Tag: Kester

The Local Sweeties and Public Safety.

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Courtesy of a community minded neighbor, we folks gathered tonight in a computer lab inside Casa Loma College on Kester to hear Senior Lead Officer Erica Kirk, Gang Officer DeLeon and a man from the Los Angeles Department of Building Safety speak about property crimes, prostitution and gangs.

The people were mostly older, largely white, and on friendly terms with one another. Before the speakers began, two chatted up about church, “I don’t hear the bells ringing any more!” and on grandchildren, “My granddaughter still works in Woodland Hills for a sod broker!”

Around the building, within spitting distance, ghetto apartments were sprayed with gang signs, prostitutes walked freely, speeding cars plowed through red lights, and old refrigerators and couches were dumped alongside the road.

But inside the room, reassuring voices of authority, festooned with badge and pistol, spoke of laws and arrests, patrols and progress against criminal activity.

Abandoned houses, trashy front yards, barking dogs at 3am, explosions, gunfire, helicopters, stolen cars, discarded marijuana containers, dumping, ubiquitous sex trade, stinky winds that blow sewage smells into the bedroom, none of these facts of life in Van Nuys would soon disappear, but some attendees were damn angry and determined to speak up and put a stop to the madness.

“Why don’t you arrest these prostitutes and ship them up to Nevada where it’s legal!” one man yelled. “They’ve been at it for forty years on Sepulveda.” And I pictured a sad whore, walking in the sun since 1975, wrinkled, abused and hated by local homeowners.

Another new arrival to Orion came with his pretty wife and spoke about his accounting of the used condoms found on streets around his beautiful estate.

“Since August 1st I’ve counted 33 condoms on Blucher, 44 on Langdon, 53 on Peach Avenue and 27 on Blucher!” he announced. My mind, always visual, imagined a sticky, gooey condom near a peach. For his wife, inviting the grandchildren into the front yard while a sex act was going on in front of the roses and white picket fence was quite appalling.

 

Some gentle people seemed innocent as to the fact that they lived amongst violence and anarchy. “The Mexican Mafia? What’s that?” a woman asked.

Another older woman spoke of her son coming home at 3am and passing three young men tagging a stop sign near Valley Presbyterian Hospital. “He stopped his car and rolled down his window and asked them why they were doing that,” she said. Officer DeLeon advised that it was, perhaps suggestible, not to confront three taggers at 3am in Van Nuys.

If Donna Reed and her family were transported to tonight’s meeting they would fit right in. That old time Angeleno, who came of age after WWII, whose life was formed in a sea of childish televised wonderment , made an appearance tonight, as delightful and improbable as Walt Disney meeting the Devil.

The local sweeties who came for this meeting were the nice ones who make up the silent and invisible and powerless backbone of Van Nuys. They cannot compare, in numbers or influence, these citizens, to the 180,000 who are in Van Nuys illegally, and whose presence regularly is spoken of in terms reverential and pandering, as when immigration reform comes up, as if we as a nation are commanded to do something to break the system further and destroy national sovereignty in the name of political correctness.

These people who gathered here tonight are regularly told there is not enough money for law and order, but when I spoke up and asked the crowd if they would pay fifty cents a gallon tax on gasoline to double the size of the (13,000) LAPD and bolster it, nobody raised their hand. “Why don’t you tax cigarettes?” a female cancer patient asked.

There will no doubt be more community meetings in the future, but the prospect for improvement in Van Nuys is dim. Without leadership, even the best intentioned community group, even the best cops on the beat, cannot hope to overcome the nonsensical and insane carnival of crime that dances all around us day and night. IMG_9557 IMG_9552

 

 

Teardown on Kester

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Up until a few days ago, a blue and yellow auto repair building with Honda, Datsun and Toyota signage stood at Kester and Delano, a retro oddity imprisoned behind high, steel- spiked fencing.

Now the fence is down, and a bulldozer is making fast work tearing up the asphalt and the evidence of the existence of the former business.

What will go here? It seems likely that it will be another modern apartment, like the one just to the north of this lot. That makes sense, as this area is predominately residential, and the auto repair was the only one of its type north of Delano.

What is sadder is the probable fate of the mid-century building. It might, in a more imaginative use, be saved, and surrounded by gardens, trees and chairs, transformed into a cafe. It could, in this area, provide badly needed nature and respite from the violent cacophony of grit, crime, and poisonous fumes that surround it.

And if an apartment is built, let us hope it imitates the modernity, restraint and white crispness of the new units next to it. We have had enough of the multi-colored, brown and rust, red and orange, loopy, asymmetrical, glib, cartoonish and “fun” styles that have disfigured much of modern Los Angeles housing.

Even Kester, once on the critical list, seems to be turning a corner.

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Changing Kester

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Kester Avenue, a narrow North/South artery between Sepulveda and Van Nuys Boulevards, is, north of Oxnard St., an industrial and immigrant arrival point, a place of car repair shops, small apartment buildings, bodegas and liquor stores.

Long neglected, like the rest of Van Nuys, it has undergone some positive change, small but not insignificant: apartment construction, remodeled houses, some cleaned up properties.

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At 14801 Califa, (near Kester and Oxnard) a property investor has taken a large industrial park and transformed it into a modern  post-industrial building. It has been landscaped with trees and plants, painted gray, adorned with metal doors and windows in a style best described as Culver City North. Envisioned as a rental property for media companies, it is within walking distance of the Orange Line.

Walls are untouched by taggers, possibly due to discreet security cameras ringing the property.

Remnants of old Van Nuys before and during WWII are also in evidence around the area. Steel buildings, used as citrus packing houses, and Quonset Huts with their arched rooflines, still exist near Oxnard and Kester.

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Walk on Kester north of Oxnard and you are in a man’s world of marijuana, liquor, used tires, transmissions, clutches, sand, gravel, cement, cheap beer, lottery tickets, tow trucks and dogs on chains. This is un-distilled and un-filtered Van Nuys, where hard-working immigrants take flat tires off cars and put bald ones back on.

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At sunset, the meanness is softened by orange and pink hues. Piles of tires turn into melted chocolates next to green boxes. Long hot days are ended and extinguished in icy lager Coronas.

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At Kester and Delano there long stood an old wooden house, a broken down slum place with discarded tires and trash. It has since been cleaned up and stuccoed up, as hygienic and impersonal as any Burbank tract house. But it is clean, which is notable, in a place where slumlords from Encino and Bel Air could care less.

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Mr. Pancho’s Market, long a fixture in the area, in now called “Los 3 Potrillos” (The Three Colts) and has been painted bright orange and I don’t know if they sell horse meat.

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A four-story apartment building has been under construction for some time near at Erwin and Kester. It stands in uncompleted modernity behind scaffolding and plywood.

On the west side of Kester, one walks past the last seven decades of architecture and development.

6315 Kester is a two-story courtyard apartment building built in 1961. A bizarre (or unique) frieze of Roman soldiers on horses decorates the exterior. Starved for ornamentation, post-war architects in the late 1950s and early 60s borrowed from epic movies like “Ben Hur” (1959) or “Cleopatra” (1963) to cinematically embellish properties.

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6321-6323 is a 1949 multi-family dwelling decorated with developer William Mellenthin’s (1896-1979) characteristic “birdhouse” designs over the garage. Mellenthin brought a rustic, Northern California feeling to this structure with board and batten siding, red brick, double hung windows and exposed beamed roof.

Sadly, this subtle, historically Californian style has little appreciation to The Vulgarians who now build in the San Fernando Valley. But in1949, it must have been a fine place to live, at a time when one could leave a window open at night, for ventilation without fear, and fall asleep to Tommy Dorsey on the radio.

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And the 2015 tour wraps up at 14851 Victory, the slum mini-mall whose most notable feature is the trash on the side of the building that the tenants and the owner never clean up.

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Kester has a lot of variety and stories, but suffers under the weight of neglect, which is a pity because it is a very human and historic place.

Rancho Pequeño and Other Places….

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Rancho Pequeno Back

Rancho Pequeno

Kester Street, for those who don’t know her, is a narrow road halfway between Van Nuys  and Sepulveda Boulevards, paralleling both.

Before WWII, it was on the fringe, out on the wide land, beyond settled Van Nuys.

Rancho Pequeño at 7050 Kester (near Vose) was significant enough to have its own postcard.

These are postcards scanned from the collection amassed by Tommy Gelinas at Valley Relics.

They provide pictorial fantasy, mined from fact, of the places and events and people who once lived in the San Fernando Valley.

 

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A 1931 postcard shows two men in Malaya (Malaysia) procuring exotic birds for shipment back to Bird Wonderland, Inc. in Van Nuys.

It was located at 15640 Ventura Boulevard, Van Nuys, CA, a location that today is known as Encino.

80 years ago, the name Van Nuys was used all the way from Beverly Glen south of Ventura up to Roscoe west past the present day 405. There was no shame in the name.

Our Ventura Boulevard has an interesting article on Bird Wonderland, which also had exotic animals, including, Jackie the Lion who allegedly inspired the roaring one seen in every MGM movie.

 

Take It Easy Take it Easy Back

No motel on Sepulveda today enjoys an entirely good name. Much of them, especially those north of Victory, are havens for prostitution.

But back when the area was a main highway into the San Fernando Valley, before the freeway, it hosted many family owned motels.

Take it E-Z Motel at 5764 Sepulveda was owned by Mr. and Mrs. GB Parrott.

The motel is still there, at Hatteras, across from Target, and is planned for tear down next year with a new replacement.

The postcard shows two people sitting in chairs on the side of the building, facing the western sun.

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Dorothy visited Hollywood and sent a postcard of Gene Autry’s home in Toluca Lake on August 5, 1947.

Writing to The Chalfants of Waynesboro, PA, she reports, “Saw two radio shows today, Queen for a Day and Heart’s Desire. Both good fun.”

Things may change in Southern California. But people still text and email the folks back home to tell them how they came in contact with celebrities and how wonderful the weather is.

 

The House on Kittridge and Other Matters

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Last night, one of our periodic public safety meetings was held at the Columbus Avenue School.

For once, the walking prostitute was not Topic A.

Instead, a sitting house represented the newest threat.

 

14926 Kittridge
14926 Kittridge

Seems 14926 Kittridge, a pleasant and recently remodeled single-family home, west of Kester, was sold to a group (The Village Family Services) that intends to turn it into a residence for young, troubled people.

Nobody in the community was informed. There were no hearings, no forum to stop the project. And now the neighbors were angry.

 

On hand was Councilwoman Nury Martinez’s Asst. Field Deputy, Guillermo Marquez, a pleasant young man in suit and glasses whose unfortunate job involves fielding complaints from every constituent reporting couch dumping, homeless encampments, abandoned houses, illegal sign posting, gang tagging, and now the addition of a troubled youth house in a quiet neighborhood that has enough trouble with troubled adults.

Councilwoman Nury Martinez
Councilwoman Nury Martinez
Assemblymember Adrin Nazarian
Assemblymember Adrin Nazarian

Also on hand was Assemblymember Adrin Nazarian (D-CA) who represents something called “46th district, encompassing the central-southern San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles.”     I never heard of him or knew I lived inside his kingdom, but apparently he is descended from other important Armenian-Americans having worked for Councilman Paul Krekorian.

He represents our district, which includes pushing for the conversion of the Orange Line Busway into the Orange Line Railway. We have a great bus system, with beautiful trees and a beautiful bike path, but it seems it must be turned into a train because not enough cars get hit by buses to make it work.

When I asked him about the wretched condition of the center of the San Fernando Valley, the district of Van Nuys, he was at a loss for words. The redevelopment and revitalization of this lost and neglected downtown does not fall under his power. That belongs to “city leaders” not “state senators”.

This is where I, bad in math, good in geography, become baffled.

Van Nuys is in the state of California. Mr. Nazarian is our state senator.

But only for a section of the San Fernando Valley. Which encompasses Van Nuys.

He is our Assemblymember. He represents a part of the Valley. He is not the mayor, or the councilman, or a representative, nor does he fly to Washington. But apparently he is someone in elected office who works upon our behalf.

Van Nuys Boulevard: Jewel of the San Fernando Valley.
Van Nuys Boulevard: Jewel of the San Fernando Valley.

 

 

Then we heard from one of the best speakers of the night: Senior LAPD Lead Officer Erika Kirk in the Van Nuys Division.

Shiny, smooth, combed dark hair pinned up, about 30, compact and well-spoken, gleaming silver badge and pressed navy uniform, she reviewed all the small bad things going on around us: kids hanging out in cars smoking pot and throwing beer bottles out the window, the empty dark house at 15102 Hamlin owned by Kathy Jo Bauer and a frequent location for crime, a falling down fence at Haynes and Columbus, negligent property owners who tolerate illegal dumping at the Casa Loma College.

Most of these situations have gone on for five or more years. They are intractable and confounding. But she assured us she is working to resolve them.

 

The problems that have afflicted this neighborhood are often flung at the police or elected officials who are asked to “just do something!”

But what can one say, for example, about a continually littered and neglected mini-mall at 14851 Victory, owned by a wealthy Bel Air man, Ori B. Fogel, who cannot even hire someone to sweep the curb in front of his stores?

Until the day comes when the errant slumlord gets a $10,000 fine, or the woman who refuses to clean up her abandoned houses faces $75,000 in criminal negligence, the property criminals will do what they have always done, milking and neglecting while earning money even as the community of Van Nuys suffers.

Califa Between Kester and Natick.

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A block south of Oxnard, between Kester and Natick Avenues, four residential streets dead end at Califa.

A time capsule of a neighborhood; neat, tidy, middle-class, without trash, graffiti, mattresses and old sofas; this section of Posoville (Part of Sherman Oaks) is either Van Nuys or Sherman Oaks depending upon your biases.

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The sunny aura along these streets, a dependable and somnolent monotony of the middle 1950s, is of people working and keeping up their homes, raising their kids and taking pride in their community. This could be Culver City or Burbank, so absent are those markers of decay that afflict Van Nuys only two blocks north of here.

Enormous landscaped parking lots, far too big for the modest amount of workers who work here, sit behind the white cinderblock boxes lining Oxnard.

In any European nation, or Japan, such decadent defacement of land would be unacceptable and put to denser use.

But in Los Angeles, the old American Way holds forth, but for how long?

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In the future, an architect might imagine that the asphalt would be ripped up to grow local fruits and vegetables, and the acres of pavement would sprout little villages of modular homes, five or ten or twenty houses arranged around xeriscaped gardens. Residents would ride bikes, walk to the corner market and board the Orange Line to ride out to Woodland Hills, or east into North Hollywood and downtown. Shady spaces between buildings would provide great outdoor seating for cafes, benches and even fountains.

For now, the houses and the white cinderblock industries meet in oversized parking lots in an average place stripped of personality, but grateful for its fragile place on the social ladder.