Tag: LosAngeles

An Abnormal Place

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An Abnormal Place: 900 Block of Kenmore, Hollywood, CA.

In my car yesterday, looking for a shortcut to avoid traffic on Melrose near Normandie, I turned up Kenmore and drove north.

On the 900 Block, I found a strange and eerie neighborhood of old houses.

There were no cars parked on the street, and hardly any automobile traffic.

Jail bars covered the doors and windows of every home. The street was baked in blistering sun, and without any shade trees.

No people were outside, and at the end of the block, at Santa Monica Boulevard, vagrants sat along the curb outside of a twin-steepled church.

I wanted to know what this neighborhood was, and what it had been, a long time ago.

Was there a time when children played in the front yards, rode bikes on the street, and adults sat on the porch drinking iced tea?

Why did every window sit behind steel bars? And was there a time when people lived in homes without protective glass gates?

And who lives here now? Are they mostly Korean or Armenian?

And why does this sunny place seem so frightened, closed-up, hermetic and cold?

There are some streets in Los Angeles where things just do not seem normal.

The 900 Block of Kenmore in East Hollywood is one of these.

Conversation at the Dentist’s Office

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I got to the dentist’s office today, and was greeted at the front desk, not by the usual person, but by a visitor, a friend of the doctor.

He was a friendly, chatty man; a Filipino born immigrant.

He said he was disgusted with the state of California and how much taxes were going to people who used up the state’s resources.

He had come here legally, he told me. In daylight.

He said that illegal immigrants were crowding up classrooms and costing all taxpayers money. “Of course”, he said, “education is important.”  But it shouldn’t come at the expense of legitimate citizens who were paying for the services used by illegals.

Mr. Pancho: Kester and Delano, Van Nuys, CA.

“Some people don’t want to work. I say if you don’t work, you don’t eat,” he said.

He was angry about people who come to America to work illegally, but also disgusted with those, presumably same individuals, who do NOT want to work.

Like those braceros who stand on Kester and Oxnard every morning? Or those bussed-in cleaning ladies walking along Sunset, on their way to clean the mansions of Brentwood?

Trillions of dollars have been wasted in the meaningless military pursuit of government change in foreign nations.  Billions were showered on Wall Street and the banks so that America’s economy could be saved. Health insurance is for the rich and any attempt to modify its dispersal is called “socialism.”

Every state and every city in America is fighting to stay solvent. Los Angeles is firing government workers by the thousands, and the schools are cutting teachers and classes.

And still the great wisdom of the street, one that captivates and controls our minds, is that Carlos and Maria pushing the shopping cart down Victory Boulevard is our greatest enemy.

Why do the barely powerful beat up on the less powerful instead of going after the real thieves in this nation?

LA: Portrait of a City

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Along the Wash.

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Banks of the LA River: Near the 101 and Vineland

A few weeks back, I explored some of the LA River as it meanders under concrete overpasses and alongside freeways.

There is a paucity of decent parkland in Los Angeles, as anyone who lives here can attest. Looking at an overhead map of the San Fernando Valley, one sees blocks and blocks of development, only sometimes interrupted by a small park.

Chandler Near Tujunga Park N Hollywood

The great freeway builders of the 1950s rammed their roads through the parks because it was easier and cheaper to do than buying up private property. As a result, North Hollywood, with its river and public green spaces, now plays host to an eternal hellish drone of smoke, noise, litter, violent driving and environmental catastrophe.

In Van Nuys, the 405 slices through parks, a wildlife sanctuary, past the Sepulveda Dam and through the Woodley Park area.

There are forces now, benevolent ones, like the Friends of the LA River, who are trying to reverse the damage done by the entombing of the river in the early 1940s, and the paving over by traffic engineers in the 1950s and 60s. They are planting trees, promoting walking and nature, and building bike trails. The most affluent area of the San Fernando Valley, Studio City, has seen the most upgrades along the LA River.

The Wash Near Vineland &101

But mostly the river and water and wash is ignored, standing mute, alongside the vehicles and the onslaught of cars and trucks, whose main goal is getting somewhere faster.

Larry Harnisch’s THE DAILY MIRROR

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One of the occasional blogs I peruse is Larry Harnisch’s THE DAILY MIRROR.

Mr. Harnisch reprints LA history as seen through its print media.

Read the story below, about an explosion at an apartment building in North Hollywood, that completely destroyed 10 units and caused $30,000 worth of damage.

They sure could write well in the old days, with those fear inducing words: hoax, suspect, blast, blown-off, kill, FBI,  and tomb.

Trip to the Annenberg Photography Space.

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L8S_ANG3LES_Exhibit

Did you know there is a place, hidden away in Century City, that calls itself the Annenberg Photography Space?

It located near those gigantic, twin steel high-rises that stand on the east portion of Century City. It is also behind the new glass front of CAA, and sits atop an enormous central lawn with restaurants, trees and lawyers-on-lunch break to provide the setting for one of the new cultural jewels of Los Angeles.

There was a bomb scare yesterday in Century City, so part of the Avenue of the Cars was blocked off. Two cops misdirected traffic, so that some cars were permitted to go through red lights, while other automobiles were stopped at green lights, and hundreds of pedestrians narrowly missed being killed by accelerating vehicles as they attempted to cross the street.

I had parked in the shopping center part of Century City, under Bloomingdales, in B37yellow, and walked through the shops, down the steps, amidst the crowds of blue shirted office workers on lunch, and eventually reached that central lawn where the Annenberg Photography Space lives.

Like the new James Perse store in Malibu, or the W Hotel, the Annenberg is full of outdoor lounge chairs, hurricane lamps and horizontal trusses.  No individual has much money these days, but every new public facility built in Los Angeles now is luxuriant, polished, modern, in every detail from the tinted glass windows to the Euro toilet bowls.  The Annenberg is in the current style, first mastered by Calvin Klein, sybaritic and sensual and corporate, down to the very choice of photographs hanging on the walls.

Power always pays tribute to power, so the most prominent, prize-winning photographs were full of Obama and Mrs. Obama and Mr. McCain, from 2008. A politically correct section had photos of screaming and suffering peoples from Palestine to Peru.  One very boring photo was taken underwater and showed Olympian Michael Phelps in a crawl.  Top athletes, top politicians, top tragedies. Photography at the Annenberg is always, first and foremost, about the subject matter and hardly has anything to do with artistry.

Window glare made the famous photographs difficult to view. I wonder why the “space” does not understand that sunlight is ruinous to hanging photographs.

I walked past the bathrooms, and hanging in the least appealing section of the “space” were the most comely and magnificent photographs. Here was a photograph of a polygamous sect of religious women jumping on a trampoline. It was artful and fun and beautifully shot.  There was a black and white panorama of horses across the Mongolian plane, cinematic and sweeping.  A group of Asian children, captured in colorful dress, and shadowy light was transfixing.

In a dark central area, an educational film educated people sitting in the dark.  It was a good place to take a nap.

If you want to visit this Temple of the Lens you must first decide which parking garage you want to park your car in. You then must plan to devote at least half your visit to walking to the building.  They have strange hours too. I believe they are only open certain days of the week.

The best part of coming to the offices of Century City is people watching. There are many nicely dressed professionals who are well tailored and very few are fat or look over forty.  If they have naval or vaginal area tattoos, they can hide them under pleated skirts. Conversations overheard here range from derivatives to litigation.

Perhaps 90% of the strangers here supported the bailout of Goldman Sachs, I imagine.

If you have any money left on your credit card, you can dine here at Craftsteak, the corporate restaurant beef publicity and investment hungry eating space which is housed in one of those low, horizontal, lounge and hurricane lamped buildings.  Pinstripes and martinis, briefcases and bruschetta, make this a premier destination for dining before and after Superior Court.  “Sir, will you be dining with us?” is a friendly rejoinder spoken to every $15-a-glass wine drinker at the bar.

A bald, short-tempered owner, who I have seen on “Top Chef”, was nowhere to be seen on the premises.

But what about the Annenberg Photography Space?

By all means, come here to relax and remember that your every movement is also being recorded and monitored by security cameras.

Upcoming celebrity photography exhibits to be announced.