VSCO – Here in Van Nuys

Around the Neighborhood.

February 16, 2021February 16, 2021Posted in PhotographyTagged 2020, 2021, Architecture, California, Kester Ridge, Los Angeles, Pandemic, Van Nuys, VSCOLeave a comment

Since the pandemic began, in earnest, last March, one of our routines is the morning walk around our neighborhood.

The fact that most of us live and work at home, self-incarcerated by choice or duty, has produced a strange life. Beside the societal disasters that befell our nation in 2020, the ordinary existence of the citizen is to wander out and wander back in.

Wandering out, in the morning, or when the light is beautiful in the late afternoon, I captured some images of our area with my mobile and edited these on VSCO.

Kester Ridge is basically a 1950s creation of good, solid ranch houses between Victory and Vanowen, Sepulveda and Kester. On Saloma, Lemona, Norwich, Noble, Burnett, Lemay and Archwood the houses have endured, and only a few have been completely demolished or aggrandized.

But the persistent trend is the ADU, the conversion of garages and backyards to multi-family dwellings. Many of these houses are rentals, and the ones that are owned also rent to others who may live beside the owners.

A few years ago this seemed problematic, and the idea that our backyard behind would sprout a second house four feet from our property line was unimaginable. But now we also have a gray box 4 feet behind us, 30 feet long and 15 feet high and we are OK with it, as long as the dogs, the noise, and the marijuana don’t also move in.

Meanwhile, the ranch houses, the sidewalks, and the garages without cars stand silently and passively, unaware of their portraits.

A Great Wall on Burbank.

February 29, 2016February 29, 2016Posted in North Hollywood, TransportationTagged "Photo Essay", Boring, Construction, DWP, north hollywood, Paul Krekorian, RIver Supply Conduit Upper Reach, San Fernando Valley, traffic, Tunneling, VSCO, Work Area #12Leave a comment

“Building-to-street proportion is the relationship between the height of buildings on either side of a street and the width between those buildings. An ideal proportion between these two creates a pleasant and visually interesting public realm. The public realm, therefore, may be considered as an “outdoor room” that is shaped by  the “walls” of the building heights and the “ floors” of the roadway.

Outdoor rooms with excessively wide roadways or short building heights tend to eliminate any sense of enclosure  for the pedestrian.”
-Los Angeles Small Lot Subdivision Design Guide, 2014

Our city, with its sprawling boulevards and speeding cars, is often cursed with roads way too wide for pedestrians. Think of six-lane Van Nuys Boulevard, bordered by one-story high buildings, and worse, parking lots.

In some areas of the city, like on Pico Boulevard and in Studio City along Ventura Blvd. planted islands with trees now break-up the wide asphalt. New “outdoor rooms” with a sense of enclosure and protectiveness emerge. These are deliberate and designed for upgrading ugliness.

But sometimes even an ongoing construction project can enlighten and transform a bleak stretch of formerly wide street monotony.

In North Hollywood, on Burbank Blvd. just east of Vineland, DWP has been tunneling and installing a new water delivery system.

And along part of the route where a deep, underground hole was dug, DWP erected 20-foot high, wood and metal-framed walls. It has temporarily transformed the commercial district of that area by slicing the four-lane road into a two-lane and creating, along the sidewalk, a European type shaded alley.

Work Area #12, as it is officially known, requires a pit to launch a tunnel-boring machine that will travel south, along Lankershim Blvd. for more than a mile. A new water pipeline will replace the aging 1940s infrastructure.

While the construction is going on, some streets have been closed off, which no doubt contributes to aggravation and inconvenience for some area residents and businesses. But the rerouting and reconfiguration has some pleasant side effects.

On Burbank Blvd. cars now stop twice, before proceeding slowly, down a narrow road whose borders are shaded by high walls and low buildings.

On the western edge of the excavation, two tanks tower above the road, as if heralding a ceremonial gateway into the neighborhood.

And on the south side of the street, the high walls come right up to the sidewalk, creating a shady and meandering path alongside area businesses.

The gift of this unwelcome intrusion allows us to experience a different LA with traffic calming elements. What emerges? Less cars, slower drivers, shaded walkways; walled off from the exhaust fumes and the aggression of speeding motorists. Industrial construction materials in steel, wood and concrete function as street sculpture.

For the time being, a stretch of Burbank Boulevard is a living experiment in rezoning by accident.

Yesterday in Burbank.

October 29, 2015Posted in PhotographyTagged "Andrew B. Hurvitz", "Ron Emmanuel", burbank, Equestrian, Photography, Stables, victory, VSCO1 Comment

Yesterday in Burbank, the sky was clear, clouds sat high and moved fast, the sun sparkled, dust blew, and people rode horses on dirt trails.

On this day, a film student from Canada put on a thermal shirt, petted a horse, picked up a shovel, tried on a jean jacket, and impersonated a life without quite really actually believing in it.

Near the stables, roosters crowed and horses neighed. And the student carried a black bag out of a red barn and walked diagonally past the camera.

The muscular, tattooed man stood timidly next to a white horse in leather blinders. He said he was from the city and had never touched that animal.

In the equestrian district, the air smelled like hay and horse, horse shit and horse sweat.

Later, along Victory, drops of rain fell and then stopped.

Under the concrete pillars holding up the Golden State, behind a steel fence, illuminated in the mellow end-of-day light, the student stood in mock incarceration, a dark skinned reminder of others who sit in prison, or move beyond borders to chase freedom in other lands.

He later stood shirtless next to a street sign, not unlike the thousands who stand on the streets of Los Angeles waiting for customers, or others who live on the streets because they have no home.

All of it was pretend, and all of it was about capturing light, and setting a mood, an imitation of life.

Yesterday in Burbank was make-believe.

But the light was real and the buildings threw off a gentle and enveloping glow, mitigating the harshness of the city, and offering an alternative imaginary story for jaded urbanites.

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