The continuing obliteration and destruction of the Sepulveda Basin area, with daily encampment fires, the hundreds of addicts camping out in garbage dumps of trash;with dogs, vehicles, bicycles, and shopping carts; is still ongoing.
Does anyone remember that this is a bird sanctuary, a watershed area, a lost jewel for the preservation of the ecology of the San Fernando Valley, and a park created for the recreational enjoyment of the community?
The sainted mayor with the dulcet voice, Karen Bass, had shown up last month for one of her photo ops, as the other trash camp on the east side of the 405 near Oxnard was cleared after five years.
50-75 people had been living there in Burning Man style until the orders came from City Hall that the news media was making a story out of it. This being LA, a problem that couldn’t be solved for five years, was magically disappeared in one bulldozing day.
The mayor spoke intellectually and philosophically, articulating something that perhaps nobody had noticed before:
“This is a notorious encampment,” Bass said. “This is such a dangerous location. I saw propane canisters all over the place. This has been a place of fires. This is dangerous.”
Yet she did nothing about it until it hit Instagram, KCAL and provided yet more catnip for her political enemies.
To live in Los Angeles right now is to inhabit a mental asylum where all officials, from the police, courts, and local government, all deny that they have any legal control over the removal of lethally destructive vagrants from public property. They are powerless, simply without any authority, to stop what any cop on the beat would have jailed in 1962.
Of course, the dark cloud over all this, is the spector of Trump sending in some army to “clean up the city.” The tanks and the soldiers will arrive, and then they’ll be stationed around federal buildings, and the trash camp parties of the Sepulveda Basin will continue. People will launch protests, and the mayor will say, “How dare he [Trump] send in federal troops to patrol LA when we are doing just fine without them!”
The obese ones of the City Council standing behind her will nod in agreement, proclaiming their legal and constitutional rights to run Los Angeles the way they have always run it, with liberty for anyone, all the time, no matter who they are, what they’ve done, or if they even have the legal right to stand on American soil.
Liberty to burn parks! Freedom to destroy public property! Let our glorious experiment in city government live for eternity!
2018 fire in the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area, Lake Balboa, CA.
Project 2028: The Olympic Games in Los Angeles
“In its biggest decision on homelessness in decades, the U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that cities can ban people from sleeping and camping in public places. The justices, in a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, overturned lower court rulings that deemed it cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment to punish people for sleeping outside if they had nowhere else to go.”- NPR June 28, 2004
Mayor Karen Bass immediately criticized the Supreme Court decision and said Los Angeles will not “go backwards” [slogan of the campaign] in arresting vagrants. Nearly $1 billion dollars is allocated for citywide homeless reduction programs.
On August 11, 2024 the city of Paris officially handed off the Olympics to the next host city, Los Angeles, CA which will have the honor in 2028.
Along one area of Hollywood Boulevard, sidewalks which had dozens of homeless tents in early August were suddenly cleared of all tents on August 11, 2024.
The solution for homelessness in Los Angeles must be tied to the Olympics. We must find a way to host the Olympics every four years for the next two hundred years.
A few times a week, homeless encampment fires burn in the Sepulveda Basin near the area of the 405 Freeway, Burbank, Woodley and Victory Blvds.
In 2028, some Olympic events will be held in the ravaged, trash filled park. (cough, cough).
Here is a report excerpted from the Los Angeles Fire Department:
CONTAINED – Grass Fire; INC#0254; 07:00AM; 15700 W Burbank Bl; https://bit.ly/3RG8PQg; #SepulvedaBasin; 20 LAFD ground-based Firefighters took less than three hours to fully contain the fire to twenty (20 ) acres of light grass north of Burbank Boulevard and west of the San Diego (I-405) Freeway. No infra/structure damage. No injury. Fire cause under investigation. ; FS 88; Batt 10; Valley Bureau; Council District 6; BC10 E288 E39 E88 RA39 T88 WT88; CH8; 17; Brian Humphrey
Update #BurbankFire Brush Fire; INC#0826; 02:35PM; 15700 W Burbank Bl; https://bit.ly/3RG8PQg; #SepulvedaBasin; 69 LAFD Firefighters have stopped all forward progress of the fire via largely defensive firefighting operations by ground and air, with the fire held at 75 (Seventy-Five) acres of vegetation northwest of the intersection of Burbank Boulevard and Woodley Avenue in the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area. No infra/structure damage. No injuries. #LATraffic: All traffic lanes (northbound and southbound) on Woodley Avenue between Burbank Boulevard and Victory Boulevard will remain closed until LAFD operations are complete. Unknown ETO. Travelers, please avoid the area by use of an alternate route.; FS 88; Batt 10; Valley Bureau; Council District 6; AO1 AO2 BC10 BC14 CE59 CM40 CM42 DZ41 DZ45 E100 E105 E239 E288 E290 E39 E73 E83 E88 E90 EM14 H0D H3 H4 H5 H6 HA3 HA4 HA5 HA6 HE2 RA39 T39 T88 T90 WT88; CH5; 17; Brian Humphrey
Brush Fire; INC#0826; 12:50PM; 15700 W Burbank Bl; https://bit.ly/3RG8PQg; #SepulvedaBasin; PRELIM: LAFD ground and air response to currently five (5) acres of vegetation burning near the intersection of Burbank Boulevard and Woodley Avenue in the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area. Slow rate of spread. No current infra/structure threat. As a precaution, the ‘Apollo 11 Model Aircraft Field’ was calmly evacuated. No injuries reported. #LATraffic: Closure of all traffic lanes (northbound and southbound) on Woodley Avenue between Burbank Boulevard and Victory Boulevard until LAFD operations are complete. Unknown ETO. Travelers, expect congestion and use an alternate route; FS 88; Batt 10; Valley Bureau; Council District 6; BC10 BC14 E100 E239 E288 E290 E39 E83 E88 E90 EM14 H3 H5 H6 HA3 HA5 HA6 RA39 T39 T88 T90 WT88 + Park Rangers.; CH5; 17; Brian Humphrey
CONTAINED Grass Fire; INC#0779; 12:54PM; 15700 W Burbank Bl; https://bit.ly/3RG8PQg; #SepulvedaBasin; It took 34 firefighters just over an hour to extinguish the three-acre grass fire using hand tools, hose lines, LAFD Dozers, and water tender. No reported injuries. Cause under investigation.; FS 88; Batt 10; Valley Bureau; Council District 6; BC10 CE84 DZ45 E100 E288 E39 E83 E88 HE1 HE5 RA100 T88 WT88; CH8; 18; Nicholas Prange
Grass Fire; INC#0779; 11:47AM; 15700 W Burbank Bl; https://bit.ly/3RG8PQg; #SepulvedaBasin; Firefighters are on scene of a grass fire, approximately two acres in size.; FS 88; Batt 10; Valley Bureau; Council District 6; BC10 DZ45 E100 E288 E39 E83 E88 HE1 HE5 RA100 T88 WT88; CH8; 18; Nicholas Prange
CONTAINED Brush Fire; INC#1688; 10:00PM; 15700 W Burbank Bl; https://bit.ly/3RG8PQg; #SepulvedaBasin; Firefighters made a quick direct attack on the vegetation fire, and snuffed it out at approximately one acre (updated estimate after the flames were out). It took 24 firefighters approximately 25 minutes to extinguish the flames. No reported injuries. Cause under investigation.; FS 88; Batt 10; Valley Bureau; Council District 6; AO1 AO2 BC10 BC14 E100 E239 E288 E290 E39 E7 E81 E83 E90 EM14 H0B H0F H3 H4 H5 HA3 HA4 HA5 RA39 T39 T88 T90 WT88; CH8; 18; Nicholas Prange
Grass Fire – Contained; INC#1847; 11:16PM; 5600 N Woodley Av; https://bit.ly/3RG8PQg; #SepulvedaBasin; Firefighters have successfully surrounded and extinguished approximately two acres of brush in the Sepulveda Basin. Originally burning as two separate small fires, careful coordination allowed them to merge before crews flanked and extinguished all remaining flames; several fire companies remain at the scene to address hot spots and ensure no further threat remains. No injuries, cause is under investigation. Nothing further.; FS 88; Batt 10; Valley Bureau; Council District 6; AO1 AO2 BC10 E288 E39 E88 E90 H6 HA6 RA88 T88 WT88; CH8; 17; Lyndsey Lantz
Fully Contained – Brush Fire; INC#1388; 07:45PM; 15700 W Burbank Bl; https://bit.ly/3RG8PQg; #SepulvedaBasin; This wildland blaze, known as the “Burbank Fire”, has been fully contained at 2 1/4 (2.25) acres. All LAFD helicopters have been released, and ground-based LAFD operations will continue tonight to monitor and fully extinguish any active flame within the perimeter. There has been no infra/structure damage, no evacuation and no injuries. Closure of all traffic lanes (eastbound and westbound) Burbank Boulevard between Woodley Avenue and the 405 Freeway will continue tonight until LAFD operations are complete. Unknown ETO. Travelers are asked to continue to avoid the area, expect congestion and consider an alternate route. The specific cause of the fire has yet to be determined.; FS 88; Batt 10; Valley Bureau; Council District 6; AO1 AO2 BC10 BC14 CE83 DZ45 E100 E288 E290 E39 E83 E88 E90 EM17 H3 H4 H6 HA3 HA4 HA6 HE5 RA100 RA83 RA88 T88 T90 WT88; CH8; 17; Brian Humphrey
Update Contained – Brush Fire; INC#1388; 07:20PM; 15700 W Burbank Bl; https://bit.ly/3RG8PQg; #SepulvedaBasin; A series of precise LAFD helicopter water drops have contained the perimeter of the (yet to be determined size) blaze in thick underbrush of the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area, south of the intersection of Burbank Boulevard and Woodley Avenue. 32 LAFD Firefighters will continue their largely defensive ground-based operations tonight to fully extinguish all active flame within the perimeter. There has been no infra/structure damage, no evacuation and no injuries reported. Closure of all traffic lanes (eastbound and westbound) Burbank Boulevard between Woodley Avenue and the 405 Freeway will continue tonight until LAFD operations are complete. Unknown ETO. Travelers are asked to avoid the area, expect congestion and consider an alternate route. An investigation into the specific cause of the fire will commence upon full fire extinguishment.; FS 88; Batt 10; Valley Bureau; Council District 6; AO1 AO2 BC10 BC14 CE83 E100 E288 E290 E39 E83 E88 E90 EM17 H3 H4 H6 HA3 HA4 HA6 RA100 RA83 RA88 T88 T90 WT88; CH8; 17; Brian Humphrey
Brush Fire; INC#1388; 05:44PM; 15700 W Burbank Bl; https://bit.ly/3RG8PQg; #SepulvedaBasin; PRELIM: LAFD ground and air response in largely defensive operations to less than one (1) acre of grass burning on the southeast corner of Burbank Boulevard and Woodley Avenue in the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area. Moderate rate of spread with light winds at 10-15 MPH out of the southwest. No current infra/structure threat. No evacuation. No injuries reported. Closure of all traffic lanes (eastbound and westbound) on Burbank Boulevard between Woodley Avenue and the 405 Freeway until LAFD operations are complete. Unknown ETO. Travelers, expect congestion and consider an alternate route.; FS 88; Batt 10; Valley Bureau; Council District 6; AO1 AO2 BC10 BC14 CE83 E100 E288 E290 E39 E83 E88 E90 EM17 H3 H4 H6 HA3 HA4 HA6 RA83 T88 T90 WT88; CH5; 17; Brian Humphrey
CONTAINED Brush Fire; INC#1074; 04:51PM; 6100 N Woodley Av; https://bit.ly/3JmOXNT; #SepulvedaBasin; Firefighters responded to the archery range, where a two-acre brush fire burned nearby, stoked by sustained winds. Employees and patrons of the archery range were evacuated temporarily while firefighters went to work to contain the flames. Ultimately, it took 41 firefighters an hour and 19 minutes to contain the vegetation fire to approximately two acres, which consumed grass, brush, and trees. Evacuation has been lifted. No reported injuries. Cause under investigation.; FS 88; Batt 10; Valley Bureau; Council District 6; AO1 AO2 BC10 BC14 CM40 CM42 E100 E288 E290 E39 E81 E83 E88 E90 EM14 EM17 H0B H0C H3 H4 H7 HA3 HA4 HA7 RA88 T88 T90 UR88 WT88; CH8; 17; Nicholas Prange
Grass Fire; INC#1074; 03:32PM; 6100 N Woodley Av; https://bit.ly/3JmOXNT; #SepulvedaBasin; Approximately two acres of grass burning with 10 mph winds (gusts 20-30 mph) moving to the southeast (near the archery range).; FS 88; Batt 10; Valley Bureau; Council District 6; BC10 CM40 CM42 E288 E39 E83 E88 T88; CH8; 17; Nicholas Prange
CONTAINED Grass Fire; INC#0499; 10:11AM; 15700 W Burbank Bl; https://bit.ly/3aPmUFx; #SepulvedaBasin; Thirty-two LAFD firefighters (by ground only), plus LAFD Crew 3-A volunteer hand crew, anchored the fire and advanced hose lines around both flanks, while allowing the dam to be a fire break to stop the head of the fire. It took 57 minutes to stop all forward progress, limiting the burned area to two acres. Crews will remain on scene to ensure there are no hot spots or smoldering material remaining in the fire’s footprint. No structures damaged. No reported injuries. Cause under investigation.; FS 88; Batt 10; Valley Bureau; Council District 6; BC10 CW3A DT1 DZ45 E288 E39 E8138 E83 E88 HE1 T88 WT88; CH8; 17; Nicholas Prange
CONTAINED Brush Fire; INC#0749; 10:59AM; 6300 N Balboa Bl; https://bit.ly/3tgQyeW; #SepulvedaBasin; Crews held the fire to approximately one-eighth of an acre in less than 30 minutes. No structures damaged. No reported injuries.; FS 100; Batt 10; Valley Bureau; Council District 6; AO1 AO2 BC10 BC15 BC17 BP99 CM20 CM22 CM40 CM42 E100 E239 E273 E290 E39 E64 E66 E73 E83 E88 E90 E94 EM15 H0B H0C H1 H3 H4 H7 HA1 HA3 HA4 HA7 RA100 SO1 T39 T73 T90 WT88; CH8; 17; Nicholas Prange
Brush Fire; INC#0749; 10:34AM; 6300 N Balboa Bl; https://bit.ly/3tgQyeW; #SepulvedaBasin; Small vegetation fire (approximately 50′ x 100′), slow moving, in the Lake Balboa Park area with no structures threatened. Crews are making good progress, getting hose lines around it, and do not anticipate further spread. ; FS 100; Batt 10; Valley Bureau; Council District 6; AO1 AO2 BC10 BC15 BC17 BP99 CM20 CM22 CM40 CM42 E100 E239 E273 E290 E39 E64 E66 E73 E83 E88 E90 E94 EM15 H0B H0C H1 H3 H4 H7 HA1 HA3 HA4 HA7 RA100 T39 T73 T90 WT88; CH5; 17; Nicholas Prange
Grass Fire – Contained; INC#1561; 06:40PM; 6066 N Woodley Av; https://bit.ly/3JmOXNT; #SepulvedaBasin; 26 ground based LAFD Firefighters contained the fire to two (2) acres of grass and vegetation (7:06 PM) . No structures. No injury. Crews will remain at scene for at least two hours to complete mop up. Fire cause under investigation.; FS 88; Batt 10; Valley Bureau; Council District 6; BC10 E100 E288 E83 E88 E90 RA83 RA88 T88 WT88; CH8; 13; Brian Humphrey
Knockdown – Brush Fire; INC#1297; 06:04PM; 5600 N Woodley Av; https://bit.ly/3JTkDLa; #SepulvedaBasin; Despite hot weather and a steady 7 mph wind from the south, a well-coordinated LAFD ground and air response with the assistance of Park Rangers, held flames to three (3) acres of grass and brush on the west side of Woodley Avenue north of Burbank Boulevard. No injury. No structures. Fire cause under investigation.; FS 88; Batt 10; Valley Bureau; Council District 6; AO1 AO2 BC10 BC14 E100 E239 E288 E290 E39 E81 E83 E88 E90 EM14 H2 H4 H7 HA2 HA4 HA7 RA88 RA90 T39 T88 T90 WT88 + Park Rangers; CH5; 17; Brian Humphrey
Brush Fire; INC#1297; 05:15PM; 5600 N Woodley Av; https://bit.ly/3JTkDLa; #SepulvedaBasin; PRELIM: LAFD ground and air response to a grass fire extending into brush on the west side of Woodley Avenue north of Burbank Boulevard. No structure threat.; FS 88; Batt 10; Valley Bureau; Council District 6; AO1 AO2 BC10 BC14 E100 E239 E288 E290 E39 E81 E83 E88 E90 EM14 H2 H4 H7 HA2 HA4 HA7 RA88 RA90 T39 T88 T90 WT88; CH5; 17; Brian Humphrey
Contained – Brush Fire; INC#1311; 07:18PM; 15700 W Burbank Bl; https://bit.ly/3aPmUFx; #SepulvedaBasin; Thanks to precise water drops from a pair of quickly arriving LAFD helicopters, forward progress of the fire/s has been stopped in just 50 minutes. The 40 ground-based LAFD firefighters are finalizing control of the perimeter of the blaze with hand tools and hose lines. No final acreage estimate is available. No injury. No structures damaged. Fire cause under investigation.; FS 88; Batt 10; Valley Bureau; Council District 6; BC10 BC14 E100 E109 E239 E288 E290 E81 E88 E90 E99 EM14 H1 H2 HA1 HA2 RA83 T39 T88 T90 WT88; CH5; 17; Brian Humphrey
Brush Fire; INC#1311; 06:28PM; 15700 W Burbank Bl; https://bit.ly/3aPmUFx; #SepulvedaBasin; PRELIM: LAFD ground and air response to several spot fires in volatile light-to-medium density brush south of Burbank Boulevard. No road closure. No structure threat. No evacuation.; FS 88; Batt 10; Valley Bureau; Council District 6; BC10 BC14 E100 E109 E239 E288 E290 E81 E88 E90 E99 EM14 H1 H2 HA1 HA2 RA83 T39 T88 T90 WT88; CH5; 17; Brian Humphrey
I hadn’t been to ROW DTLA/ SmorgasburgLA since the pandemic.
This past Sunday was cool and it seemed like a good day to go down there, so we drove to the weekly event, parked in the commodious and well-ordered concrete car park, and walked across to the food trucks and cheerful carnival of Smorgasburg.
I ate a type of goat cheese and beet Chivadilla (a mulita style Quesadilla) from The Goat and later had pulled pork on a roll at Battambong BBQ, a Cambodian American joint. I tried a fresh fruit drink from another Cambodian seller, Sweet Grass. Everything was delicious and affordable (to a point).
The crowd was varied, and dressed colorfully, some pushing baby strollers.
I stopped to speak to one man at Lost in LA, selling embroidered knitwear. He had recently returned from Japan which he had visited a few times. We both admired the public civility of that nation and wished we had more of it here.
“Their kids clean their own classrooms!” he said.
Later we walked along the landscaped, manicured and well-swept symmetrical street of shops where they sell luxury perfumes, furniture, clothes, liquors, coffee drinks, pottery and jewelry. This is a kind of “downtown” you might find in Zurich or Singapore, a controlled destination where crime is rare and all the social ills are absent.
But this is Los Angeles, so we make do with an artificial representation of urbanity other cities take for granted. Because we don’t have civilized choices downtown or in Hollywood where our safety is sacrosanct. We instead find walkable and safe spaces under private ownership, guarded by for hire security forces.
On the route back home, we drove along Alameda and past tents where human beings reside along old railroad tracks next to shuttered industrial buildings that are awaiting new, more profitable uses. Piles of garbage and debris lined the road. And this wasn’t even the worst example of vagrant life in our city. There are many worse places nearby, skid rows by the dozens all over the Southland and a paucity of humanity and public policy to house and minister to people who are down on their luck and their circumstances.
There is not a park, a freeway underpass, a river, bus stop, library, 7/11 or a major street without RVs, tents, shopping carts, and piles of garbage. Wilshire Boulevard from downtown to Wilton for example.
Wilshire Boulevard! The once prime and pristine example of the glory of this city! Can it be that Los Angeles will soon host the 2028 Olympics? What can this city do in 48 months to become what it should be and disavow what it should not be?
Before the rains came, we went to visit the La Brea Tar Pits and the outdoor grounds adjacent to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the new Academy of Motion Pictures.
Despite having lived in Los Angeles, close to 30 years, I don’t remember ever walking around the La Brea Tar Pits.
It was Christmas Eve and there was parking along 6th Street just east of Fairfax, past many homeless tents. We pulled into a free spot, got out of the car and walked into the park.
The first thing we encountered was a man under the giant rock screaming his head off while two amused security guards watched him from a distance.
We walked on, into a sculpture garden of enormous steel animal heads on steel posts arranged in decorative circles around a concrete patio. (The Zodiac Project by Ai Weiwei, his first major public sculpture.) It felt like a religious installation but the gods were animals, toylike and comical. Their creator is currently in prison in China. We are free to laugh at his genius and liberated to be ignorant of its meaning.
Further we went along the red columned walkway that connects various art galleries and the new Academy of Motion Pictures built inside the old May Company Department Store where Bette Davis played a washed-up actress working as a sales clerk in “The Star” (1952).
There were nice looking families dressed in nicer clothes, out for a holiday walk or visit to the museums or motion picture halls. You could believe right there that LA was a normal city with civilized citizens taking part in the arts like people do in any other city outside of the United States, forgetting the woman on life support shot in her car, December 17th, on the 101 in Tarzana, a kind of gruesome violence that is our everyday normality, and nothing special to speak of, only one human life.
The crazy screaming man walked past us still screaming, trailed by two security guards, and there were so many security guards in every part of the property, inside museums, at the entrances, around the park, and you knew they were there to provide security in an insecure city where mad people wander and sleep in tents and on bus benches in the tens of thousands. And drivers fire guns at other drivers.
We saw many smiling, delighted Indonesian tourists taking pictures next to the decorative lampposts on Wilshire near Ogden. Their bus waited with open door as the happy group posed in the sunshine. What did they think of this city and this nation, so much abundance, so much squalor?
The future of Wilshire was all around us: the demolished museum buildings and the new construction for the concrete exhibition rooms that will catapult over Wilshire and connect via an indoor sky bridge filled with rooms of paintings.
The new subway is pummeling along below, and there will soon be underground trains taking people from east to west and west to east just like every other modern city around the world where people take public transport to get around. But here it was a novelty, opposed for years by the most powerful and influential leaders in politics and business, but somehow, now, in the 2020s, we are getting a subway along the most important boulevard in Los Angeles.
Priorities of this city. So meaningful and so confounding. What we hold dear, what we think matters.
Traffic, car chases, murders, helicopters, homeless.
We walked west and saw the ugly but beloved, closed down coffee shop on the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax where Senator Bernie Sanders had a campaign office in 2016. His name and murals still decorate the building.
Into the Academy of Motion Picture Museum we went, past more friendly, young security guards, (aspiring screenwriters?) guiding us to a gift shop where they sell “The Godfather” memorabilia and nice sweatshirts, t-shirts, film posters and music albums.
The Renzo Piano designed lobby is perfectly proportioned modernism with crisp polished concrete floors and exposed steel ceilings, pipes and vents. There are also many precisely hung blood red signs to bring life to all the gray steel and tan concrete.
It’s all very well done, very architectural and quite elegant. In Copenhagen or Stockholm this would probably be a subway station.
There are some very nice restrooms and we went down to use them, past many masked security guards who ensure that urinating visitors come, like us, from the proper stratum of society. (I have a BA from Boston University.)
After peeing and handwashing we went outside in the La Brea Tar Pits Park walking past fenced in oil pools with signs explaining the stories of animals who walked here 10,000 or 20,000 years ago and were caught unwittingly in the tar for eternity.
Almost all the old LACMA buildings from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s have been torn down to make way for the latest incarnation of faddishness, but they somehow allowed one of the ugliest to escape death: the Pavilion for Japanese Art, a monstrously grotesque, green rocked assemblage of artificiality, concrete ramps and gigantic shoji screens; asymmetric, tangled up, psychotic and tortured, mumbling to itself, whose only real quality is being outdated.
The George C. Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits was our last stop. “A fiberglass frieze depicting Pleistocene mammals runs around the top of the building, held up by a black aluminum web called the “space frame,” writes the LA Conservancy.
It is also a 1977, Charlie’s Angels era building sunk into the ground and rising up with a sculpted mural along the horizontal façade, kind of monumentally casual and pop art significant in the mode of Hall and Oates in concert or Kristy McNichol skateboarding.
What are these years and what do they matter? And what are the plans for Los Angeles and what do they matter?
Tear down, erect, tear down, erect, tear down, erect. Make big plans, wait a few decades. Discard.
Spend millions, spend billions, spend it lavishly, tell a story about a story and what have you got for a city?
The dead animals in the tar, the homeless on the streets, and the fenced in realm of enlightenment.
This is our civic space: a tar pit, an old department store, and a policed park. Maybe one day it will evince as much humanity as it aspires to, but for now, the answer to what Los Angeles will become is buried with the fossils.
East of Vineland Avenue, along or near Burbank Blvd, North Hollywood has a collection of small businesses, creatives, prop houses, and studio related companies that turn out goods and services, real and virtual.
On a windy, clear, cool Saturday we came to walk around. We explored Satsuma, Chandler, Cumpston and Riverton Avenues.
Spacecraft
At 5453 Satsuma, a small, white, mission style stucco church was transitioning to secular renovation for a company called Spacecraft. The site was an otherworldly juxtaposition of architectural divinity and outer space travel.
In the 1946 North Hollywood Street guide, it seems that Santa Susana Catholic Church was the center of a Spanish speaking community along Satsuma that was strictly encased (segregated) between Chandler and Burbank, but not one house north of Burbank, or one house south of Chandler. All the old houses were knocked down and replaced by industrial concerns in the 1950s. Only the church survived but not as a church.
1946 Street Guide5416
At 5416 Satsuma, a black and pink cinderblock building stood behind a chain link fence laced with reeds. A decapitated palm tree and wooden power pole completed the scene.
We walked along the Chandler bike path, next to a Robert Spiewak mural painted on a building in 2000, during the reign of Mayor Richard Riordan (1993-2001).This Angeleno themed artwork is a dystopian, militaristic vision of power poles, mountains, sky, missiles, and skyscrapers entangled in traffic or the internet.
My masked, hand sanitized friend Danny stood in front of the mural, marking our own pandemic time as we are poised on the brink of a potential world war and nuclear holocaust.
On the north side of Chandler, a half-completed structure (for USPS?) is going up with lots of steel and diagonals, in an aggressive, edgy, industrial style that looks like what they were building in West Los Angeles twenty-five years ago.
At 10747 Chandler, one story buildings from the 1950s, for lease, are neighbors with a homeless tent. And adjoining the block is a clay-colored stucco, streamline modern building, with mean little windows guarded by frilly iron bars, also for lease.
Praxis Custom Frame & Upholstery is housed, anonymously, in a deep teal and decoratively topped structure with brown awnings at 10717 Chandler.
This was once the location of Triple C Polishing and Plating Company according to a 1946 North Hollywood Phone Directory.
A matte finish, gray, Toyota Tacoma 4 x 4, pumped up and preening, was parked in front.
Triple C Polishing & Plating Co. 1946
Steel Lighting is a new design on an old building, crisp and clean, black and white, with a cornice of black barn lights extending across the facade.
Martin Iron Design (est. 1990) is hidden away at 10750 Cumpston. An American flag droops over a wall like a sad, lonely dog. HOLLYWOOD is crafted in metal over a steel walled security gate.
5550 Riverton Av.
Curving Riverton Avenue is half industrial, half little houses from the 1940s, a street like a small town, with tiny (million-dollar) residences that face west, into the sun and the new sidewalk, the parking lots and the shadow emitting steel plates that protect VFX Video Services at 5543.
Their firm is housed in a torturously proportioned building punctured with a whacko assemblage of exaggerated, protruding windows with monstrous, robotic, tinted glass eyes that scan a parking lot.
All who look up at the misshapen, off-kilter windows know they are entering a hallowed kingdom of architecture.
That concludes a sampling of North Hollywood, High and Low.
Here in Van Nuys 
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