Just for those that weren't here 40-plus years ago, describe what it was like.

Well, it was a spectacular region-wide arts and culture festival and unprecedented in the city's history.

And I doubt if there was an Olympics that had the impact on their cities as this one had on ours.

I think the legacy of that festival olympics arts festival was what's transpired in this in this city for the last four decades uh we the opera was one of the things that came out of it 1984 placer domingo was here uh took a look at los angeles and said you don't have an opera company we ought to have an opera company and uh this year we celebrated our 40th anniversary in 1986 that's that was the opera uh the opera's first season and it's one of the best operas most respected operas in the country and maybe even beyond The catalytic impact that this festival had on the cultural arts footprint in Los Angeles can't be understated.

We were on the ascendancy already in the cultural arts field, but what's transpired since 1984, think about it for a second, just the infrastructure that's been built, Disney Hall, the Getty Center, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, the Broad Museum downtown, The Cal State Northridge Soraya Performing Arts Center, Disney Hall, the refurbishment of the Hollywood Bowl, the new Los Angeles County Museum of Art, all of these things, I wouldn't say... had direct relationship to the festival, but all of these things have happened because the philanthropic and the cultural arts community came together.

They saw what the possibilities were for Los Angeles, and they became believers.

And today we have the legacy of the Arts Festival in 1984.

Zev, so I'm just curious, what do you think needs to happen now? And why hasn't there been more planning surrounding this?

Um, so as I always do, and this is such a key part of your story, but my first question is always, where were you born, and where did you grow up?

I was born in Los Angeles, uh, at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Hollywood.

Uh, grew up the first eight years of my life in Boyle Heights.

It's where my parents, uh, lived since they migrated from New York to, uh, to Los Angeles.

Uh, my parents ran a Jewish, uh, labor Zionist, uh, school for e- uh, you went to kind of a Hebrew school after, after your regular school, and my parents ran that from the late '30s till 1956, when there were no, there weren't enough Jews, uh, with kids to fill a classroom, so they, they shuttered the, the school and we moved to the, uh, to the Fairfax neighborhood, where I've lived within eight blocks of that house ever since.

I mean, I'm a sociological oddity.

I've lived in this neighborhood since 1956.

Yeah.