The heart of the Skid Row Petting Zoo is the power of pets (specifically dogs and that is not to marginalize cats) to help in the healing of trauma and promote overall mental and emotional wellbeing. But a healthy body has more vital organs than just the heart and so this article is about the lungs. Or maybe the kidneys.
The debut of the Skid Row Petting Zoo was this rainy Christmas Day on the parking lot of the Downtown Women’s Center. While providing loving and creative pop up experiences for folks to enjoy dogs (and cats) along with stuffed animal goats and ponies until the day of a full on Petting Zoo in Skid Row, another part of the pop up is advocacy around 18.3 in the Department of City Planning draft for DTLA 2040 — updating the Downtown Community Plan, meaning Land Use policy and Zoning.
Here is 18.3 in the Wellness and Sustainability section of the Plan — Cultivate urban habitat for animals and plants and increase opportunities to experience nature in Downtown’s urban environment.
A Petting Zoo in Skid Row certainly falls under the heading of 18.3. But on Christmas Day I received the gift of realizing there is another interpretation of 18.3 and that brings us to the Laundry Parrots.
SC Mero is an artist working and living in Skid Row who partners with other artists to do strange things on the streets of Downtown. Laundry Parrots is not her only effort to “increase opportunities to experience nature in Downtown’s urban environment”. A year ago she attached tentacles to a Safety Cone to create a Safety Octopus.
