Does the Wet Suit You

Echoes of Design Review

Report from a design review hearing in the near future. There are a few changes in the process. Applicants are now addressed as supplicants. Those against the project are anti supplicants.

Supplicants must kneel on a granite stone located before the bored who are seated bodega style behind bullet proof glass. Supplicants are allowed three seconds to speak. Anti supplicants are seated in a massage chair and may take all the time they need, although they shall not repeat them selves more than 24 times.

Today’s hearing concerns an application by a supplicant to create an indentation in their house with a reduction of 120 square feet of floor area.

The main issue of contention is the allegation by the next door neighbors that the proposed indentation in the wall of the house facing them will result in a disturbance of the echo pattern in the open area between the two homes. To this end both parties have hired echo oologists to give expert analysis.

The analysis by the expert for the supplicant asserts that there will be no acoustic impact from the proposed building indentation, preserving the echo as it is. One of a low pleasing traffic roar with notes of Harley, Mac Truck and a bit of helicopter rotor for a finish.

The analysis from the neighbor’s expert asserts that the echo will be bifurcated by the indentation resulting in a garish and conflicting medley of discordant notes of horns and screeching brakes.

First to speak for the bored is Ms. Hateitall. She is dressed in a stylish mouse fur jump suit. “Oh the echo, as it is, provides a wonderful acoustic heritage that must not be disturbed by this reckless and oversized indentation.” This was followed by increasingly more expansive mutterings from the other bored members in support of her remarks.

The bored chairman dressed as Indiana Jones complete with jacket, hat and whip sums it all up. “It sounds like the bored would like you to reduce your reduction to lessen the impact on this cherished and historic echo. If you reduce the reduction sufficiently the bored is willing to grant you exterior lighting credits for preserving the echo. How would the supplicant like to proceed?”

The supplicant responded that he would like to proceed by moving to a town that has done the work to write a zoning code complete enough in its provisions that the need for design review would be limited to view preservation and perhaps privacy.

The hearing was continued so that the supplicant could work on this option.

JJ Gasparotti moved to Laguna Beach with his family when he was 11yrs old. He has loved it ever since.