Kleenex Anyone?
“I would be more comfortable in Russia with the way I am being treated,” Mr. Vorgeack said.
His next move? “I am looking for a giant kleenex so I can have a good cry.” He laughed at his seeming joke. His visitor did, too, but only until reality dawned.
“Everything is so absurd, I am making a joke about it,” Mr. Vorgeack said.
“I have no place to go. When you have no place to go, how can you have a plan? So, no, I don’t have plans.” His neighbor Cool Harry, the artist, this week was awarded an eviction-extension until next month. “Everybody was,” Mr. Vorgeack said, glumly.
Speaking of Stubborn
Last Monday night, behind very closed doors, the City Council and its legal advisors mentally wrung their hands over what to do about the stubborn little Frenchman.
The stubborn little Frenchman faces no such conundrum. He knows exactly what he thinks should be done with City Hall.
He won the hearts of his neighbors by posting a handwritten chalkboard sign that says, “Keep out! All Dogs, Thieves and Redevelopment Personnel.”
Are You Kidding?
When he is asked how much his war with City Hall has affected his wrought iron business, Mr. Vorgeack does not even bother to answer. Each cheek gathers into a pouch, and he laughs, hollowly, as if to wonder if the question were serious.
A pause.
“At this point,” Mr. Vorgeack said, “my business is closing. I have to be honest with my clients, clients I have had for over 20 years.”
Do you just sit here and wait until City Hall comes to get you?
“I’m cornered,” he said, twice. “I’m cornered.”
Comparison with Custer
By now, he has achieved hero status in the view of his fellow small business owners. They say he would make Custer look like a flaccid flibberty-gidget.
Even in the pocket-sized courtyard of his modest Metal Art business, 8829 Exposition Blvd., Mr. Vorgeack was dwarfed this morning by the eerie enormity of his crisis.
Except in the eyes of his chorus of supporters, quiet-spoken but steely-determined Mr. Vorgeack does not stand very tall.
Unprecedented?
His case is utterly fascinating because so far no known person in Culver City ever has gone where Mr. Vorgeack is standing.
He and the city are engaged in a high noon showdown in which he is one of the biggest underdogs of all time.
Effectively, he is daring City Hall to attack him, to bulldoze his business to the ground while he stands there, hands on hips, to see who will blink first.
He already has eliminated himself as a candidate.
Ill-Fitting
Immediately identifiable by his locomotive moustache and mostly nude pate, he seems to be shrinking inside his gray work pants and short-sleeved pale blue shirt that he wears outside without tucking it in.
His clothes hang on him.
He is losing ground physically. He isn’t sleeping at night, and doubters have only to glance at his poorly maintained eyes.
His already fragile health continues to decay.
Commanding? Not Even Close
The long-ago person who determined how to define a commanding presence would have placed French-speaking Mr. Vorgeack at the opposite end of the spectrum.
You have to stand close to hear him.
City Hall has trained its main cannons on Mr. Vorgeack, who seems like such easy prey. When it comes to Showdown Time, as it surely will, next week, next month, next season, Mr. Vorgeack can claim one set of bragging rights. He has been conducting his wrought-iron business at 8829 almost twice as long as his pursuers at City Hall have been in their buildings.
Postscript
On a previous visit, Mr. Vorgeack warned his visitor that “I am being watched, so I have to be careful about what I say.”
This morning, he felt a little more expansive. “One thing I can say on the record,” he said. “If I end up in the hospital with a heart attack, it won’t be the first one.
“Then the city really is going to be sorry.”
