Tag: Ventura Bl.

The Fire Last Time

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

March 30, 2007

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On March 30, 2007 there was a fire burning in Griffith Park.

And I was walking in Studio City when a red-haired woman drove up and parked on Ventura Bl. in an odd little purple car, a Nash Rambler. Her license plate read “Kissmet.” I’m sure she is someone, or was someone, quite beloved, judging by her car and plate.

  • March 30, 2007
  • November 9, 2019

Yesterday, 13.7 years later, there was another fire burning above Warner Brothers Studio near Barham. And the same atomic plume of smoke went up in the sky and theatrically filled up the space between the rows of palm trees along Ventura Boulevard.

There was no Nash Rambler in yesterday’s photograph, and by comparison, in content and style, the new image is quite unexciting and unremarkable.

When fire threatens Los Angeles, the first thing we think of is our loved ones, and then our homes, and lastly our cars.  

Or perhaps it’s the reverse.

1960: Peace March at Kester and Noble in Sherman Oaks, CA.

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Photo by George Brich, Valley Times./ LAPL/Public Domain

At the height of the Cold War, a brave and liberal minded group of progressive people marched through Los Angeles and eventually ended up in Moscow where they worked to defuse tensions between the US and the Soviet Union.

Los Angeles at that time was a conservative, anti-communist city whose main industry, Hollywood, was just emerging from the blacklist and any association with Russia was tantamount to career suicide.

The Committee for Non-Violent Action (CNVA) was an American anti-war group, created in 1957. Its purpose : resist the US government‘s testing of nuclear weapons. It used non-violence to oppose atomic military tools.

The group was often attacked as pacifist and for its welcoming of African-Americans into the fold.

Photograph article dated December 22, 1960 partially reads, “Eight foot–sore peace walkers marched through the Valley Wednesday on the 11-month tour that will take them from San Francisco to Moscow, Russia. The placard-bearing marchers, who represent the Committee for Nonviolent Action, stopped Wednesday night at Highland avenue and Hollywood boulevard in Hollywood. They will remain in the Los Angeles area until Christmas day when they will resume their march toward Tucson, Ariz. In addition to having their board and room paid for by the committee, which is composed of 60 Americans, the hikers have seven administrators and advance publicity men making the tour with them.” Bruce McIntyre, 20, leads the peace walking team along Ventura Blvd. near Noble Ave.