainstorming sessions.

It’s how do we break the political deadlocks that stifle new ideas? It was apparent Saturday, as each insider group huddled like birds of a feather, that it didn’t matter what ideas were thrown at the wall.

Nothing will stick until people drop their weapons and pick up fishing poles.

Oh wait, we can’t fish in Laguna Beach — never mind.

DAVID HANSEN is a writer and Laguna Beach resident. He can be reached at hansen.dave@gmail.com.