The Elysian Park Variations.

The Do Not Enter sign, top, is on Ewing Street. I have been walking past it for years, usually in the company of my dog. Recently, there has been a man nearby making mosaic sculptures at an outdoor table a few feet from here, including the one that sits brightly near the base of this road sign. He has installed several pieces in the yard of a corner house that is not in this picture.

About a year ago, I took the Stop sign photo, above, with my phone camera on lower Landa Street. I liked the semi-accidental collage of elements that included the sign, but I thought my picture needed a context more explicit than the picture itself could provide -- despite the fact that Stop signs are always fun to look at. So I kept the photo in the archive, and there it sat, saying "Stop" to no one.

So, the months passed, and as soon as my mystery sculptor finished this blue-themed mosaic and put it in place ... my stop sign had context.

Joking aside, Chicken Corner celebrates a certain aesthetic that is not uncommon in this neighborhood, one that values broken plates and street signs (authorized in their repurpose or not), working with available materials, reshaping.

Like you, perhaps, I have seen the Caine's Arcade video by Nirvan and been inspired by the nine-year-old boy who realized a real amusement center out of cardboard, while his dad ran a used-auto-parts store on Mission Street, east of downtown. Nirvan's video of a flashmob descending on Smart Parts Auto has gone viral, and Caine's Arcade is a success. It's an Internet story, but it's also a local story. And a fun attraction. So last weekend, I drove to Mission Street with my daughter, a friend of hers, and a friend of mine, Nicole Panter, who had been invited to participate in a staged enjoyment of Caine's wonderful Arcade as Nirvan builds on the video he made earlier this year.

We arrived at about 1:30 on Saturday to find 30 to 40 people milling around the arcade. There was a line to buy passes, and a line to play the games Caine Monroy had made by hand. Unlike in the video of the flash mob, Caine had a staff of relatives -- his mom, his cousin -- and others close to the family working behind the counter, giving instructions, handing out tickets for wins, exchanging tickets for prizes.

A mariachi band had been called in for the occasion, and they played some folk norteño style songs, an Iglesia-ish pop number, and they learned the Caine's Arcade song in time to play it for the cameras. There were lots of cameras. There was also a neighborhood dog that Caine's father didn't recognize, but who I had seen a couple of blocks away when we parked. The big orange dog came by and took a nap on the sidewalk in the midst of festivities.

Caine's father said that people around the world know about Caine and his creation, but most people in the neighborhood didn't know about it.

Caine himself looked a little bored by all of the attention. But he was game, smiling when asked, singing when asked, poking around as his staff ran the place. To date well-wishers have donated some $200,000 to his college fund, and there are matching pledges for a foundation to encourage other kids to be creative in his name.

My daughter didn't want to stop playing the games when we were all called to come out front to sing the Caine's Arcade song for the cameras. But when she was promised she could get back in line at her old spot she agreed.

Later, she was delighted with her prizes. She had won a set of Pokemon cards, some miniature parachutes, Caine's Arcade sunglasses.

On our way back to the car, we passed a different used auto parts place -- a single cinderblock room -- with about two dozen dream catchers of different styles and sizes hanging from the ceiling. There were no tickets to buy, and no games to play, and we kept going.

It was Cinco de Mayo, and it was Arcade time on Mission Street.

Previously on LA Observed:
Caine's Arcade passes 3 million views and $130,000 - this week

A decision by the Los Angeles department of Animal Services to eliminate the New Hope Coordinators' position has led to quite a bark fest on the Echo Park Animal Alliance's lively list serv. In recent years, New Hope Coordinators have been responsible for facilitating as independent, nonprofit animal rescue organizations adopted animals from the city's shelters, many of these animals running out of time in the shelters. The former coordinators now will return to jobs as Animal Care Technicians, their previous duties reassigned or reclassified or forgotten.

LAAS General Manager Brenda Barnette told Chicken Corner yesterday that the decision to eliminate New Hope Coordinators, folding their duties into other jobs, is due mainly to budget constraints, with staff vacancies going unfilled, and what she says was a lack of need for the New Hope Coordinators.

Barnette explained:

The Supervisors met and said that they felt like the special assignments (Volunteer Liaison and New Hope Coordinators) were not an effective use of resources. There is not a steady stream of New Hope Partners or Volunteers needing assistance coming into the shelters which left the New Hope Liaisons and the Volunteer Liaisons idle at times and yet not in the schedule to do other work.

Several volunteers and animal activists on the Echo Park Animal Alliance's list serv begged to differ.

A woman named Jane Garcia posted that elimination of New Hope Coordinators would mean a return to the days when nonprofit volunteers could not get calls through to shelter staff:

Remember trying to get through to the shelter and constantly getting busy signals? No more calling the [New Hope] Coordinator's cell phone and getting right through to speak to her or leave a message on a dedicated voice mail line. How about getting through, then being put on immediate hold for 5, 10, 15 minutes just to ask to be put through to an ACT or kennel supervisor?

Then there was the 20 minute wait while someone was paged but didn't pick up. Either you waited and waited--not a good option if you are lucky enough to have a job and had to put everything else aside in the hope that someone actually responded to the page. ... Often you'd have to give up or even got cut off.

According to LAAS documents,

The purpose of the New Hope Program is to expand opportunities for Los Angeles Animal Services (LAAS)' dogs, cats, and rabbits to find permanent homes by partnering with qualified 501 (c) 3 organizations. The New Hope Program is the means by which LAAS acknowledges, cooperates with, and supports the efforts of partnering animal care, training, rescue, welfare and law enforcement organizations as we all try to find homes for the City's homeless dogs, cats, and rabbits.

A New Hope Coordinator is assigned to each Animal Care Center to serve the needs of our New Hope Partners. The role of the New Hope Coordinator is to expedite and facilitate the adoption of New Hope animals to New Hope Partners.

A very important program, in this age of cash-challenged government organizations working with nonprofits. Though Chicken Corner would like to see chickens added to the list of animals the New Hope program values.

Meanwhile, Barnette emailed Chicken Corner, saying,

I have offered to schedule a meeting next week and I'm waiting to see if more than one person is willing to sit and talk face to face.

If you can sit with the pun.

This once perfectly fine old chair went splat several months ago in the wind storm that we all remember as The Windstorm, in December 2011. Since then, we have been removing sawed bits of our fallen eucalyptus, one green bin at a time, getting the smaller pieces out, leaving the big ones as benches. Some trunk portions we may finally have to pay for help to get carted out. Cluck. Cluck.

Photo: Chicken Corner, 12:48 p.m., April 24, 2012.

Or where the wild things are in Elysian Park. This little guy has been sitting in a eucalyptus -- what does he think he is, a koala? -- for some time now (usually, when I see him, I have neither phone nor camera). He's been there through rain, through wind, through sun and moon. Existing as part of the landscape, waiting with a patience that is not of this world. Unlike those TV bears in Scranton, PA, who made everyone miss the weather report Monday.

Speaking of wild birds in cages, Bob Pool of the L.A. Times wrote a short piece a few days ago about a woman who is squawking -- and rightfully so! -- for parrot owners to increase the size of their birds' cages. The woman, whose name happens really to be Tweti, rhyming with tweety, argues that parrots are wild birds and really shouldn't be pets at all. But once they're in the prison system of petdom, they can't be released safely, and need cages bigger than most of them are allowed.

Who could argue?

One of the many benefits of having backyard chickens has been getting to know the wild birds that spend so much time in our elderberry, loquat, eucalyptus, and walnut trees. First, there's the fact that I spend more time in the yard. That helps in getting to know the purple finches, wrens, scrub jays, mocking birds, and towhees. Then there's the fact that -- because I spend more time in the yard -- they get to know me. I always assumed that wild birds are simply afraid of humans, that they don't distinguish between members of the household, and -- most fallaciously -- that their attitudes toward people are fixed. But it turns out they are watching, they are thinking, and sometimes they make mistakes.

At left, mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti seeks an important endorsement (Photo posted on Facebook yesterday by my friend Dominic Ehrler). Mario the Goose -- AKA Maria the Goose -- is expected to make his announcement in support of Garcetti any time now as the Councilman was active in helping the gander secure a safe home at the L.A. Zoo about 13 months ago.

Though he no longer lives at Echo Park Lake, where he once walked daily with Dominic, Mario remains securely bonded with his human best friend, who visits him at the zoo regularly.

*Update: Dominic says the Garcetti "endorsement" photograph was taken several months ago, at Mario's zoo "debut." Below are some more mario zoo pics, courtesy of Dominic. At bottom, Dominic and Mario.