Hollydale Regional Park
James [00:00] I guess you can tell us your name, where you are from?
Chris [00:05] Chris and I’m from Downey
James [00:07] Downey, ok. And what is your experience with the LA River, have you..what have you used the river for, like today you’re walking your dog. Is that what you mostly do?
Chris [00:18] Yeah I just let her walk.. I wanna say I don’t even go to the River that much. I just go here cuz its a bigger park than anywhere else. There’s a park near Downey and there’s a river down there but its not as big for her to run around in the grass. And honestly she just wants to lay in the grass but the river itself doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s not even a real river, it’s fake.
James [00:041] Yeah so kind of piggybacking off of that, the the city of South Gate and the city of La they kind of want to make it into a real River in that sense, and so there’s a lot of development projects upcoming with it. Are you familiar with any of what those are?
Chris [00:55] I’m not so tell me about it
James [00:57] Ok so the city is… basically they want to…kind of similar to this park, re-open up access to the river and use it as a community asset in terms of parks and recreational areas for community members to use.
Chris [01:14] That’d be nice.
James [01:15] Yeah and so if that were to happen, what would you say you would want to see built or developed here?
Chris [01:24] Honestly better parks more areas for the dogs because if you look at the other side of here and I actually saw several dogs on that side like over [there] they’ll let you but… they put a little, crappy little spot over there for the dogs and no one really even uses this area if you look at it, no one is ever here.
James [01:40] Yeah
Chris [01:41] So you just have a whole open grass that no one can ever really use. It looks nice but that’s about it
James [01:46] Okay and so that’s pretty much what you would hope for? Just recreational
Chris [01:51]` yeah because I only do it for my dog otherwise I’m working I don’t really care
James [01:55] Okay, and then…
[01:58] Oh shit! Come here! Oh! You asshole, come here! Bad Girl!
James [02:06] Strong dog!
Chris [02:08] She’s a puppy still, she saw like something. Sit! Come here! She got scared of that or something she ran away from it
James [02:18] No worries
Chris [02:19] Something scared her, sorry about that
Andrew [02:22] No, no, no
Chris [02:22] Go ahead
James [02:22] Are you okay, do you need to collect yourself?
Chris [02:23] Nah Im okay
James [02:25] and so what was I just…develop okay like the development [some] cities are planning to do project what would you say is a big concern if they were to go through with some of the things like..
Chris [02:38] You know what I would like to see! More actually water! Yeah you know because its all grass and its nice and everything but the dogs like running in water in a water area. I would say having a closed area where they can have dogs run around. In an enclosed area, lest say they enclose this entire area and there’s a little pond. They don’t actually have this for dogs, and that’s what I’d like to see. It’s great thing they have the slides and all the stuff for the kids I think it’s great! But I don’t have kids so.
James [03:08] Okay, and then one of the biggest reasons why the LA River was concretized and made into this channel was that concerns of flooding. So part of our research is also to kind of gauge what concern level do community residents have in terms of the Rivers capacity to mitigate flooding for the community
Chris [03:35] you know honestly I’m not an engineer, i don’t know much about that stuff but all I know is every time we talk about the River you know that’s not a real river. C’mon yanno its concrete. It’s not a real river so we all laugh about it
James [03:50] Because right now the LA River is pretty good at keeping and maintaining flood control but do you think in the future in terms of climate change do you think the LA River would be able to handle that? Do you think that would be a concern?
Chris [04:06] I don’t know, you know I’m not sure you remember climate change but now it’s global warming but before it was global cooling, you know climate is always gonna be changing. They just change the terminology
James [04:16] Yeah
Chris [04:17] Did they just… honestly I think it’s more fear-mongering so people can make money off of it
James [04:21] Oh, interesting okay.
Chris [04:22] You know what I mean? Cuz when it was global cooling they tried to make money off of that. Once the temperature went up they changed it to global warming and then when it cools again they’re just gonna change the term, to and open term with everything. That’s just my thought on it
James [04:36] Alright
Chris [04:37] But it’s smart though, if I would make money off of that I would too
James [04:40] Ok and then…
Chris [04:41] Because the climate’s always gonna be changing just look at history you know?
James [04:48] Any final questions? Final thoughts?
Chris [04:51] No not really
James [04:52] Okay yeah alright thank you!