Hidden Los Angeles Visits LMU

TOMORROW NIGHT, W. Lynn Garrett will speak to our class about her adventures putting together the Hidden Los Angeles website and its Facebook fan page. Take a spin here. Hidden L.A. is a site dedicated to "embracing the depth beneath the shallow" -- which has been "Telling L.A.'s Story's" focus this semester as well. Please come with spirited, deep questions about the region.
-- L.G.

Nothing Like a Marathon to Jump Start Your Day

WALKING ALONG THE Santa Monica Pier this past weekend, it had occurred to me that I live too close to this area to not appreciate it as much as I should. I almost take for granted the fifteen-minute drive down Pacific Coast Highway. The warm feel of the sun mixed with the cold blasts of wind, but nonetheless gave me a very satisfied feeling. It reminded me of the last visit prior to this, when I waited on the sidewalk of Ocean for my friend to cross the finish line of the LA Marathon.

Running the marathon was a goal he had before the end of the 2009 school year. He began training in August and stuck to his routine. That Sunday morning, March 21, the sun rose over Dodger Stadium where he and 25,000 people prepared to literally run through the city of Los Angeles. The kinds of people that came out to this event served as a colorful support group for the runners.

Police officers wandered up and down the course controlling the flow of traffic and protecting unaware pedestrians from walking on the wrong side of the road. I remember watching the crowd cross the one-mile mark, people running by dressed like Elvis, wearing banana suits and other costumes. On the bibs of the runners are a number to identify with and a name. Most people put their own name but there were few who wrote the name of a person to whom they dedicated the race. It is amazing to see how so many different people can come together for a few hours and share in something so incredible, running, walking or supporting.

While the insanely packed streets caused me some claustrophobic moments, I would be more than willing to bear through it all again to see the joy on my friend’s face. I have trouble articulating what it is that I felt that morning, other than the usual joy and happiness for my friend and the 25,000 people who overcame this great feat. I cannot even begin to imagine how much of an achievement it is to run the marathon, and not just any marathon but one that takes you on a tour through your own city.

Standing on the pier that morning gave me a different feeling, one that I will never feel on an ordinary day overlooking the ocean from the dock. It felt close to inspiration, similar to motivation. Maybe next year I'll find that word that I was looking for, hopefully something like 'exultance.'

“All of the hard work leading up to the race was well worth it when you cross the finish line and get an overwhelming sense of pride in yourself.” -Chad Smith, a dear friend and LA Marathon 2010 Participant.

April Showers Bring LA Flowers

RAIN IN L.A. Every Angeleno's nightmare. It makes us all wonder, how does Nor Cal do it so well? My dad always said that Californian's can't drive in the rain, so be EXTRA careful if you even see a cloud in the sky. We can't even function driving our cars, forget riding bikes, making it to meetings on time, or catching up with that friend for dinner across town. The whole city seems to stop what it's doing on those perfectly gloomy days (except for the traffic, of which there is inevitably more) and go inside for hot tea and a good book.

We like to think of ourselves as the happy people that they make us out to be in the ads sometimes, but when the rain comes, were just as grouchy and blah as everyone else on earth. That's when we realize that it's all to do with the warm glow of our Pacific sun. Its our secret. If I could count every time I have heard a person say that they couldn't live in a rainy place, they would be depressed if they did, Seattle has the highest suicide rate because of the rain or some variation of those, it would probably equal ten times the amount of rainy days I have ever lived through in LA. That's how much we hate it. I mean, personally, I love it. Love the sound it makes against the windows, the way it clears a place out, and the way it makes people pensieve, it forces them to think. And of course, it cleans up that LA skyline! There is nothing like a clear and crisp rainy "day after" to brighten one's spirits. But, of course, I use the collective "we" because, well, Angelenos really don't like the rain.

-- Kimberly Dennis

(photo credit, kimberly dennis)

The "Anti-Tour" -- Beneath the Myths

WE HAVE REACHED the part of the semester where we are now looking at remapping, re-imagining L.A. in a different way. The boosters had their moment; so too, the writers from elsewhere. The historians arrived with expectations; the fiction writers with dreams that soured then shriveled. We've read journalists who have tried to crawl under the myth, read voices from those who have lived their lives along the margins of the official L.A. story. Now, the city is again remapped as the L.A.'s core has become valuable. With gentrification comes "erasure" add to it lives behind walls, lives in a bubble. What happens then to community and the stories communities create and re-tell? What will L.A. be if is "written over" yet again? What are the stories you plan to tell about your L.A.?

A postscript on Norman Klein...
In the late 80s, word got around about Norman Klein and something he began to call his "Anti-Tour." A critic and urban historian and theorist who teaches at California Institute of the Arts, had begun taking his classes on "anti-tours." Klein had purchased a crumbling vestige of a grand house in Anglelino Heights (which is a small neighborhood that is Echo Park adjacent) and word had it that it was a former gang house, which meant that sometimes slow moving cars would slink by at any given time. He writes of that time:
"It took twelve years to restore [the house]. . . . [I] discovered I had a lifelong fascination with high urban decay and with gradual uncovering of urban ruins. By 1986, I was running a series of lectures about the level of public neglect and bad faith in Los Angeles, entitled, "Beneath the Myths." I started taking students on what I called anti-tours. I would stop at locations where no building existed any longer, tell them what had been there once: a movie studio, a whorehouse, whatever. We would get out, look around and agree it was gone all right. I showed them as many interiors as I could find, but only if they were inhabited; no museum artifacts allowed."

Those lectures were the working notes and foundation for his book, The History of Forgetting

-- L.G.
photo caption : from Norman Klein's "L.A. Slideshow"

"We Tell Stories . . ." : Norman Klein

"In 1974, when I first moved to the neighborhoods west of downtown Los Angeles, I was soured by the omens I sensed there. One vacant store had been a kosher butcher shop in the fifties now with a rusted sign, but very similar to the dismal store my father had run in Brooklyn for thirty years. In an utter reversal of Proust sipping tea, I remembered the smell of raw meat in the sawdust on the floors, the armies of cockroaches under the display cases, the look of chicken guts stuck to the sides of garbage pails out back.

I learned that across the street from my apartment on Glendale Boulevard, Tom Mix used to ride a horse to work from his ranch in Mixville (now a Hughes market shopping Center). But no recognition could be found anywhere that the entire film industry had once been centered there (1912-192). It was clear that the city of Los Angeles would never announce formally that the movie business had started in what was now, forgettably a "Mexican" neighborhood. At first, the sheer neglect left me dreary, reminding me of family repression during my own childhood. It took at least a year for me to realize how much vitality existed west of downtown."

-- Norman Klein
-- from The History of Forgetting



(photo captions: edendale and mixxville
photo credit: lapl archives)

Los Angeles Is . . .

LIVING IN Los Angeles is like living in a bubble rolling along a path of needles. Ya kno' its going to pop, but you just don't know when.



A YOUNG man meets and falls in love with a young woman at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. This area is known as Miracle Mile, and the whole movie takes place there. They make a date, which he misses, and while he is searching for her, he accidentally finds out that we (the United States) are about to start a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. He frantically searches for her so that they can escape Los Angeles.

Harry finally meets the girl of his dreams--on the last day of Earth. Harry mistakenly picked up a ringing pay phone to learn that a nuclear war had already begun. Now with a ticking clock and a rioting city deteriorating around him, Harry must guide Julie to safety. But can he save himself as lawlessness becomes the norm and terror grips every living soul in the city? Written by Tim Kretschmann ( courtesy of ImDB)


The 1988 film Miracle Mile captures the paranoia that constantly grips Los Angeles. People living on top of each other. So close but yet so far. Its like a game of Telephone where what one person says may start out as the truth, but as it snakes down that line things can become twisted, more surreal than anyone can ever imagine. to understand the movie is too understand the areas:

Miracle mile is a one mile stretch between Wilshire, Fairfax, and La Brea. When my father first moved out here, "He said that it was beautiful, everything new and clean it seemed but now its just broken down. Nothing has its sheen anymore, just homless zombies, and roving rockers past their prime, with fairy dust pouring through the palms just trying to rememnber a glimpse of the stars"

Some things that may help put this in perspective:
Support_for_the_theory (broken windows theory, When people think an area is broken down they treat it as such. Crime rises, etc...)
(Quick history of Miracle Mile... Look at the history and compare it to the movie version. Kinda funny how word spreads so fast in Los Angeles about a nuclear holocaust and what does this say about this city's degrees of separation)

-- Jason Collins

Daryl F. Gates, Former LAPD Chief, 83

DARYL GATES, led the LAPD for 14 years and was at the helm when the 1991 beating of Rodney King occurred, and when the 1992 riots broke out in response to the acquittal of the officers who were accused of the crime. A controversial figure, particularly in communities of color around Greater Los Angeles, Gates' legacy also extends to the type of policing L.A. became known for -- a modern, almost "militaristic" force -- said critics. He oversaw the launch of the city's first Special Weapson and Tactics Team, better known as SWAT. The police force he built up was known colloquially as "The Hammer." As the entire region changed demographically, physically, ("white flight," out-migration, the city's inner-core emptying out), L.A. proper was, more than ever, a melting pot ready to boil over, during the fourteen years of his service He died Friday of cancer. He was 83.

-- L.G.

From the Los Angeles Times obit:

Daryl F. Gates, the rookie cop who rose from driver for a legendary chief to become chief himself, leading the Los Angeles Police Department during a turbulent 14-year period that found him struggling to keep pace with a city undergoing dramatic racial and ethnic changes, died Friday. He was 83.

Gates died at his Dana Point home after a short battle with cancer, the LAPD announced. (An earlier version of this story said Gates had died in Newport Beach.)

The controversial chief, whose tenure ran from 1978 to 1992, spent his entire four-decade career at the LAPD, where he won national attention for innovative approaches to crime fighting and prevention: He instituted military-style SWAT teams to handle crises and the gentler DARE classroom program to prevent drug abuse. These initiatives, emulated by police departments across the United States, and other advances, such as a communications system that reduced police response times, bolstered his reputation as an exemplar of modern law enforcement. President George H.W. Bush called him an "all-American hero."

A proud emblem of progress to some, he was a disturbing symbol of stagnation to others. When the city went up in flames over the acquittal of four white officers accused of beating black motorist Rodney King, he was castigated as a leader out of touch with the changing realities of the city, yet to the end he remained righteous about his authority to police it.

Faced with a proliferation of illegal drugs and street violence, he hammered gangs with police sweeps and broke into crack dens with an armored vehicle armed with a steel battering ram. He made no apologies for declaring that casual drug users should be shot.

By turns charming and brash, articulate and tactless, he generated controversy with gaffes about Latinos, blacks and Jews, most famously with a remark about blacks faring poorly under police chokeholds because their physiology was different from that of "normal" people. Fiercely loyal to his rank and file, he clashed frequently with elected officials, particularly when they slashed his budget or meddled in department discipline, and vowed he would never be bullied by "crummy politicians."

Throughout his tenure, he had a fractious relationship with Tom Bradley, the former LAPD lieutenant and councilman who united a diverse coalition of constituencies to become the city's first African American mayor.

Gates "fought vigorously to make sure the chief's duties were not encroached upon. That comes from understanding the struggles Bill Parker went through moving the department out of corruption," said City Councilman and former Police Chief Bernard C. Parks. He was referring to William H. Parker, the tough, reform-minded chief in the 1950s and '60s, who became Gates' mentor.

Parks said it was important to remember that the vilification of Gates after the King beating was not universal and that his accomplishments as chief mattered to large segments of the city long after he left the department.

"If you go to areas of the Valley, police organizations, officers' funerals . . . he gets the loudest ovation," Parks noted recently. "I've never seen a situation where . . . 18 years after retirement, officers who never worked with him cheer him as chief of police."

Yet others just as vehemently argue that Gates' strengths were outweighed by his weaknesses, particularly his failure to evolve with a city whose politics and social fabric had been transformed by the maturing of established minority communities and the flowering of newer ones molded by immigration.

"This L.A. was a changing city. . . . He never made the adjustment to the new L.A.," said Ramona Ripston, the longtime head of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

In 1991, the videotaped beating of King was replayed around the world, shattering the carefully nurtured myth that the LAPD of "Dragnet" fame -- professional, honest and humane -- never stooped to such behavior. Gates was slow to criticize his officers' handling of the incident and missing from his command post when the officers' acquittal provoked the worst urban violence in decades, causing at least 53 deaths and more than $1 billion in property damage, but he faced inevitable calls for his resignation with characteristic defiance.

Sense Memory: The Classroom and the Jungle

AS PART OF my parents conscientious attempts to encourage my education during the summer they once enrolled me in the Summer Science Workshop at the Museum of Science and Industry. Once. It seemed to my pre-teen self that summer was not meant for school, and certainly not a summer school program built around a science curriculum. But the greatest indignity of it all was taking classes “at the museum” that were really in old, cramped, run-down classrooms that were buildings away from the actual air, fun, interesting museums themselves.

The classroom I remember was long and narrow, old plank wood floors that creaked if you even thought about shifting in your university style chair desks. The spaces between the floor planks was black from years of accumulated grime that had been waxed over rather than cleaned away. It was sticky, and you could peel up small strands of the grime and ball it up between your fingers. The floor grime was far more interesting than learning the differences between concave and convex, or discussing the properties of heat.

There was a large multi-sectioned glass window opposite the entrance, a chalkboard as long as the wall, and desks facing the chalkboard in two rows that were twenty seats wide. Space was so packed that once the class started no one could move – not even the instructor – until the class was cover and the last person in could open the door. In retrospect, the room was a fire hazard and probably in violation of code, but all in the name of science education, so who could fault them?


And it was dim. The heat of an LA summer and a building no doubt built before “refrigerated washed air” had been invented meant that the only way to keep fifty school aged kids comfortable meant cracking the windows open an inch and keeping the overheard lights off. At least I'm pretty sure they were off. The ceilings were so high in the room, the hanging light shades affixed to six foot steel poles stopped at least ten feet above our heads, made it difficult to know whether the large, clear glass orb lights were even on.

There was one redeeming quality to my daily summer trips to the Museum of Science and Industry, and that was the drive along Jefferson Boulevard that passed by a place I called The Jungle.

The Jungle was a small hunk of land on the other side of the only creek I'd ever known growing up, the concrete gully known as Balona Creek. On the far side of the creek a large berm rose from the chain link fence, and beyond the bern exotic trees and shrubs. Exotic to me at least. In truth they were probably nothing more than sycamores, polars, and old oaks that had been planted and grown over time. Surrounded by large planes of asphalt and concrete, with the occasional tree along the road and a lot of casual shrubbery that smelled of the dusky smog dust that settled on their leaves, this oasis I knew as The Jungle seemed an anomaly of time and place.
And indeed, it had once been a jungle. It was decades before I understood that this plot of land had a formal name: The 40 Acres Studio Backlot. Like many of the illusions of Hollywood, the 40 Acres property was less than 30 acres of land, and it had been used for jungle sequences by its original owners RKO when they filmed King Kong. When I was older my father mentioned in passing that The Jungle was a studio backlot and that I've probably seen the inside of it more than I realized. A little research proved this was an understatement.


Any child of the late 60s and 70s has seen their fair share of The Jungle on television. Exteriors for television shows like The Andy Griffith Show, Bonanza, and Hogan's Heroes were filmed there, as were the occasional desolate 20th century Chicago sets for a few Star Trek episodes. In its prime The Jungle was home for the Tara plantation in Gone With the Wind, exteriors for The Magnificent Ambersons, and various Tarzan adventures among the dozens of other films shot there.

In a way I'm glad I never knew what went on behind the eight foot earthen berm that ringed the property. In my mind the place was a Shangri La of exotic flowers and crystalline springs and trees dripping with vines. The dirt roads and trails that wound their way through The Jungle were of an earth that was unlike the rest of the Southland which smelled of oil and dried hopes.

As with everything else in Los Angeles, the land was too valuable and possessed too much history to be left alone or preserved. In the late 1970s it was razed and turned into a far more valuable industrial park.

-- David Elzey

Iconic L.A. Save the Peak -- Reprieve

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES reports that Hollywood sign supporters now have 16 more days to raise the funds -- $12.5 million -- to save the the iconic sign and the land surrounding it from "development" L.A. Times blogpost here.

(photo caption, L.A.'s biggest booster, Councilman Tom LaBonge
photo credit, Al Seib, L.A. Times)

On the Subject of Helms . . .

AS MENTIONED IN class this is a subject that has been coming up of late...some images:






-- L.G.

photo credit: L.G.