Category: Van Nuys and the Valley

1956: Crazy Times

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These are a selection of violent news stories from just a few months in 1956, mostly related to people in Van Nuys, but also in Canoga Park and Burbank.

It is common to look back at the 1950s, especially in Los Angeles, as a less violent and less chaotic era. Old-time residents of the San Fernando Valley remember it as a verdant, peaceful, fun, and safe place. 

But there was actually a 62% increase in crime in the SFV from 1954-55.[1]

More Police Asked for West Part of Valley

True one could buy a house for $14,000. But the average US household income in 1956 was $5,000 a year or about $96 (before tax) dollars a week.  And nobody drove their children to school in Los Angeles. The kids walked or biked. Affordable houses and children on foot: two extinct attributes of life in Southern California.

Then, as now, the horrors of sudden death were attributable to two beloved things profuse in our city: cars and guns. 

1/9/56: Burbank motorcycle officer, William Catlin, 44, said he owes his life to citizens who helped him subdue youth he said threatened to kill him during questioning. Reginald Lemon, 18 was booked on suspicion of assault with intent to commit murder.

5/14/56: Three persons were shot to death, a fourth critically wounded, at 19859 Saticoy St., Canoga Park. Regis Johnston, 35 went berserk and killed his wife Jean, 30 and Bessie Mungall, 35 and wounded Bessie’s husband John, 40. Regis Johnston then took his own life by shotgun.

6/18/56: Rudolph Liberace, 24, of Van Nuys, brother of pianist Lee Liberace, is shown in jail after his arrest as a burglary suspect.

9/30/56: Protecting the mid 1950s’ 600,000 residents of the San Fernando Valley (2018: 1.75 million) were 418 LAPD officers who were crammed into the 1933 Van Nuys City Hall which was designed to only house 45 cops. The new regional police buildings that were later built around the San Fernando Valley in the late 1950s and early 1960s helped alleviate the primitive conditions of the old headquarters.

10/18/56: In the midst of a strike by laborers at Hydro-Aire, Inc. in Burbank, a striker’s wife in Van Nuys, Mrs. Patricia Laszlo, 21, of 9920 Saticoy St. was cooking dinner when a masked, leather jacketed thug entered the house and beat her and knocked her out. He struck her in the abdomen and threatened to burn her fingers on a stove if her husband, James Laszlo, 22, a machinist, did not return to work. The International Association of Machinists, Lodge 727 is the union picketing the plant at 3000 Winona St. Burbank.

10/23/56: Twenty-one juveniles were arrested for vandalism including Robert E. Farmer, 18 of 15001 Paddock St., Van Nuys who was apprehended by custodians as he and a friend attempted to crack a safe in the student store at San Fernando High School, 11133 O’Melveny St. Both were booked on suspicion of burglary.

11/23/56: A 31-year old mother of a 10-year-old boy took a 22-caliber rifle, shot her son to death and then killed herself. Julia McIrvin of 7240 Woodman Ave., Van Nuys, died in the Valley Emergency Hospital along with her son. Twice divorced, she suffered from mental issues.

11/30/56: A Youth Dies, 4 Hurt in 3-Car Smashup on Sepulveda. The youth was a native of Germany, Karl Schmidl, 21, who was driving southbound in his lightweight, imported car when he plowed into a northbound car with four people driven by Leonard W. Kraska, 30, of 14259 Vanowen St. Van Nuys; James Robert Parker, 48 of 9261 Wakefield Ave, Van Nuys; and Earl Schapps, 53, of 8850 Tyrone Ave. Van Nuys.

[1]10/4/1956 LA Times: “More Police Asked For West Part of Valley”

Densmore and Stagg, N. of Saticoy.

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Drive west on Saticoy St., past the 405 and turn right/north, onto Densmore Avenue. 

You are still, according to Google Maps, in Van Nuys. (all apologies to Lake Balboa, which seems to have some fourteen boundariesaround its neighborhood.)

On Densmore, near Stagg, you’ll find, as I did, a neat, monotonous, hard-working district of small companies; mostly hidden behind bricks and barred windows.

Creative Age Productions at 7628 Densmore is there. They publish beauty magazines. Nailpro, Eyelash and Dayspa are some of their best-known publications. These titles are often competing with mirrors for customer attention.

They are neighbors with: Superior Shipping Supplies, New Rule Productions, Regency Fire Protection; and Kedem Properties, 7752 Densmore, which sounds like a Kosher wine but is actually a commercial property company. 

Black Sheep Enterprises, at 15745 Stagg, manufactures theatrical and stage drapery, a specialty one cannot buy off the shelves of Target.

The Katsu-Ya Group at 15819 Stagg owns nine sushi restaurants around the Southland. They are incongruously housed in a white and brown brick Mexican style building with arched designs.

Katsu-Ya Headquarters at 15819 Stagg St.

And the American Rubber and Supply Co. at 15849 Stagg St. has been in business since 1947 and is a supplier of industrial rubber products. Your car mat, your yoga mat, and your kitchen mat, next to the kitchen sink, might have all come from here.

New Rule FX at 7751 Densmore makes special effects props and supplies for movies, TV and theater. If you need piles of fake US currency, realistic cheeseburgers in rubber, or a room full of exploding balsa wood furniture , then this is the place to shop.  Their free-floating, fantastical, imaginative fantasies are constructed behind a dismal, prisonlike façade of white cinderblocks and steel bars.

Where Stagg St. bisects Densmore Ave is Mission Industrial Park, announced by a two-posted, two-fisted, old Western kind of sign with raised letters on a wide wooden board hung 20’ high over the street.  It welcomes you to a white-walled alley of various buildings presumably under one owner who felt compelled to establish an identity for her vastly unremarkable assemblage.

Mission Industrial Park.

We went all around here, on public sidewalks, a few days ago, to shoot some photos for a mens’ fashion brand called Magill Los Angeles.  

James and Carter were the models.

Along Densmore Av. Carter (L) and James.

James was 19 and had long blonde hair and said he was born in South Los Angeles but had moved with his father to North Dakota. He was now living in New York City and visiting Hollywood to strike up a modeling career. He had the dazed and confused 70s aura from juvenile and stoned Reseda. He works at McDonalds now but may well be famous in 2029.

Carter, actor, came from North Carolina and was well-read, articulate and sensitive to both words and pollen.

James

The day was sunny, the wind was blowing, the boys were happy and we went to eat tacos later at Tacos Hell Yeah which they said was their best ever meal in LA.

Tacos Hell Yeah
7607 White Oak Ave, Reseda, CA 91335

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Those industrial compounds, like the Stagg/Densmore District, are the hidden places in the San Fernando Valley that nobody knows about. 

Tidy, productive, industrious, they are the old lifeblood of Los Angeles, where your late Uncle Bernie, with the cigar in his mouth and the bad gallbladder, set up shop after the war and bought a three bedroom, rock-roofed ranch up on Zelzah Avenue with a delightful kidney-shaped pool.

He had little patience for tears, or men who didn’t know the difference between a wrench or a pliers, having served up ice cream at Montgomery Ward until he enlisted in ’42 and saw action at Guadalcanal. He was never bored, because he was always busy, and you vowed you would never become Uncle Bernie but you’ve done quite worse, haven’t you? He had work and a family, and a company, and a paid for house and you made fun of it, but now life laughs at you.

Aside from the work that goes on inside these shops, there is nothing to do in this area for someone in search of stimulation. Densmore and Stagg and parts around here are boring, without street life. Yet men and women in these enterprises are engaged in work, absorbed in inventions, and creating products that are, in many respects, quite interesting.

Along Stagg St.

Magill: Target/N. Van Nuys
(Not near the Densmore/Stagg/ Mission Industrial District)
James on the Raymer St. Bridge, Van Nuys, CA.

6353 Van Nuys Bl.

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6353 Van Nuys Bl is at the NW corner of Friar St and VNB, one block south of Victory.

I recently came across a commercial real estate advertisement for this building.

It is a 1939, streamline moderne style structure with 7,330 feet of leaseable space. Asking price to purchase is $2.1 million dollars.

The property description is very pleasant, sounding like a building that Mildred Pierce might have set her eyes upon:

“This renovated property is located at the signalized intersection of the northwest corner of Friar St. & Van Nuys Blvd. in Van Nuys, in close proximity to many government agencies, local institutions as well as a dozen car dealerships, all within a 2-mile radius. The Los Angeles Superior Court, the LA Department of Building and Safety, the Van Nuys Library and the DMV Office attract a large number of visitors and help to create a traffic count of over 36,000 cars per day. The property is located in an Opportunity Zone.”

On the DWP historical site, there is a photograph of this building, and that corner, and the bustling, prosperous, clean, diagonal parking surroundings of Van Nuys Boulevard in the 1950s. It housed an Owl Drug Store, a chain of its time. Back then, like now, Angelenos spent a large amount of their leisure time walking around drug stores and imagining that various potions for sale would restore youth and keep one alive for many years.

“Postcard view looking north on Van Nuys Boulevard toward Friar Street with Owl Drug Store at the N/W corner.  Across the street, on the N/E corner, stands Cowdrey’s Pharmacy and the Beneficial Finance Company office.  Behind that can be seen the signs for Hart’s Jewelers and the Oasis Club “-DWP

VNB at Victory looking northwest. 1955 (DWP)

That was then. What exists now is too dirty and depraved for the family audience of this blog.

What is the use again of belaboring the tired state of Van Nuys in 2019? But belabor I must……

Beyond the walls of 6353 Van Nuys Bl. hundreds of people sleep on the street, behind alleys, on bus benches. Nobody shops here willingly anymore, in a state of happiness or anticipation or delight.

What we have now are memories of lawful and patrolled streets peopled by legitimate industries from the bad old days when women were living in #metoo times and were forced to wear dresses, hats, gloves, heels, and hose and men were enslaved in lifetime skilled jobs, promised pensions after retirement, with $2 a month health insurance premiums and put into paying $64.99 a month mortgages. Their children walked and rode bikes to local schools, and might have even gone to the corner store to buy candies or add to their stamp collections. Entertainment consisted of many musicals, westerns, dramas, comedies staring such forgotten nobodies as Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Lauren Bacall or Van Nuys’ Marilyn Monroe.

How lucky we are to be living now when our phones are our life and life beyond our phone is of no interest to us because what we want and desire is entirely online.

Garbage Shaming.

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Calvert St. e. of Kester

A few weeks ago I wrote about how my home in Van Nuys was cited by the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety (LADBS) for “Loose, peeling or flaking paint along the fascia boards at gables and eaves.” Proactive Code Enforcement inspectors were sent out to walk around the neighborhood and cite properties in need of maintenance. Mine was cited, a notice hung on my front door, and an official demerit is now a government record.

It was sort of bitterly funny, a kind of karmic boomerang, for this writer. 

I have this blog, you see, and all I do is walk around, write and photograph such egregious violations of sanitation, cleanliness and order that it boggles the mind. 

Since 2006, Here in Van Nuys has been shouting in the ears of Former Councilman, now Congressman Tony Cardenas; and now Ms. Nury Martinez, his successor, whose record of housekeeping leaves something to be desired as well.

How does an elected figure work in the center of downtown Van Nuys and see all the garbage, all the dumping, all the homeless encampments around and not make it her number one priority? Is there not an element of shame in allowing Van Nuys to look as it does when you are in charge of it?

2009: Eastside of Kester near Victory. Nothing has changed in ten years.

Since 2006, Woodley Park has become a grotesque outdoor garbage filled encampment of such utter despondency that one can forget that it is actually a beautiful park, a bird and wildlife sanctuary, a recreational asset, a place for biking, running, hiking, field sports. It is not, and never was supposed to be, skid row.

“The latest storms have left a path of destruction for homeless who had been living in the Sepulveda Flood basin. During heavy rains the dam is closed to control downstream flows causing the area to flood, sometimes in minutes. The hundreds of homeless who live in the secluded area known as “the Bamboos” flee leaving everything behind.” (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

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On the walk to and from MacLeod Ale on Calvert last evening, again I saw how utterly sad the upkeep and the maintenance of some areas of Van Nuys are. These are streets within a five-minute walk of Councilwoman Nury Martinez’s office. 

If I were her, I would take a weekly walk around the neighborhood with my staff and photograph and document this. Send it up the food chain to Mayor Eric Garcetti, and to Governor Gavin Newsom and demand that the city and the state step in and end this!

3/5/18 Bessemer at Cedros.
  • 3/5/18 Bessemer at Cedros.
  • 3/5/18 Bessemer at Cedros.
  • Cedros St. near Bessemer.
  • Calvert St. Van Nuys, CA.
  • Calvert St. e. of Kester.
  • Calvert St. e. of Kester

Incident at The Sad Ralph’s

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The Sad Ralph’s is the Ralph’s at Burbank and Van Nuys Boulevard. It is the one closest to my house and the one I almost never go to. It is too sad there.

The people who shop here are the heart and soul of the in-between land of Sherman Oaks and Van Nuys, a place where the overworked, the underappreciated, the overwhelmed and the underpaid push around big grocery carts full of frozen pizzas, ice creams, sodas, frozen potato salads, pre-heated hot dogs, cool whip and hot nachos. 

Anything that can go down an open mouth is sold here. 

Many customers skip the checkout line and just grab whatever they want off the shelf and walk back out. Others are homeless, the fastest growing religion in Los Angeles. And then there are always people set up with petition tables to ask you to stop and contribute to end hunger, end abuse, end suffering or buy Girl Scout cookies or cookies for girls in the Boy Scouts.

There are fresh foods sold here, but they also stock “fresh” strawberries, blueberries, peaches and pears year round. Where they are grown ranges from Chile to Thailand to the Arctic Circle. 

The checkout lines are always monstrously long. Every woman around you is in black, head to toe, and is enormous. There are tattooed actors, up and coming exotic dancers, and your elderly neighbors from next door, who are just pulling up, shell-shocked, in a gold 1999 Buick LeSabre. 

The atmosphere in line is raucous or indifferent, and there are always a few men in line with their butt cracks showing.

But today I stood near a sour-faced young woman. She placed her fitness bars on the conveyer belt along with her thermal foiled bag that she must have brought along to hold a frozen pizza. 

She made no attempt to push her things forward to allow me to upload, and she stood silent as the middle-aged cashier with the ruddy complexion, bunions, glasses and back-ache rang up the items and then started to bag them. The Sad Ralph’s has little to no baggers and the cashiers themselves do the bagging since Ralph upped hourly salaries by 50 cents.

Then an argument started up. The annoyed shopper was annoyed because the fitness bars were put inside the thermal lined bag. “I wanted my pizza in here!” she snapped. The cashier, a veteran, no doubt, of many children, grandchildren and multiple husbands, was unmoved. 

“Go ahead. Bag it as you like. You said nothing when I started bagging, ” said the no bullshit cashier.

“So I have to do your job for you!” the young bitch said, without empathy for the older woman who stood on her feet all day scanning junk foods and fresh peaches from Antartica.

When the young bitch left, the cashier laughed bitterly. 

“My husband is from Nebraska and he can’t believe the people in this State of California,” she said. 

I made the cashier feel better and told her I understood how wrong the previous customer was. 

I was also enraged, as all Americans are these days, offline or online or on this line. 

And then we saw the bitch speaking to the store manager outside.

“Let her bitch, I have nothing to lose,” said the cashier, probably dreaming of happy days ahead at the Agua Caliente Casino.

Later, in the parking lot, I saw the sour faced one get into an SUV. As it drove past I spotted Indiana license plates and breathed a sigh of relief.

The Hoosier State. 

So that’s where all the rude people come from.

Kester Square: Bassett St/1950

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With no down payment, for $44.50 a month, you could buy a brand new, 2 bedroom, 1 bath home in Van Nuys in 1950 starting at $7,950.00 ($83,033.63 today).

Kester Square, a little pocket of 37 new single-family residences, was quickly erected in a few months and planted on old farmland just steps from Kester and Vanowen.

The San Fernando Valley was booming five years after the end of WWII and every smoking factory, every plan to build thousands of little houses on every square inch of land, and the daily, hourly pouring down of asphalt over millions of bulldozed walnut and orange groves was a continual occasion for rejoicing.

In Kester Square, new sewers, paved streets, sidewalks, curbs, lawns and shrubs, along with clothes lines and a backyard incinerator made life very instantly suburban ideal. There was no environmental review, just men in suits with money buying up land and building everywhere.

5/21/50 LA Times

Van Nuys Boulevard, “2 minutes away” from Kester Square, still had chain stores, restaurants, theaters and diagonal parking. It’s ruination, starting with street widening, began in 1955 and it has been on its death bed ever since.

Circa 1950.
1953 Van Nuys Boulevard.

Today when you drive down Bassett St., just west of Kester, a few blocks north of Vanowen, you still encounter a neat, tidy, small home pocket of pleasant houses. The general non-affluence of the area acts as a preservation tool because nobody can afford to or make money tearing down houses and replacing them with oversized uglies.

You would not dare venture out at night to stroll down Kester to Vanowen, but if you stayed home, or went out into your yard, front or back, you would still have a nice place to live, almost 70 years after Floyd C. Fisher, owner-builder, built a couple thousand homes for white veterans and their families.

Vanowen near Kester. Housing in Van Nuys, CA/ 2007.
5 7 1950 LA Times