California – Page 4 – Here in Van Nuys

Mike Mandel, Photographer, San Fernando Valley, 1970s

October 13, 2020October 13, 2020Posted in PhotographyTagged 1970s, California, Mike Mandel, Photography, San Fernando Valley, The New YorkerLeave a comment

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The New Yorker has a photo essay about Mike Mandel, who was born in 1950, studied at CSUN, and made a large body of photography here in the 1970s.

His work reminds me of the people who grew up here during that time, kids who were lucky to live a good life in houses with swimming pools, competent neighborhood schools, low cost college, and the ability to just do nothing, or everything, on foot, on bike, in car. Some are alive today, living in Encino or Woodland Hills or Studio City, inheritors of $2 million houses with $780 a year property taxes. These photos are their youth.

They had a rollicking good time in the past 70 years: getting high, going to concerts, having lots of sex, traveling everywhere and coming back to a freeway and shopping center universe in a city where only making yourself happy was considered the most profound errand in life.

The late 60s and early 70s was a subversive time with the Vietnam War, racial protests, and the Generation Gap. Anyone under 30 was thought angelic and gifted with great insights into human nature. Anyone over 30 was held responsible for all the hypocrisies and injustices of society. The Baby Boomers blamed their parents for conformity, environmental ruin, war and segregation. Yet these pissed off kids truly enjoyed a lucky period in the world, partaking of all the freedoms and leaving the bill for future generations.

The late 60s and early 70s imitated the time we live in now with cooler temperatures, unfiltered cigarettes and the insulted assurance that this country and state worked well for white people, and if everyone just got down, baby, and spoke their, like, mind, why, hey man, there was nothing that couldn’t be achieved, like even landing on the moon or dating Jane Fonda.

In the arts it was a time of blunt honesty, just showing things as they were, in music, movies and photography. There was group therapy, of just saying what was on your mind, no matter how embarrassing or crude or cruel. “Bob, Carol, Ted & Alice” captured that quintessential Southern California moment with its wry satire and takedown of the sexual revolution within married couples.

But there is nothing malicious or mean in Mandel’s work. It’s childlike in its openness, sweetness and curiosity.

If you had a camera, and practiced photography professionally, you went out and shot photos of suburbia, of people driving in cars, or you were goofy and put yourself, like Mike Mandel, in the middle of the photo with strangers. You saw the humor in ridiculous juxtapositions of people and environment: the shirtless slab of guy in the butcher shop, the suede coated beauty next to the space laser game, the old lady on her driveway with her boat and garbage can, the double cowboy hatted dude with a box of popcorn next to the bumper cars.

Now these images are a historical record of a lost time. And we value their freedoms, dearly, as we endure temporary incarceration and social isolation during this pandemic.

Escaping the Haze

September 13, 2020September 13, 2020Posted in CultureTagged "129 Marguerita", Adelaide Dr., California, fire, Georgina, Los Angeles, Muscle Beach, Politics, Porsches, Q-Anon, Santa Monica, WealthLeave a comment

Seeking to escape the haze and home confinement, we went where we used to go on Sunday in normal times: Santa Monica.

We parked on one of the wide, flat streets north of Montana, away from crowds. And we walked in masks that we imagined shielded us from dangers visible and invisible.

At Adelaide and 4^th, where a palm lined grass island ends at a cliff and now blockaded stairs, someone had written “No Vaccine” on a wall.

This year everything is No: no work, no travel, no movies, no dining out, no socializing, no school, no hugs, no kisses, no bars, no strangers, no baby visits, no old people, and, of course, no vaccine.

Before the pandemic there were many runners here, and they would run up and down the stairs, but the virus put an end to that, and now the bad air ensures it.

This part of Santa Monica is grand, with large houses, of every style and decade from the past 100 years, but everything, under the grayish, smoky skies seemed tired, out of breath, defeated; like the city and the state and the nation.

There were Porsches parked in driveways, and Mercedes speeding past, but there seemed no respite from thoughts of ruin and gloom. Who will save us? Will we burn down? Will we be safe when fascism takes over? Or will the lawless sack the mansions and the stores while hated cops stand by and watch? Will a smart leader emerge? Or shall we suffer under Q-Anon and the conspiratorial voices on Next Door?

Who shall live and who shall die and who shall find the most followers on Instagram?

Only the Shadow Knows.

Along Ocean Avenue at Georgina there is a restoration of a grand mansion, with construction illustrations of the elegant plans, and other photographs of historic and happier Santa Monica. Why there’s Mr. Pepper Gomez, Muscle Beach Contest Winner, 1950.

On Georgina there are yard signs, some of them angry. “Elect a clown, expect a circus” says one placed inside a long olive tree lined forecourt of a gated house.

Sometime from the 1940s through the 80s, this area was not so rich. There were large houses, but they weren’t expensive, so developers came in and tore down some of the historic ones and put up cheap apartments.

A 1971 apartment at 129 Marguerita is emblazoned with a strange sign: 129 Career. A door or two off Ocean Avenue, the 2-story building is remarkably plain and homely, with a side alley of individual garage doors, stucco wall and steel windows. Balconies are big and full of plastic furniture. The good life was once available at bargain prices.

And at 147 Adelaide (built 1926) there is a mysterious, long, downsloping, concrete driveway that leads into an old, wood door garage with a five-panel utility door next to it. Two spotlights were on at Noon, and in the distance, haze covered the canyon and the hills and the houses.

People People Envy

August 23, 2020August 23, 2020Posted in History, UncategorizedTagged American Life, California, Contest, history, Los Angeles, September 3 1961, Valley Times, Van Nuys, women2 Comments

In 1961, the Valley Times newspaper ran a contest to promote a new insert, Weekend. The winners produced a clipping of Miss Weekend Weather and claimed a $10 prize if they were chosen.

A photo essay, with pictures of the winners, entitled, “People People Envy” ran on September 3, 1961 in the Valley Times. All the women were courteously named, in the custom of that time, with their husband’s names, i.e., Mrs. Patrick McGarry.

It was an era when women were not considered complete unless they had a husband.

September 3, 1961

Mrs. William A. Rygg, 13430 Oxnard St., Van Nuys; Mrs. Walter Schulte, 8720 Hazeltine Ave., Panorama City; Mrs. Brace Gurnee, 11744 Otsego St., North Hollywood; Mrs. Jay David, 7519 Owensmouth Ave., Canoga Park; Mrs. Frank Dalton, 926 Parish Pl., Burbank; Mrs. F. W. Walpole, 17500 Minnehaha St., Granada Hills; Mrs. S. E. Meck, 9132 Yolanda Ave., Northridge; Mrs. Patrick McGarry, 5104 Woodley Ave., Encino; Ruth Fulton, 6619 Wynne Ave., Reseda, and Mrs. William Schmitt, 14201 Remington St., Pacoima.

Lilac Nights.

August 7, 2020August 7, 2020Posted in UncategorizedTagged Ash, California, DS&Durga, Photography, San Fernando Valley, Scent Trails, Van NuysLeave a comment

Last night, I met Ash for the first time.

He came over to do some social distance photos.

He reviews perfumes on YouTube. I found one he did for DS&Durga’s White Peacock Lily, followed his Instagram and he contacted and hired me.

He was born in Egypt and came here when he was five. Ash lives with his mother and his 5-year-old son in Reseda. He is divorced and hurt his shoulder playing pool. Slight, medium height, shaved head, he has a kind, soft, shy demeanor.

Like most these days he has work and no work. I didn’t ask more. Nearly a quarter of the people in Los Angeles have no jobs. But Ash is sadly cheerful. He is devoted to his son and his scents. I asked my subject to wear a mask except when I photographed him.

We walked around my neighborhood, after 6, when the light was dimming and people were walking dogs and children. Some had masks, others did not.

You would never know something malign was afoot in the land.

There is a mid-century calm on the blocks that radiate off Kittridge west of Kester: Saloma, Lemona, Norwich, Noble, Haynes. The houses are nearly 70 years old. Not rich enough to be torn down, not quite poor enough for decay, they are like their residents: solid, homely, neat, clean, enduring without drama.

Except for the walkers, there are hardly any people outside. Nobody gardening, nobody socializing, nobody doing anything social.

This area has been dead at night since “I Love Lucy” went off the air.

There are a couple of houses for sale. I saw one, a not pretty ranch house with an asphalt driveway and crummy design. It’s for sale at $1.2 million. Another fancy one with a vinyl fence in front is just under a million.

Who is buying these houses? Not the unemployed or the homeless.

One just sold across the street from me, a fancy Z Gallerie style redesigned Spanish home, $1.3 million. It had been remodeled, non-stop, for four years, the owner lavishing last minute changes on the property while vacationing in Turkey and Mykonos. Just when you thought the remodeling was over, a new element was added, like a chandelier in the carport, or double oversized Buddha heads overlooking the hot tub.

Earlier this week, the new owners moved in. Yesterday, roofers came to pull down all the clay tiles and re-roof it.

Some have discretionary income, others line up in their cars to get bags of donated food.

Last evening, on the streets around here, the little ranch houses from the 1950s were going into another night. A man was testing paint colors on his garage. Along the sidewalk, beside the house with the American flag and the backyard basketball hoop, an old man with a red bandana mask walked with two little girls and their dog.

And Ash from Scent Trails was leaning against a tree, perhaps dreaming of his next lilac infused adventure.

Beauty in Banality

May 19, 2020May 19, 2020Posted in CultureTagged Architecture, Artists, California, Drawings, French, Los Angeles, Martinet & Texereau, mid-centuryLeave a comment

The Drawings of Martinet and Texereau

Zoé Textereau (b.1986) and Pauline Martinet (b.1987) are two artists from Paris, France whose oeuvre is composed of graphite drawings of many places they have visited, among them Los Angeles.

I found their work on Instagram. Their architectural drawings of Los Angeles find beauty in banality. Perhaps because there are no people in these images, they have an affinity with our present time of desolation and isolation.

They are all something marvelous, an illustration of our city, seen through the eyes of two French artists, a revelation of form, geometry, shadow, texture and shape.

Our built mistakes: the round driveways, the fake pillars, the long awninged walk into an apartment house, the vinyl window and vertical blinds on a stucco wall, the landscaped lake of gravel around a palm tree, the steel security door, the tarp covered car in the driveway of the deluxe house with arched porch and glued on stone walls, and the randomly laid flagstone wall illuminated at night; these are their subjects.

Los Angeles is an artificial encampment watered by imported irrigation, stitched together by freeways and endless streets, baked in sunshine, built in discordance, promoted and extolled for no good honest reason. We have no ensemble of unity in our buildings, no public squares, no grand arches, no central gathering place. Tens of thousands are camped out in trash along the roads and under the overpasses. Those who own property pave their gardens, puncture the skies with revenue producing billboards; they construct monstrosities and guard them with guns and security cameras, they venture out from patrolled properties in tinted windows, sunglasses, and breathing masks.

But Textereau and Martinet find beauty in our banality. We can too.

Glorious California: Some Photographs from UCLA’s Bartlett Collection.

October 29, 2019Posted in Van Nuys and the ValleyTagged 1930s, Adelbert Bartlett, Archives, California, Historical, Palm Springs, Photography, Santa MonicaLeave a comment

Members of Santa Monica College Women’s Row-A-Way Club, Santa Monica, 1935

UCLA’s Adelbert Bartlett Collection has superb, hi-resolution images from the work of a commercial photographer who lived from 1887-1966 and worked in Southern California in the 1920s through the 1960s.

It was a time when this state was considered the pinnacle of glory, a place where aviators, sportsmen, golfers, movie stars, and athletes played and worked in brilliant sunshine under smog-free skies; swimming, water skiing, boating and hiking through deserts, mountains and parks.

El Kantara, house with onion dome, horseshoe arches, and tiled roof, Palm Springs, [1930s or 1940s?]

As we endure cataclysmic natural disasters and allow unnatural disasters, such as homelessness, to overtake our state, we have to look back to how the Golden State operated when economic conditions were truly bleak.

We have brought ourselves, by our own powers, to a time and place of our own creation, and our California is a product of our human strengths and weaknesses, a society which can go up or down, in a natural environment which is now turning deadly as it is heated up by carbon.

Way before people understood that our planet might perish by our own hand and not God’s, California took stock of its good fortune and erected a real place out of fantasy.

How did such phenomenal architecture, science, sports and innovation happen here in the early and mid 20th Century? What can we do to restore the optimism and leadership that once made California the envy of the entire world?

Can we bring back the pristine, polished, glimmering, spotless world that once existed?

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