Last night, around 8:30 PM, Erica picked up her Avocado Spread and two drinks from a Starbucks Drive-Thru (6833 Van Nuys Blvd, Van Nuys, CA 91405). Store #23369.
Then she (or they, meaning two persons in the traditional sense of the word) drove to the 15000 Block of Hamlin Street, parked her vehicle, and devoured (her/their) meal.
When (she/they) were done (she/they) threw everything out of (her/their) car, and left (her/their) mess on the street where (she/they) had parked under the exquisite oak trees and had enjoyed a quiet dinner in the peaceful shade of dusk.
(She/they) are, unfortunately, typical of Van Nuys.
These are also the people who speed through red lights, who play their music at full blast in their car, who also steal packages from front porches, and for many people these are our friends, families and neighbors.
Do I care if these people are any particular ethnic group or wounded victim group? Does their identity matter?
Not in the least. Because identity is not a matter of character. You are born with identity but you learn character. I just care that people I live near destroy my surroundings with their ignorant selfishness.
There is no elected leader, no parent, no law enforcement person who can police this kind of selfish behavior.
It is purely a matter of individual conscience and character.
It has been some two and a half years since the pandemic began, and somehow it is sort of (not) over. In that time, since March 2020, America has been in a slow-motion meltdown, proceeding quickly, an epoch unlike any other with riots, lockdowns, and a lunatic who would not and will not accept that he is no longer President.
There was always Santa Monica for me.
Since I came here in 1994, that always cooler place near the ocean was a destination for dining, drinking, shopping, biking, and hiking. It was where you took out-of-town guests, where you went to show them, half truthfully, that LA was just as walkable, vibrant, urbane and enjoyable as New York.
I went down there yesterday to cool off and what remains on Third Street is deserted. Gone are the crowds, and gone are the stores: J Crew, Banana Republic, Bloomingdales, Barneys, Barnes and Noble, Old Navy, and Levi’s.
The sun still shines brilliantly. The buildings, for the most part, are well-kept. But the life and the crowds are absent. Benches, outdoor dining, storefronts, are lifeless. There are “for lease” signs everywhere.
In some ways it feels as if the clock has spun backwards before gentrification, when Third Street was awaiting revitalization, when JC Penney was the big store.
We walked, expecting to come to that fancy outdoor mall with the wine bar on the floor and Bloomingdale’s, the blowout salon, Jonathan Adler, Starbucks and CB2, but all of it was gone, shuttered, closed down, papered over windows and nothing. All the jobs, all the merchandise, all the interactions between people and goods, work and profit, and millions in tax revenues for the City of Santa Monica, wiped out.
This is August! This the height of tourist season! This is when thousands of families come to Santa Monica to partake and enjoy everything this city has to offer! And hardly anybody was there on a Saturday morning! Except for the Farmer’s Market.
The low point for me was May 31, 2020 when mayhem and looting destroyed many businesses, the murder of George Floyd acting as irrational justification for mass robbery, fires and stealing. I remember the BMWs and Audi’s pulling up to Vans, the broken glass, the fat, young, tattooed trash in black leggings, with boxes of sneakers getting into their cars and driving off. I saw the mobs work their way up the street and hit everything they could get their hands on.
And now Santa Monica is a quieter and dying version of its pre-pandemic, pre-George Floyd self. Will it come back? Detroit, Newark, The South Side of Chicago, Watts, 1965, 1967, 1968…are they somehow the ancestors of Santa Monica’s fate? Or does Santa Monica belong with Beverly Hills, often assaulted, but easily available to afford plastic surgery, police protection, and investment capital?
Will Santa Monica slowly fade off the way so much of Los Angeles has, all the places that once held joy and nice stores and nice memories: Miracle Mile, Westwood, Bullocks, 7th Street, Van Nuys Boulevard, the May Company?
Los Angeles is fickle, people dispose of anything inconvenient or unpleasant if it does not offer amusement or distraction. A destination without anything to offer is DOA.
Yesterday, between the rains, after the air had been washed, the skies were radiant. And enormous cumulus clouds towered above, bottoms gray, tops white. The sun came and went. Streets of dark shadows ended in blinding light.
I walked in the wind up Sepulveda, north of Vanowen, and went left along Hart Street.
This is a neat neighborhood of mostly well-kept houses on generous lots. It is not rich here, but the general feeling seems contented. There are no sidewalks but lots of walkers.
Near Sepulveda, at 15322 Hart, there is a burned-out house with a lovely second floor balcony and no trespassing signs on a gate; secluded and romantic, it awaits rebirth from ruin.
At 15439 Hart, someone is selling a 1970 (?) Yellow Ford pickup truck.
15521 Hart (built 1952) is a white house with blue awnings. Though it faces south, into the hot sun, there are no shades trees in front.
Firmament Avenue is the last street in this neighborhood east of the 405 freeway. Large houses and empty lots, well kept estates, battered weed infested places, townhouses and bungalows, all are found on the block between Hart and Sherman Way.
These are the kind of typically Californian streets that make people from other states uneasy. They mix danger with intoxicating beauty, ruin next to richness. Is this a good or a bad place? In this area an old lady might come outside and offer you apple pie… or aim a gun at your head.
7110 Firmament could be a location in a 1940s Van Nuys movie with its roadside mailbox, cyclone fence, picket gate and wood houses set way back behind mature trees and overgrown ivy.
Next door, at 7128 Firmament, a brown stucco house with a red tile roof and white balustrade bedecked wall is carefree and liberal with its architectural elements. They are seemingly picked out of air and dropped onto a large lot hidden behind black screened fences and decorative lanterns. A Nury Martinez election placard is planted near the driveway.
Up at 15549 Sherman Way, Helen Towers (built 1972) is a large, 93-unit apartment building with a pool and lots of parking set on an acre and a half property right next to the on-ramp for the Northbound 405. Strangely bucolic, it seems well kept, if a bit dated.
At the Starbucks (15355 Sherman Way) a man ignited himself in burning flames last week and later died. I stopped off there for iced green tea. There were no signs of death, only life, and frozen faces glued to phone and screen.
My walk back home took me past the Royal [6920] Sepulveda Apartments, a “K” shaped, two-story complex frivolous in design, far from royal. Built in 1961, the 92-unit complex seems sex-soaked and secretive, untethered from anything around it, a floating, decadent motel of licentious and libidinous acts. Surrounded by parking, for quick escapes and quick arrivals, behind its closed drapes lie transient guests.
On blissfully sunny drive around the San Fernando Valley today, I went on a couple of errands. As usual, there were stopovers at places that make me feel like I am connecting to the larger world, that bigger universe of ideas and thought: Borders and Starbucks.
At Borders, there are just so many magazines. It is hard to look at these glossy promotions of a better life, especially when you know the truth is so much less than those covers promise. There are dozens of publications telling you how to make money; many others show impossibly lovely homes and landscaping; others have gourmet eating, sophisticated international travel, weight loss, weight gain, muscle gain, celebrity child rearing tips. There is not an average looking person on any cover, unless they are working for the Obama Administration.
Books, like magazines, are just as eager to sell titles promoting any point of view that might sell. One book that I recently bought, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel H. Pink, postulates the idea that all those “experts” and people like engineers, doctors and financiers, will lose out to generalists of the imagination, like Andy Hurvitz. I will treasure this book as I collect my unemployment check and fondly remember earning my BA in English from Boston University.
At Starbucks, in Toluca Lake, one can plug their laptop into an outlet and conduct online activities. This will be done while the accompanying Hollywood schmoozers pour in and out the door with fantastic tales of meetings they just had over at NBC, Warner Brothers and Disney. Somehow, their great projects and plans always end up in a coffee store at 2:30 on a weekday afternoon.
The whole world, of course, is not unemployed. There are still many productive people who work within those padded cubicles, and collect paychecks every week. They spend hours on Facebook and Yelp, but unlike those of us at Starbucks who do the same, these employed people have a fabulous sense of purpose and accomplishment, a feeling that they are working and earning something tangible.
Here in Van Nuys 
You must be logged in to post a comment.