creating

On the soccer pitch, Cobi Jones was defined by blinding speed, a tireless work rate and an exceptional soccer IQ. But that’s not what stood out most when you watched him play.

It was the shoulder-length dreadlocks that made him instantly recognizable whether he was playing for the Galaxy or the national team.

So those became the most important — and more difficult — things to replicate in the nine-foot-tall bronze sculpture of Jones that the Galaxy will unveil Sunday before the team’s MLS matinee with Real Salt Lake.

“Essentially you build it out of clay and then you take it to a foundry and you pour bronze over the clay. That turns it into a statue,” said Galaxy president Tom Braun, who oversaw the process. “But you can’t do that with the hair. You have to build them individually and then solder them in.”

That meant artists Oscar Leon and Omri Amrany had to painstakingly join approximately 100 separate dreadlocks into the sculpture. The result, said Braun, one of two people other than the artists to have seen the finished statue, is remarkable.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime piece that is going to show him, and everything about him, in a really iconic way,” Braun said. “But I think when it comes to the hair specifically, they did a really nice job.”

The statue will join liked-sized tributes to David Beckham and Landon Donovan in Legends Plaza, which fronts the main entrance at Dignity Health Sports Park. Those sculptures, also done in Amrany’s studio, were unveiled in 2019 and 2021 respectively.

For Jones, the tribute is humbling.

“Just to be in the plaza itself and have a statue, that’s the incredible part for me,” he said. “When I’m long gone that statue will be there. My grandkids, hopefully, will still be able to see it.”

Yet having himself rendered in bronze was the furthest thing from Jones’ mind when he started playing soccer as a 5-year-old in Westlake Village.

“I don’t think that crossed anyone’s mind,” said Jones, 55. “It was all about just playing and having fun and trying to be the best player that I could possibly be. I was more focused on how do I beat the opponent in front of me than thinking about 20 years, 30 years down the road.”

”It makes me truly think about the past a bit more,” he continued. “All the various things that had to happen — that did happen — that came to this moment. It makes you kind of reminisce [on] the various histories and all the people that helped you.”

The statue is as much a monument to Jones’ self-confidence and refusal to quit as it is to his stellar playing career. Unable to land a scholarship coming out of high school, Jones used his academic success to enroll at UCLA, where he played as a walk-on for a strong Bruin team coached by Sigi Schmid. He wound up leading UCLA to its second NCAA championship while earning All-American honors — as well as a scholarship and a place in the school’s Hall of Fame.

Galaxy star Cobi Jones heads the ball above the Chicago Fire’s Carlos Bocanegra on Oct. 17, 2001.

(Fred Jewell / Associated Press)

He played the first of a U.S.-record 164 games with the national team in 1992 and played in the first of three World Cups in 1994 before starting a professional career that would take him to teams in three countries. He spent the majority of that time with the Galaxy, appearing in a franchise-record 306 games while making five All-Star teams and winning two MLS Cups, two Supporters’ Shields, two U.S. Open Cups and a CONCACAF title. He also served the team as an assistant coach and interim manager.

“It’s unequivocal that Cobi should have gotten a statue,” Braun said. “No one is doubting the contribution that Cobi Jones has had on the Galaxy and U.S. Soccer. So I think was an easy one for us to decide on and it’s probably long overdue.”

The plaza is nowhere near full, nor has the list of Galaxy players and coaches who deserve statues been exhausted, so Braun said there likely will be more sculptures added in the near future.

Jones had substantial input into the design of his statue, choosing the pose and offering other guidance. But it was important the statue show motion, as the Beckham and Donovan sculptures do. And the most obvious way to do that was to have Jones’ ample dreadlocks flowing behind him.

It might have been the most obvious way, but it certainly wasn’t the easiest one.

“We asked [Amrany] if he ever sculpted hair like this and he said no,” Braun said.

And he probably won’t do it again either — at least not for the Galaxy.

“They got to a point where they started to do it and we wanted some adjustments,” Braun recalled. “We wanted the hair to flow a different way and we thought maybe the hair was too long so we had them shorten it and move the hair a certain way that makes it look like it’s in motion.”

Although Jones said he wasn’t allowed to see the finished product so he has little idea how he has been rendered for history. He’ll find out Sunday.

“They took me out of the statue process as they started getting to the face and the head and hair and all that so that I could still have some element of surprise when it’s unveiled,” he said.

It figures to be a hair-raising moment.

⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.

When I was a child, I watched “The Jetsons” and “Lost in Space” and imagined my adult self living in a world of high-tech ease: flying cars, self-cleaning rooms, high-speed trains, personal jetpacks and wise-cracking robotic companions capable of solving any problem in a trice.

Instead I got Google (now with an irritating and frequently wrong AI feature), increased gridlock, Roombas, far too many passcodes/two-factor authenticator systems and a bunch of motorized ice chests cluttering up the sidewalks.

The last of which were recently banned, mercifully if temporarily, in Glendale. Reading about the city’s upcoming moratorium on delivery robots, I literally cheered. I hate them so much.

I know, I know, they’re adorable, with their wide “eyes” and squat toddler-like determination as they trundle along, pausing in careful recalculation whenever they encounter a curb, street sign, a sidewalk cafe table. Hating them makes me feel a bit like those folks who ban children from weddings or make snarky comments about dogs showing up just about everywhere (two things I would never do).

A Serve Robotics delivery robot heads to work Feb. 13. They navigate autonomously using LiDAR and only require human intervention if they get stuck, damaged or are heavily vandalized.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

But though I am happy to accommodate dog walkers, stroller-pushers and other slow-moving/space-requiring pedestrians, I am less happy to do so for a tricked-out little metal box as it picks its way over potholes and sidewalk cracks on a “heroic” mission to deliver takeout to someone who, presumably, lives less than a mile away from its source.

And it isn’t just cranky-pants impatience. I recently became part of a face-off between two opposite-running Coco bots on the small strip of sidewalk in front of Cafe Figaro. The minutes-long standstill forced several people into the street; many more, including my husband and his cane, engaged in a potentially perilous stutter-step around the two knee-high, randomly moving yet noncommunicative vehicles.

One of which was, for reasons of its own, sporting an American flag — maybe it wants to be a Mars rover when it grows up.

Delivery bots, including those made by Coco, a company begun in 2020 by two UCLA graduates, have been around for a while. Early rollouts, however, were small and often plagued by trouble. Stranded or struggling robots became the new Bird scooters — nifty ideas that proved more problematic in practice.

In the last two years, however, improved models have become an increasing presence; Coco, which has expanded across the country, recently announced a bigger, bolder next-gen model.

The Coco 1, left, alongside the new Coco 2 (Next-Gen) at the Coco Robotics headquarters in February in Venice. Coco Robotics launched its next-generation, fully autonomous delivery robot, Coco 2.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Many people love Coco and other delivery robots, which partially replace traffic-clogging, exhaust-spewing delivery drivers with a more environmentally friendly alternative.

Others do not, viewing the bots as sidewalk lice that create hazards and take jobs from humans. Several cities, including Chicago, Toronto and San Francisco, have already instituted bans; Glendale is, as Long Beach recently did, taking a less draconian approach, putting the robots on pause while city officials figure out a regulatory framework.

Good luck with that. The e-bike craze, which is putting many people, including kids, in the hospital at an alarming rate, has thus far defied similar regulatory frameworks. As with delivery robots, the possible benefits of e-bikes — environmentally friendly, traffic-decreasing, super fun to ride — created a demand that ignores the dangers created by popularity.

Unlike e-bikes, or the electric scooters that preceded them, delivery robots aren’t yet causing widespread physical harm. Even my own feelings for those motorized metal coolers are fueled by existential disappointment as much as personal irritation.

In many ways, the high-tech future I envisioned as a child has come to pass — we have computers in our pockets, driverless cars, thumbprint and face ID, and voice-activated remote controls for everything. We may not be able to teleport, either physically or via hologram, but we can Zoom or video chat with pretty much anyone anywhere. ChatGPT is not exactly J.A.R.V.I.S., but it’s something. High-speed trains, and pretty much any mass transportation improvement, continue to elude the United States, but one can experience them elsewhere.

Matt Wood, Serve Robotics supervisor, drives a robot to a holding area earlier this year in the company’s parking lot where it and 26 others were to be transported by delivery truck to a farther service location.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

The problem is, of course, that reality is much more complicated than futuristic visions sold by “The Jetsons,” “Minority Report” or the cultural marketers of Silicon Valley. Like e-bikes, every advancement creates a host of new problems — hackers, identity theft, system failures, increased energy demands. Labor-saving devices are rarely that — instead labor is shifted, from one department to another, from the body to the brain, or standards are raised — when laundry is done by a machine, its operator must ensure that all clothing is bright, soft, sweet smelling and stain-free just as those who have been given a company smartphone must be available 24/7. After all, how hard is it to answer a text?

Delivery robots are both disappointing in their reality and alarming in their symbolic implication. With all manner of industries constricting and AI threatening entry-level positions, many people have become delivery drivers, full-time or as an economically necessary side gig. Are robots coming for them as well? And are we all going to step around them and post photos on Instagram as they do?

It’s a lot to put on a relatively new and small industry that remains, thus far, a cute and novel way to receive a salad or a few groceries. Those who fear imminent robotic world domination can actually take heart — like the AI actor Tilly Norwood, these little geezers have limited abilities. They don’t go very far, or move very fast; they are easily damaged and disabled (especially in Philadelphia). If they are the vanguard of a sentient nonhuman enemy, we don’t have much to fear yet.

Still, as these robots grow in number and size, those big innocent “eyes” and the cutesy design take on an unnerving air. As Albert Brooks said in “Broadcast News”: “What do you think the devil is going to look like if he’s around … he will be attractive, he’ll be nice and helpful.”

And deliver your lunch.

Donald Trump touted the US-Israel war on Iran as “bold” and “historic,” telling a Saudi investment conference that the Middle East will soon be free from Iranian “nuclear blackmail.”

‘These are countries that face drought, food or economic difficulties that compound this crisis much farther.’
David Owiro, founder of the African Development Think Tanks, says that African countries are particularly vulnerable to the economic consequences of the US-Israeli war on Iran.