Category: Van Nuys and the Valley

Sentries of the Past.

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  • 6600 Norwich

There are ten houses along the west side of the 6600 block of Norwich in Van Nuys.

They are all ranches, built in the early 1950s, solid and compact.

Unusual for Los Angeles, the houses are all original. There are no tear downs. There aren’t any protective fences, walls or gates on any of the properties if I recall correctly. The front lawns are still grass. Not concrete, not RV, not Hummer.

Yesterday, I walked down the street, which has a real sidewalk, and on both sides of the block, two rows of identical tall trees, species unknown, currently bare of leaves, chopped up by Cortadores de árboles.

There is something midwestern about this street: sedate, well-tended and reserved. The only person I know who lived on Norwich was a blond-haired man who came from Ohio, married a woman, divorced, and moved back to Ohio. 

Norwich Ave. reminds me of Lincolnwood, IL where I grew up. Especially one thing….

Each of the ten houses has a lamppost in front. 

  • 6600 Norwich
  • 6600 Norwich
  • 6601 Norwich
  • Norwich
  • 6621 Norwich
  • 6615 Norwich
  • 6633 Norwich
  • Norwich
  • 6645 Norwich
  • Norwich
  • 6651 Norwich

You can stand on the end of the block, on the south, at Kittridge, and on the north at Lemay, and look straight down and see the lights lined up, like sentries, in front of each property.

  • Norwich

These exterior lights belong to mid-20th Century suburbia. They functioned, in their time, as gracious servants who lit up sidewalk paths for evening guests, paths planted with geraniums, petunias or marigolds; illuminated walkways for the wintertime mailman, dad coming home from work, and junior on his Schwinn thrown down, rushing in for his dinner of fish sticks, tater tots and Kool-Aid.

Some of the posts have address numbers attached.

Like every other block, people see what their neighbors are doing to their homes and they copy it. 

The lamppost is a survivor from a domestic time seven decades passed. It has no real security value, and when it’s turned on during the day it indicates that nobody is home, thus negating its magical protection.

But walking past these homes and their lights, brings you back to the old days of bourgeois Van Nuys, when this district was neat, safe, and proud. And citizens thought that men in suits and uniforms, serving under sky god and nation flag, were looking over them and protecting their lives and family, fulfilling oaths sacred and lawful.

When the people, who always paid taxes and sometimes voted, discovered that nobody was in charge, that security was your own problem, that only wealth bought law and justice, the decorative lamppost went out of fashion.

And here we are today, in the new dark ages, monitored and terrified.

Bernie Sanders’ Van Nuys.

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  • Medicare For All:
  • Create a Medicare for All, single-payer, national health insurance program to provide everyone in America with comprehensive health care coverage, free at the point of service.
  • No networks, no premiums, no deductibles, no copays, no surprise bills. 
  • Medicare coverage will be expanded and improved to include: include dental, hearing, vision, and home- and community-based long-term care, in-patient and out-patient services, mental health and substance abuse treatment, reproductive and maternity care, prescription drugs, and more.
  • Stop the pharmaceutical industry from ripping off the American people by making sure that no one in America pays over $200 a year for the medicine they need by capping what Americans pay for prescription drugs under Medicare for All.

Green New Deal

  • Transform our energy system to 100 percent renewable energy and create 20 million jobs needed to solve the climate crisis.
  • Ensure a just transition for communities and workers, including fossil fuel workers.
  • Ensure justice for frontline communities, especially under-resourced groups, communities of color, Native Americans, people with disabilities, children and the elderly.
  • Save American families money with investments in weatherization, public transportation, modern infrastructure and high-speed broadband.
  • Commit to reducing emissions throughout the world, including providing $200 billion to the Green Climate Fund, rejoining the Paris Agreement, and reasserting the United States’ leadership in the global fight against climate change.
  • Invest in conservation and public lands to heal our soils, forests, and prairie lands.
  • End the greed of the fossil fuel industry and hold them accountable.
  • Housing:
  • End the housing crisis by investing $2.5 trillion to build nearly 10 million permanently affordable housing units.
  • Protect tenants by implementing a national rent control standard, a “just-cause” requirement for evictions, and ensuring the right to counsel in housing disputes.
  • Make rent affordable by making Section 8 vouchers available to all eligible families without a waitlist and strengthening the Fair Housing Act.
  • Combat gentrification, exclusionary zoning, segregation, and speculation.
  • End homelessness and ensure fair housing for all
  • Revitalize public housing by investing $70 billion to repair, decarbonize, and build new public housing.

End the housing crisis by investing $2.5 trillion to build nearly 10 million permanently affordable housing units.

Source: Bernie Sanders

After all these policies are in place, we may have a new Van Nuys.

Source: Skyscraper City

Mementos From a 1950s Girlhood in Van Nuys

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Anne Clark Seidel (1936-2018) was born in Ft. Smith, AR and moved with her parents to Los Angeles in 1942.  The family owned a house at 14936 Camarillo in Sherman Oaks where Anne grew up. 

An obituary from 2018 summarized her life.

Her son, Dave Cox, is a vintage dealer of antiques, cameras, and thrift store items and now lives in Maine and Florida. He graduated from Valley College. He has a Flickr page which I found years ago and in it he has archived thousands of photos, including his mom’s scrapbooks from her days as a teenager in 1950s Van Nuys and greater Los Angeles. 

There is a lot to look at in the sentimental and wonderful notes, photographs and souvenirs she saved from that time.

These include: a 1955 Van Nuys High School Graduation Commencement, a 1950 award for “Am I My Brother’s Keeper” from B’nai Brith, her 1954 interim California Driver’s License, a “Grease Monkey’s” membership card from Van Nuys High School, a ticket from “Crew Cut and Curls” a musical comedy performed at VNHS, a typed up sheet of rah-rah yells from that school, and a May 27, 1953 poster from “The Man Who Came to Dinner” also performed by the Van Nuys High School Drama Department.

Anne had nicknames too: Butch, Clark, Corkey and Muggsy. Her 9/15/52 book cover is emblazoned with them. 

It was a corny time of ridiculous humor, intentionally juvenile, feather-brained, nitwit, amusingly dumb and G-rated, naughty jokes that would pass the test of censors.

“They do say,” John said, “that kisses are the language of love.” 

“Well speak up!”

There were heartfelt, self-correcting mottos Anne wanted to embody: 

When I have lost my temper, I have lost my reason too. I’m never proud of anything that angrily I do.

It was an era of apologies, given by children to adults, students to teachers. There was morality in movies and songs, and wrongdoing and scandal were wrong and scandalous. 

She had a crush on hazel-eyed, curly-haired Richard Walter Peck, 6’2, whose favorite foods included ham and eggs and minced meat pie and whose hobby was model airplanes. He drove a ’41 Buick and worked at Hammond Electronics in Studio City, CA.

There are clippings from newspapers with advertisements for stores in Van Nuys such as Ceil Miller at 15243 Victory Bl.(STate 0–7921) which sold dresses, suits and gifts; and the Ru-Mae Shoppe at 14511 Sylvan St. with plaid, print or plain short, long or sleeveless dresses.  

There was Easter at Central Christian Church on April 2, 1953 with cut out photos of Minister RL Pryor and Youth Director Daniel M. Immel. There is the 1956 Van Nuys Mirror paper with presidential candidates Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai E Stevenson as headliners, and another story explaining plans for the upcoming conversion of Birmingham Hospital into a Junior High School.

There was Johnson’s Ice Cream Store, newly located at 6127 Sepulveda Bl. in Valley Market Town which was next to the Sepulveda Drive-In Theater. All of this was on the site of our present day LA Fitness and Orange Line Metro (Keyes Storage) Parking Lot. 

Those days are full of colorful events: sports, theater, holidays, miniature golf, friends, clubs, work, and crushes. The times were rambunctious and goofy, young and exciting. 

And Van Nuys was its epicenter, it contained everything needed for a happy and fulfilling life, its promises were delivered in productivity, positivity, and personalities.

I will let the visuals speak for themselves. And show more of Anne Clark Seidel’s life in future posts. 

My gratitude and appreciation to Dave Cox for his permission to use these images from his mom’s life in this blog.

Valley Rents Near All-Time High as Vacancies Drop.

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“Vacant apartments in the Valley are scarce, rents are heading toward all-time highs, and observers expect little change for the next three years.”-LA Times 8/24/1969

  • Vacancies Decrease, Rents Increase, Los Angeles Times. Aug 24 1969
  • Vacancies Decrease, Rents Increase, Los Angeles Times. Aug 24 1969

Most of the new apartments will be large, luxury, high-rent operations because land is so expensive.

Landlords are choosey and many refuse to rent to tenants who have pets or children. Only 25% will allow pets or kids.

  • South Bay Club, Torrance. Photographer: Arthur Schatz. March 1967. [The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images]

In North Hollywood, only 3.8% are vacant, in Van Nuys, 2.5% and in Northridge, 2.7%.

Ten and 12-unit buildings were once common, but now land costs and materials are pushing builders to put up 40, 60 or even 80-unit structures.

The average tenant in the San Fernando Valley, incidentally, is 27-years-old and cannot afford the high rents.

And some of the rents that are being asked are quite shocking.

  • Dec 21 1969 Apartment Rentals LA Times

Furnished and unfurnished bachelor apartments are going for $85-$95 a month ($90=$657 in 2018); one bedrooms are averaging around $115 ($115=$796.42 in 2018); and two bedrooms for $175 ($175=$1,211 in 2018).

Walt Taylor of Van Nuys, who is the new president of Valley Apartment House Owners’ Association, fears that if the trend continues only large corporations will become landlords, or even worse, the government.

Progress Report.

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On a brief walk, after dropping off a package at the UPS on Van Nuys Bl. I walked west on Sylvan, south on Vesper, ending this set of photos at the new fire station on Oxnard.

There is a small but significant amount of new apartments going up. They are pleasant additions to the neighborhood and are all in the currently popular white style, blindingly white, with dark windows.  They add some upgraded cleanliness to an area which has long been the sad kingdom of slumlords. 

On Sylvan, the former post office, built during the 1930s by the WPA, in a classical style, was later a home for Children of the Night, a non-profit created to fight childhood sexual exploitation. They have since moved out, so the sidewalk outside the gracious building is now a trash camp.

  • Old Post Office

The new fire station (2019) is a great asset for the neighborhood and has significant architectural beauty that recalls the 1930s Streamline Era, and is also conversant with the first fire station on Sylvan (1939) as well as the former DWP building on Aetna and Vesper (1938) just behind the new edifice.

Just to the east of the fire station, Aetna is closed, with a high fence, between Vesper and Van Nuys Boulevard, most likely due to the trash campers who took over the area. They are banished to fly somewhere else, probably to the bird sanctuary in Woodley Park.

  • Fire Station on Oxnard at Vesper

Councilwoman Nury Martinez has jurisdiction over this area, and her office is nearby in the Valley Municipal Building. She is now the head of the city council, and the first Latina to hold that position in city history.

We can applaud the justice of diversity, the idea that anyone from any background can ascend the ladder of politics and achieve leadership.

We cannot applaud the failures of Ms. Martinez, and her predecessor Tony Cardenas (who is now a congressman in Washington, DC) for they have had over 20 combined years of allowing Van Nuys to fall into utter disintegration, filth, homelessness and blight. 

Their ethnicity has pushed them up into the spotlight even as their academic records in elected office should be graded D- or F.

The idea that one’s identity deserves praise rather than one’s achievements is a new chapter in our American conversation. If Van Nuys should fall further into the gutter, which seems unimaginable, we will think of the paucity of Ms. Martinez’s and Mr. Cardenas’ accomplishments and recall this verse from Matthew 7:16 “Ye shall know them by their fruits.”

Rotten.

In Singapore.

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In Singapore, which I just visited for four days, I do not remember seeing any decorative streetlights, but I might have been looking, instead, at spotless plazas, copiously planted parks with enormous trees and bright flowers; or perhaps I was riding the air-conditioned MRT, easily navigating between scrupulously clean stations, labeled in easy-to-read signs, navigable by newcomers and citizens alike.

One day we walked up to the MacRitchie Reservoir where students, in the water, directed by coaches, were practicing and exercising rowing. They worked hard and still smiled. At the clubhouse I saw posted rules and regulations and fines for violating the laws of the recreation area, and still, all around me, everyone was peaceful and happy. Why shouldn’t they be? They were surrounded by order, nature, and safety.

I was unaware, until I returned to Los Angeles, that our city was removing fines for overdue library materials.

In Singapore, next to transit, are great food halls, called “Hawker Centres” which gather, under one roof, superb eating establishments: affordable, delicious and regulated by government inspectors.  We ate at two:  Tiong Bahru and Old Airport Food Centre.

The hawker centres date back to the 1960s, when the new government of Singapore, in order to insure cleanliness, hygiene and food safety, put all the street food into these mass eating halls.

In 2019, Los Angeles made it LEGAL to sell food on the street, so the lady who just finished cleaning her cat’s litter box and will shortly make your guacamole, can also sell it from her blanket next to MacArthur Park and not get arrested. 

Often when people talk about Singapore, people who don’t live there, they bring up draconian laws that sound utterly terrifying. Death for drug dealers, chewing gum is illegal, and a recently enacted “fake news” law that might curb free speech.

Singaporeans I spoke to didn’t think about these laws, or believe they hampered their freedoms. Perhaps they were too happy enjoying the liberties of crime free streets, or sidewalks without homeless encampments.  They probably were also feeling good while availing themselves in superb health care or government subsidized housing.

Incidentally, Singapore has public housing. Rules are that the residents must be legal citizens or permanent residents. 82% of the housing in Singapore is government run. So here we have a refutation of the tired conservative/liberal ideology that poisons American minds. There is such a thing as desirable government housing. And there is such a condition as limiting the use of these buildings to those who are lawfully in the country.

Singapore is rated number one or number two in education for its schooling. An 8-year-old boy, a son of a friend, helped me program my mobile phone so I could get internet coverage all over the city.  Just one example of intelligence at a very young age that comes to mind. 

What else can be said to praise laws, rules, order, safety, and yes, penalties, punishments and respect for social order?  Can our nation, and our city, emulate Singapore? Or should we look to Mississippi, El Salvador and New Delhi for our future plans in transit, education, housing, health care and sanitation?

On the day we came back to Van Nuys, two men were shot and wounded nearby.  Four were killed here in 2019 according to the LA Times.  

“According to UN data, Singapore has the second lowest murder rate in the world (Data excludes tiny Palau and Monaco.) Only 16 people were murdered in 2011 in a country with a population of 5.1 million.”-BBC News  In 2017, 11 people were killed in Singapore.

Am I freer in Los Angeles or do I live inside a city prison of another kind?

Western Avenue Off Ramp, Hollywood Freeway, December 15, 2019.