This is the warning sign that greets visitors to Metal Art, 8829 Exposition Blvd., the wrought iron business of, arguably, the bravest businessman in Culver City, Patrick Vorgeack.
Standing in his slender office this rainy morning, shortly after opening for business, he made an extraordinary statement for a small-town business owner.
“I am fighting against the Gestapo.”
In his business milieu, such a statement does not cause him to be accused of hyperbole.
This is how nerve-wracking day-to-day existence has become for the soft-spoken but quietly crusading gentleman. He appears to be the single, physically present, surviving entrepreneur along a 1-block stretch of well-hidden Exposition.
He doesn’t look like a hero.
In no way does he resemble the Schwarzenegger of the movies or the Superman of the comic books. Likelier, he is the older-looking gentleman gingerly taking his place at the rear of a room for a lecture on an esoteric subject.
But loudly beats — no, pounds — his jumbo-sized heart.
Mr. Vorgeack’s street used to hum with happiness. Under the crushing weight of City Hall’s en masse eviction orders, the only sound cracking the still air is a funeral dirge.
Typical of the army of vulnerable entrepreneurs, Mr. Vorgeack has operated Metal Art for the past quarter-century in Culver City. For about 16 years, his store has occupied what surely is one of the most modest commercial niches in Los Angeles, a pocket-sized space that has supported his family throughout his adult life.
This profile is a perfect fit for dozens of the businesswomen and businessmen blocking City Hall’s legal but personally pained right-of-way.
One after another, business owners are telling thefrontpageonline.com that they feel like bowling pins — and City Hall owns the bowling ball concession.
Just east of Downtown, business operators say that the city moves ominously, intimidatingly, sometimes with stealth, other times like a ham-handed giant, to clear a path for the vaunted light rail line and its many, but still unidentified, accoutrements.
Mr. Vorgeack is a florid-faced Frenchman with the flamboyant, old-time moustache who was introduced to readers of this newspaper last September. He says City Hall wanted him out months ago.
However, he is nowhere near ready to go.
Therefore, he is not budging.
Situated about 6 blocks east of City Hall, he feels the heaving breathing of the Community Development Dept. on his weathered neck.
He says he is breathing right back at them.
He also is practicing inordinate discretion. He realizes he is not bullet-proof.
Doughty but definitely not dowdy, Mr. Vorgeack, and his son, Jean-Claude, loom as twin lighthouses for the business owners around them who surrendered their sites to the city for more compliantly.
Inspiration Island. That is what you could call this secreted, isolated patch of the most ordinary looking properties in Culver City where the Vorgeack men stand alone.
Up the street at City Hall, there is exasperation.
They have nearly made a clean sweep in their attempt to eliminate the long-established businesses that (formerly) stood in the way of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s shrouded, and sometimes doubted, light rail project.
Nearly.
Next: Business people speak out.