Members of Santa Monica College Women’s Row-A-Way Club, Santa Monica, 1935
House with tiled roof, garden, and gated wall, Palm Springs, [1930s or 1940s?]
California Bank, Brentwood office, Brentwood, [1957]
Prefabricated steel home, [1930s?]
UCLA’s Adelbert Bartlett Collection has superb, hi-resolution images from the work of a commercial photographer who lived from 1887-1966 and worked in Southern California in the 1920s through the 1960s.
It was a time when this state was considered the pinnacle of glory, a place where aviators, sportsmen, golfers, movie stars, and athletes played and worked in brilliant sunshine under smog-free skies; swimming, water skiing, boating and hiking through deserts, mountains and parks.
El Kantara, house with onion dome, horseshoe arches, and tiled roof, Palm Springs, [1930s or 1940s?]
Santa Monica shoreline, Santa Monica, 1934
Santa Monica College Women’s Row-A-Way Club, Santa Monica, 1935
Bungalow court, The Town House and Bungalows, Palm Springs, 1936
Coastal view from hill towards house under construction in the Rancho Malibu la Costa development, Malibu, circa 1927
El Kantara, house with onion dome, horseshoe arches, and tiled roof, Palm Springs, [1930s or 1940s?]
As we endure cataclysmic natural disasters and allow unnatural disasters, such as homelessness, to overtake our state, we have to look back to how the Golden State operated when economic conditions were truly bleak.
We have brought ourselves, by our own powers, to a time and place of our own creation, and our California is a product of our human strengths and weaknesses, a society which can go up or down, in a natural environment which is now turning deadly as it is heated up by carbon.
Way before people understood that our planet might perish by our own hand and not God’s, California took stock of its good fortune and erected a real place out of fantasy.
How did such phenomenal architecture, science, sports and innovation happen here in the early and mid 20th Century? What can we do to restore the optimism and leadership that once made California the envy of the entire world?
Can we bring back the pristine, polished, glimmering, spotless world that once existed?
Woman and girl on dirt road, Santa Monica, 1928
Spanish-style house, Santa Monica, 1928
Mullen Bluett building, Wilshire Boulevard and Ridgeley Drive, Los Angeles, 1949
Group on dock and on Sikorsky S38-A
Ann Pruden and Mary Conners in outdoor area with palm trees, Palm Springs, 1940
El Kantara, house with onion dome, horseshoe arches, and tiled roof, Palm Springs, [1930s or 1940s?]
Yesterday, late afternoon, there were clouds in the sky and the temperature was notably cooler.
On Calvert Street, outside MacLeod Ale, I was waiting outside for a friend when it began to rain. A few drops fell and then it moved on.
My friend arrived and parked in one of the few spots reserved in front of the brewery.
We had a few beers, including Cut and Dry, an Irish stout; Deal with the Devil, my favorite IPA; and The King’s Taxes, a mild warmish ale from the first days of MacLeod.
We ordered a mushroom and sage pizza.
There were people sitting next to us with two dogs, one sitting on a lap, the other, a Rottweiler, lying on the floor.
Then we paid for our food and drink and walked down Calvert Street, east, to shoot some photos.
In what some might consider the better parts of Van Nuys the people walk or jog past you and don’t say a word. They walk their dogs past my house, they pull a wagon with triplets, they push a stroller, and nobody even looks at you or smiles.
But on this part of Calvert Street, a poor place, just steps from a large homeless encampment, the working people were outside sitting, talking, laughing, skateboarding, coming home from work and selling food from the back of a truck.
Recently, I photographed Tim near the Sepulveda Dam.
He was visiting North America from Muenster, Germany, spending a few months traveling around from Cuba to Toronto to Chicago. He bought a used van in the Windy City and rode out to California, criss-crossing the country through Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Arizona and finally ending up in California.
Tim was “discovered” one day outside a fashion show in downtown Los Angeles and signed to a small model agency whose owner hired me to photograph Tim.
He was in California tasting wine in the Santa Ynez Valley when a gunman burst into a Pittsburgh synagogue and killed twelve parishioners. I know because we were leaving the winery when a friend of mine from Pittsburgh texted.
Tim was in California, staying at our home, on November 7, 2018 when a gunman opened fire in Thousand Oaks, CA and killed thirteen people at the Borderline Bar and Grill.
Tim was here for the Woolsey, Hill and Camp Fires and he walked and biked and lived among us under the smoky skies.
A friend of mine let Tim visit him in San Francisco and the young German arrived in the most polluted city on Earth on Wednesday, November 14, 2018 when you needed a face mask to walk outside and the hazardous air reading was 300 near the Golden Gate, and only 29 in Van Nuys.
Tim went to the Huntington Gardens, to Pasadena. He rode electric scooters with me in Santa Monica. And one morning I jokingly used Google Translate to wake him behind his closed door with a German woman saying, “Angela Merkel requests you to wake up.”
He came with us to our pot-luck Thanksgiving where we went to three neighbors’ homes for appetizers, wine, beer, the main course and an array of desserts.
He celebrated our holiday of thanks, of gratitude, of wonderment, for our American blessings. Blessings often forgotten or wasted or trampled upon by the ungrateful.
Tim Schneider: Sepulveda Dam
Tim worked as a landscaper in Germany so he came into our backyard, inspected our young trees and set about anchoring them in the correct way according to how he had been taught.
Anchoring a tree.
He is a vegetarian, so for almost a month there was no meat, chicken or fish served at home. One night he fried potatoes and onions just like his grandmother in Schapdetten.
He was neat, polite, punctual, funny, good-natured, and open to advice. He eschewed the crowd thinking of his generation, preferring to use his own mind to navigate his own tastes in music, movies and pop culture.
Unique to my experience in Los Angeles, he never didn’t show up on time, or fail to keep an appointment. He kept his word. When I brought him to Koreatown to meet a so-called filmmaker with 10,000 followers on Instagram and that person didn’t arrive, or text or email why, I told Tim that was how people normally behave in this city. If they think there is nothing in it for them they don’t bother to show up.
He had stayed in crappy AIRBNB’s in a $20 a night place with three strangers. He had slept in his van in the parking lot of a Home Depot in Kansas City. He had stayed with someone he met on the road who allowed him to crash in El Monte. And then he was photographed by a hustler who called himself a photographer and never gave Tim photos because Tim kept his honor and his heterosexuality intact.
The liars and the con-men and the grifters somehow passed over him without harming him.
This was the 20-year-old German man’s first visit to the United States. And he saw how we live, how we treat one another, how we co-exist.
Often this nation recalls wistfully its battles against fascism and how freedom prevailed in 1945. We love to replay that song over and over again, thinking of the atrocities of the Nazis and how horrible that time was.
Yet now we have a different kind of improvisational cruelty in the United States that happens suddenly with violent surprise. We think we are better, yet we tear gas women and children fleeing violence at the border and think we are defending our nation by keeping 5-year-olds separated from their parents. We go on, living our lives, after random shootings, after walking past homeless people sleeping on the street, and play Christmas songs in the car while others pick food out of the alley dumpsters.
And now a young German man visits and reminds me of what civilized behavior and expectations are. And how sorely lacking in those we are in the City of Angels. But what can I do to correct that? We are what we are as the American Nation.
So I go back to photography, and writing, and lamentations.
Tim Schneider: Sepulveda Dam
Sometimes our city shows off a side of its environment that is at once sublime, cinematic, and, perhaps lonely in its vast arid spaces. Sometimes something noble sprouts up in the ground and manifests its greatness before your eyes like the old Sepulveda Dam with its repeating arches and graceful artfulness.
And sometimes, a friend is made out of the most unlikely of strange and wondrous coincidences, because they showed up at your house, and you took them in, treated them with respect and kindness, and reaped some reward of brotherhood and international understanding and even love.
Last week, before he left town, before the rain came, we hiked over to the Sepulveda Dam before sunset to capture the late afternoon light.
And then the next day, at Burbank Airport, we said goodbye.
For most of the day, especially in summer, the San Fernando Valley is baked in a stultifying, blinding, suffocating heat and intense sunlight. In those hours, peaking in the afternoon, it is an ugly place. Go to Sherman Way near the 170 at rush hour when its 105 degrees and see if you disagree.
But at dusk, near sundown, the Blue Hour appears.
And photographer Dima Otvertchenko, a New Jersey raised shooter living in North Hollywood, has a particular sensitivity and artistry in capturing our valley after the sun has gone below horizon.
Imagine how temperatures have cooled down after the heat of the day, how people have come home from work, eaten, and finally can go out for walk in a more temperate and gentle city.
His work is modern noir: graceful, atmospheric, cinematic, and magical. This is the San Fernando Valley at its most merciful hour, astutely photographed.
All photographs used with the permission of Dima Otvertchenko. Here is his Instagram.
For awhile now, residential modernism has been in charge in Los Angeles.
There was a period, roughly paralleling the 80s and 90s, when ersatz historical structures were the rage. Overdressed, highly embellished and gaudy.
But the stripped down box, the serious architect’s preferred style, is now the only way to build, especially on the west side of Los Angeles, where property is the most expensive, and every single ounce of concrete, glass and steel must pay homage to the gods of inconspicuous consumption.
The Box is King. Long live the Box!
On Memorial Day 2018, I walked from 5thand Pacific in Santa Monica down to Abbot Kinney, observing and photographing select buildings.
2120 4thSt. The West Winds (1959)
Whimsy from a cursive sign that provides a movie title sparkle to an otherwise dull structure.
2311 4thSt. Santa Monica (1967)
They charitably called it decorative modernism. It is a cheap way a developer dressed up his building with costume jewelry.
2316 3rdSt. Santa Monica (2017)
These are ultra-serious modernist condos designed by architect Robert Thibodeau. At least one unit sold for $2.6 million last year. They have all the emotionality and personality of a computer processor, but are of this moment in their sanitized, digital perfectionism, one that is scrupulously wired to accommodate residents who might command Alexa to send hot pizza and chilled Riesling by drone.
2404 2ndSt. Santa Monica (2006)
Already looking a bit dated with its ultra frozen metallic trim and smooth stucco, it compares awkwardly with its more relaxed and disheveled asphalt roofed neighbor next door.
2501 2ndSt. Santa Monica (circa 1902)
Fear not! This historic house has been under municipal evaluation/debate/conflict/litigation since at least 2010 and there are now plans to demolish only a back garage and guesthouse, and preserve the front structure. An official report by Santa Monica City said this property does not meet standards of preservation accorded to prominent architectural buildings. A casual observer might disagree.
2520 2ndSt. Santa Monica (1900)
Imagine if Santa Monica were like Martha’s Vineyard, and little beach cottages with front porches were the norm? 2520 sits in exquisite preservation, next to a parking lot, but it is landscaped with wildflowers and drought-savvy plants. In its modesty and kindness, its gentle openness, it serves as an exception, not as the norm.
2543 2ndAve. Santa Monica (1915?)
All over Southern California, the courtyard housing of the Early 20thCentury provided modest, enveloping, nurturing neighborhoods for new arrivals to the Golden State. These archetypes made maximum use of land, but did so with landscaping and interior gardens. Unlike today’s crime paranoid structures, this building has windows and doors around the entire perimeter, inviting and friendly. It is under renovation, no doubt destined to be something unaffordable.
260 2ndSt. Santa Monica, CA (1989)
Now almost 30 years old, this white, modernist, multi-family structure is best appreciated by observing it through steel security fencing and a parking lot. It has the mark of the late 1980s and early 90s in its square paned windows. Private, secretive, hidden, fortified, yet gleamingly bright and stripped down to essentials, this is what investment bankers, psychiatrists and plastic surgeons consider creative living.
320 Hampton Drive. Venice, CA (2015)
Google, Inc. is worth $600 billion and controls almost every aspect of every person’s life on the Planet Earth. It is more powerful than government, it is wealthier than 90% of all nations. Its infantile interface masks an incredibly complex and manipulative design meant to squeeze dollars out of any enterprise it wishes to.
It enslaves us by promising us ease. It erodes our individuality and uniqueness by herding us into categories assessed and rated by algorithms. It impregnates our dreams and deludes us into waking stupor.
Here is one of the buildings built by the pre-eminent monopoly of our time. It is a box: fortified, secured and undistinguished. Inside, no doubt, young employees bring dogs, tricycles, skateboards to work 18-hour-days, for 24 months, before they scooter over to another company in Silicon Beach.
In another moral riddle for our times, hundreds of homeless men and women sleep on the sidewalks just a few hundred feet away as if no money existed to rescue them from suffering.
“State of the art architectural, new residential compound, right in the heart of Venice. One block from Gold’s gym, Abbot Kinney Blvd and two blocks to the beach. This three story gem has everything, from the rooftop patio with a jacuzzi to huge walk in showers, built in speaker syste and much more. No expense was spared on the construction of this home, it truly is one of the finest homes that Venice has to offer. Perfect for a live work space. 2 car garage plus 2 uncovered parking spaces. Available fully furnished at $25,000.00 or unfurnished at $23,500.00 In addition to the space per public records, there is 500 sq/ft roof top patio that includes an outdoor kitchen and a hot-tub. On the second floor there is a 100 sq/ft balcony, on the main level there are also two decks/patios over 400 sq/ft that allow true indoor out door use total of over 1,000 sq/ft of outside use. LIVE WORK ZONED”
708 Hampton Dr. Venice, CA (2017)
“Perfect for a live work space. 2-car garage plus 2 uncovered parking spaces. Available fully furnished at $25,000.00 [a month] or unfurnished at $23,500.00”
Muscular guy on balcony extra.
The Bird Scooter
All over Venice, these motorized scooters, unlocked by app, rented by hour, provide another means of transportation which speeds one along without aerobic effort.
Motor Home Home
This RV is parked at Brooks and Electric. The California Flag flies behind it, fittingly, salutingly. No housing type has grown as fast as the parked recreational vehicle.
1201 Cabrillo Ave. Venice (2008)
This home sits partly on a street and partly in an alley, both of which help solidify its sculptural presence. Dark, with variegated steel panels, and zig-zag cut outs, it is somewhat softened by vines. Lest it forget its bohemian surroundings, a reminder of drug dealers and gangs is provided by shoes hung on electrical wires nearby; as well as a tagged refuse container in the back alley.
249 Rennie Ave. Venice, CA (2013)
This is just the back guesthouse, but sparkles with a Teutonic crispness, like 1920s Bauhaus. And if this were Japan, there would be many houses just like this one, built along fastidiously maintained alleys.
420 Marine St. Santa Monica (1969)
Only 50 years ago they were knocking down quaint neighborhoods in Santa Monica and erecting cheapo, stacked, shoe-boxed units like 420 Marine St. Almost mid-century modern, this late 60s dwelling shoves cars into the back alley, and squeezes one or two under the cantilevered second floor. An overgrown pepper tree grows like a beard to obscure a homely façade.
2709 4thSt. Santa Monica (1967)
Still a rental, a recent ad offered a two-bedroom for $3,100 a month. Well-maintained from the exterior, it looks to have been upgraded with steel security gate, garage doors and energy-efficient windows. Considering its date of construction, it’s surprisingly un-ugly.
Here in Van Nuys 
You must be logged in to post a comment.