Tag: CA

Lemay St./ Old Van Nuys

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East of Kester and one block south of Vanowen, along the 14800 block of tree-shaded Lemay Street, a trio of old, early 20th Century houses stands intact.

14836 is perfectly renovated, beautifully painted in dark gray paint, white trim and white picket fence, looking as if it were picked off the pristine Pasadena streets, flown through the clouds and dropped here gently.

14842 has not yet undergone the external transformations, but its original architecture seems to have been little changed.

14848 is the largest and grandest and most eccentric and is built with massive roof overhangs, a Wisteria covered pergola, a deep and long porch and an array of tropical plants. It is painted in various blues and browns and seems also under some renovation.

Van Nuys has many gracious and heartfelt pockets of old.

And Van Nuys, central to the San Fernando Valley, and its local seat of government, serviced by highways and public transportation and industry, this maligned and misunderstood district is still awaiting an infusion of money and imagination, sweat and vision which has been sorely lacking here since at least 1975.

A Dire Warning.

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Proposed Redistricting of Los Angeles/ LA Times

There is something going in Los Angeles right now called proposed redistricting and a dire warning flyer, from one of my neighbors, arrived on my doorstep this morning warning that if these new changes go through “Van Nuys will start at Victory Bl. and be lumped in with Panorama City, Pacoima and Arleta.”  I was implored to show up for a meeting at the Walter Reed Middle School in Studio City on Thursday, February 9th to make my objections public.

I don’t personally know who wrote this flyer and I don’t know why it matters if Van Nuys is associated with communities north of here.  If prostitution, gangs, garbage and fat, short women dressed in skintight black spandex have not lowered my property values yet, then I doubt that my new city council boundary will make much difference.

Have you been to the corner of Kester and Victory lately? It is not a pretty sight. McDonalds, at this location, is considered an upmarket restaurant.

And who are these haughty and snobby Van Nuysians who imagine that they belong in a district with Studio City and Sherman Oaks?  The issues that matter to an 29-year-old single, white entertainment executive living in Franklin Canyon are quite different from a 29-year-old Salvadorean single mom supporting three children, two grandkids and two parents in a one-bedroom Victory Boulevard apartment.

The City Council is in business for one reason only: power. It is their job to insure that they have a job.  We constituents only matter if our last name is Broad or Caruso.

I don’t care what district I am in because I can only control my quality of life as far as my front curb.

Bank in Flames Painting Scares LAPD.

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The LA Times has an interesting story about an artist, Alex Schaefer, who had set up his easel on the corner of Sylvan and Van Nuys Blvd., in front of  Chase Bank, and was creating a painting of the bank in flames.  The cops questioned him and the next day, detectives showed up at his home to interview him and ask if he intended to torch his subject matter.

I am reminded of an incident that happened to me several years ago in this same area.

In 2007, I had walked around the corner from this area, and was shooting daylight images of the historic 1933 Valley Municipal Building.  As I was doing this, a woman came out of the building screaming, “He’s taking photos! He’s taking photos!” She later drove her car down the street and followed me as I walked westward down Sylvan St. and then she stopped and demanded to know what I was doing. I told her I was a photographer.

Painting and photography are two acts that may get you in trouble with the law. That’s America in the 21st Century.

Friday Night Chrome.

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The chrome, metal, motor and wheels crowd gathered at Bob’s Big Boy, as they do every Friday night, to partake of a parking lot full of old restored cars.

One old man had an old crank shaft Model T and was showing a crowd how to turn the engine on.

There was a very long purple Cadillac, and more than the usual collection of mid 1960s Chevys.

Fifty-two Fridays a year, vintage autos and their lovers gather here; even as we fall deeper into the 21st Century, our hearts are stuck in place in a country and century that no longer exists.

Photographer Tom M. Johnson, Lakewood, CA.

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Photo by Tom M Johnson
Photo by Tom M Johnson
Photo by Tom M Johnson

Photographer Tom M. Johnson is profiled in today’s New York Times. He shoots images of Lakewood, CA finding profundity inside banality, in matter-of-fact photographs which document an ethically diverse place where neat lawns, plain houses and regular people mingle.

A Quiet Day, a Peaceful Day.

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Ghost Freeway, originally uploaded by anosmicovni.

For a few months now, it had been broadcast, far and wide, over the airwaves and through airy heads, that Los Angeles would be vehicularly incapacitated by the partial destruction of a tall bridge over a wide freeway occurring on a long weekend.

For surely the closure of THE 405 was truly a great emergency, predicted as cataclysmic by experts who described it in cinematic destructiveness, coined with a biblical neologism, Carmaggedon.

So into action the officials sprang, as politicians, Caltrans, LAPD, LAFD and all the fat men who sit inside the city council chambers, urged the motoring public to forestall leaving home and let the great emergency Passover.

And Saturday, June 16, 2011 was a quiet day, a peaceful day. The deafening roar of 500,000 cars stopped. And one stepped out of the house and into the dry, hot, windy air of Van Nuys and beheld a gentler, kinder, slower, less crowded city.

The skies and sounds reminded me of the days after September 11, 2001. I had been working on Radford Street in Studio City, and came out of an office on Valleyheart Drive, and looked up into the sky and saw or heard not a single jet plane flying above. The serenity of Los Angeles, without aerial assault by plane, was mesmerizing ten years ago. And absent automobiles it mesmerized me yesterday.

Civic spirit, civic pride, civic engagement, Los Angeles has all the collective civic energy of a desert mausoleum. In this town, as some call it, the idea that the greater good matters, that people might come together for a single day, and make a success of it, seemed impossible.

And though some were dubious, they stayed home in Westwood and didn’t drive their SUV to Encino to meet for baklava. Survivors of the purges of the Shah, who know what sacrifice means, took a day off from shopping and driving. And those who didn’t surf on the beach Saturday, or drive to eat sushi in Studio City, those heroic citizens deserve our applause and appreciation.

Yesterday, many stayed home and many didn’t drive, and in those neighborhoods where discarded mattresses sit in front of buildings where homeless people push shopping carts, and earn money recycling plastic, and some defecate on the sidewalk in broad daylight; where millions are undocumented, and thousands are poorly educated, where health care is withheld and violence administered; along those broad, sun-baked, lifeless, treeless, billboard-infested blocks and garbage littered curbs, the people obeyed and the politicians praised, and something so very minor and so very unimportant stood in the historical record as a great culmination of achievement in the City of Angels.