The Christmas Lighting Ceremony Where You Can Help String the Lights!

Come and join the Franklin Hills community on December 9th from 8 – 10 AM when they decorate the historic Shakespeare bridge on Franklin Ave.

The Shakespeare Bridge is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument that is rumored to have been used in a scene while filming the Wizzard of Oz.  This is truly a special Christmas decorating activity as it is not done out of corporate interests.  It’s a community organized and executed event.

The residents of Franklin Hills have a long history of working hard to keep the community beautiful.  When the grounds underneath the bridge were taken over by homeless encampments and people wanting to use the secluded area for underage drinking, sex and drug deals the neighborhood responded by planting the now famous Shakespeare Gardens under the bridge.  The strategy worked.  The undesirable elements moved out.

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There is a lot we can learn from the example set by the Franklin Hill neighborhood.  When we find our neighborhoods being overtaken by undesirable elements, the solution is to clean up the neighborhood.  Literally.  Clean up the trash.  Power wash the sidewalks.  Beautify our own property and demand the city do the same for the areas under its control and we find the drug dealers, homeless, and criminals tend to move on.  I guess they are uncomfortable around nice things (which is perhaps why they destroy so much around them).

If you can’t make it to help string the lights on the Shakespeare Bridge, make it a point to drive over it some evening after the 9th to see the lights.  The bridge is on Franklin Ave about a mile east of Vermont St.