L.A. gets the Olympics—2028. This Olympics won’t be OC-centric like 1984, when Laguna Beach’s Peter Ueberroth helmed the effort, $0 in the bank and national malaise—finished with a $250 mill surplus and the Games’ financial viability restored.
“We just followed the London 1948 model,” the former MLB Commissioner told me recently.
It’s 2017, so no Orange County figure was going to be L.A.’s pitchman. Hollywood scion Casey Wasserman is the one selling the unctuous International Olympic Committee on Southern California. But handing Wasserman the baton was Fullerton-born El Dorado grad and Newport resident Janet Evans. The five-time gold medal winner chairs the athlete’s committee. OC resident Kobe Bryant is on the bid team. The Honda Center hosts indoor volleyball …
Overflow crowd in Orange on Wednesday for a World Affairs Council-OC staged discussion of the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula. Chris Hill, ambassador to Korea in the ’90s, headed our delegation in the six-party talks. “No walking away, we are threatened now,” Hill advised the audience—among them many immigrants to the county with the second largest Korean population in the U.S. The ambassador bristled at the suggestion that South Korea should “go it alone.” “This is not the Cuban missile crisis,” he retorted. OC supervisor candidate Young Kim was born in Incheon. “There’s no favored option among my constituents,” Kim told me. “But there is consensus that they want the U.S. involved.” Many of OC’s 100,000+ Korean residents are in Buena Park, Anaheim, and Fullerton, inside the 4th district Kim hopes to represent. The former assemblywoman led the pledge of allegiance saying, “I couldn’t be prouder of my choice to be an American.”
Winged Victory: If only negotiations with Pyongyang were this easy—Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait had just met with Mario Cuevas, consul for the Mexican Consulate in OC, when they crafted an idea to foster cultural ties between Mexico and Anaheim, an OC city with a majority Hispanic population. Tait knew about “Wings of the City,” a popular public-sculpture exhibit in Mexico City, and said to Cuevas, “You need to bring it here.” Cuevas did. Nine large bronze sculptures are on the grounds of the Anaheim Convention Center. Jorge Marin is the artist, one of Mexico’s most well-known sculptors, and “Alas de Mexico,” his most famous. (p. 1). See for yourself through Sept 30. Tait was also there for Wednesday’s US-Korea-China nuclear confab. So I’m thinking—on the heels of a small feat of diplomacy in Anaheim—Mr. Tait, Mr. Cuevas, meet Young Master.
Next week, Dale and the Dominoes.
