About, but not limited to, Van Nuys, CA.
The great civic spirit of Los Angeles is in evidence here at MacArthur Park. Along “world class” Wilshire Boulevard, somewhere between Beverly Hills and the financial district of downtown. No wonder there is no money to take care of this historic park.
Photo: USC Digital Archive
In 1939, Sepulveda at Magnolia in Sherman Oaks was a country road, surrounded by open agricultural fields. Today, it is a busy urban boulevard.
In planning and developing a city, it is important to have at least an imaginary idea of how you hope it will turn out. Did the city fathers, 70 years ago, understand that endless sprawl, single family homes, malls and asphalt stretching 100 miles into the desert, with four cars for every family might make Los Angeles into the international dystopia that it is today?
And what about old Van Nuys? It went from orange groves and picket fences in 1945 to a thriving suburb of 1960 and then descended into decay and crime in the 1980’s. It is only now crawling out, slowly, unsure of where it is heading, but trying to deal with illegal immigration, air pollution, inferior housing, bad schools and an unacceptably high level of criminality.
I am conservative in matters of law and order and believe we need to greatly increase the number of cops in LA to patrol this city more effectively. But I cannot ignore the liberal arguments which correctly point out that a nation spending $453 billion in Iraq cannot muster the resources to take care of its own domestic priorities. We cannot even guard and defend our southern border, yet we have the arrogance to invade another nation halfway around the world!
Can’t most people see the connection? Spend America’s hard earned tax dollars on the American nation first, before wasting billions to “spread democracy” overseas……
What kind of a city would LA be if it had $450 billion to spend on public transportation, law enforcement, open space preservation, fine schools and health care?
In the past few years, I have witnessed assaults, robberies and break-ins, violent drivers and threatening lunatics on the street. A few of those times, I have dialed 9-1-1 and thought that perhaps I was going crazy. Nobody answered the phone. If they did answer, and I told them about the crime in progress, they put me on hold and then the call was transferred to L.A.P.D. who answered with a Spanish speaking recorded message.
Now, an L.A. Times article confirms that the 9-1-1 system is completely overwhelmed by phone calls. There are some emergency calls that take TWENTY-SEVEN minutes to be answered. The reason: the California Highway Patrol, in an archaic arrangement, takes “mobile” calls that used to originate only from drivers. Since we all use wireless phones now, the CHP has become the clearinghouse for every single mobile 9-1-1 call.
The L.A. Times article is terrifying because it details how long it takes for help to arrive. Anyone who lives in L.A. knows that we are under policed, but we are now living in a 21st Century city with a response system that cannot respond.
If you need help, don’t call 9-1-1.
I was thinking about how it is a sport in New York to dis L.A. You know, how they say this city is superficial, stupid, sprawling, etc. Even though they worship at the personalities altar of Arod and Trump. New York is far more obsessed with the right address, the right school, the right side of the park…than LA.
But just as Reyner Banham loves LA, I find that a lot of Europeans do as well. They don’t care that it sprawls, they come from suffocatingly gray cities with oppressive rows of worker housing. They don’t mind the superficiality, because it is fun and mindless, and they come from places where serious debates, politics and two thousand years of tradition dictate who you are.
Imagine a Brit from a cold, rainy, damp place who finds himself in Santa Monica. If he is smart enough to make good money, and finds a way to live happily, he can bike to the beach, sit in the sun, and live well.
It is true that we have an appalling amount of ugliness in LA. Our schools, health care, air quality and crime rate are in need of a major overhaul. But we also live in the most freewheeling city in the freest nation on Earth. A place where people become rich working on video games, or selling $80 t-shirts, or ripped up jeans, or writing dumb movie scripts….and we do it in our flip-flops, in tanned tattooed bodies and don’t give a shit about the rest of the world…mostly.
That’s why Europeans love LA. Because it is so………. un-European.
In my recounting of the “Studio City Camera” story, where I walked around the affluent Colfax area at noon and happened to meet another photographer, I apparently touched a nerve.
About 11am, on Tuesday, I had parked my car on in front of 4107 Troost, in Studio City, which is a lovely 1936 ranch with a picket fence and mature trees. I came there to shoot some photos.
Then I wandered around the neighborhood and walked about six blocks east towards Tujunga. I saw a woman with a Canon DSLR, also taking photos on Kraft. We stopped to chat. It turned out that she was there to scout locations for KMart. I told her about the Troost house, but couldn’t quite remember how to find it. She remarked that the house “sounded perfect”. I casually said to her, “Well if you want to give me a lift back to my car which is parked in front ot it, I can show you where it is.”
She said to me, “No. That would be TOO WEIRD.” So she got into her car, drove off, probably not ever finding the “ideal house”. I eventually walked back to my car.
Evidently, she used great judgment in refusing me a ride. But…..
It’s a fact that perhaps it isn’t smart for a woman to pick up a strange man and give him a ride. But to some readers, this woman would have been taking an enormous risk, to transport me, in broad daylight, six blocks back. If perhaps, I was a violent man, I might have carjacked and raped her, yet neither one of us was intoxicated, and I was clearly an intelligent, articulate, and helpful fellow photographer.
I also wrote that I am clean shaven and white, which apparantly was “racist”. That’s what I am and I make no apologies. I don’t have tattoos, or a pierced tongue and metal ringed nostrils, and I don’t have a big build, with steroids or weigh 250 lbs. Do you see my point? I’m 5’9, 175 lbs, with a short haircut.
Someone wrote that Ted Bundy, the killer, was also white and clean shaven. So what? If it’s wrong to point out that most murders in this city are committed by non-whites, than I will politely refer you to the LA TImes homicide report. The victims are almost entirely black and Hispanic. That in itself is an injustice and wrong.
And it is also “sexist” to broadly label any man, such as me, as a threat to women. Don’t put me into the category of Ted Bundy when I more clearly fit into the shoes of Woody Allen.
The same Studio City women, who are so averse to the “awful risk” of giving me a ride, will be speeding at 50 mph down Moorpark in their 2 ton S.U.V’s, drinking coffee and talking on their mobile phones oblivious to anyone else’s life, but confident that their own pleasure and comfort is foremost.
Funny that what we fear the most is the least dangerous and what we do daily is oftentimes the riskiest.
Here in Van Nuys 
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