Category: Uncategorized

Here in Van Nuys, Martin Wehmann of Modern Outdoor, manufactures a beautiful, contemporary line of outdoor furniture made of such materials as a Brazilian hardwood called Ipe and electro-polished stainless steel. He is also an environmentalist who uses some composite products in assembling his pieces.

Martin Wehmann and Tom Sandonato have put their design expertise to good use, as we saw this weekend, when we were introduced to the new “KitHaus“, a zinc clad, architecturally dazzling modular house. Soaring stainless steel ceilings, bamboo floors and light filled interiors are simple, elegant and calming. The precise workmanship is as finely engineered and tested as a BMW Z8. It was a very windy day, but with the dual glazed windows shut, it was completely silent and air tight. A small white bathroom with opaque windows is in the back of the unit. KitHaus is perfect for a work space, an extra guest room or a (deserving) teen-ager’s hang out.

The Kithaus differs from some modular homes in that it is pre-cut and pre-drilled at the Van Nuys factory, but it is assembled on the buyer’s site for greater flexibility and ease of transport.

While many people might look at these and see a future home office and a place for the in-laws to stay, they are also a partial solution to the social problem of homeless people. Bank of America and City of Los Angeles should join hands to buy some of these Kit Haus homes and create small villages throughout the city where six or eight units can be arranged around a common garden. The vast parking lots behind some banks on Van Nuys Boulevard, now filled with people living out of shopping carts, could make a lovely future spot for a community of Kit Haus dwellers.

More photos of KitHaus.

PHOTOS of 1910 era Santa Monica and circa 1950 Venice: http://www.uncanny.net/~wetzel/vsline.htm

The plan by Westside City Councilman Bill Rosendahl to fund a subway by raising the sales tax one half cent has infuriated the “Daily News”. Not only do they object based on higher taxes, but they also throw in resentment:

” So while the San Fernando Valley and other transit-starved parts of the region make do with inadequate bus lines, the tony Westside would get the Cadillac of public transportation in a Wilshire Corridor subway to the beach.”

That’s right. The rich and snotty people who live near the beach would somehow have de-luxe transportation paid for by taxing foreigners living in Calabasas and Northridge.

So let’s not raise the sales tax. Let’s repeal Proposition #13 and raise commerical and property taxes to where they should be so we can have a state wide solution to traffic problems.

The next time my NJ based parents visit me in Van Nuys, and my brother and his family in Marina Del Rey, I’m going to remind them that it’s unfair that little Ricky has a subway while I just have an Orange Busway. We’ll have that talk as we speed along the 405 and the 10, unencumbered by traffic.

PHOTO: http://flickr.com/photos/jackbox/78992080

LA Weekly’s Malina Saval writes about teen boys in LA in her article, “The Secret Life of Boys”:

“Mason was 14 years old when he spent 94 days in a tony youth rehab center in Los Angeles…”

“Lee Mason is an Indie Fuck. The membership rules are as follows: Have hair in front of your eyes, own at least two shirts promoting bands too obscure for anyone but another Indie Fuck to know, have a Livejournal.com or Myspace.com account, drink way too much, own the Royal Teitelbaums DVD, be not-so-sure-you’re-gay-it’s-sad, and listen to music by the likes of Modest Mouse, The Shins and Elliott Smith, preferably the post-humous stuff”

“A few months back, Mason’s mother caught him screwing some girl in her tidy house up on Mullholland…”

“Vincent Estrada has to wait until Tuesday to find out if he’s the one who gave an ex-boyfriend chlamydia.”

“Freddy Vasquez is an Outlaw. A rebel. A Tagger. The 19-year old has spray painted, scrawled and marked the word TIKAL across more schools, parks and cars than the Hollywood High Senior (he flunked a year and had to repeat it) cares to remember.”

Drugs, dropping out, flunking class, tagging, doing rehab, hating yourself, hating your parents, hanging out….haven’t we heard this garbage since at least 1955 when Nicholas Ray directed, “Rebel Without a Cause”? Why do these indie writers have to adhere to their own ideological interpretations of teen boy self-destruction? Who ever sees a story about the ones who do well, who get fine grades, who contribute something to their community and are still cool for doing so? Is there ever a teen starring in these LA WEEKLY exposes who doesn’t say, “So I started hanging out with some people, you know, got drunk at their houses, smoked a lot of pot.”

“Adolescent naivete has sadly gone the way of the dinosaur”, Saval writes. Oh really? Was an adolescent, like Gore Vidal, (who grew up reading Homer and Plato in 1930s Washington, DC) somehow less “sophisticated” than the mobile phone carrying,self-indulgent teens of today who download I-tunes and hang out for 10 hours a day in front of their Imacs? If you live in Silver Lake and your mom is an actress with shaggy hair and your dad was once a drummer for Inxs surely you possess more savoir faire and insight into life than any 40 year-old. Is being smart and aware only about parroting the styles worn at New Community Jewish High School in West Hills? When most high schools stopped teaching Latin, geography, grammar, and calculus in the 1970’s, did the graduates who emerged from those degree factories suddenly become the most hip and well-educated humans in human history? Or did we become a nation enamored of dumbness who confuse fashion and slang with education and wisdom?

In LA Weekly, one never hears about the people who aren’t covered with tattoos and taking every pharmaceutical under the sun while whining that they have ADD. Subjective casting of outcasts, and not statistical facts about the vast majority of boys, is what created this article.

One hears ominously about the Christian right agenda to brainwash America, but one never hears why they might feel compelled to do so. LA Weekly, the great sage of liberal thought, somehow thinks the worst qualities in our children are worth praising and exploring without ethical or moral judgment.

One of the mysteries of Los Angeles is how a city that produces so many films and stories about the entire world, indeed the universe, and creates a celluloid reality of such manifold visual imagination and wonder…… is so aesthetically ugly. Citizens here truly put up with an enormous amount of grossness in our midst and seem to accept that we cannot build anything better.

Mike Ramon, a friend of mine from Flickr, recently visited Brazil and captured some remarkable images of a place called Paraty. He wrote, “If you ever get a chance, you should visit. It’s a 3 1/2 hour drive from Rio. It’s an old fishing village in the jungle on the sea.” Mr. Ramon’s photos’ show a dignified place where grace and elegance are in evidence. It is no doubt a poor area, one that hasn’t even a tenth of the wealth of Los Angeles.

Yet who can look at the images of Paraty and not feel joy? What pleasures are there in the hideous monstrosity at the corner of Kester and Victory? Which country is rich and which is poor? What are we Americans working so hard for if the end results are the deformed and degraded mini-malls of Van Nuys and other places?

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Demand from the public has inspired us to offer this new convenience.

Thanks for your support.

Andrew

Monty sent me a photo of this building and asked if anyone could help identify it.

It reminds me of a Julius Schulman photograph of a building in Palm Springs, but that may be all wrong.

Monty, who plays a SF Valley trivia history game with his friends, knows the answer:

“Found out this is a photo of the Northridge Hospital in the very early 50s. I sure couldn’t find it anywhere on the web & it turns out we got spoofed by our trivia moderator….he actually took the photo way back then & just posted it to see if any of us could come up with an answer….Guess he got HIS answer ’cause none of the trivia players got it.”
Monty.”