Recently, I thought of one running inane storyline in TV’s “I Dream of Jeannie” about an invisible dog named Chin-Chin who attacked anyone in a uniform, specifically Major Anthony Nelson and his buddy, Major Roger Healey.
The animal would chew up their clothes and then Jeannie would have to step in and restrain the animal. Since the dog was partly invisible nobody could understand why Major Nelson and Major Healey had chewed up and torn uniforms. Especially NASA psychiatrist Dr. Alfred Bellows.
Around our neighborhood we have a loose German Shepherd who wanders out of his property on Columbus Avenue and is often seen by concerned neighbors who worry about his safety. The owner apparently does not care if her dog escapes, unleashed, and dashes across Victory Boulevard at rush hour.
A few months ago, in the morning, I went running and encountered the dog near my house at Hamlin and Columbus. The dog snarled at me and then came at me like he was going to bite or attack . I tried to walk around him, but he was not going to let me pass. So I went into a driveway of a neighbor. The dog eventually wandered off.
I related the story on Next Door and of course, people were dubious of my story. They said I ran off screaming, that I handled the dog incorrectly, that my fear showed. Then some neighbors said this dog had killed another dog, and was a danger to the community.
The point was that my story, like most items on Next Door, ended up being a place for people to argue, and to doubt the veracity of what had been reported. Somewhat like the invisible dog on “I Dream of Jeannie.”
I’ve since reported the dog to E. Valley Animal Control. And the Next Door posts about the wandering German Shepherd continue to proliferate. One woman said perhaps the dog had a problem with men, (as Chin-Chin had a hatred for men in uniform?)
On a more cheerful note, the archives of the Los Angeles Public Library contain images of Barbara Eden (b. 1934) at a few charitable events in the San Fernando Valley circa 1960.
Photograph caption dated May 22, 1959 reads “Young Michael Rohmer, 8, post-polio patient at Orthopaedic Hospital, center, sells tickets to 3rd annual benefit golf tournament to actors and actresses, from left, Barry Coe, Barbara Eden, Sal Mineo and Terry Moore. Tourney is sponsored by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Investigator’s Association and will be held May 29.” Orthopaedic Hospital is located in downtown Los Angeles.
Photograph caption dated July 26, 1957 reads, “Actress Barbara Eden signals last call for Trailer Coach Association’s 1,200-mile travel-trailer caravan from North Hollywood’s May Co. parking lot to Seattle, starting today. Some 160 persons in 75 trailers will participate in caravan trip to Seattle’s Seafair celebration Aug. 2-11.”
Photograph caption dated March 23, 1960 reads, “Sherman Oaks actress Barbara Eden samples spaghetti sauce dreamed up by another film queen, Marilyn Monroe, whose recipe for sauce is included in Celebrities and Citizens’ Cookbook being made available to public by Women’s division of Sherman Oaks Chamber of Commerce. Division is headed by Mrs. E. J. Turner, right.”
Photograph caption reads: “Actress Barbara Eden, official hostess for the Los Angeles Open golf tournament, helps Junior Chamber of Commerce president Bob Meyer in selling tickets for the $44,500 links classic Jan. 8-11 at Rancho”. Photograph dated: Jan. 4, 1960.
Caption included reads, “Happy group at birthday party held at Charter House in Anaheim, get together to blow out single candle on cake signifying first anniversary on July 2 of Melodyland Theatre. Left to right are Melodyland producer Danny Dare, stars Barbara Eden and John Raitt of ‘Pajama Game,’ current attraction, Patti Moore, actress wife, producer Sammy Lewis and Bob Golbach, Charter House manager.” Photograph dated July 10, 1964.
Yesterday afternoon, for an hour or so, I was perched, up high on a wooden chair, in the back of my favorite coffee shop in Studio City. I was writing a short story and concentrating on a character who suffers a nervous breakdown.
Across from me, diagonally, and seated at a lower table, a middle-aged woman sat with her open checkbook, her mobile phone, and artfully addressed mailers with her mid-century name and current address calligraphically sharpied.
Her name and address were so large and so graphic that I could read it seven feet away: Terri Lynn Graumann, 12765 Moorpark #Apt. 2904. Studio City, CA 91604 [Name and address have been changed]
I went back to my writing but then the woman turned around, frazzled and disoriented, and asked, “Did you see anyone go into my purse?” She was referring to her black, poster-board sized, leather handbag that looked expensive and elegant.
“No I didn’t,” I answered. I half expected her to accuse me but she didn’t.
She turned to another couple, in conversation, to ask them the same question.
It soon became obvious that the woman was missing another electronic device that her mobile phone indicated was right there in front of her, or nearby.
She rifled nervously through her 36″ x 24″ x 1″ purse, and upended her papers and looked under the table and inside her black duffle coat pocket. She brought us all into her missing electronic device mystery, and we had to stop writing, or talking, or thinking, and listen to her plea to find her missing Ipad.
Then she ran out of the coffee shop, ostensibly into her vehicle, to locate the missing object. On her table, left behind, were blank checks, her name, her home address and her mobile phone.
She returned, relieved and carrying her missing device. She had found it in her car.
She sat down, opened it and started to work on her finances, which I could not see in detail, other than the large logo for Chase Bank.
I’m often jittery about getting robbed, and sometimes, like that woman, I’ll wonder if that wallet or phone or laptop I brought in to the coffee shop has gone missing. So I am not without empathy for her temporary debacle.
But again, it is ironic, in this day when shows like “Mr. Robot” dramatize how easily one’s information can be hacked electronically, especially, in public places; to see someone do almost everything wrong, and indeed, dangerously, to put her personal information and financial privacy out in the open.
Again, real people sacrifice reality to save a digital device.
In a larger sense, we lose “friends” who come to town and post photos on Instagram and Facebook and never bother to see us in person. If we “unfriend” them that is as grave an insult as not getting together in person. Or maybe it isn’t.
We work on our online persona, to gain followers, to get compliments from strangers, to make friends with people who have more fans, and then we fail to visit our family for Christmas.
Or we are thrown into a panic because one portable computer is missing and we think that it is the end of the world.
And an idiot on Twitter, the most powerful man in the world, cannot resist joking about global warming, the FBI, nuclear war and health care. His projections matter most to him and the rest of the world must be brought into his virtual drama. That real icebergs are melting, that real people are sick and have no insurance, that real children die from guns, that real wars are started by selling weapons to evil countries, those facts are real. But a tweet, a conjuration of idiocy read by millions, it matters only because it is spoken online.
That’s the true story of modern life: to rescue the imaginary while imperiling the real.
Photograph caption dated February 23, 1955 reads “Posing with custom, are, from left, WallyMcIntyre, president, Stylers of Van Nuys, and George Weinstock, secretary-treasurer. Sleek showpiece is ’48 Olds with unaltered engine but complete customizing, including ‘Frenching’ (recessing) headlights, ‘shaving’ (taking ornaments off) hood and ‘deck’ (trunk), new upholstering and rungs, choming windowsills and painting dash to match general color scheme (Mandorin (sic) red and white).”
Perhaps the quintessential Option A story grows out of the life of Ivan Gomez (b. 1972) the owner of Pashupatina, a fine custom decorative metal shop on Aetna.
He was born in Mexico, by chance. His other four siblings (one sister and three brothers) were all born in the USA.
They were raised in Pacoima and later Friar St. in Van Nuys. Ivan experienced the turmoil and insecurity of being a little boy who had to register with the INS every few years.
He later went to school in Tarzana, and saw the other world of privileged children. Never bitter, always ambitious, he worked in Van Nuys at Bargain Books, devouring books on design and mechanical art. He graduated from Van Nuys High School where he met his current wife, a Lebanese immigrant, Natalie Magarian. He did not go to college, but worked at Tower Records, and Aah’s on Ventura Bl.; Taco Bell, and most importantly, at a cabinet shop in South Central where he learned about the manufacturing, design and installation of custom woodwork.
Ivan formed a band called Stikman (1989-92) and they often played in the dug out ruins of old factories near downtown Los Angeles. He went to raves, but remarkably, he remained clean of drugs. His strong character resisted violence, self-destruction and falling into the traps of depravity all around him.
He does not smoke or drink. He has a wife, two children, a thriving business, a home in Lake Balboa. And both sets of in-laws live nearby.
I thought it instructive and interesting to explore the city of Los Angeles in the first 20 years of Ivan’s life, to give some context for what it felt like to be a young immigrant absorbing all the culture, music, crime, drugs, police brutality that fell atop the intelligent, observant, fervent, creative mind of Ivan Gomez.
All statistical facts in this article are from original sources and are footnoted.
The Idyll
Photo by John Divola
In 1970, there were some 966,240 persons in 26 San Fernando Valley communities in Los Angeles. The population was young. And the average age was 29.
There were small percentages of racial minorities in every community in the Valley, except Pacoima where 33% were black. 4% of Sun Valley was minority, mostly Mexicans.
In Woodland Hills, the average rent was $172, the highest in the Valley. And the minority population was 1%, the same as in Tarzana.
Encino had the most expensive homes, averaging $50,000 in value.[1]
Many worked in the defense-aerospace industry, 348,000 jobs in Los Angeles County. Some of the San Fernando Valley employers: Lockheed in Burbank, Boeing Co.’s Rocketdyne Propulsion and Power in Woodland Hills, Hughes Missile Systems in Canoga Park. Bendix Aviation, Ramo-Woolridge Laboratories, Litton Industries, RCA, Atomics International and Bunker-Ramo. [2]
There had also been cutbacks in the defense industries, ironically due to the Vietnam War. Research and development, which was a large part of defense contracting work, took a back seat to output and manufacture of weapons. When the war was on, rockets and planes were needed, fast. Employment fell from 616,000 in the state in 1967 to 400,000 in 1972. 70% in Los Angeles still depended on aerospace to earn their living. [3]
Military attack aircraft, surface to air missiles, rockets, bombs, satellites, electronic controls for weapons systems, defense-related communications systems, The Stealth and the P-3 antisubmarine craft, were only some of the advanced weaponry produced here.
All these weapons of war, sent around the world, would ignite and fuel conflicts that one day would come back to the San Fernando Valley and upend the placidity, the normality, the blessed banality of pools, homes, burgers, convertibles and blond-haired boys and girls riding bikes around safe and clean neighborhoods.
ph: Mike Mandel, People in Cars, North Hollywood, 1970. Photo by John Divola, San Fernando Valley, circa 1970.
If you were wealthy in 1972, and could spend more than $100,000 on a home, you might want to live in Brentwood.
A Confluence of Events
**ADVANCE FOR SUNDAY, JUNE 8–FILE** In this April 29, 1975 file photo, mobs of Vietnamese people scale the wall of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, Vietnam, trying to get to the helicopter pickup zone, just before the end of the Vietnam War. (AP Photo/Neal Ulevich, file)
In the late 1970s, a confluence of international events; wars, revolutions, and genocides swirled around the globe. Under the umbrella of American anti-communism, military interventions produced results that eventually washed back up onto the shores of Southern California.
In Vietnam, in 1975, the fall of the Saigon government, the helicopter evacuation of the US Embassy, and the triumph of Ho Chi Minh brought a new influx of refugees to the US. At the same time, in neighboring Cambodia, Pol Pot captured Phnom Penh and instigated a deadly forced labor and collective farms movement causing the deaths of millions. Cambodians who could, got out.
In US allied South Korea, still developing its economy, an uneasy and tense truce lingered. Fearful of a new war, the government encouraged some citizens to emigrate to the US and send money back home. Millions left and settled predominately in Los Angeles.
Filipinos who had served in the US military during WWII were allowed to become US citizens, and many war brides came to America. Relatives of people already in this country were permitted to come here and gain citizenship.
Los Angeles also became home to the largest group of Thai people outside of Thailand.
The engine for all the changes in allowing new countries to migrate to the US came after 1965.
The U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (also known as the Hart-Cellar Act) eliminated national origins quotas and gave priority to immigrants with skills. In addition, the law allowed the spouses, unmarried minor children, and parents of U.S. citizens to enter as non-quota immigrants.[4]
Previously the law had favored northern and western Europeans. The involvement of the US in Asian affairs prompted Congress to change laws. The US needed to look magnanimous in Far Eastern eyes so that our role in Vietnam might be justified.
In Taiwan and Hong Kong, the prospect of American retrenchment and Red China’s rise fueled new immigration to the US. The San Gabriel Valley, once a bastion of whites, became a sprawling Chinese community.[5] Asian-Americans would become the largest immigrant group by 2014.
In 1979, the Shah of Iran, an ally of the US, was overthrown and replaced by an Islamic fundamentalist government. Fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for 444 days (November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981) after a group of Iranian students took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
The Shah had been a large weapons purchaser and his regime was seen as a bulwark against Russian expansionism.
By miraculous coincidence, all the US hostages were freed on the very day of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration. An overjoyed nation overlooked what some might call collusion.
Persian immigration to Los Angeles spiked. Beverly Hills and Westwood became the heart of a new community of refugees from Tehran and vicinity. Christian Armenians, many of them living in Iran, also came to Los Angeles and settled in East Hollywood and later Glendale. The Soviet Union also eased up on restrictions and allowed many Armenians to leave the communist ruled nation.
Notable too was the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1980. It lasted over nine years, from December 1979 to February 1989. Insurgent groups known as the mujahideen fought against the Soviet Army and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan government. These groups, which later morphed into Al Queda, were backed by the United States and Pakistan, making it a Cold War proxy battle. Between 562,000[27] and 2,000,000 civilians were killed. [6]
In Lebanon, a power struggle between ruling Maronite Christians, Shia Muslims, as well as the influx of Palestinians, resulted in Civil War, lasting from 1975-90, killing 120,000. Wealthier Lebanese, many fluent in Arabic, French and English, fled the country.
The War Against Central America
John Hoagland, El Playon, El Salvador, a well-known location where bodies of the “disappeared” are often found, Sonsonate, 1980.
In Central America, civil war broke out in El Salvador (1980-92). The government, with the support of the US, fought against guerillas who sought to bring social justice reforms. 75,000 people died. And the US spent $6 billion to aid a repressive regime.[7] President Reagan made a stand against the expansion of communism in the Western Hemisphere by brutally ramping up the wars to contain it.
In neighboring Honduras, Contra Guerillas fought against socialist Nicaragua’s Sandinista Government. Reagan also supported the Contras. A secret plan, hatched up in the White House, used illegal weapons sales to Iran to finance anti-communist Nicaraguan guerillas.
In El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua, millions were killed, and the murder rate, even today, remains the highest in the world. By 2011, 564,000 Central Americans would live in Los Angeles.
Mexico: Our On Again, Off Again, Family.
Mexican workers await legal employment in the United States, 1954 (LAT) Braceros working in US farm fields.
Mexico and the US have had a long love/hate relationship . The northern colossus relied on migrants to harvest crops, and allowed free, casually monitored movement of Mexicans who supplied low-cost labor to US industries.
A mercurial, schizophrenic, self-centered immigration policy alternated between friendly and hostile. The pawns were poor Mexicans on foot, seeking work, escaping poverty, exiles from two nations, never fully at home in either one.
In 1930, after the Depression hit the US, half a million Mexicans, including children born in the US, were deported.
Then in 1942, the Bracero Program was established to bring in Mexican agricultural workers to fill in for war workers sent overseas or into weapons manufacturing.
But in 1954, “Operation Wetback” launched by the INS, arrested 1 million Mexican immigrants at their workplaces and many were again sent back.
In 1986, President Reagan, now a lame duck, signed an amnesty bill into law for 3 million illegal immigrants. Half of these stayed in California. In Los Angeles, 33% were foreign born in 1990, compared to 11% in 1970.[8] By 1989, Los Angeles had the largest population of Mexicans outside of Mexico City.
How did this tidal wave of immigration happen in such a brief period of time in the 1980s? One explanation:
“Mexico, burdened by international debt, imposed economic austerity measures further hurting the poorest members of its society, which caused thousands to make the dangerous trek north for economic survival. Guides who could lead families across the border to a better life in “El Norte” were nicknamed “coyotes.” Signs along the northbound interstate freeway in San Diego County graphically warned motorists to avoid hitting families fleeing across the highway.
More than 2.3 million foreign-born Latino residents in the U.S. took advantage of this [amnesty] program, leading to naturalization and green-card status. However, most foreign-born laborers did not want to give up their Mexican citizenship, preferring to work in California on a temporary basis and then return home. The IRCA required people to make a choice. Most choose to stay in the U.S. and sent for their family to join them. Under Reagan’s leadership, Congress had tried to limit Latino immigration, but instead, they created incentives that would lead to its increase.”[9]
Last year, some in the Mexican-American community shrugged their shoulders at Trump’s invectives. It had always been that way.
Imagine this man, a make believe character, a true, fine, successful, once famous Angeleno:
Up on Mulholland Drive, east of Beverly Glen, sometime in 1980, there is an old, white songwriter, Len Shnauzerman, attended by his housekeeper Esmerelda, sipping wine on the deck of his estate, overlooking the Valley, purchased for $39,000 in 1949. He’s still collecting large monthly residuals for a few songs he wrote 35 years earlier (“Mippity-Dippity”,”The Cow Girl’s Serenade”, “Hoopy Doopy Waltz”, “Pretty Girls and Peanuts!”). He used to love LA, but it was now a cesspool. He is angry at those illegals, riding the bus to work, mopping floors, digging trenches, pouring concrete, those illegals collecting benefits in his country.
He may be fiction but there were plenty like him and perhaps there still are. Just because you worked hard, doesn’t mean you didn’t get lucky.
Plagues of the 1980s
The 1980s also became the high water mark of the Cocaine Era, much of it originating in Colombia and sent up through Central America. Crack-cocaine addiction destroyed poorer communities, and ended up with the arrest and incarceration of millions of black Americans.
The Angel of Death, AIDS, arrived just about 1980 mowing down the young, the brilliant, the innocent, the uninhibited.
The party was over.
Los Angeles would undergo challenges to its identity and survival never anticipated.
Suddenly the faces one passed on the freeway were strange, exotic, and menacing.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, meant the end of the Soviet Union, and the death of the Communist Revolution. Soon, client states like Cuba could no longer count on Russian help.
The end of the Cold War affected the military-industrial complex in the US. There was a decline in spending at the Pentagon, and this was felt, most deeply, in California, where defense industries were a backbone of the state economy.
Skunk Works, Lockheed, Burbank, CA.
Beyond the Beach
Life Magazine, 1970.
To the average Angeleno, politics in the late 1970s was something that only mattered when it came to local issues: freeway traffic, water rates, school boards, fire protection, crime and safety.
The chosen ignorance of the larger world, the anti-intellectualism of the American Mind, would come back to haunt pleasure loving California, which did not make the connections between the military-industrial-political-money machine, and its role in eventually undermining the peace and security of domestic life in the Southland.
Many loved the Republicans who were tough on crime, tough on communism, tough on deviants, tough on high taxes. They carried the flag high, and promised a restoration of law and order and the banishment of all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Insulated from international traumas, residing in a bubble of postwar prosperity, enjoying a beer and a cigarette on the beach, the people frolicked in the surf on the edge of instability, oblivious to the coming tsunami of social upheaval in Los Angeles.
The low point of it all came in the early 1990s when riots, an earthquake, the Rodney King beating, and the OJ Simpson murder case, seemed to encapsulate a region unhinged. Random people were murdered. There were drive by shootings every day, gang warfare, and a feeling that Los Angeles was just a giant cesspool of dystopian failure.
5/19/92 LA Times
The 21st Century: A New City of Many Nations.
Through all the tribulations of violence, economic hardship, racial injustice, environmental degradation, social dislocations, skyrocketing housing, education and health care costs, the Californian pushed ahead to forge new horizons in virtual reality, public transportation, immigration policies, social justice, police reform, housing codes, environmental, gender and age protections.
And the remaking of Los Angeles, painful yet exhilarating, a city that would once again embrace so many different people, living in so many unique ways, that future also came to pass, a hopeful passage into the future; creative, imaginative, innovative, multi-dimensional, internationally engaged.
All this brings me back to Van Nuys and Ivan Gomez.
More on his life, and the meaning of Los Angeles and here in Van Nuys, to come……
Pashupatina: Ivan and Daniel Gomez in their shop which they completely renovated with their own hands and money in 2015.
Just east of Kester, on the north side of Bessemer, Mustangs, Etc. has been servicing, restoring and selling that model of Ford since 1976.
They occupy three buildings. Two are rented, and one is owned.
There are 20,000 square feet, in total, of vintage parts stacked high and piled thick, inside cavernous, narrow, metal-shelved rooms with wood-framed ceilings, some punched out with skylights. Dusty light pours down through decades of spider webs to illuminate every small, medium and heavy part that might go into any Ford Mustang built since 1964 1/2.
Garrett Marks, 37; musician son of the founder, Arnold, 76; lead me on a tour of their facility. Thoughtful, quiet, bearded, limping somewhat from a two-year old accident, he wears his red hair long and speaks softly and knowledgeably about his family business.
“I feel like a historian, an archaeologist, and an investigator,” he said, as we walked past rows of steel tire rims, drive shafts, 14″ Spun Aluminum Air Cleaners, spark plug cables, brake pads, fuel pumps, stainless hood hinges, ’67 Mustang air conditioning vents,auto lamps, hydraulic hose lines, Bendix Radios, and stacks of vintage dashboards with fuel, oil and speedometer instrument panels.
We passed those extra-large, circular Mustang gas covers from the early 1970s.
Mary Tyler Moore, are you still on that highway to Minneapolis?
Inside the parts office there was a straight-haired young woman who sat in front of a computer screen. Her digital device seemed out-of-place in a fluorescent lit, wall-paneled room overflowing with volumes of instruction manuals: 1969,70, 71, 72, 73 Wiring and Vacuum Diagrams, 1959 Edsel Maintenance, and a glass case with headlights, key chains and other ephemera seemingly mixed up and tossed about by mischievous ghosts.
A few buildings down the block I toured the service garage.
It is expansive, bright and light filled. Jocular young men in dark blue uniforms with retro names (Scooter, Steve, Mike, and Gil) worked on vintage Mustangs and mocked one another in friendly terms.
It was like a scene out of old Kansas somewhere in a small town. I thought the boys might get a lickin’ if Auntie Em or Uncle Arnold came onto the floor. It could play out like “The Wizard of Oz.”
AUNT EM
Here, here, what’s all this jabber-wapping when there’s work to be done? I know three shiftless farm hands that’ll be out of a job before they know it!
SCOOTER
Well, Garrett was walking along the —
AUNT EM
I saw you tinkering with that contraption, Scooter. Now, you and Steve get back to that wagon!
SCOOTER
All right, Mrs. Gale. But some day they’re going to erect a statue to me in this town, and —
AUNT EM
Well, don’t start posing for it now. Here, here — can’t work on an empty stomach. Have some crullers.
A few jaunty, groovy autos were positioned high, held up on hydraulic vehicle hoists. Each mouth-watering, metallic Mustang body was a different color: deep red, orange, blue, and misty green. Each evoked a sensory flood of memories, for me, that fast time, 50 years ago, when people drove fast and unbelted, and every car you passed in Malibu had women in short skirts with long hair and big sunglasses smoking. Everyone you saw was 18, smooth-faced and sat in the sun and went to the beach every chance they got.
Those Mustang Dreams were getting renewed in present day Van Nuys. Their exteriors polished, their engines tuned up, their interiors sewn and repaired and given a yearly dose of immortality denied to their owners. A freshly restored Mustang gallops like an unbridled pony. It embodies youth, fury, energy, and a temporary escape from any debt, duty or obligation.
Just outside the garage, out on the black top, Ray was demonstrating a 1967 Lincoln Convertible Sedan whose top unfurled electronically and was stored in a giant steel trunk that opened to receive it and seemed ominously capable of holding five dead gangsters comfortably.
I met Arnold, the founder, and we sat in his office as he spoke.
He was born in Detroit in 1941. His father was a skilled auto mechanic. They came to South LA after the war, and Arnold came of age during Kennedy’s New Frontier when the Presidency was still profound and its occupant quotably inspiring.
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
The young idealist Arnold wanted to teach. He got his certification, and he went down to South Central where he encountered disheartening road blocks: a disdain for education, broken families, poverty, and children who passed around bullets in class for amusement. In those schools, at that time, before busing, there was no order, no discipline, no respect, so he soon went to find another way to work.
He got smart and retrained as an auto mechanic. By luck, he found another spot near Kester, and began his operation in 1976. His rent was $900 a month so he had to hustle. He found that his specialty in Ford Mustangs was dear to many, including celebrities such as Jay Leno, and Miley Cyrus among others.
Like all business owners in Los Angeles, he found that he had to fight, not only for customers, but against appalling social conditions in the neighborhood. There was illegal dumping, homeless encampments, drug dealers, drug addicts, thefts, and murders.
Arnold with Miley Cyrus.
The expansion and landscaping of the Orange Line (2005), with its lush trees, bike trail and dedicated bus route also ironically hampered the operations of Mustangs, Etc. For now Bessemer Street was narrower, there was no room for tow trucks to drive. The leaves from the many shade trees blew into the property, creating a fire hazard, necessitating removal.
Arnold does not believe “Option A”, the plan to destroy his business and hundreds of others for a Metro Light Rail Service Yard, will happen. “If we are evicted where will we go? There are no other affordable, convenient places for a small business. Many of our customers come from Hollywood or over the hill, so they aren’t going to drive to Pacoima.”
Mike
General Manager Mike thinks the plan to demolish 33 acres of industrial Van Nuys will create some huge environmental problems as decades of discarded oil, poisons, liquid metals and other bio-hazards, once willfully dumped, buried into the soil, are released back into the air. Adjacent homes will see clouds of dust blow over them as bulldozers, jack hammers and shovels unbury deadly toxins entombed in dirt since the 1940s.
If Mustangs, Etc. and other businesses survive this threat, a piece of historic but still functioning, producing, contributing, industrial Van Nuys will have had a small triumph. These family owned companies, mostly employing locals , walking to work, or living nearby, these places of quiet accomplishment and enduring fortitude shall not perish from this Earth.
From Oxnard north to Calvert, from Kester to Cedros, in Van Nuys, Metro Los Angeles is proposing a 33-acre light rail repair yard.
“Option A” will require the eviction, demolition and clearing of some hundred or more businesses that hug the Orange Line industrial area.
To the casual passerby, this area looks like a shabby district of old warehouses, with a sand gravel yard, a liquor store where homeless buy cans of beer, and used tires are fixed onto old cars at cheap prices. Wooden utility wires, car repair shops, and narrow Kester Street, along with a teaming population of Hispanics, affix in the elite, ruling-class imagination some place below dignity.
The real, happier, optimistic story is hidden away……
Behind the facades, technological, artistic, industrious, innovative and modern small businesses are building fine cabinetry, fashioning decorative metal hardware, restoring vintage motorbikes, making stained glass windows for churches and homes, recording music, and employing hundreds of people well-paid and well-skilled.
And they are all facing a death sentence whose judge, jury and law is Metro Los Angeles.
Pashupatina Owner Ivan GomezKristian Stroll, Owner: Bar Italia VespaIvan Gomez chatting with Kristian Storli inside Bar Italia Vespa. Both men have companies under demolition threat.Hardware Built by Skilled Craftsmen at PashupatinaShowcase Cabinet Owner Peter Scholz
The real estate here is cheaper, so Metro, in its billion-dollar “Measure M” wisdom, has fastened onto it, insisting that the destruction of many lives, companies and buildings will “improve” Van Nuys by permitting a site where trains from the yet-to-be-built light rail can be repaired.
Imagine 33-acres of train tracks and floodlights, fences, security personnel, closed circuit cameras, and penitentiary inspired gravel and stone paved grounds, acres of track, sitting just steps from Van Nuys Boulevard for the next 100 years?
What will result from the gutting out of yet another piece of Van Nuys? Just look at Van Nuys Boulevard and surrounding streets where every generation since the 1950s has insisted the mass clearance of homes, buildings and small structures is for the “improvement” of Van Nuys.
Widening of Victory Blvd. 1955 Tree Removal.
When the Civic Center of Van Nuys was built in the early 1960s, hundreds of homes were knocked down. Today the area is a Martian Moonscape of emptiness propped up by court buildings and occasional law enforcement.
When Victory Boulevard and Van Nuys Boulevard were widened in the early 1950s, commerce was lost, walkability and desirability were thrown away. The result is an ugly speedway of pawn shops and urine scented sidewalks.
And if some hundred businesses are cleared away just blocks from Van Nuys Boulevard to make way for a fenced in, electrified, floodlit prison yard for light rail, what positive affect will this have on the promise of revival for Van Nuys?
Simon Simonian, owner, artist at Progressive Art Stained Glass StudioNew $30,000, Swiss Made, Vertical Panel Saw at Showcase.Newly renovated industrial headquarters of Pashupatina where fine decorative metals are fashioned for installation in homes and businesses.Pashupatina owner Ivan Gomez presents his creations to members of the Valley Economic Alliance.Ed Kirakosian, Peter Scholz, Annie Vatov and Ivan Gomez meet to discuss the fight to preserve their businesses from eminent domain clearance.The pristine and light-filled interior of Pasupatina.Skilled craftsman at work at Showcase Cabinets.Peter Scholz, owner, Showcase Cabinets, discusses work with a craftsman.Pashupatina, a place where pride is evident.
You can be sure that the politicians and agencies will promise the world to Van Nuys. Just as a decade ago Mayor Villaraigosa gave us “A Million Trees” and only a few years ago current Mayor Garcetti lauded “Great Streets” to further the improvement of our urban boulevards. A walk along vacant shops on treeless Victory Boulevard from Kester to Van Nuys Boulevard is evidence of these old promises.
A great city needs small businesses. A great city needs walkable streets. A great city needs to fight for the survival of unique places connected by history, places organic to the area in which they are born.
Option A is yet another death knell for Van Nuys, another scheme from the outside of Van Nuys, dreamed up by bureaucrats flush with cash, who think they know best how to build in Los Angeles.
Photograph caption dated July 26, 1957 reads, “Actress Barbara Eden signals last call for Trailer Coach Association’s 1,200-mile travel-trailer caravan from North Hollywood’s May Co. parking lot to Seattle, starting today. Some 160 persons in 75 trailers will participate in caravan trip to Seattle’s Seafair celebration Aug. 2-11.”
Here in Van Nuys 
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