Fake Creek of the Week
June 23, 2011 § 12 Comments
Fake Creek #1
Introducing a new feature! LA Creek Freak’s Fake Creek of the Week will (mostly) poke fun at angeleno fantasy creeks on a somewhat less-than-weekly basis. Why am I picking on fake creeks? Besides the fact that they’re fake, I’ve met way too many angelenos who say “you mean it’s real?” when I show them a natural creek, and way too many angelenos also express the desire to “restore” a creek by making it, well…fake-like. So here we go:
Our inaugural fake creek has something for almost everyone with a natural resources bone to pick. With a rip rapped channel “banks” and splash-over weirs, this fake creek combines engineering aesthetics, replacing the logic of stream geomorphology and the natural sorting of cobbles, with irregular-and-therefore-naturalistic paving! Variegated arundo reminds us all of the escaped weed currently colonizing almost every waterway in Southern California, while the sight of the gracefully arching invasive pampas grass and pennisetums burn holes in the eyes of all your environmentalist friends. And once that’s happened they won’t be able to see any more of the destruction going on around you – and won’t that be just nice. Also a relief will be the absence of pesky native birds and butterflies. This is an almost perfectly fake Fake Creek: the only thing marring its bad-boy status is the absence of pumped imported water down its channel, were they trying to mimic a natural condition here?Do you know where this is?
And in case you’re wondering, a real Creek of the Week feature may also pop up sometime in the near future.
L.A. Creek Freak 
When is a creek NOT really a creek?
Maybe it is just a creek of the future… how long until most of the natural creeks end up looking like that? 😦
It looks like it maskes a good walkeay (if it went anywhere.) I do see one pampas grass but are you sure the others are varigated arundo and not big Miscanthus Grasses?
Thanks for your comments – Greg, for me a creek is a creek is a creek, except when it’s a fountain, er, “water feature,” like the Fake Creeks that this feature intends to lampoon. It seems that despite our culverting and channeling of LA’s streams the subconscious desire for a nature still comes through in our constructed landscapes. Dan, you got me second-guessing myself on the arundo, I will have to go back out to this Fake Creek and take a another look. There’s more pampas grasses, my camera angle didn’t do them justice. Slow Water Movement, if this really is arundo, the biggest bummer of all is that there is an amazing perennial stream (the real deal) a few hundred yards from here. The pennisetum here is just one clump of many in this well-coiffed neighborhood that is invading local hillsides.
Still no guessers as to where?
Give us a hint! Other than the Spanish-style room in one photo, there’s not a lot to go by to guess the location.
oops, I meant Spanish-style roof.
besides that it’s a well-coiffed neighborhood with a groovy perennial stream nearby and spanish tiled roofs? OK…Olmsted Bros designed subdivision.
do to my visits to the nature blogs such as Creek Freak, all will be happy to know I dug out my four Pampas grass plants. It was intense, Those things fight back
Yay! “una pequeña gran victoria” – Francisco X. Alarcón
(a small but big victory)
“pennisetums” ? LOL!
San Marino?
Right demographic, but not San Marino, or that part of LA.