Swimming Upstream

This YouTube video may seem to be merely humorous commentary about escaping the traffic aggravations of contemporary urban life, but now that the Army Corps of Engineers has disqualified the Los Angeles River as a "navigable" waterway, environmental activists are busy documenting evidence of people similarly kayaking in the LA River to dispute the new designation, because it would also halt environmental cleanup efforts and roll back restrictions on development. The film's protagonist, George Wolfe, is the hero of yesterday's article in The Los Angeles Times, "Is the L.A. River up a creek?" Wolfe a.k.a. George Calvarescu is also a blogger at LaLaTimes, which regularly runs stories about those who take on the activist call to paddle.