Michael Woo is Dean of the College of Environmental Design at Cal Poly Pomona. He was the first trained urban planner and the first Asian American elected to the Los Angeles City Council, where he represented Hollywood and its surrounding neighborhoods for eight years. Below, Woo answers our In The Green Room questions.
Q. Where would we find you at 10 a.m. on a typical Saturday?
A. If I’m lucky you’ll find me asleep.
Q. What music have you listened to today?
A. Starting after midnight, I was listening to a new CD by the pianist Fred Hersch.
Q. What do you consider to be the greatest simple pleasure?
A. A tomato.
Q. What surprises you the most about your life right now?
A. I’m doing some things to make a living that I probably had only a vague idea about 30 years ago.
Q. What is your fondest childhood memory?
A. Riding on the train through the Central Valley with my mother and my sister to visit my grandparents in Stockton.
Q. What do you wish you had the nerve to do?
A. To tell some people what I really think of them.
Q. Who is your favorite fictional character?
A. I’m fascinated by the character Don Draper on “Mad Men.”
Q. What is your favorite cocktail?
A. I don’t drink cocktails. I’m not sophisticated enough.
Q. When do you feel most creative?
A. When I’m thinking of how to use words to say what I’m really thinking, or when I’m figuring out how to arrange ideas or people in a certain order.
Q. What profession would you like to practice in your next life?
A. I’d like to found a record label similar to Mosaic Records, which would license historic jazz recordings and package them in a way that people could understand the significance of the recordings.
Q. If you could take only one more journey, where would you go?
A. A calm and beautiful place.
Q. What is your most prized material possession?
A. A soft shirt that’s hanging in my closet.
Q. Who is the one person living or dead you would most like to meet for dinner?
A. Jane Jacobs.
To read more about Woo’s panel on how to create a more integrated Los Angeles, click here.
*Photo by Aaron Salcido.