About, but not limited to, Van Nuys, CA.
Courtesy of Nathan Masters, I found these fascinating vintage images which the USC Digital Libraries recently added to their Dick Whittington Photography Collection.
They show a family or friends (Dufay?) on what seems to be a Sunday type of outing, in the mid 1930s, up to Griffith Observatory, which had opened on May 14, 1935.
In the midst of the Great Depression, or perhaps because of it, people took care to dress up in dignity and elegance.
Fast-food wrappers and soda containers litter the parking lot of the LA Fitness on Sepulveda in Van Nuys.
For at least five months, discarded lumber, illegally dumped, has lain scattered. Members on their way to step class or leaving the gym scarf down burgers, fries and dump their refuse right on the pavement.
The culture of Van Nuys.
The great website Pacific Electric Railway Historical Society has added some historic Los Angeles streetcar photos to its eminent collection courtesy of Robert Chamberlin Photo and Richard Wilkens Collection.
ABOVE: Their latest comes from Los Angeles Transit Lines no. 452 on the N Line service.
BELOW: Los Angeles Transit Lines no. 485 is captured on B Line service in this neighborhood location. It’s November of 1948.
Despite upgrades and vast physical improvements in buses, trains and modes of public transport in Los Angeles, there are still glaring and inhumane gaps in the Metro System that seem to be devised to torture and humiliate the people who ride them.
One of them is this garbage-filled, plastic bench waiting area at Metro’s Rapid Line #734 stop in Van Nuys near Oxnard and Sepulveda. It is a direct connection for riders who come from across the street off the Orange Line and intend to travel north on Sepulveda. Sometimes as many as 30 people stand here and wait, baking in the noxious Valley heat, next to a bench that can accommodate only three.
Out in the sun, out in the rain, riders stand; without overhead shelter or trees, in front of the oil soaked parking lot of Pet Boys, where cars inside service areas are treated better than humans standing outside.
To add insult to injury, most of the riders are dressed in all black, a hue which absorbs the most sunlight.
83-years-ago, the San Fernando Valley was an all together different place than today.
Rural and urban, it was dotted with Spanish style gas stations, grocery stores, small houses; orange and walnut groves, neatly designed and well-kept businesses, with swept curbs and gracefully articulated architecture. Store signs were designed to fit into architecture and each letter and every proportion was sensitive to the greater architectural whole.
Photographer Dick Whittington worked this region back then, and his images are kept, for posterity, in the archives of USC.
Heartbreaking it is to see what has become of the corner of Lankershim and Victory today, a grotesque piling together of cheap plastic sprawl and indifferent commerce, junk food and junk culture. Even without looking, people know the location Lankershim and Victory is synonymous with ugly. Guns, crime, speeding, littering, illegal everything…that is what it is today.
What started out with great promise, California, is now ready for the apocalypse.
Here in Van Nuys 
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