Mystery Flag

It is a bizarre analog to the US flag. Instead of thirteen red and white stripes with a field of blue, this banner has the same number of green and white stripes, and a field of green. Where Old Glory has stars, this flag sports a gold Theta symbol, an oval bisected by a bar.

It’s been flying since March when it suddenly replaced the giant US flag that usually flies there.

Ever in your service, dear reader, I set down the alley at the end of 24th Street to find the source and meaning of this unnerving banner. Behind the gas station, past a jumble of industrial buildings, I turned a bend, fully expecting to be greeted by a private ninja army guarding the headquarters of the villainous coporation which had finally, officially, taken over the U.S. federal government.

Instead, I entered the property of Southern California Disposal and Recycling, a family-owned waste management company serving Santa Monica and much of the West Side for three generations.

Rather than a dart to the neck, I was greeted with the kindly suggestion of a worker that I park the Lensmobile more conveniently to the business office, which was flanked by a pair of docile Dobermans.

I soon discovered the flag is no more sinister than a sunflower.

“It stands for ecology,” explained SCD owner Sam Kardashian, a smiling family man. The flag has been a symbol of the ecology movement since the 1960s, before we all went green, back when every idea was a “movement.”

The company flies the flag because they believe in its message. While the big waste management companies dabble in sustainability, these guys walk the talk. 99 percent of SCD’s fleet of giant trash trucks run on biodiesel. And their business isn’t just about picking up trash, but recycling the stuff.

From the freeway, the flag is merely enormous. Up close, it is awesome. Its 55 foot length and 30 foot height brings it in at a weight of 48 pounds. It is flown atop the same 100 foot antennae tower the company uses to communicate with trucks in the field.

It takes at least two burly men to run it up the tower, and a two inch-thick stainless steel cable to keep the thing attached in the near constant wind coming off of the Pacific.

Like the US flag of the same dimensions Kardashian has flown since 1974, the Ecology flag has a lifespan of just a handful of months, depending on weather. Rain can double its weight. Add a stiff breeze to 1,650 square feet of wet flag, and it eventually frays itself into long, cracking bullwhips.

But getting a circus tent’s worth of wind-blown material down a 100 foot tower to replace it is a major operation.

“The ideal wind speed must be two knots,” explains Kardashian. “If it’s any windier than that we can’t control the cable. If there’s no wind at all it gets tangled.” These perfect conditions must coincide with a yard empty of trucks, and having three men available to wrangle it.

Kardashian is waiting on the Guinness Book of World Records to confirm that his is the largest of its kind flying in the world. But when this one has gone to the great recycling center in the sky, he will replace it again with Old Glory.

Mystery solved, the Lens headed back up the alley to 24th Street. Along the way I couldn’t help considering, however, less spooky designs for a flag which symbolizes respect for the environment. Perhaps one symbolizing a rainforest. Or a giant sunflower.