Let's Run It Up The Flagpole...er, Maybe Not

Yesterday I spent a dozen hours hanging around the 1928 penthouse of one of LA's most successful haberdashers. Looking out over the city from the thirteenth floor (built when that was as tall as you could build in town) I started thinking about the flagpoles that were scattered about the rooftops.

Now, new buildings don't seem to have flagpoles, perhaps because many are so tall, nobody could see a flag at that altitude, or that the rooftop has been given over to the CEO's helicopter landing pad. So, no flagpoles on skyscrapers. Windsocks, yes; flagpoles, no.

Older buildings built back at the turn of the last century, and for a few years more, seemed to embrace the pole and its flag; adornment for the architect's urban visions. The poles still stand today, leaning out over the street or jutting prominently upward from a select corner of the roof.

But hoisting a flag seems to be a forgotten task. From my penthouse vantage point, I counted 25 poles; four had flags; and one of those was of some corporate logo and not Old Glory. And of the three American flags, none was taken down at dusk, nor illuminated after dark as proper etiquette deems necessary.

Perhaps the maintenance men who were assigned this task to do each dawn and dusk died off, and their replacements never were told it was part of their job. Maybe it's just too big a hassle to climb up on the roof in all sorts of weather. Maybe the flags wore out and nobody bothered to buy new ones. Maybe nobody gives a rat's ass. Maybe a little of all of the above.

I'm no super-patriot; I don't think symbols and slogans and sound bites and bumper stickers replace fully realized thoughts. But, if you're gonna have a flagpole, you might as well fly the freaking flag.