If you have been to Cabrillo Beach in the last few years, you probably have seen the pirate ship. Maybe your kids even played on it. It was a large play structure on the sand at inner Cabrillo Beach and provided years of fun for thousands of children.
Students played on it after riding the bus to the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium for a field trip. There is usually down time before and after field trips so it was a great distraction from the polluted water at Inner Cabrillo Beach.
When the Port of Los Angeles replaced the sand at Inner Cabrillo Beach, the pirate ship was taken apart and put behind a barrier in the parking lot. My kids loved watching the trucks and conveyer belts moving the sand so I was at the beach a lot. I always kept my eye on that pirate ship.
When the first phase of the sand project was complete, I was surprised the pirate ship wasn’t put back. I began to ask the Port Representative who attended the Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council (CSPNC) meetings if it would be returned and was told yes month after month. Then one month I asked, and the port representative told me that no it wouldn’t be returned because the Department of Recreation and Parks had lost the pirate ship. From his tone, I could tell he did not want to talk about the pirate ship any longer, which of course, made me want to talk about it more. How can you lose a pirate ship?
At the next CSPNC meeting, it was my great luck that somebody from Recreation and Parks was there so after her report, I inquired about the pirate ship that was lost by her department. She stated she never heard anything about it and gave me a number to call. The Port Representative began yelling at me asking me why I cared and I told him the more he avoided the truth the more I wanted to know. Seriously, who yells at people like that at a public meeting I wondered.
I contacted Recreation and Parks and found out they never had received the pirate ship. When I located the subcontractor who replaced the sand, he gave me the same type of “friendly” response the Port Representative had given me. He told me he was not under contract with me so he didn’t have to tell me anything.
If a $75,000 life size pirate ship can disappear in the city and nobody knows or cares where it went it, it makes me wonder what else goes missing. To me, the pirate ship incident is a prime example of lack of transparency and accountability in our city not to mention a waste of money. I contacted the City Controller and while she could not locate the pirate ship either, she did tell me that the Port would be buying a new one. It will be installed in March and will include swings. The Port Representative recently told me that the old pirate ship was out of code, which to me is “code” for they never found the old one.
I envision the pirate ship sailing into some employee’s backyard or maybe onto EBay or into the dump. Either way, a pirate ship is missing, there was some yelling, some finger pointing and a treasure chest of money wasted to buy a new one. Just another day in San Pedro, matey.
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