Tarzana is the epicenter of ickiness in the Valley. Say what you will about “impoverished” Van Nuys, with its broken down apartments and tacky business district. Yet Van Nuys has good bones. There is the beautiful 1933 city hall, a modern and sensitively designed government building, the beginnings of a revival of bungalow houses, a brand new landscaped bus route and possibly the Valley’s first historic district. The mostly Latino population is basically polite, and practice such outmoded practices as allowing a driver to merge into traffic in front of them.
Tarzana, by contrast, is a grotesque and sprawling 1950’s and 6o’s junkpile of blacktop baking in the noontime sun. Near Reseda and Clark Streets, huge parking lots scream with honking horns, as aggressive and rude people shove their way into Gelsons. There is a generous amount of immigrants of here, but they aren’t Spanish speakers. Instead, they mostly come from the letter “eye” nations. Cell phones and cigarettes are their passport. “Thank you” or “excuse me” are unspoken here.
There is a wonderful Jewish bakery here, but surrounding it are dozens of shops peddling junk: nail salons, hair products, candles and Russian souvenirs. Completely absent in this man made hell are trees, grass, water, fountains. Billboards and wooden power lines deface Reseda Boulevard, which itself is a road without rules. Speeding drivers, with ear piercing woofers and noxious music blasting, race to exit and enter the 101. Walking, solitude, peace…..are you kidding?
Along Ventura, east of Reseda, there are slutty women’s stores selling purple gauze midriff tops and mini-mini skirts with glued on sparkling plastic, beaded sequin bra tops. Psychic readers, Indonesian coffee tables, mass -produced poster art and the ubiquitous falafel restaurants line the “upscale” street. A mini mall calls itself “Wall Street”, a name sure to appeal to the money conscious Botoxed mommies in their Lincoln Navigators who jam the front parking area.
Burbank Boulevard is the northern border of the “Ugly District” and this speedway is full of elderly and medically impaired drivers turning into the Tarzana Medical Center, and those angry younger ones in the SUV’s who are desperate to step on the gas. The bellowing smoke and fumes from the freeway, and huge piles of trash are the street sculpture of this area.
Even the “Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf” on Reseda and Ventura is dirtier and more unpleasant than other locations. There is less graciousness, less room and more trash. The Mexican style restaurant chain Sharkys also has a branch nearby but the interior smells of the restrooms more than food. Can anyone eat without indigestion here?
Tarzana is fabled as the place where Edgar Rice Burroughs once had a magnificent rural ranch. He is fortunate to have died many years before his beloved region descended into an urban jungle of unimaginable grossness and vulgarity.
Here in Van Nuys 
Comments about New York being full of elitists are just as nonsensical as Los Angeles being filled with “hedonists.” Sure, if look around you can easily find examples of each. But there’s more to New York than Fifth-Avenue dwelling, martini sipping Manhanttanites (four other boroughs, as a matter of fact), and there’s more to L.A. than botox-injected, smoothie-drinking, granola-sucking, Pamela Anderson wannabes or drunken rocker dudes prowling the Sunset Strip, two old hoary sterotpyes that HAVE GOT TO GO. Both of my parents were from The Bronx (though I was raised in New Jersey) and I’ve lived in L.A. for 16 years. So I think I have enough experience to speak for both sides here. So everybody, enough with the generalizations.
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Andrew,
I agree that most people’s impressions of LA don’t go much beyond the Encyclopedia Britannica summation – fake people without any culture. I’ve been dealing with it all my life, especially from most people on the East Coast. Most of them always compare LA to NY, and you can guess which gets the unfavorable end of that comparison.
The other end of that elitism is represented by anonymous’ post (gee, I wonder why he/she is anonymous) about VN being full of ‘illegal Mexicans, gangs and crime’. Sure, there’s lots of illegals. But so what? Maybe you should talk to them. There’s lots of Mexicans who were born here, too. Most are just regular people with families who are just looking to support themselves. There’s gangs and crime just about anywhere you look, all over LA. Lumping together illegal immigrants with the criminal element is like saying all anonymous posters are racists. But I don’t mean to suggest that. People used to feel the same way about Irish immigrants, but it would be anachronistic to say things like that now.
And because all VN residents aren’t the same, writers and dreamers can be there, too. You don’t have to live in NY, or live in a clean Tarzana, to be cultured.
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Once someone commented that I could not compare Europe to Van Nuys. Now I’m not supposed to compare Van Nuys to another town in the San Fernando Valley named Tarzana? What nonsense.
My law abiding neighbors from Mexico who keep their homes scrupulously clean and neat and respect the law don’t need to be lumped in with gangbangers.
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What nonsense. Van Nuys is a cesspool, period. With illegal Mexicans and their gangs, crime, you can’t compare to it Tarzana.
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Dear LA Writer-
I liked your piece commenting on the Encyclopedia Britannica’s misinformation about LA. How can an allegedly objective and factual book publish such opinionated nonsense as: Nowhere is the pursuit of hedonism more evident [than LA]?
Tell that to the Orthodox Jews walking to shul in Sherman Oaks. Are they surfing, tanning, practicing wild sex? Maybe. Most likely not. They’re Angelenos too.
The world needs to move beyong the Baywatch era and realize LA is a real city with serious thinkers and writers and dreamers.
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You forgot about the Tarzana “Safari walk” which lines the sidewalk at the corner of Reseda and Ventura, a puzzling attempt to emulate the Hollywood walk of fame and attract visitors. It was sponsored by the Tarzana Improvement Association, whose name is amusing and purpose even more puzzling. I sometimes go to the Cold Stone Creamery near that corner on a hot day since it’s the closest one to my house, take a look around, and find very little reason to stay once I’ve finished my ice cream.
I have to say that I recently discovered your blog and find it an interesting document of our neighborhood. I’ve lived in Van Nuys for 3 years, and am a lifelong LA resident. I’m just now discovering some of the Valley’s history, though in general I’m an LA history buff. Makes sense to understand where you live, but it seems very few people around here do.
I think what you’re observing is the strange conflagration that is So Cal. No monuments here have ever stayed very long, and I’ve seen so many places I remember close for no apparent reason, or just fade away. The city is constantly pulsing and changing when new people move in, new trends start, and buildings and businesses sprout up with little planning of what the neighborhood is or is going to be. “Planned” communities start up, and within a dozen years have completely changed from what they were “planned” to be, so I don’t fret much if I see a new mini-mall.
I love Van Nuys and try to stay away from the Boulevard as much as I can. VN is the one of the few neighborhoods in the Valley that still shows its working class roots.
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Yikes.
Swinging, twisting and finally smacking onto the asphalt. You nailed today’s Tarzana.
And what about that speculator’s unkempt, unattended tree that twisted and fell and smacked onto the Reseda Blvd. passerby south of Ventura a month or so aqo? Yeah, it squashed him to history, too.
Yikes, indeed.
Hang in there, Tarzan.
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