The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 109

VIEW Coo Angclco (Times Sunday. July II. Part VII Status Report on a Capitol Idea Project Will Change Face of the Hill rn iii.itrr wni' ii it ii jEiIiiiiiiI' i i i Caa I ti T7TT T.YaE'-k" nrnn w. i fi in fMlllHIIIfeltfl ERNIE BOSTON Lot Angeln Timet Parking will be banned from the East Plaza of the Capitol under a master plan proposed forjhe erea By SAM HALL KAPLAN, Times Urban At fairs Critic WASHINGTON Congress is scheduled to begin hearings this summer on a proposed master plan for the sprawling legislative complex, national symbol and tourist site that is Capitol Hill. The last time a plan shaping the federal presence here was introduced, in 1902.

it took Congress 27 years to approve the document. This time approval is expected by the end of the year. Cadre of Planner The reason for the optimism is that the plan for most of its 81 well-documented and designed pages is fortuitously modest and relatively non-controversial. It overcomes the federal government's penchant for arbitrary edifices while sensitively promoting the city's suture as a preeminently designed capital. Prepared over a five-year period by a cadre of consultant planners and architects directed by George White, the architect of the Capitol, the new plan is designed to guide development on the hill for the next 50 to 75 years.

The plan is a conscientious successor to some notable past efforts. Powerful Geometry The first plan establishing the city's powerful geometry of radial avenues and focal points was designed in the Baroque tradition by Pierre Charles L'Enfant in 1792. It was embellished in 1872 with a landscaping plan by Frederick Law Olmsted and in 1902 by the McMillan Commission plan. The latter was developed by Daniel Burnham in the neo-classical style of malls and marble monoliths. The new master plan confines it- George White, the architect of the Capitol, guided the drafting of the master plan, the third in the history of Washington, D.C.

Capitol, the court and library buildings has occurred in the last two decades as the number of employees serving the 435 House members and 100 senators has grown from about 8,000 to nearly 24,000. "Everytime we needed a new building, finding a site for it was like See STATUS REPORT, Page 8 self to the 246 acres on Capitol Hill, which includes the Capitol, the Supreme Court, 12 House and Senate office buildings and annexes, three Library of Congress buildings, two garages, a power plant and the botanic gardens. Much of the growth on the Hill beyond its major symbols of the A model of the master plan on display at the Smithsonian shows the proposed extensive landscaping. On the Beach New-Style Nomads Call Camps Home By T. A.

SUNDERLAND Emma Wood State Beach, nestled along the coastline two miles north of Ventura, is one of the more primitive state campgrounds. There are no sewage hookups, no electricity, only water tanks spotted throughout the campground. All the camping is first-come, first-served. A small group of people considers Emma Wood and the surrounding beaches their permanent home. Referred to as live -ins by park rangers, these people prefer to call themselves "permanents." They number perhaps 20 families.

Unlike summertime and holiday campers, the permanents actually live at Emma Wood, or rather, live there sporadically. Pick Up and Move The name permanents is a misnomer. By law, camping at the state campgrounds is limited to seven consecutive days during the summer months and 14 days during the rest of the year. To the permanents, this means that whenever they exhaust their limit they have to pick up and move to another campground. Extending north from Emma Wood for seven miles is a stretch of county-controlled beach called Rincon.

Camping along a wall fronting the beach is allowed and KEN LUBAS Los Angeles Times encouraged by Ventura County. Many of the permanents go back and forth between Emma Wood and Rincon. Others travel in a larger circuit that includes the neighboring campgrounds. Emma Wood is inexpensive. Camping fees are $3 a night.

Holding a Job Some permanents hold down full-time jobs. These generally remain in one area. The children attend local schools and make friends who visit them at the beach. They are normal families except for their homes. Despite their nomadic existence these people consider themselves settled down.

Juan and Pat Slason are such a family. In September they will have been living in the Rincon-Emma Wood-Lake Casitas area for two years. They have two teen-age sons, John and Mike, and Wendy, a younger daughter. Two years ago the Slasons were living in a house in San Dimas. Slason, a contractor, got a job working near Ventura.

During the week he stayed at Emma Wood, coming home on the weekends. Slason met some permanents and found their life style appealing to him. After making a few arrangements he moved Pat and the children up. Last John Powell, right, a permanent camper in the Ventura-Rincon area, says living in a trailer and moving every seven days is "settling down." summer they spent most of their time at Lake Casitas, about 25 miles inland from Ventura. But this year the children, especially the boys who enjoy surfing, have decided they prefer the beach.

Juan Slason has been working on contracting jobs around Carpinteria. Pat is a beautician and has a small shop in Ojai. Each morning during the school year she drops the kids off at school before she goes to work. The most permanent attachment they have is a post-office box. The family lives in a 23-foot house- trailer with an attached awning.

Pat sat near the campfire one recent morning at Emma Wood talking about their life style. A couple they know in Ventura had just arrived to spend the day. They had jogged out from their home. "Before I came here I didn't even like the beach," said Pat. She briefly discussed the children, the friends they make and how she enjoys the life of a permanent.

Even at the campgrounds they manage to lead a relatively quiet life. They eventually hope to purchase some land around Ventura. Living at the campgrounds is not always easy and peaceful. It requires tolerance and adaptability to live in the cramped quarters of a motor home or house trailer. For the most part the permanents are all self-contained in their rigs, but they have to be constantly aware of the capacity of their holding tanks, both for water and sewage.

They use the outhouses as much as they can. and they haul much of their own water. There is always the danger of the campgrounds being full when their limit runs out on a space. Careful planning can prevent this, but it does happen, especially during the holidays and in the summer. In a case like this the permanents are forced to travel great distances to find facilities.

According to rangers, the network of communications among the permanents is extensive. News of available camping spots travels quickly. Many of the permanents seek out each other's company. Please see CAMPERS, Page 13 Jack Smith The Fall and Rise of Our Van Nuys I HERE." ASKS Howard Ahmanson of Irvine, I "is the premier Southern California life style yy to be found?" 1 It is a platitude of our time, though perhaps a myth, that the life style of the nation it might not be going too far to say the world is set right here in Southern California, and mostly by our teen-agers. Thus the life style not only of our own metropolis but civilization itself is essentially adolescent.

We have given the world a succession of objects the surfboard, the Hula Hoop, the Frisbee, the taco, the Popsicle that have pervaded Western culture in the 20th Century as Chinese tea pervaded it in the 18th. Nowhere is this infiltration more evident and ironic than in Paris, a city that once thought of itself as not only the center of civilization, but the only place in which it could be found in its pristine state. Today, alas, Paris is hardly distinguishable from Van Nuys on Saturday night. in fact, in the 19G0s Van Nuys Boulevard probably supplanted the Champs Elysees as the core of Western culture, its life-giving artery, and the styles of the Champs Elysees, along with those of Broadway, Piccadilly, the Via Vencto and Pennsylvania Avenue, became mere derivatives. As Ahmanson notes, the Valley faded for a time, just as Rome and Athens did, but he sees signs that it's coming back, one of them being Frank and Moon Zappa's new record.

"Valley Girls." "What is happening," he writes, "seems to be that the Son Fernando Valley Is once again asserting its leader To turn off the San Diego Freeway and drive through Irvine and into Newport Beach was to discover a landscape of exhilarating corporate beauty a blueprinted, idealized kind of beauty that seemed to prove that nature had at last been happily wedded to commerce, and that what is good for conglomerates is good for mankind. And now to hear from a local observer, a man of discernment, that this apotheosis of Western energy and creativity, this fulfillment of the Athenian ethic, has somehow missed the mark and emerged as God help us Dallas-by-the-Sea! I pray that Ahmanson has exaggerated; that he is merely in the throes of some temporary malaise. Perhaps there is an underground sentiment in Irvine-Newport to escape the responsibility of being cultural well-spring to the world, and he is merely its spokesman. There seems to be much evidence, however, that the money, the power, the creativity, the energy, and the mantle of leadership have already drifted from Los Angeles to Orange County, and if the style and mentality of Texas indeed prevail, all that we have loved about Southern California its eccentricities, its variegated ethnicity, its spectrum of religious and political faiths, its preference of freedom over wealth and Individuality over monolithic bigness will be lost. I'm afraid I can't answer Ahmanson's question.

I don't know where the essential Southern California life stylo is to be found today. But if what he says is trur, I hope Frank and Moon Zappa are right. Van Nuys. come back! ship in life style and environment for the whole Basin. In the '50s, everyone recognized the Valley as the place to live and be.

Now, at last, it is regaining that recognition, which it should have never lost. "Other places have tried to pretend to the honor that the Valley holds. In particular, the Newport Beach area, where I exist (1 would hesitate to say "live') has often talked recently as if it were the Texas of California, to the extent that some now call it "The question is worthy of one of the reader surveys which you sometimes do. Where is the premier Southern California life style to be found?" Actually, I wouldn't say that I do reader surveys. It is true, however, that I often state some patent truth which, not being universally agreed with, may provoke a number of readers into writing me In protest.

In effect, I suppose, that is a survey. I'm afraid I haven't listened to "Valley Girls," but I certainly intend to if, as Ahmanson says, it signals the renaissance of the Valley. Ironically, the Valley culture was not originated by teen-agers but by their parents the homing veterans of World War II and Korea and all those girls-next-door who had waited for them. It was a paradise of no-down-payment houses, schools, supermarkets, sunshine and room to grow in, and the style was pre-laid back that is to say, casual but patriotic. Christian, and materialistic, and dedicated to the propagation, education and husbandry of healthy horses, dogs and children.

Women went marketing in sunsuits, men didn't wear neckties, children grew up tall, tan and assertive, like the Nelson kids, and the drink was beer and very dry martinis. The Valley was the first community in the world to have a television set in every home. But Ahmanson is right. Somewhere along the line the Valley turned into Paradise Lost. It is no longer man's last hope it is his vision of a desperate future, a wasteland of singles bars, defunct schools, treacherous streets and unaffordable houses.

No longer is it a place where "young marrieds" can begin their lives with a deed to the American dream. What surprises me most about Ahmanson's comments is not that the Valley may be coming back, but that Newport Beach has fallen short of Its promise as the newest, richest, most enlightened, intellectually vigorous, healthful and felicitously situated community on Earth an illusion that I myself enjoyed..