2008 – Here in Van Nuys

Obama Fundraiser: Silverlake, October 4, 2008.

March 27, 2022March 27, 2022Posted in UncategorizedTagged 2008, Asian, Biden, Black, Cheney, Fundraiser, Gay, McCain, Nostalgia, Obama, Palin, photographs, Piñata, Politics, Silverlake, Straight4 Comments

For ten years a dead external hard drive lay abandoned in our garage, a device that once backed up our desktop computer from 2007-2012 and then suddenly died.

We cleaned our garage last month and found the dead drive. We took it to a tech in Toluca Lake who retrieved everything for $150.

Now we have tens of thousands of revived photos, seemingly taken yesterday, but actually 14 years old. I’m going through the files now and labeling them.

One folder contained a memorable evening from October 4, 2008.

On that night, we attended an Obama fund raiser at a private home in Silver Lake along a winding street above Sunset.

There is my 36-year-old brother Rick with his wife, Pri, and her 27-year-old sister Rue. Muscular, smiling, shirtless Jeremiah and his girlfriend Ivy.

There are good friends and acquaintances in floor dragging denim and long t-shirts under short ones. Fun includes John McCain, Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney piñatas, lots of Shepard Fairey designed HOPE t-shirts with Obama’s face, and me in an Obama mask. There are masks of Biden too.

There is food and drink and Ivy in with her Smart Women Vote Obama button.

The crowd is gay and straight, black, white, asian, male, female. There are high tech devices like digital cameras that are strictly digital cameras, not smartphones.

There are cute young kids and old dogs snuggled up on the sofa.

What I remember most from the event is that one of the guys there wanted to sleep with me, and a woman who had a high position in production wanted to hire me for photography but never hired me.

Through time all the famous faces from that night are connected in our long political show that never ends, jumping from event to event, begging for analysis, but often falling into irrationality, emotionality and missed opportunities.

They held a Van Nuys Community Council meeting last night at the Marvin Braude Center. And I went.

September 13, 2012September 13, 2012Posted in Van Nuys and the ValleyTagged 2008, 2012, Community Council, VNCC2 Comments

They held a Van Nuys Community Council meeting last night at the Marvin Braude Center. And I went.

I had last attended one of these back in 2008, when there was discussion about Christmas decorations, prostitution, graffiti, traffic, working with Tony Cardenas’ office, plans for more buses on Van Nuys Boulevard and the frustrations of homeowners who place calls to the LAPD about trash, derelicts, discarded couches, illegal garage sales, and discarded condoms on their front lawns but get no response.

In 2008, there was no Facebook or website for the Van Nuys Community Council so nobody who did not attend a meeting in person would know anything about what was happening. That was still true last night.

In 2008, representatives of the “civic” organizations, non-profits, churches, police, all made presentations and proposals at the Van Nuys Community Council in front of many men who sat behind a long table and behind their laptops. That was still true last night.

All the 2008 issues were topics of the September 2012 VNCC.

At last night’s meeting, board member Jon Hendry was eloquent. He spoke, wearily but wisely, of historic preservation, the idea that Van Nuys, established 1911, might have worthy structures to save, that there was still a battle against wanton destruction, as witnessed by the bulldozing of the 1925 First Lutheran Church on Vesper and Kittridge. He spoke of Here in Van Nuys, this blog and this writer who posts essays and photographs of our widely maligned district. He seemed to be crying out to the disinterested and the disenfranchised, saying, please, please, help Van Nuys.

As I listened, I was fantasizing about Van Nuys, the place I wish it were.

It would be a city that would have its own mayor and its own police force, a place where the law was enforced, where illegal anything was illegal and subject to arrest.

It would have a new centerpiece of trees, shade trees, planted down Victory Boulevard and down the center of Van Nuys Boulevard from Roscoe to Burbank Boulevard. It would have new decorative lampposts and a center busway or streetcar.

It would have fines for illegal couch dumping, red light running, speeding, illegal handicap placards on cars, illegal drinking in parked cars by minors. It would fine businesses that operate without licenses, people who hold “garage” sales on the sidewalk or on the side of the supermarket every single weekend. It would insure that clean, honest, respectful commerce and behavior was not swamped by the mania and madness of down low criminality.

Because without law, we have no civilization. We become Benghazi or Tripoli or Baghdad or Somalia, a place where only thugs and mobs rule.

Maybe we aren’t there yet, but we are getting there fast.

So I attended a Van Nuys Community Council meeting last night…

Other than Mr. Hendry’s profundity, 2012 was just like 2008. Only one thing had changed for Van Nuys.

Four years had come and gone.

David Mingrino

December 31, 2008November 6, 2014Posted in Celebrities, Van Nuys and the ValleyTagged 2008, Actor, David Mingrino, PortraitLeave a comment

David M., originally uploaded by Here in Van Nuys.

Perhaps one of the most distinguished and accomplished actors living north of Victory and east of Sepulveda, sat for a portrait today. Presenting: David Mingrino.

Values Voters.

October 25, 2008November 6, 2014Posted in PoliticsTagged 2008, Bob's Big Boy, burbank, car showLeave a comment

Values Voters., originally uploaded by Here in Van Nuys.

On November 4, 2008 Americans, like these gentlemen, will step into the voting booth, not only to decide their own country’s political fate, but to make a decision that will affect the entire world and possibly influence the future of our planet.