Tag: burbank

The Streets Were Spotless

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On Sunday I went to Burbank to take photos of a 25-year-old actor. 

We met at Chili John’s, a “World Famous” landmark, now out-of-business, a spot of streamline slickness with a neon sign, all of its recent Covid signs still intact. Somewhere I had read that preservationists were fighting developers on this site but could not pull up any stories to verify.

It was Burbank so there were no people around, just an empty parking lot, spotless, without litter, tagging or anything vandalized. The rains had washed the skies. In the distance, past Glendale, sharp and clear, stood the eternal San Gabriel Mountains. 

I got there before he did, and I walked along Burbank Boulevard where the cherry trees bloomed, and one specialty liquor store was open for contactless delivery. Through the window, I saw a $24 bottle of Riesling and moved on.

On Sundays, in Burbank, there are always old, spotless cars driving around. I saw a VW Beetle turn right. 

After that notable vehicle sighting, the actor from Springfield, MO appeared. 

He had just taken a Zoom acting class. He had long pandemic locks and beard and was quite chippy and happy with himself as he ran his hand through his hair and made goofy expressions with his face. He took out a guitar, which he doesn’t play, and he soulfully strummed it for our shoot. 

He had a backpack, a wool driving cap, zip up boots, tight pants, overcoat, trim denim shirt. We shot some photos of him along the long white wall where its red painted parking in rear. He talked about his end days Christian friends from Missouri and trimming his chest hair and how he comes from the same town as Brad Pitt.

He said he was happy in Hollywood, happy to meet cool people, happy for people who were signing him up and taking him to Peru for work. I think.

He told me he had access to a super high resolution Blackmagic Production 4k Camera, and if I wanted to use it on some other day I could. 

He left his stuff in the back, behind the store, and we walked up front to the sidewalk. I had no fear any of it would be stolen. But he went back to retrieve it and then rejoined me on the sidewalk where I directed him to slump down into the doorway and look down the street as if he were a tired, exhausted traveler.

We had free reign, with nobody nearby.

There was also no trash, no litter, no fast-food wrappers, no condoms, no homeless, no shopping carts; just an empty place all around, with store windows and shuttered businesses. After two hours, one masked pedestrian walked by.

That Sunday, Burbank was the Los Angeles that once existed, the hygienic wonderland of donuts and burgers and whimsical cars, chlorinated swimming pools, empty sidewalks and freshly washed streets.  It was dead but it was a delight, and somewhere nearby I imagined a crew-cut kid with blonde hair and plaid shirt riding his Schwinn.

When I was done, I drove through North Hollywood and crossed back into chaos, filth and disorder, past an invisible wall between dreams and reality, past and present, Los Angeles and Burbank. 

Yesterday in Burbank.

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Yesterday in Burbank, the sky was clear, clouds sat high and moved fast, the sun sparkled, dust blew, and people rode horses on dirt trails.

On this day, a film student from Canada put on a thermal shirt, petted a horse, picked up a shovel, tried on a jean jacket, and impersonated a life without quite really actually believing in it.

Near the stables, roosters crowed and horses neighed. And the student carried a black bag out of a red barn and walked diagonally past the camera.

The muscular, tattooed man stood timidly next to a white horse in leather blinders. He said he was from the city and had never touched that animal.

In the equestrian district, the air smelled like hay and horse, horse shit and horse sweat.

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Later, along Victory, drops of rain fell and then stopped.

Under the concrete pillars holding up the Golden State, behind a steel fence, illuminated in the mellow end-of-day light, the student stood in mock incarceration, a dark skinned reminder of others who sit in prison, or move beyond borders to chase freedom in other lands.

He later stood shirtless next to a street sign, not unlike the thousands who stand on the streets of Los Angeles waiting for customers, or others who live on the streets because they have no home.

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Processed with VSCOcam with j4 presetAll of it was pretend, and all of it was about capturing light, and setting a mood, an imitation of life.

Yesterday in Burbank was make-believe.

But the light was real and the buildings threw off a gentle and enveloping glow, mitigating the harshness of the city, and offering an alternative imaginary story for jaded urbanites.

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A Quiet Enclave

Posted in Architecture, Culture, Van Nuys and the ValleyTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

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There’s a little area of Glendale or east Burbank or whatever you want to call it, a quiet neighborhood nestled into the confluence of Griffith Park, Victory Blvd, and Riverside Drive.

Old, snug, shaded, smelling of horse and hay, hit with the low, dull roar of the nearby 134, its winding houses and cottages are silent, eccentric, redolent of the old Western town, and completely out of tune with the flash, bang and sprawl city of Los Angeles.

I’m drawn back here. Especially on days like yesterday when the skies were dark, and gray clouds spread over the San Gabriels in a convincing display of more ominous meteorological conditions.

It was cool and autumnal when I turned up Winchester Avenue and parked near Riverside.

Hidden in the crook, under large trees, I found a sprawling, two-story high, hacienda apartment with a red tiled roof, white painted brick and a lush green lawn obliviously and joyfully unworried by drought. Adirondack chairs, twig chairs, plastic chairs, and a barbecue threw off an impression of eternal leisure and life without worry. A 1965 Turquoise Chevy Chevelle sat on the driveway: as if yesterday was still today and what was old was still young.

California, up until about 1960, built apartments that looked like well-to-do homes. You might live here poor, work as a waiter, scrape by on next-to-nothing, but you were surrounded and intoxicated with hope and dreams and a stage set of domestic happiness. Your aspirations were given to you the moment you arrived at Union Station. Only later did you realize they would be taken away.

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The streets are clean in Burbank and Glendale, often spotless.

Coming from Van Nuys, which gives a social excuse to every ill around us, it is remarkable that Burbank and Glendale are run so seemingly well, with a presentable public face that is simultaneously progressive and traditional.

Streets are swept. Windows are washed. Alleys are paved. Walls have no tags or markings. There are no shopping carts of clothes tied to trees. There are no tent cities of the dispossessed under the overhangs of buildings.

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And there are many small motels here. But I didn’t see prostitutes and pimps and hookers and johns and the sex community walking along Victory in Glendale.

Maybe the laws are tougher here. Maybe the police and the courts and the residents work together. Whatever they are doing here they are not doing on Sepulveda Boulevard.

At a public safety meeting last week in Van Nuys, held jointly by Councilwoman Nury Martinez and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, the issue of homelessness came up. Ms. Martinez spoke to a resident complaining that public sidewalks are now taken up with the private possessions of individuals. The Councilwoman said the courts had sided with the people who tie their shopping carts to trees and put up tents in the alley. “You can’t haul away their belongings.”

Legally, the illegal is legal.

And that is the way the new world works. What would have been unimaginable in 1945, 1955 or 1965 is tolerable today because everyone knows that toleration—not the law—is the highest principle liberalism can aspire to.

The inhumanity and injustice of allowing people to live on sidewalks and eat trash and set up tents anywhere, that must be tolerated because “we are understanding.”

Maybe it would be inconvenient for him, but Mayor Garcetti should allot some time in his schedule to drive way out to Glendale from LA City Hall and contemplate what they are doing that provides some space for civilization and contemplation that is missing in much of the San Fernando Valley and greater Los Angeles.

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306 W. Valencia Ave. Burbank, CA, 1979

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Last week, I ventured along Victory Boulevard in Burbank.

And I came across a one-story stucco building at 306 W. Valencia Ave. built in 1940, with round porthole windows and horizontally striped overhangs.

I posted photos of the structure on this blog which Dwayne Baldridge saw.

Mr. Baldridge was connected to 306 W. Valencia Ave. and had spent time there in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

He sent me photos some of that era which I am posting below.

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“My new (now ex) wife leaning against our 1970 Mustang in front of our apartment looking east, just a couple of days after our wedding, taken 7/2/81”

 

 

"My Mother, Father, younger Brother, Maternal Grandfather and Grandmother at a simple party to celebrate my Grandparents Anniversary taken in late 1979."
“My Mother, Father, younger Brother, Maternal Grandfather and Grandmother at a simple party to celebrate my Grandparents Anniversary taken in late 1979.”

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“Me with my girlfriend on our first official date around June 1979”

Holiday Inn Express, North Hollywood.

Posted in Culture, Links, North HollywoodTagged , , , , 3 Comments

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Holiday Inn

One of the strangest juxtapositions of new development and old crap can be seen in the San Fernando Valley east of Lankershim on Burbank.

A new six-story Holiday Inn Express is going up on the south side of Burbank Blvd. within view of the “arts district” yet firmly within the auto zone of muffler, tire, transmission, oil change, lawnmower and auto sales dealers.

Imagine you are a naïve guest, perhaps from Iowa, who is coming to Los Angeles for the first time and you see this modernistic, multi-colored Mondrianlike building on Trip Advisor. You might be excused for believing that you had lucked into a real fine deal, a lovely, clean hotel with good rates right in the heart of North Hollywood.

Upon checking in, you drive up Lankershim, past Sunrise Ford with its bright red painted “Diesel Truck Repair Center”.

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You go up to your room and look out and see V.A.S Auto Repair and John’s Lawn Mower with its garages full of grease monkeys changing oil, servicing radiators, and loading up pick up trucks with power equipment and lawn mowers.

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If you are getting hungry, after walking through all the paint and gasoline fumes, and breathing in the smell of diesel, you can pick up something to drink at N. Hollywood Liquor where they accept EBT and can also cash your check for a fee.

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Smoke Shop

For a stroll you might stop by for a bite to eat at Tacos Manzano where Taco’s Tuesday is only $1. Or go directly next door to the Smoke Shop or Harry’s Auto Repair where the smog experts work behind cinderblock murals of Marlboro cigarettes and hookah. Pick up some pot at any of the medicinal pharmacies along the way. Marijuana is to modern Los Angeles what rice is to China.

Los Burritos

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If you don’t want burritos on the cheap you can have a more expensive burrito at Los Burritos or go across the street and get an American style burrito burger at Denny’s. If you crave nightlife you can go to El Zorro nightclub right next door to the Quick Lane Tire and Auto Center.

In another 50 years, a new generation of XXL’s  will waddle past here, orange drinks in hand, and wonder if that bad old motel with prostitutes and vagrants will ever be torn down.

Last Week on the Equestrian Trail.

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Last week, before the heat hit, late on a mellow Monday afternoon, I went with Andreas for a walk around the old stables, trails and grounds where horses are equal to humans, near Griffith Park, along Riverside Drive.

I hadn’t seen or entered these old places before, places where the noble creatures go trotting, riding and pacing; animals so big, up close, with their long trapezoidal heads and muscularity, emitting an intelligence and alertness, odor and breath; hay, dust and sweat.

The light was rich and deep and golden. We wandered behind one stable, walked over a bridge and turned onto a dirt- paved riding trail running alongside a watery trench. A young group on horseback came down, kicking up dust, laughing and yelling hello.

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Andreas, photographing, walked one way and I went another.

Justin Resnik

And then I walked, alone, out of that trail and back onto Riverside Drive where I came to Eurosport Horses and Justin Resnik, a wiry, tall, greying, boyishly effusive man who invited me into his compound where he keeps exquisite German, Swiss and other European horses in a fastidiously elegant and old-world stable, once owned by Gene Autry.

Seemingly placed on the front patio by a casting director were three good-looking people: a blue-eyed male worker hosing down the plants and squirting water at a playful pit bull, a young Latino student rider sitting at a table, and Mr. Resnik’s young blonde girlfriend drinking beer.

Massive horses, shiny, groomed, overpowering, without a stray mane hair, posed and loitered in their spotless stalls, as Mr. Resnik walked me through his brass-plated and polished facilities. He spoke casually of his Olympic riding, his entrée into high cost horse-trading, his childhood growing up in Malibu, and a multi-million dollar offer he rejected for one horse last week.

I, with $73 dollars in my checking account, was once again conscious of Southern California, the incredible luck of some, mixed with hard work and the right connections, the accidents of geography and heredity propelling taller, better-looking and better-situated people into better lives, even as we outside the gates press our noses through the iron and hope to be taken into their affluence and security.

Ronald Reagan on horseback rode across my mind for a second, singing his encomiums for the Golden State, a place where anything is possible if you can just grasp it when you are temporarily young. For me, an anti-Reagan, An American Failure, I have always looked forward by looking back, from youth onwards. Should I not have learned something from the 40th President? Where are my stables, my advisors, my investments, my followers?

What will become of me after my Pinterest is no more?

California and America always mourning those.

I said good-bye to Resnik and crew and went looking for Andreas who was somewhere up the creek without a cellphone. We got into his car and drove back to Van Nuys.

With a walk and a curiosity we had gone exploring. And come into an old California of man and horse, hoof and horseshoe, saddle and strap, somehow more lasting and more eternal than anything online.