Desperately Seeking Stagehands, Planet McDonald's
Desperately Seeking Stagehands, Planet McDonald's
[Madonna] Desperately Seeking Stagehands
When Madonna kicked off her Confessions Tour at the Forum last Sunday, she faced an emotionally charged crowd. Hundreds gathered outside, however, were not there to worship the Material Girl but to protest working conditions at the Inglewood venue.
Sunday's protest was the latest in a heated face-off between former Forum employees and SMG, a venue-management company. Mary Gutierrez, communications director of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, numbered the protesters at between 250 and 300. Current Forum owner the Faithful Central Bible Church hired SMG in 2003.
“That's when all the trouble started,” said Cherri Senders of Senders Communications Group, Inc., which represents the Local 33 branch of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) union. The “trouble” Senders referred to was an alleged slicing of employee wages and hours during SMG's and IATSE Local 33's two-year struggle to negotiate a new contract, which has now expired. Operating engineers and custodial staff were also affected, explained Sender, who described walkouts as well as job losses resulting from SMG's alleged termination of a contract with the janitors' employment company.
According to its statement, SMG eventually drafted a “final offer,” which was implemented on April 5. This figurative cease-fire lasted only five days. A minute before midnight on April 10, SMG nullified the new terms and, claimed IATSE Local 33 Business Agent Peter Marley, union employees were effectively locked out of their jobs.
“We showed up the next morning to find non-union people already working in the building,” said Marley. An SMG statement charges that the company was simply responding to employee work “slowdown,” an “on-the-job action,” spurring management to safeguard its “legitimate business interests.”
Marley denied the charge while Senders accused SMG of engaging in “union-busting activities.” Still, both insist they hope to bring SMG back to the negotiating table.
“I think we have a big fight on our hands,” said Marley.
–Anika Clark
[Fast Food] Planet McDonald's
“Imagine this is all farmland,” says the man in the paper hat, “and we're speeding through San Bernardino on a dream.” Outside the bus, big-box retailers and brand-new subdivisions stretch to the horizon, but farmland is nowhere to be seen. The scratchy notes of “Hooray for Hollywood” playing over the PA help the imagination a little. “Follow me,” he intones, “as we set out in search of the story of Dick and Mac McDonald.” The man in the hat is Chris Nichols, culinary historian and modern architecture preservationist. He is dressed in vintage McDonald's attire: white shirt, apron, paper cook's hat emblazoned with Speedee, McDonald's old-school burger-headed mascot, and a bolo tie, adorned with the same. Nichols, a self-described “McHistorian,” is in the midst of narrating the McDonald's History Tour, of which he is creator and guide, a daylong bus ride to the origins of the world's most famous restaurant.
Over the course of the day, Nichols shares with his group of 47 foodies, culinary historians, and lovers of weird, offbeat bus tours, the “real” story of McDonald's – that is, the one that takes place entirely around L.A. and ends in 1961, when Ray Kroc bought the company and took it global. He takes us from Downey to Azusa to San Bernardino, along Route 66, in search of one of Southern California's most famous innovations: fast food. The brothers McDonald, Nichols explains between bites of an Egg McMuffin, came to Hollywood in 1928 with big dreams of movie moguldom, but instead ended up running a burger stand in San Bernardino. It's classic dollar-and-a-dream Americana. And Nichols is all about it, setting the scene with a mischievous grin and a glimmer in his eye.
We stop at the world's oldest operating McDonald's, in Downey, its magnificent neon arches rising above its plain, stucco neighbors. Employees still wear the old-fashioned uniforms here and serve root beer out of a barrel. Later, Nichols shows us to an all-night donut store in Pomona that was one of the earliest McDonald's but has since fallen into disrepair.
Another stop is the historic Original McDonald's museum in San Bernardino, which is housed in a '70s stucco bungalow where the first restaurant once stood. Nichols shows it all off with a flourish, reeling off details and dates, chatting to folks at every stop, sharing his deep love for the Modern, his passion for the Googie. But the longer we cruise, the more chain drugstores and condo developments Nichols points out as the “former home of,” it becomes clear that this is also a story about destruction and decay, about L.A.'s famous hard-on for razing its own history. There is a hint of sadness in Nichols's voice when he talks about this, but he doesn't dwell on it; rather, he focuses on two guys who came out west with a dream, and made history. “I hope people feel like they can accomplish something like that – make something from nothing,” he says. “It's inspiring that they could do what they did at the time, just invent this whole world.”
–Jeremy FreedPublished: 05/25/2006
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