Category: Culture

Days of Light Traffic.

Posted in Culture, Van Nuys and the ValleyTagged , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Days of Light Traffic

Normally, in the morning, the cars start traveling bumper-to-bumper in Van Nuys, and indeed, all over the city.

Since the school strike began, the number of vehicles on the roads seems to have dropped significantly.

Parents take their children to school by car and drive them miles to attend magnet schools, charter schools, and schools with better educational results.

There are parents who live in Van Nuys and drive their kids to school in Los Feliz, and there are people who live near me who worry about their 4-year-old daughter starting kindergarten because the local, walkable, nearby school is only rated 1 out of 5 stars.

When school is in session, a convoy of cars, SUVs and vans drives up and down Columbus Avenue where the people without means still bring their children to class before the parents start work.

Los Angeles was built to allow children to walk to school. For most of the history of the city it worked that way.

Mrs. Fletcher, Hazeltine Elementary School, Van Nuys, CA 1965

But illegal immigration changed all that. The preponderance of non-English speakers made parents who want their children educated in English fleeing and fearful of LAUSD’s public education.

Proposition #13, which keeps taxes to the level that a home was originally purchased at, rather than its current value, is an idea meant to starve public education, because the taxpayers cannot be expected to continually spend more to educate everyone who comes here from south of the border.

There is a racial component to the withdrawl from public education in Los Angeles, and everyone knows it, but nobody really talks about how it came about.

So the light traffic will certainly get heavy again, as the one child, one car, faraway school system gears up again.

The question is: why and how are do we endure this?

It’s the same quandary that Los Angeles continually creates for itself. By allowing illegal activities, such as vast public homelessness, it invites and incentivizes the very things that diminish civic life and cause more suffering for the residents of this city.

Would it not be wonderful if children could walk to school? Would it not be delightful to see them riding bikes and walking to well-organized, highly rated schools?

Or is it preferable to have a city of fatties in vans sitting in traffic, grabbing a Jack-in-the-Box on their way to the freeway to bring Sophia and Mohammed 15 miles to their morning classes and back again at 3pm?

No wonder there is such aggression in this city. People can’t catch a break, they are forced to spend more to educate their children, to inconvenience families by chauffeuring kids to class, and it’s all under a system blessed by the hypocrites in the state house and city hall. 

Bourdain.

Posted in CultureTagged , 6 Comments

Illustration by Jenny Mörtsell.

 

It has been a tearfully confounding few days for those who imagined a life of elation for that man privileged to travel and eat anywhere in the world, to dine in places high and low, to taste cuisines in remote outposts, and consume foods prepared by experts in professional kitchens, or cooked on stoves by mothers in Ghana, Sicily, Ukraine, Bali, Uruguay and Northern New Mexico.

Why did he, of all lucky mortals, choose to strangle himself in a hotel bathroom at the five-star Le Chambard in Kayserberg, France?

 

Once a fuck up, a drugged, sad, angry rebel from New Jersey working in restaurant kitchens, he somehow strapped himself down at a typewriter in his early 40s, cigarette in mouth, coffee at hand, and composed a brilliantly inventive memoir exposing the death, filth, corruption, blood and cruelty turning out fine cuisine. “Kitchen Confidential” became a best seller and a 44-year-old loser was suddenly the toast of New York and the hero of truth tellers around the world.

In our early 21stCentury Bourdain was the healer, the traveller, the sage, the explorer, the courageous adventurer who called bullshit on all liars as he saw them, those phonies who dance on the Food Network sets and perform like The Rockettes as they whip up Key Lime Pie for a studio audience clapping on cue.

Later, he acted as our elder statesman, visiting those places around the world despised and feared by people who knew nothing of them: Lebanon, Palestine, Iran and Russia. His every meal was more than an exploration of cuisine; he conducted discursive, penetrating, eviscerating discussions of why and how nations and individuals do what they do in food, war, love and politics.

He stood up for women degraded by sexual assault and gender inequality. And called out others who would deny injured females palliative justice.

Sometimes his articulation and verboseness became exhausting, his face, sunken and tired; his body long limbed, tattooed, tanned and tired. And he was always drinking something.

Yet somehow he was allowed, by the networks that employed him, to get buzzed on camera, for in those late hours when alcohol magically connects words to ideas and liberates men from self-imposed constraints, Bourdain flourished, every sense of his intellect and wit was lit by fire, and the camera captured it.

His life as we projected it off our own, was a mirror of baby boomer fantasy, travelling from drugs and rock and roll, divorce and shitty jobs into the universe of eternal fame, free travel, the ability to express himself on paper, on camera, to go anywhere in the world. And eat dinner with Barack Obama in Vietnam, the last destination wrapping up that pinnacle of American shame, repackaged as a television event of healing and camaraderie with the black American President in our former enemy’s capital of Hanoi.

Seemingly every insurmountable obstacle of hate: race, religion, gender, or war was solvable over a bowl of pho or a plate of tacos.

He took up Ju Jitsu, and at 60 was lean and defined. Book publishers and publicists, agents and advertisers saw him as the perfect imperfect. He was the star of CNN but somehow his own man.

And then at 61, like Hemingway, Bourdain did as Hemingway did and killed himself.

In those last five minutes of his life, alone, near the toilet, Bourdain murdered Bourdain, a dastardly tragic, unjust, undeserved death; and a malevolent attack on the entire human race who was joined to him in an unofficial, but widely accepted compact of love and mutual understanding.

His suicide robbed us of that satisfaction that there is greater meaning to life, to grow to understand by venturing out into the unknown.

Now we are back to nihilism, that nothingness of despair, that poison of philosophy whose only known antidote is survival, carrying on, living under any condition to stay alive, confronting the urge to end it all by persisting to the very end.

The Janitors’ Light Rail.

Posted in Culture, TransportationTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

 

nury-martinez-dn
Nury Martinez, 2012. (Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer)

“If you’re a housekeeper, janitor or dish washer, you need to get to work every day on time,” she said. “Buses don’t move as many people and as quickly as the light rail. That’s why we’re excited about the project that would serve people who are transit dependent.”[1]

“As a mom, I can tell you it’s terrifying to sometimes think of having to get on the Red Line. I won’t for that very reason,” she said. “I don’t have to see the data collection to know that if I feel unsafe to ride the train with my kid, that I’m just simply not going to use it.”[2]

-Councilwoman Nury Martinez

Why are these two quotes important?

What does it matter what Councilwoman Nury Martinez of LA’s City Council District #6, representing Arleta, Panorama City, Lake Balboa, and Van Nuys thinks about public transportation, light rail, who rides it and who needs it?

It matters, I think, because it shows a way of describing non-car travel as something used by people who are the lesser people of the City of Angels: maids, janitors, dishwashers and perhaps even criminals.

Can agents at William Morris, that actor who stars on that sitcom, Hancock Park attorneys, the conductor of the LA Philharmonic, and Dodger Clayton Kershaw also ride trains? I wish they all did!

Strange that a political culture that panders to PC should grossly stereotype transit riders.

The prospect that Van Nuys, long languishing, is under her jittery guidance, and limited vision, is not especially comforting.  A public official who denigrates public transportation is not doing the people’s business very well.

For in her remarks she shows a remarkably retrogressive and depressing view of public transportation as something which is sometimes terrifying, unsuitable for mothers with children, and only made for unskilled workers commuting to low paying jobs in the NE Valley.

There has been, for a long time, an idea that if you had enough money in Los Angeles you would surely travel by car. And today, we have the spectacle of 24/7 traffic produced by a culture conditioned to expect that every journey must begin and end in a car.

Even as plans for expansion of light rail go on all over Los Angeles, there is an equally strong pushback against it.

  • Uber and Lyft are making it possible to take short distance trips by dialing up a ride on your phone.
  • Amazon is delivering everything from chewing gum to sofas with fleets of trucks that are also clogging our streets.
  • Parents who rightly shudder at their children attending a low rated local school chauffeur their kids 25 miles away to “better schools.”
  • Housing is now a luxury commodity but every law that seeks to expand it runs into the “where will they park?” crowd who wants to stop new apartments, new granny flats, new retail stores and multi-family dwellings near trains.

And instead of public officials offering imaginative, innovative and futuristic ideas, we have a throwback to the car culture that is unsustainable.

Los Angeles! This is 2018! This is not 1975, 1965 or 1945!

Light rail and subways are not dangerous. They are not only for criminals. They are not only for the woman who scrubs your floor. Properly policed, intelligently managed, excellently maintained, they can be pleasant, quick and enjoyable.

They are the way we ALL will get around Los Angeles when gridlock by private vehicle renders this city dysfunctional.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] https://www.dailynews.com/2018/06/03/heres-van-nuys-through-the-eyes-of-mr-van-nuys/

[2] http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-martinez-metro-sexual-harassment-20180124-story.html

The New Chief Design Officer of Los Angeles.

Posted in CultureTagged , , , Leave a comment

 

“Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne is leaving the paper to take the newly created position of chief design officer for the City of Los Angeles.

According to a release from Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office, Hawthorne’s new role will include bringing a “unified design vision to projects that are shaping Los Angeles’ urban landscape,” and collaborating with city officials, departments, and architects on a wide range of public projects including housing, parks, and transit.”

-LA Curbed 3/12/18

 

Imagine Los Angeles and “unified design vision” in the same sentence, and you might be able to swallow the strange challenges Christopher Hawthorne will face in “shaping Los Angeles’ urban landscape.”

A laudable, admirable position, Chief Design Officer, but how will it work?

In Van Nuys, if this area can be considered a microcosm for the city as a whole, nobody has the slightest idea, in power or out-of-power, what design the broken down district should undertake.

There are people like me, believers in public transport and walkability. And law and order: with clean, safe, well-maintained streets and sidewalks.

There are others, hating any building taller than four stories, fearing road diets, terrified the Orange Line will bring dense development to Van Nuys.

Public projects in Los Angeles are almost invitations to desecrate. I see the archway erected over Lankershim Blvd in North Hollywood, north of Camarillo, a pile of steel whipped together like tsunami debris and wonder who ordered and paid for it?

In Westlake, in MacArthur Park, in Pershing Square, the public realm must fight against the persistence of homelessness which seeks to establish its own rights within the public parks.

Homeless on Aetna St. Feb. 2016

In our city, the billboard is holier than religion. Will the Chief Design Officer fight against the outdoor advertising industry even as their pervasive ugliness destroys the public roads all over Los Angeles?

We need public squares and public places to gather, like they have in any impoverished Mexican town. But who will stop traffic in Mar Vista to carve out a plaza? Who will put a monument like the Washington Monument in the middle of Sepulveda Bl. to commemorate Francisco Xavier Sepúlveda? Can you think of a quiet conversation in the Fairfax District with a room full of old people as you propose carving out some back alley for public gathering space?

Where will they park? Who will hang out here? I don’t like it!

Almost every neighborhood honors the car first, and identity politics second. Can you imagine the fights in South Central, Boyle Heights, Koreatown, and other areas when trying to unite the indifferent, the angry, the argumentative members of the community on something as small as a little pedestal honoring a local somebody chosen for their ethnicity first and achievements second?

Every civic proposal will need to pass the gender test, the inclusion test, the not-a-white-man test. Even if the Eiffel Tower were built it would need to pay tribute to some forgotten and abused figure.

Los Angeles is a place where the historic car wash, the historic bowling alley, the historic hot dog stand all have a place in the civic realm. And perhaps that is a good thing, we simply don’t live in a city definable by standards used to measure Barcelona, Paris, New York or Boston. When we try to be grand, we do it privately, behind gates, on our own property.

When we erect grandly, we like to ruin it, with tags, trash, and irony. See any of the new bridges going over the LA River.

And lovely old homes, and fascinating vintage buildings are bulldozed regularly. See the two examples below from Van Nuys. Now gone forever.

14827 Victory Blvd.
6/14/15
DEMOLISHED

Vintage Auto Repair
6200 N. Kester Ave.
7/9/15
DEMOLISHED

We lived for the day when Echo Park was redesigned, and now people sleep all over it, and anyone with a cart can sell anything anywhere. So we modify our laws to accommodate and placate illegality. You want to get high here? You want to sleep here? You want to park your RV here? No problem. Everything is allowed no matter how it demeans.

The problem with civic life is there must be civilization and there must be a minimal, publically acceptable standard of how to conduct oneself in public. And we don’t have that. Just ride the Metro Red Line, daily, and see how often people ignore rules. And get away with it.

We can’t just build ourselves into civic pride. We have to bring it up through our own character. And right now we are busy ripping it down, hoping that our urge for destruction will somehow open up a bright new world of self-realization. But it won’t.

So good luck to Mr. Hawthorne and his Chief Design Office.

I imagine he will be a regular on KCRW and KPCC, there will be plenty of conferences and appearances with Frances Anderton and Frank Gehry, and Instagram posts at Intelligensia and MOCA.

And then a year from now, the job and the title will quietly be gone, and he will find another position up in the Bay Area as Apple’s Chief Aesthetician, “devoted to the virtual civic realm on Apple devices.”

 

Live in the Moment.

Posted in CultureTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Through the virtual sheet of postage stamps on my smartphone, I learned of an event, with music and men’s fashion, held last night at Rogue Collective at 305 S. Hewitt St. in the Arts District.

Due to the constraints of my domestic relationship, I drove down alone around 5pm, the most beautiful part of the day in late winter.

I sped down the 2, crawled on Glendale, accelerated on Sunset, turned onto Alameda and found a parking spot on E. 2nd St., now built fine with dark brick  loftettes where children under 30 live in $3,000 rooms and rent zip cars.

It was a cold night, a gorgeous night, and I had dressed up in wool plaid pants, a black turtleneck, a new wool zip cardigan sweater, and a gray wool beanie from 1995, along with suede lace up boots. I mention all this because I thought about how I would look at an event where every gesture and style would end up on the virtual sheet of postage stamps.

As I walked alone down S. Garey St. and E. 3rd St., past people eating ice cream in the cold, past the bright artworks and candlelit tables where people dined, it was like 30 years ago in New York City’s Soho.

Inside the Rogue Collective, site of the Gooch Collective, I saw the people from the virtual postage stamps.

I knew many. Nobody knew me.

@ethanmwong in beret

Credit: @ethanmwong

@ethanmwong was there, a stylish photographer who favors retro clothing from the early 1940s and reminded me of those Margaret Bourke White images of evacuated Japanese-Americans from the West Coast who wore high-waisted khakis, fedoras, cinched leather bomber jackets and double breasted suits on their way to prison camps.

I told him about “Out of the Past” (1947) and how his jacket reminded me of one worn by the sheriff.  He didn’t know the movie, but he looked as if he came from that time.

Rogelio 2 15 18 4
@goochybaby

The host: limber, loose, effusive @goochybaby a tall, thin, bearded and handsome man who looks good in flood length trousers and anything else. He recently moved from San Francisco to Studio City.

The star performer was @goochybaby brother @joshuaraygooch another natty dresser, seemingly talented, who plays guitar and has great riffs and swinging, blunt cut hair. I wondered if the Gooch Brothers were related to writer Brad Gooch.

There was the guy who makes the fancy shoes  @2120handcrafted. He lives in Lincoln Heights and some of his shoes are upholstered with cow-hair. He recently wrote about his ventures on Facebook:

“The last few months have been amazing for 2120. Garret and I [me]. [We] have been selling at both the Rose Bowl Flea Market and Melrose Trading Post where we have connected with some amazing new customers. It’s simply just us enjoying our Sunday speaking to people about our shoes. Thank you all so much for the support and as always, feel free to join us today at Melrose.”

@bradleyjcalder

Tall, blond, long-haired photographer @bradleyjcalder was there in bell-bottoms and I asked him to try on a strangely gorgeous salmon colored jacket from @clutchgolf. I wondered if he was related to artist Alexander Calder.

In the virtual postage stamp rollout of friends, people who knew one another, people whom I just met, everyone was a friend, all had been inducted into a club where creatives supported creatives and all ventures were destined for success.

There was a link online, a chain of love, holding everyone together, every hashtag and heart was a gesture of affection and support.

To paraphrase Pharoah: “So it was posted. So it will be done.”

The cow-hair shoe man told me that the long-haired photographer, “an expert studio shooter” would be creating visuals for a new 2120 catalog. @goochybaby told me @ethanmwong was amazing and @ethanmwong told me we had to grab coffee.

I don’t think anybody that attended the event last night bought anything, such as the $200 shirts, $250 trousers or $80 candles or the exquisite, unconstructed salmon colored sportcoat. Or perhaps they did. I’m making assumptions…

One of the characteristics of young artsy life is that everything is a promotion, but nobody gets paid, so nobody can afford anything, but the virtual postage stamp rollout convinces the world you are dazzlingly successful.

In the end, I left, shaking hands, not hugging, retaining the vestiges of my generation where you only hugged people you knew and loved, mostly in private.

I walked back, alone, and passed an outdoor, black and white sign at Inko Nito restaurant which read:

Live in the moment. Savor the moment.

Dinner With the Hollywood Advisor.

Posted in CultureTagged , , , , , , 2 Comments

The other night I went to dinner at the home of The Hollywood Advisor, “Jason” who owns a little cabin (“Worst home in Malibu” his wife calls it) nestled into a canyon, mockingly rustic, but worth millions.

They had just returned, from their yearly six-week jaunt across several continents. The family skied in Switzerland for a few days, then dad flew them to Peru, and they ended up in Brazil and came back home to Malibu.

“By the way, the food sucks in Peru. Bourdain is fucking wrong,” Jason told me.

Wife is Selena, a toned, Bulgarian born woman in her late 40s fond of red wine and yoga. Her stunning daughter Samanatha is 13 and goes to school at a private academy near the Pacific. The boy, Igor, is also handsome and quite scientific, showing off his new telescope on the back deck within the gurgling sound of the creek.

The aura of the evening, sounds, on paper, relaxing, yet Jason, who directed an Oscar winning film in 2000, had clenched teeth and some annoyance at what’s been happening with his life. He was tense, perhaps because he strictly abstains from alcohol.

“This whole town is fucking nuts. I take meetings, sometimes two a week, and I meet with A list people, and then projects seem to get off the ground, and I’m attached for big bucks, and then they pull the rug out from under me,” he told me as he stir fried tofu and organically harvested shrimp.

A doorbell rang and Jason commanded aloud, “Alexa open the front door!”

The front door opened by wireless butler, and in walked Carla, a tall, long-haired actress in her early 40s who was carrying a small white dog in her arms. The dog and the actor excited Selena who hadn’t said a word to me yet ran up to Carla and the dog and embraced them.

“Do you love Fergie? Isn’t she amazing?” Carla asked blue-eyed Samantha.

“Yes! She’s like the most amazing dog ever!” Samantha responded.

Selena, the wife, who had been curled up on the sofa, jumped up and asked Carla if she wanted something to drink.

“Do you have any red wine?” Carla asked.

“Yes, try this. It’s so amazing!” Selena said as she poured two-buck chuck into a glass.

Selena patted Carla’s hair. “I love your hair. The color is so amazing.”

“Thank you. I go to Ronnie. Your guy in Venice. He is so amazing,” she said.

“I know. He is just like the most amazing haircutter ever. Amazing,” Selena said.

“Is Pushkin coming?” Carla asked.

“He’s supposed to,” Jason responded.

Pushkin was their friend, a 5’6, NJ born, reality TV producer who reinvented himself mid-life, painting $7,000+ artworks out of Crayola crayons, which featured renderings of 6 foot high, childlike disciplinary commands from grade school, “I promise not to throw spit balls in class!” which were drawn 20 or 30 times on one oversized canvas and were now beloved by all of Abbot Kinney and that 30ish crowd from the Church of Amazing.

“Pushkin just spent $40,000 on succulents at his new house! And then they had to rip them all out because his new girlfriend hates them,” Jason said as if he were recounting a story of horrific tragedy.

“This is my buddy from Reseda,” Jason said to Carla, introducing me.

“Oh hello! I heard about you. Don’t you do watches or something? You design them and sell them online?” she asked.

I had given Jason a wristwatch in November, which somehow was now on Carla’s wrist. “I love this! Jason gave it to me! It’s your company right?” she asked.

It was the watch I had given Jason as a gift, which he re-gifted to Carla.

It was like that with Jason, you found out about something he did by accident, his duplicity was never an outright lie, just an omission of fact. You were never quite aware of the whole honest story with him.

A few years earlier we had been together on a Sunday morning for breakfast in Santa Monica. I asked him what he was up to for the rest of the day. “Oh, nothing. Probably go home and crash on the couch,” he said. A few days later on Facebook were photos of his daughter’s birthday party that day with some of our mutual friends.

“It’s such an amazing watch. I wore it to the art show and Pushkin complimented it. If Pushkin likes it, it must be gorgeous!” Carla told me.

We nibbled at various small plates that Jason produced. He was enamored of a certain French butter that came in a small straw tub and he insisted we all dip our potato chips into the butter and savor its exquisite foreignness.

“This butter is amazing!” Carla said.

Selena and Samantha also dipped their potato chips in and said, almost in unison, “Oh my God. This butter is amazing.”

Carla spoke about her home in Sardinia and she invited Jason and his family to come visit her in July. “We probably will stop over in Sardinia because we are going to Egypt, Russia and Japan in August.”

“Do you think Pushkin will be in Sardinia too?” Carla asked.

“I know he is going to the art show in Rome so I assume he will be able to go. But “The Slob” is going into production in August so I’m not sure he will be able to.

“The Slob” was a new reality show with Britney Spears where she transformed slobs into stylish men and women. It was, sadly, going to be Pushkin’s final Executive Producing job in Hollywood. His art career was taking off, and he was starting to sell each Crayola creation for $15,000.

“I think the concept is so fucking brilliant. I mean it’s so amazing to take a slob and make him look great. Only Pushkin would think of that!” Jason said.

We drank a few more glasses of wine and then Jason took out a jar of olives. “Try these. They are so amazing!” he said.

Towards the end of the evening, Igor came up to me, rather empathetically, and asked if I wanted to look up at the moon through his high-powered telescope.

We went out onto the deck and peered into the heavens, contemplating a universe above and beyond Los Angeles.