Call him phlegmatic.
Even after the most disappointing episodes, he is restrained.
Nearly everyone on the City Council had assumed that Mr. Silbiger would swear in Don Pedersen next month as the latest Chief of Police.
If the ceremony is not on the scale of a Washington inauguration, it nevertheless is a photo-op perk of the job of ceremonial mayor.
The rug was pulled out from under Mr. Silbiger’s anticipatory feet minutes into the meeting when, magically, the swearing-in showed up, unannounced, as the opening act of the evening. It was not written down. Mr. Vera declared that this was the right time — more than three weeks before the Police Chief would assume his duties.
Of Bekins and Kidnapping
In response, Mr. Silbiger was as quiet as a tardy teenage boy tiptoeing into the house after his parents had gone to sleep.
With wordless grace, he swallowed his disappointment.
He had just been deprived of a rite that would have been a scrapbook moment.
Mr. Silbiger’s only hope for swearing in a police chief in the next twelve months rests in the longshot hope that the Bekins Truck will be kidnapped by aliens on the way to Culver City after emptying out Mr. Pedersen’s office in Signal Hill.
A Theatrical Natural
If Mr. Vera was not born for the stage, he was at least meant to be somewhere inside of a theater.
He loves being in front of the public. It is an unrequited affair.
At the end of a Vera punch line, the public throws its head back and laughs as if it has not heard his repertoire a couple hundred times.
Witness the familiar repartee while he was leading Mr. Pedersen through the oath of office.
The star of the moment was supposed to be the chief.
Somehow, though, the klieg lights kept veering back toward the mayor who was pitching well-tested lines.
A classic Albert Vera snapshot even though — or perhaps because — the humor lines are shopworn. The jokes, the self-deprecating mispronunciations and the inevitable references to his ethnicity are staples that have not been out of work as long as he has been in public life.
Unmistakably, all three of those aspects of Mr. Vera’s personality have become bridges into the community, endearing him, possibly forever, to many, many residents.
The effect of the speeded-up swearing-in is that Culver City may rank alone as the only city in America with two police chiefs.
Bill Burck is the Interim Chief, running the department day to day. His assignment is not a technicality but reality. In occasional consultation with Mr. Pedersen, he is working on the Police Dept. budget for the fiscal year that starts in a little more than two months.
Approaching his own retirement, Mr. Burck has been warming the chief’s chair since early last December, and he won’t be surrendering it for a few more weeks.
If Mr. Silbiger had been allowed to conduct the swearing-in ritual, the scene probably would have played out unremarkably: Sober, professional, businesslike, the way it is done in most communities.
Mr. Pedersen’s style appears more compatible with Mr. Silbiger’s. If he were part of a comedy act, Mr. Pedersen would be the straight guy.
Different blokes prefer unlike strokes.