Pasadena City Council to children: stop skating, start drug dealing!

I snapped this photo with my iPhone at 3:30 on Sunday afternoon just as the public skate session was ending at the Pasadena rink. There was probably another 50 or so people milling off the ice -- including many of them children.

Children who, in all likelihood, will have to go somewhere else to skate in a couple of years when the rink's lease is up at the convention center. The city was going to be build a modern rink to replace it but the Pasadena City Council balked this fall, afraid of the cost. Here's a link explaining that momentous decision.

I was looking at all the children around and thinking that if I was a political consultant -- wait, I am a political consultant of sorts! -- I would run a campaign casting the Council members who voted against the rink as people who hate children.

They must hate children, right? Instead of providing them with a popular and wholesome activity such as ice skating, the Council instead sent the kids a hearty "fuck you, munchkins!," claiming they would investigate renovating the current rink. Never mind that the current rink is too small and that the space it occupies is coveted by other interests.

In fact, the Council may as well have told kids who like to skate to go secure a street corner and begin immediately engaging in unwholesome activities -- such as whoring, selling crank and cursing in public (a no-no here in Pasadena, Land of the 120-Year-Old Citizen).

Those kind of images, I believe, would look mighty fine on a political mailer in, say, 2013, when Councilmember Terry Tornek -- an avowed enemy of a new rink -- is up for reelection. All the flier would need is a neat caption along the lines of "Tornek could have put this kid in skates and hockey shorts. Instead he put him in San Quentin."

Who cares if it's technically true or not? It's local politics! I mean, it's possible the kid could go to San Quentin and, of course, it's possible that the kid would -- given the choice -- choose a nightmarish life of drug dealing and crime over playing exciting youth hockey.

That's all for now. But if you have any ideas for political fliers or you're handy with Photoshop, shoot me an email -- the next Pasadena City Council election is less than 3 1/2 years away!

--Steve Hymon