Here is a photo of the corner of Vanowen at Sepulveda in Van Nuys.
Wooden power lines create a chaotic and technologically primitive presence at one of LA’s busiest intersections.
A two-story tall “mini-mall” is set back from the street with an oil filled asphalt parking lot as its welcoming face. Junk food sellers offer donuts and pizza to a local population that is more than 50% obese.
There is not one pleasant place to sit and read a paper, walk a dog, or stroll and meet a neighbor for a pleasant chat. The environment is dirty, criminally threatening, choked with exhaust fumes and lacking in any civic pride. It is also ugly.
One would never know that behind this mini-mall is a relatively opulent residential neighborhood of large homes on generously sized lots.
While city planners desperately propose certain upgrades for the faded commerce of Van Nuys Boulevard, the real eyesore is Sepulveda. This boulevard is, ironically, a much busier and more prosperous road than VNB, with stores like Target and Costco just down the road.
Here in Van Nuys 
LA shows no more respect for the road bordering the Veteran’s Cemetery than it does for the living along all of Sepulveda. I agree that it “boggles the mind” since we are not a poor city, but one that includes Brentwood, Bel Air, Pacific Palisades, Encino, Hancock Park, Cheviot Hills.
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While city planners desperately propose certain upgrades for the faded commerce of Van Nuys Boulevard, the real eyesore is Sepulveda.
Coincidentally enough, Sepulveda Blvd in West Los Angeles, right next to Westwood’s Veterans Cemetery, is the same street that has a row of even taller wood telephone poles planted up and down it. This crude format is in a supposedly nicer part of town, visible to tens of thousands of people who drive by it everyday on the San Diego Freeway.
The archaic, slipshod nature of Los Angeles’s environment boggles the mind.
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Buried power lines and some shade on those streets would be a huge plus. Right now this area is 110 in the summer and a lot of locals are walking to the bus stop. Even more strange than the straggler homes on Sepulveda are the handful of homes off Woodley next to the Van Nuys airport. This area is zoned light industrial, and is noisy as all hell, but there are still houses here and there between the warehouses.
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The ho’s are still out there. They are just more discrete.
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where are the prostitutes? I do not mean to be a jerk, but i still remember sepulveda being kind of a trip with all the hookers. I do not partake, but it added some color to the area. Now it is just like half of mexico is out there daily. Boring. I say bring back the hos and get rid of some of the joses. I still remember driving north on sepulveda to get bagels late at night from western bagel and one time i stopped to make a phone call and sure enough about 6 ladies of the night accosted my car offering their services. Kind of romantic.
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some good news– the vacany ralphs has left might soon be filled: i saw a sign posted there the other day informing the public that fresh and easy grocery chain has applied for a permit to sell alchahol at that location!
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Agreed that corner is sad. The power poles are the least of the worries though. I think all four corners should be bulldozed and rebuilt. You know something odd about that area? On Vanowen west of Sepulveda there is a lone house standing amongst the jungle of apartments. It is odd to look at that house and imagine a time when the area was not so crowded. I agree on the Sepulveda problems though. You could start mowing down almost everything from Victory to Plummer? is that the corner where the four wheel drive shop is and the school? sorry if I am wrong on the street name but you know where I am talking about.
Ciao
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You’re absolutely right.
This could be an 1907 tintype picture of some crappy Kansas City corner with the first electric lines and telegraph wires draped over unpaved streets.
Start diggin, DWP. We’re tired of looking at your schlock. And we’re fed up with the lights (and everything else) going out because some drunk knocks down a pole with a transformer buzzing away up top.
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