Category: Van Nuys and the Valley

The Departing Storm

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The ladle shaped storm that began to pound the Southland on Friday, February 17, 2017 arrived like a landing jet over the Pacific. It circled, counter-clockwise, landing onto Los Angeles, dropping horizontal blasts of wind, and pounding sheets of rain. It blew down trees, power lines, cable and telephone wires, flooded roads and carried away cars. And drowned our sinned and parched city in a cascade of baptizing waters.

A few died in strange and tragic ways. A man on Sepulveda was electrocuted fatally after strong gusts brought down a tree that hit an electrified power line. Another man was drowned in a raging creek at Thousand Oaks.

What minor choices of life, where to walk, what path to take, might bring us to death?

In Studio City, at Woodbridge St at Laurel Canyon, an aged sewer burst under water pressure and pulled out the soil underneath the road. A 30-foot wide, 20-foot deep hole emerged, sucking two drivers and their two vehicles into a subterranean river. People in those cars were rescued. Thankfully, nobody died or were seriously injured.

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Here in Van Nuys, on Hamlin Street, late yesterday afternoon, the departing storm closed its one-woman show, packed its bags, and headed east.

Solar klieg lights were aimed on the darkened sky as its magnificent performer paraded off stage, led by a chorus line of tall, skinny palm trees, lined up to bid good-bye to the wind and the fury, the destruction and the drama.

It was a thrilling show, taking our eyes off the irrationality in Washington, and bringing us back to the true leader of the planet, one who never relinquishes power, but whose atmospheric whims are capricious, indifferent, and violent, but somehow understandable and predictable.

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The Columbus Curse

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Shopping Cart on Columbus
Shopping Cart on Columbus

The pocket of houses bounded by Victory, Kester, Sepulveda and Vanowen is mostly neat, and well-kept, full of sturdy ranch houses and domestic bonhomie.

But along unimproved Columbus slumminess prevails.

While there are remnants of rural Van Nuys, large parcels of land that once grew oranges and walnuts, most are now inhabited by  abandoned or neglected houses, illegal dumping of cars, illegal businesses set up with nurseries, and others of dubious intent where tow trucks show up at 3am and weird men disappear behind locked, fenced gates.

Each family home has been miserable in its own distinct way, to paraphrase Tolstoy.

There was the hillbilly brigade that sold drugs out of their rental house, a group of oily zombies and hollow-eyed skeletons who threatened neighbors and broke the law hourly until the LAPD got in there after many years of surveillance and complaints. Now their lair is an empty house, just one of many on the street, in a city of homeless people and other working people who cannot afford to buy a house.

At another house, last year, a homeless, addict owner of an auto body repair shop (yes there is such a being) moved into a foreclosed yellow ranch house at the corner of Kittridge and started buying the contents of storage lockers and piling them up and down his driveway and all around the property. He used the electricity left on by previous tenants and continued to collect couches, garbage containers, boxes, electronics, toys, furniture. All of it was stacked and crowded around the entire place from curb to front door.

50 or 60 emails and calls to Nury Martinez’s office as well as our LAPD Senior Lead Officers finally resulted in the eviction of the mad vagrant. It only took 12-18 months. After his arrest, yes AFTER his arrest, he was allowed to return to the house he had no right to be in, and he conducted his own criminal garage sale, selling off all the merchandise he hoarded. He is now gone and the electricity is turned off.

LAPD Sr. Lead Officer Kirk worked patiently, diligently and valiantly to contact city attorney’s and work with law enforcement to end the siege of the self-displaced person.  The squeaky wheels who made the noise, all of us, were thankful to her.

DSCF0038At Haynes Street, another man owned a home that he kept empty. It was stripped of its walls and plumbing, and allowed to denigrate into a trash strewn property with high grass, and many bottles and cans dumped everywhere. Eventually, it was bought by a bargain basement builder who axed large shade trees and is building a plain stucco box with vinyl windows. Better than before but now devoid of shade and character.

Columbus at Hamlin looking south. During rainy season, puddles form as the street has no sewers to drain rainwater.
Columbus at Hamlin looking south. During rainy season, puddles form as the street has no sewers to drain rainwater.

Last year, hope sprung up as one of the large properties, over 28,000 SF, was purchased by a Van Nuys architect/developer who concomitantly was also designing some large scale, mixed use retail/commercial buildings along Sepulveda and on Van Nuys Boulevard.

VNNC Planning and Land Use arranged for residents to meet with the architect at his offices on Delano St. It was a civilized, courteous, nice evening of pizza and wine and drawings of the proposed homes, 4 or 5 of them. The architect took suggestions about design changes and again presented a second version of the houses at a later meeting.

It seemed that the project was moving along. Bulldozers cleared the property which was also behind another under-construction apartment building on Sepulveda associated with the developer.

Then a few days ago, a neighbor sent me a listing he found on Redfin. The 28,314 sf property where the new homes were to be built was up for sale. If a new buyer comes in and purchases the land for $1.1 million (it previously sold in 2011 for $320,000) she would not be building what the previous architect/builder had proposed.

In an email to me the architect denied that the project was forestalled or cancelled. He claimed he had a disagreement with some partners and put the property up for sale to satisfy their demands. I believe a similiar situation happened to Mildred Pierce in 1945 and the end result was not good.

In fairness to the architect/developer, whom I personally like, I hope his project continues. But the signs are not hopeful.

Once again, what can only be called “The Columbus Curse” has come to pass.

Sr. Lead Officer Erica Kirk, 2016.
Sr. Lead Officer Erica Kirk, 2016.

Observations Atop the 134 Bridge After the Storm.

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LA River/Griffith Park

After many days of successive, concussive waves of rain swirling into Los Angeles, the hills in Griffith Park were wet, green, and soaked.

I walked there, yesterday afternoon, along the bike path, and the bridle path, at the point where the 134 roars alongside the LA River.

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The storm, now depleted, had moved east, sent into exile. And in the distance, under dark clouds, I saw the Verdugo Mountains, the flat roofed towers of Glendale, and all the man-made highways and power lines: showered and renewed, glistening and spot lighted by sun.

The littered homeless encampment on the island in the middle of the river was vacated. There was nobody else around but me, except for a lone man riding a child’s bike.

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A bridge over the waters and the freeway, a bridge under construction, its metal rods exposed, a messy conglomeration of concrete, lumber, fencing and plywood, that incomplete, torn-up bridge evoked others before her time destroyed by floods.

Angelenos in the 1930s and before lived in fear of the river and put their hope in President Roosevelt. Now we trust the river and fear our president.

Once we trembled under the fury of nature. Now we shudder under the drama of political malfeasance.

After 1940, the army conquered the unpredictable river, contained its fast water, and controlled its deadly fury.

Tomorrow, we trust, we hope, will fold out and reveal itself as it did in Genesis.

“Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. The water receded steadily from the earth. And God said

never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

 “As long as the earth endures,

seedtime and harvest,

cold and heat,

summer and winter,

day and night

will never cease.”

LA River/Griffith Park

Pacific Electric Station Restoration: North Hollywood.

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Screen Grab By the Pussy.

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It happened that last week occurred a strange and unexpected event. I had a job interview.

Somewhere on my resume it must have listed numerous documentary production companies I worked at and places where I gathered archival footage for History Channel and A&E, those years I spent researching and “associate producing”, working with editors, producers and executives assembling those forgettable programs exploring the exploits of exorcism, John the Baptist and the Hatfield and the McCoys.

I was about to come back to the wondrous world of TV production.

On that stretch of Cahuenga, where it curves like an IUD towards Hollywood, stands a particularly ugly, mirrored glass office building shaped like an upside down pyramid. This is where the interview took place.

I parked in the garage and a security guard ushered me into a secure elevator that went up to a fourth floor office furnished with white leather sofas and a black receptionist.

The interviewee was a tanned, fit fortysomething Latino production supervisor with two initials for a first name and a last name that rhymes with Fontana. He told me he was impressed with my resume. His company, he assured me, was in a massive rush to acquire new archival materials. They hired for the long term, and he himself had been there 12 years. The hours were everyday, from 8:30am-5pm with one half hour for lunch. Did it all sound good? Yes, I replied, it all sounded good.

I imagined my new life, one with a weekly paycheck and my hours, net pay and gross taxes taken out and how great direct deposit would be. I thought of how it might feel to be around a workplace with workers, people who earned money and went to jobs everyday, and when they were asked at a party what they did, they had ready answers that put them in a respectable and understood category of American life.

I thought I would be just like those two sallow faced, starched shirt, flat-front khaki pants Asian guys who come into Toluca Lake Starbucks everyday at 2pm, right down the street from their job as investment counselors and pick up their pre-ordered cappuccinos from the barista. I would be just like Harry and Ted, those guys who drive a white Toyota sedan and live in Arcadia.

Well the job interview went into its second scene, as I was taken up to a large, high-ceilinged, dark room with many monitors and many men watching a sea of sucking, fucking, breasts, vaginas, and ass holes. It was all online, all over the room, timed by an army of paunchy dudes with Big Gulps on their desks punching keys for eight hours a day. They recorded in data every second and minute, describing exactly, bluntly, in forensic carnality, every second of every sexual moment.

I was introduced to a goateed Indian man, a fat, friendly guy who sat in front of a monitor and explained how they were using Google Docs, but soon would have more sophisticated software. The work was laid out, like the women, right in front of me. He explained that once I got the hang of entering, I would be able to insert my work into the computer and procreate key words for every act.   Anal was the big thing, they were looking, he explained for anything anal, and that was the big thing now, anal.

Gone was the warm, soft, moist vagina; that pink wonder of life, welcoming a hard dick inside. The future of men and women, and women and women, and men and men, and men and whatever—- it lead straight up the ass.

Since this was a job interview I pretended to be very interested, but as I looked around the room, seeing men from young to old watching porn and scrutinizing it for quality control and key words, I thought of my life, the past thirty years, the time since I graduated with a BA in English from Boston University and imagined that now I might, now at $12.50 an hour, end up in this enormous toilet of a business, begging to be considered for work that my 18-year-old self would have thought appalling.

Where have you gone Andrew Benjamin Hurvitz your parents in heaven cry for you….

After about 15 minutes the man with the initials told me that I was a strong contender for the opening. He would be calling me, possibly in the next day, to let me know. “Either way I will call you!” he assured me.

He never called, of course, because this is LA, and people here usually do not keep appointments or promises. What is that old saying, that you can grow old and broke on yes?

This is just a small tale of vocational dismalness. As we know, our nation feeds on a diet of broken dreams and only the promise of lies keeps us alive.

Every year I think of suicide or work, and every year neither event pans out, but I think in 2017, something big will happen to me. It’s up to me to make it happen.

 

 

 

 

Four Days After the National Cataclysm.

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Four days after the national cataclysm, uneasy inside, tentative, mourning for my nation and its political immolation, I took advantage of a partially overcast Saturday morning and walked on those quiet, well-kept streets north of Valley Presbyterian Hospital.

Tom Cluster’s emails had introduced me to the area, and I wanted to see for myself what it looked like.

On Columbus Avenue, where Tom had grown up, the street was still lined with trees, with neatly kept houses, and well-paved sidewalks. In front of his childhood home at 6944, where he lived from 1955-62, a gravestone next to the driveway read: “Beneath the Stone Lies Squeaky 7/13/61.”

I assumed a pet, but have not asked Tom yet. But I am sure he will fill in the mystery.

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If you walked just three streets, Halbrent, Columbus and Burnet, you might be forgiven for believing that virtuous, middle-class, hard-working, Ozzie and Harriet Van Nuys was still the norm.

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There is hardly any trash, the curbs are swept, the lawns are cut, and it seems that the hospital itself is as sanitized on the exterior as the interior. There is a calm, a self-assurance, an illusory orderliness conveying control. The buildings, dating back to 1958, drum shaped towers, share the grounds with more recent concrete ones; but unlike Cedars or UCLA, there is no affluence in the architecture, no preening for impressiveness or garish technological materials. This is a plain Protestant place, stripped down and frugal.

At Valley Presbyterian, there is also a long driveway leading from Noble, west, into the main entrance of the medical facility. The edge is lined with raised, planted beds under a 1950s modern, illuminated overhang. Welcoming and efficient, it conveys a public language of progressive health care and community.

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The Edsels and the Oldsmobiles and the Pontiacs wait patiently at the entrance as the medical staff bring out wheelchairs. Dad, always calm, lights a cigarette and turns on the radio to hear how Don Drysdale is doing. Mom, in labor, is brought into the hospital by nurses as Dad goes to park the car and walk back into the hospital to wait, in the maternity area, for his wife to give birth to their third child.

Volunteer girls in red lipstick and white uniforms hold trays of apple juice in Dixie cups. They walk the floor and offer refreshments.

Dad took the afternoon off work but will be at the GM plant in the morning. His wife will spend a week in the hospital and they will pay their $560.00 bill in $15.55 monthly installments over the next three years.

For a few blocks, a section of Van Nuys, its homes and hospitals, is still preserved in a formaldehyde of memory and architecture, a Twilight Zone where hospitals were up-to-date and affordable, great schools were within walking distance, jobs were plentiful, work was secure, streets were safe, and houses reasonably priced.

Beyond these streets, the real, harsh, angry, misery of another Van Nuys in another America plays out.

And we Californians, we Angelenos, are caught in a vise of fear, hoping for the best, fearing the worst, and seeing the day of demagoguery descend over Washington and the world.

In preserved pockets, like the one north of Vanowen, some cower and hide from a restless surge of irrationality in search of scapegoats, chasing myths down dark alleys of the mind. The state, if it comes to it, may join the vigilante in enforcing the law. Or the law, if it is just, may return us to a semblance of sanity.

The best and the worst, the past and the future, it is all here in Van Nuys.