Tag: Links

The Janitors’ Light Rail.

Posted in Culture, TransportationTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

 

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Nury Martinez, 2012. (Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer)

“If you’re a housekeeper, janitor or dish washer, you need to get to work every day on time,” she said. “Buses don’t move as many people and as quickly as the light rail. That’s why we’re excited about the project that would serve people who are transit dependent.”[1]

“As a mom, I can tell you it’s terrifying to sometimes think of having to get on the Red Line. I won’t for that very reason,” she said. “I don’t have to see the data collection to know that if I feel unsafe to ride the train with my kid, that I’m just simply not going to use it.”[2]

-Councilwoman Nury Martinez

Why are these two quotes important?

What does it matter what Councilwoman Nury Martinez of LA’s City Council District #6, representing Arleta, Panorama City, Lake Balboa, and Van Nuys thinks about public transportation, light rail, who rides it and who needs it?

It matters, I think, because it shows a way of describing non-car travel as something used by people who are the lesser people of the City of Angels: maids, janitors, dishwashers and perhaps even criminals.

Can agents at William Morris, that actor who stars on that sitcom, Hancock Park attorneys, the conductor of the LA Philharmonic, and Dodger Clayton Kershaw also ride trains? I wish they all did!

Strange that a political culture that panders to PC should grossly stereotype transit riders.

The prospect that Van Nuys, long languishing, is under her jittery guidance, and limited vision, is not especially comforting.  A public official who denigrates public transportation is not doing the people’s business very well.

For in her remarks she shows a remarkably retrogressive and depressing view of public transportation as something which is sometimes terrifying, unsuitable for mothers with children, and only made for unskilled workers commuting to low paying jobs in the NE Valley.

There has been, for a long time, an idea that if you had enough money in Los Angeles you would surely travel by car. And today, we have the spectacle of 24/7 traffic produced by a culture conditioned to expect that every journey must begin and end in a car.

Even as plans for expansion of light rail go on all over Los Angeles, there is an equally strong pushback against it.

  • Uber and Lyft are making it possible to take short distance trips by dialing up a ride on your phone.
  • Amazon is delivering everything from chewing gum to sofas with fleets of trucks that are also clogging our streets.
  • Parents who rightly shudder at their children attending a low rated local school chauffeur their kids 25 miles away to “better schools.”
  • Housing is now a luxury commodity but every law that seeks to expand it runs into the “where will they park?” crowd who wants to stop new apartments, new granny flats, new retail stores and multi-family dwellings near trains.

And instead of public officials offering imaginative, innovative and futuristic ideas, we have a throwback to the car culture that is unsustainable.

Los Angeles! This is 2018! This is not 1975, 1965 or 1945!

Light rail and subways are not dangerous. They are not only for criminals. They are not only for the woman who scrubs your floor. Properly policed, intelligently managed, excellently maintained, they can be pleasant, quick and enjoyable.

They are the way we ALL will get around Los Angeles when gridlock by private vehicle renders this city dysfunctional.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] https://www.dailynews.com/2018/06/03/heres-van-nuys-through-the-eyes-of-mr-van-nuys/

[2] http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-martinez-metro-sexual-harassment-20180124-story.html

Los Angeles.

Posted in HistoryTagged , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

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Los Angeles, it seems, is often in a housing crisis.

UCLA has a collection of historic photos of our city, and from their extensive archives, I pulled out a few to show that poverty, sub-standard housing, and homelessness, are life conditions that ebb and flow in both good times and bad.

In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, some 25% of American workers had no work at all. No income, no livelihood.

Many picked up their lives and their families, escaping the Dust Bowl farms in Oklahoma and Kansas, and came to Los Angeles which promised, then, as now, some deliverance from suffering near Hollywood, under the warm sun, to get cleansed of sin and pain in salty ocean water.

But Los Angeles was not Eden. It had slums galore. Within sight of City Hall, wooden shacks housed poor people. There were many neighborhoods that still had unpaved streets, mostly inhabited by Mexicans and blacks.

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1934, unpaved streets, Los Angeles, CA. “Las Olas Altas” (High Waves)
slum-sought-out-during-sera-housing-study-los-angeles-1934

In 1933, the average American earned $29 a week ($4.25 a day or $1,500 a year). A family of five, say mother and father and three children, had to live on that paltry income.

Under the leadership of FDR, the New Deal attempted to ameliorate poverty by sponsoring government work building roads, parks, planting trees, and constructing public works such as dams, bridges and post offices.

men-pose-for-a-photo-after-working-in-a-community-garden-circa-february-1934-

When FDR ran for his second term, in 1936, the aristocrat who worked tirelessly for the common poor man spoke these words about the oppressive forces who ruled the land:

 

“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace–business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

 

“They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

 

“Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.”

 

What would Trump say to that?

It took World War II, and the enormous engine of wartime defense spending to inject money into Los Angeles. Factories, aircraft plants, steel mills, weapons manufacturers, all of them set up shop in this arsenal on the Pacific Ocean.

After the war ended, the government created housing, highway and school spending programs to provide work and prosperity for the State of California. So much of what we think of as individual initiative was created by the Federal Government so that Americans would have work and income.

Hansen Dam: basilone-homes-veterans-housing-project-in-san-fernando-valley-calif-1947
31 Years Ago: maureen-kindel-inspecting-homeless-sidewalk-encampment-on-skid-row-in-los-angeles-calif-1987

Now, once again, we are in a new type of housing crisis with people living on the streets. Our new cruelty is compounded by an opulent prosperity that has dropped great real estate riches on many who bought cheap, or inherited property, or by sheer luck ended up in the right favored neighborhood.

But tens of thousands are living in cars, sleeping on trains, camping out under bridges and along rivers.

And how we meet this challenge, which sickens, disgraces and saddens us all, will be the next great test of character in the city of Los Angeles.

Easy answers about arresting people, deporting them, rounding them up and shipping them to desert camps tempt us. We think every dirty, distressed man and woman on the sidewalk is a lazy alcoholic, a lost drug addict, a violent, crazed criminal.

Yes, character counts, that announcer on KNX 1070 intones.

And it is hard not to hate the debasement of our parks, the volume of garbage, of shopping carts, of debris, stacked up like mountains along the freeways, under the overpasses, along skid row, and in every single alley in Los Angeles. Needles, feces, and beer cans are not compatible with little children playing on the swings in Woodley Park.

It is all becoming monstrous. Our city is slipping into a kind of hell.

But where is the humanity and where is the law and where does reason meet mercy so that we come to some guiding policies to end the barbarism of allowing encampments of lost souls to wander and fall down under the blue skies in the City of Angels?

Perhaps we un-officials need to start doing work, to prepare ourselves to heal, to care, to mend, to bring together this grieving metropolis of want, while waiting for deliverance from the Mayor and the Almighty.

But what, dear God, is the way forward?

 

 

“For a brief moment I forsook you, But with great compassion I will gather you.”- Isaiah 54:7

Victory Bl. near Sepulveda., 2018.

 

 

 

The Van Nuys Experimental District (VNED)

Posted in ArchitectureTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

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Given that the largest amount of new housing built in Van Nuys consists of tents on sidewalks, the idea of taking a portion of this district, say from Oxnard to VanOwen along Van Nuys Boulevard, and re-christening it as “The Van Nuys Experimental District” (VNED) is an idea whose time has come.

Along with light rail, bike roads and alternate modes of transport beyond private automobiles, the VNED would allow architects great freedom to build modern, inventive and attractive buildings providing apartments for a city starving for it.

If these buildings could be tax deferred for developers for 25 years, maybe the high costs of construction could be partially ameliorated.

Professional complainers, who begin and end every discussion with “where will they park?” should instead ask, “where will we live?” Amateur economists, who hate new housing because “it’s too expensive” should ask if limiting housing will reduce its price.

 

The photographs on this page are taken from a website called Architizer.

The photographs below were taken by me on Victory near Sepulveda on the south side of the “99 Ranch Market” shopping center.

Victory Bl. east of Sepulveda, Van Nuys, CA 5/10/18
Victory Bl. east of Sepulveda, Van Nuys, CA 5/10/18

 

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La Linda.

Posted in Architecture, CelebritiesTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

La Linda is an artisanal cafe and bakery built within a 1927 garden house in Montevideo, Uruguay. The architect is Pedro Livni.

Dezeen featured it on their blog and I’m bringing it, digitally, to Here in Van Nuys.

Why can’t we have a place like this near downtown-like Van Nuys?

On Gilmore Street, west of Van Nuys Boulevard, north of Victory, there is a row of empty shops across from, of course, a large, underutilized parking lot.

An old grocery store at 14547 sits forlorn and abandoned with homeless packed under the eaves of the building, and no signs of any forthcoming improvements.

Perhaps someone poor and unknown, who grew up in nearby Sherman Oaks and Encino, someone like Nancy Silverton, the celebrity founder of La Brea Bakery who sold her enterprise for $55 million in 2001, might come up to Van Nuys, 20 minutes north of Beverly Hills, and wave her imagination, her vision, and her money at a forgotten corner of Los Angeles. She could come her by Uber, maybe split a ride with her housekeepers from Pacoima and Panorama City and check it out.

She could partner with animal rights photographer, musician and Silver Lake resident Moby, and with his $32 million dollars, they might fund a bakery here, employing poor men and women, as well as starving artists, starving architects and starving for vision politicians.

 

Moby
Nancy Silverton

Photography of La Linda is by Pablo Casals Aguirre.

Walkable Places You Drive By.

Posted in Van Nuys and the ValleyTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

 

On the east side of Van Nuys Boulevard, south of Oxnard, there is a conglomeration of small shops.

Signs advertise a Kirby Vacuum shop, Attorney Sandra Nutt, a Farmers Insurance office, PC Tech Computer Repair, Young Actors Space, and a Los Angeles Wedding Chapel. Angeleno Mortuary and Benjamin Moore Catalina Paint fill up the northern most two blocks.

Here you buy cleaning machines, you get legal counsel, you are taught acting, you are legally married, you are fixing your computer, you are buying paint, you are purchasing life insurance, and you are dead and interred.

All this small business activity takes place in little shops constructed in the 1940s when commercial Van Nuys barely stretched south of Oxnard.

 

To the east of this is a pleasant, shady neighborhood of single- family houses mixed together with multi-family properties, mostly well-kept. Tiara, Califa, Tyrone and Sylmar are interesting to walk down because they contain an ecosystem of housing that works well together, near public transportation, modest and neat.

And if you are wondering what to call this area, please address it properly as “Sherman Oaks” even thought it abuts downtown Van Nuys.

You get your smog check in Van Nuys. You rent or own in Sherman Oaks.

At Calhoun and Tiara, a three-story apartment is under construction. Humorously, I observe that the style recalls those jutting out, trapezoids on steroids style popular 15 years ago in Santa Monica. The Valley is always behind….. architecturally.

There are vividly painted buildings on Calhoun, including a bright red box unit, and a 1920s house in school bus yellow at 14300 Califa. People will do daring things only when they see their neighbors do them.

The eccentric hues cheer up the area, bringing energy to a place where the beiges and grays cover everything else.

At Califa and Sylmar there is a property with dark green dwarf palms growing in profusion along the walkway and the front yard. They are a bold alternative to grass and liven up the house, along with a muted green fence built of wood and wire. This arrangement of plants discourages parking, and provides a sharp, prickly security perimeter, a subliminal deterrent, but naturalistic.

 

On the west side of Sylmar, are newer (2014), two-story dense houses packed together, a chorus line of garagettes. The builder pastiched shutters, vinyl windows, tile roofs, and various desert colors to evoke a Californian aura, Montecito Mansion by Home Depot. The houses sold for about $800,000 each.

With a down payment of $157,000, a mortgage for a family of four would be about $3,100 a month.

This area, newly christened as Sherman Oaks, still within paint fume reach of the auto body shops along Oxnard, is a desirable place in a city starved for “affordable” housing.

At 14403 Tiara, townhouses with three bedrooms and three baths will soon be available for $659,000 each. With rows of garage doors, it is unlikely that any of the folks living here will hang out on the front porch drinking lemonade.

The tour ends BEHIND the shops on Van Nuys Boulevard where an old house stands marooned in a sea of asphalt and parking.

Forensically, curiously, I wonder what this was so many years ago? Was this building a little cottage in a sea of orange groves, set back from the road before they filled in the frontage with the commercial buildings? Someone was surviving, living, eking it out 80 or 90 years ago. Then the land, I guess, was subdivided and “improved”.

 

A clever, innovative city would allow this back area to be turned into a garden apartment area. The shops could be built with apartments above, and the windows could face in back around a central courtyard planted with lemon, orange and walnut trees. They might build a few more small houses here, and devise a protected, nurturing development on this site.

The cynic in me doubts it will happen. But the optimist in me knows it is possible.

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The New Chief Design Officer of Los Angeles.

Posted in CultureTagged , , , Leave a comment

 

“Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne is leaving the paper to take the newly created position of chief design officer for the City of Los Angeles.

According to a release from Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office, Hawthorne’s new role will include bringing a “unified design vision to projects that are shaping Los Angeles’ urban landscape,” and collaborating with city officials, departments, and architects on a wide range of public projects including housing, parks, and transit.”

-LA Curbed 3/12/18

 

Imagine Los Angeles and “unified design vision” in the same sentence, and you might be able to swallow the strange challenges Christopher Hawthorne will face in “shaping Los Angeles’ urban landscape.”

A laudable, admirable position, Chief Design Officer, but how will it work?

In Van Nuys, if this area can be considered a microcosm for the city as a whole, nobody has the slightest idea, in power or out-of-power, what design the broken down district should undertake.

There are people like me, believers in public transport and walkability. And law and order: with clean, safe, well-maintained streets and sidewalks.

There are others, hating any building taller than four stories, fearing road diets, terrified the Orange Line will bring dense development to Van Nuys.

Public projects in Los Angeles are almost invitations to desecrate. I see the archway erected over Lankershim Blvd in North Hollywood, north of Camarillo, a pile of steel whipped together like tsunami debris and wonder who ordered and paid for it?

In Westlake, in MacArthur Park, in Pershing Square, the public realm must fight against the persistence of homelessness which seeks to establish its own rights within the public parks.

Homeless on Aetna St. Feb. 2016

In our city, the billboard is holier than religion. Will the Chief Design Officer fight against the outdoor advertising industry even as their pervasive ugliness destroys the public roads all over Los Angeles?

We need public squares and public places to gather, like they have in any impoverished Mexican town. But who will stop traffic in Mar Vista to carve out a plaza? Who will put a monument like the Washington Monument in the middle of Sepulveda Bl. to commemorate Francisco Xavier Sepúlveda? Can you think of a quiet conversation in the Fairfax District with a room full of old people as you propose carving out some back alley for public gathering space?

Where will they park? Who will hang out here? I don’t like it!

Almost every neighborhood honors the car first, and identity politics second. Can you imagine the fights in South Central, Boyle Heights, Koreatown, and other areas when trying to unite the indifferent, the angry, the argumentative members of the community on something as small as a little pedestal honoring a local somebody chosen for their ethnicity first and achievements second?

Every civic proposal will need to pass the gender test, the inclusion test, the not-a-white-man test. Even if the Eiffel Tower were built it would need to pay tribute to some forgotten and abused figure.

Los Angeles is a place where the historic car wash, the historic bowling alley, the historic hot dog stand all have a place in the civic realm. And perhaps that is a good thing, we simply don’t live in a city definable by standards used to measure Barcelona, Paris, New York or Boston. When we try to be grand, we do it privately, behind gates, on our own property.

When we erect grandly, we like to ruin it, with tags, trash, and irony. See any of the new bridges going over the LA River.

And lovely old homes, and fascinating vintage buildings are bulldozed regularly. See the two examples below from Van Nuys. Now gone forever.

14827 Victory Blvd.
6/14/15
DEMOLISHED
Vintage Auto Repair
6200 N. Kester Ave.
7/9/15
DEMOLISHED

We lived for the day when Echo Park was redesigned, and now people sleep all over it, and anyone with a cart can sell anything anywhere. So we modify our laws to accommodate and placate illegality. You want to get high here? You want to sleep here? You want to park your RV here? No problem. Everything is allowed no matter how it demeans.

The problem with civic life is there must be civilization and there must be a minimal, publically acceptable standard of how to conduct oneself in public. And we don’t have that. Just ride the Metro Red Line, daily, and see how often people ignore rules. And get away with it.

We can’t just build ourselves into civic pride. We have to bring it up through our own character. And right now we are busy ripping it down, hoping that our urge for destruction will somehow open up a bright new world of self-realization. But it won’t.

So good luck to Mr. Hawthorne and his Chief Design Office.

I imagine he will be a regular on KCRW and KPCC, there will be plenty of conferences and appearances with Frances Anderton and Frank Gehry, and Instagram posts at Intelligensia and MOCA.

And then a year from now, the job and the title will quietly be gone, and he will find another position up in the Bay Area as Apple’s Chief Aesthetician, “devoted to the virtual civic realm on Apple devices.”