Comments by Carmelo
Page 1 of 2 | Next
1 of 1 people thought this was a good comment.
Posted on April 1 at 6:40 a.m.
What? A history of skateboarding in Isla Vista that doesn't cover garage bands nor mention Italian movies? What would D.J. say?!
But thanks, Henry, anyway.
Carmen Lodise
Isla Vista: A Citizen's History
www.islavistahistory.com
Posted on February 6 at 7:06 a.m.
DJ,
Thank you for the mostly positive review of our book. I acknowledge my "citizen's history" does short the vibrant cultural aspects of Isla Vista. However, I recall a piece you wrote in the Independent a couple of years ago on that topic, which leads me to believe that it may be you, not me, who should write that history.
A couple of other reviews:
“The book is gorgeous and vividly authentic, a grass-roots people's history in the tradition of Howard Zinn."
Bob Potter, Prof. Emeritus, UCSB
Co-author, The Campus by the Sea Where the Bank Burned Down
“This is outstanding! The legacy of Isla Vista owes you a tremendous debt of gratitude and on a personal level, so do I.”
Cloe Mayes Yocum,
UCSB student, mid-1970s
"The book reminds me a lot about how much I owe Isla Vista. I think someone could never really know me without knowing what our community was/is like."
Glen Lazof,
Isla Vista Community Council, 1983-84
I.V. Park District GM, ~1985-93
Incidentally, the book is available at Chaucer's Books, the I.V. Food Co-op, both UCSB and Isla Vista book stores and, within the next couple of days, at Amazon.com.
Regards,
Carmen Lodise
Posted on January 29 at 7:40 a.m.
Thanks, Ben, for the article. It's obvious from all the comments that you've touched some sensitive spots.
I question Sgt. Olmstead's assertion that "20 percent of the serious crimes that occur in the Sheriff’s Department's jurisdiction are in IVFP’s territory." Especially since, despite more than six weeks of communicating, the Sheriff's Department refused to produce ANY crime statistics for Isla Vista for a research project I was involved in last fall.
I haven't lived in Isla Vista for sometime, but I published the results of a May 4, 1989 public meeting between community members and local Sheriff and UCSB police when I had a newspaper there. And, despite all the Orwellian excuses offered up by Olmstead, police in Isla Vista 20 years later still do not show respect for its residents on the same basis police do in similar circumstances in other communities.
No matter what anybody says about snotty students, Ben Preston did not deserve to be thrown to the ground and handcuffed in his own residence. And I'm sure it would not have happened in the City of Goleta, where the Sheriff's Department also provides service under contract.
Carmen Lodise
1 of 1 people thought this was a good comment.
Posted on December 17 at 9:47 a.m.
The UC Regents’ Trow Report was not, as Nicki says, “a study about the most effective ways to deal with I.V. and keep it under control without resorting to violence.
The purpose of the seven-person committee was to “make recommendations for eliminating or ameliorating the causes of unrest in Isla Vista.” The committee, which included UC Berkeley sociologist Martin Trow (after who the final report was popularly named) and Ira M. Heyman (former Professor of City & Regional Planning at UC Berkeley and Chancellor there from 1980 to 1990), chose “to make practical recommendations about the University’s role in Isla Vista... [which were] designed to change the character of Isla Vista in ways that will reduce its potential for violence and destruction, and strengthen its potential as . . . a vital community.”
As Snugspout points out, its recommendations were largely ignored, although their analysis still rings true:
If there is one thread running through all of our deliberations and recommendations, it is that the University can no longer ignore, if it ever could, the conditions under which the bulk of its students live and spend the greater part of their time while at the University. What goes on in Isla Vista is as central to the University’s life and functions as what goes on in its laboratories and lecture rooms. page iii, Preface.
. . the local [UCSB] administration’s attitude that the improvement of Isla Vista’s environment was of secondary importance in the long-range development of the campus . . . reflects a failure to consider the campus and Isla Vista as an integrated University community.
In a sense, UCSB is the most powerful ‘citizen’ in Isla Vista, yet in our opinion it has refused to assume its proportionate civic responsibility. page 76.
For more on the Trow Report, see my new book “Isla Vista: A Citizen’s History,” pp 42-54 available at Chaucers Books, the UCSB and Isla Vista book stores, the I.V. Food Co-op, and www.amazon.com.
Carmen Lodise
Posted on October 17 at 9 a.m.
Isla Vista, that rectangular box within the UCSB campus, is only one-HALF square mile in size, not a FULL square mile. 0.55 sq. mile, to be more exact.
Fun column.
Carmen Lodise
Posted on September 29 at 9:51 a.m.
Interesting stories. You don't have to go as far at the Davidson Library to check out Isla Vista's history because you can go to www.islavistahistory.com, which has had over 1.6 million hits since its launch in 2002.
Carmen Lodise
Posted on August 6 at 10:33 a.m.
A sad story very nicely written, D.J.
Don't forget Jeff Levy who used to staff the I.V. store.
Carmen Lodise
Posted on June 25 at 5:31 a.m.
Nice start.
Isla Vista, excluding the UCSB campus, is only 1/2-square mile in six, not one square mile.
Carmen Lodise
Posted on June 6 at 8:48 a.m.
Allow me to express my gratitude to Mayor Sheila Lodge for her moving eulogy to her husband, Superior Court Judge Joe Lodge.
In it she mentions the time he ordered the release of some 350 people who had been arrested in a peaceful sit-in in Isla Vista‘s Perfect Park on June 10, 1970. Those of us active in Isla Vista politics and community affairs during the Vietnam War era will forever honor Joe for his brave and principled rulings in that case.
As Sheila notes, he could well have lost the job that he loved when he said, in effect, that the offense of torching the Bank of America three months earlier could not be used to restrict the entire community’s right to free speech and assembly. The demonstrators who made that point in Perfect Park were amazed to come before a judge willing to stand firm in the face of overwhelming pressure from the sheriff, the DA and a large swath of public opinion.
By the time he was an institution on the bench, Joe was even more forthright in publicly discussing that case when he appeared as the featured speaker at a reception launching the website "http://www.islavista.org/" on Feb. 25, 2000, the 30th anniversary of the night the bank burned. That he actually showed up to address about fifty people gathered at the Isla Vista Medical Clinic was a surprise; what he had to say was downright astonishing.
“I looked out at those young people who had been arrested in Perfect Park, and in letting them go I felt I was taking sides in a revolution,” he said to gasps from the audience.
In 2002, hundreds of people attended the anti-retirement party Mayor Lodge threw for Joe at the Montecito Country Club. I found it remarkable that four of the six speakers mentioned that his releasing the demonstrators back in 1970 was the ruling that most impressed them about the judge in his nearly 50 years on the bench.
I think of Joe’s words and example each time I visit the monument to the international anti-war movement in Perfect Park.
Carmen Lodise
Barra de Navidad, Mexico
Page 1 of 2 | Next
Previous Month
Posted on June 21 at 7:30 a.m.
To limit the revenue side of this study to the income from tickets issued by law enforcement seems perverse. What about the income to local businesses and hotels? Every city hosting a major event provides an estimate of such revenue. For example, LA said the Lakers victory parade last week added $150 million to the local economy. Plus, over the years I've seen several estimates that Isla Vista contributes more in revenue to the County than it receives back in services. I think a comprehensive cost/revenue analysis of Isla Vista's impact in the region would provide some interesting information.
Carmen Lodise
On Grand Jury Investigates Isla Vista Halloween