Loving Los Angeles

IT IS very important to know the history and background of the place in which we call “home” because without that deeper history there lacks any legitimate stance to belong to or own Los Angeles. Time and time again we see “I love L.A.” T-shirts and stickers that can be argued as either fashion statements or forms of personal statements but if we take a deeper look into the phrase can someone truly love a land without deeper knowledge of how it was discovered, divided and ultimately flourished? After recently viewing videos of a barren downtown covered with dirt roads, the production of a popular transit system in the 1940’s, the desegregated locations for various ethnicities, the Chavez Ravine land conspiracy, the Watts Riots in the 1960’s, the contribution from the Chandler family, the romanticized construction of Olvera St. and much more, a Los Angeles migrant like myself can only begin to appreciate the land and city for what it truly was and now is. Once you learn about how and why a place like the Dodgers Stadium was built, your association to it becomes completely altered and your experience in Los Angeles becomes heightened to a more enlightened level. After speaking with a close friend- a diehard Dodger’s fan who reps an L.A. sticker on her car- about the families who were relocated from Chavez Ravine for what later became the famous Dodgers Stadium, she was shocked and seemed somewhat disturbed because her perception of this place that she had been to year after year was altered. Although she may have claimed to have loved Los Angeles and the Dodgers before I filled her in on the story I can only hope that knowing a little bit of that history helped her understand her love for them even more. Exposing ourselves to Los Angeles’ history can only help create more passion, love and respect for those who helped build such a multifaceted and diverse city filled with art, culture, music, film, fashion, sports, journalism, education and much more.
-- Jayme Dolan

Mike the Poet at LMU: "Telling L.A.'s Story" -- Verse by Verse

THIS WEEK we have a special guest, Mike Sonksen, A.K.A. Mike the Poet, who will be touching down to talk about the city, verse, borders, erasure and all matter of pressing social and literary issues.
Here's his bio:
Mike Sonksen, also known as, Mike the Poet, is widely acclaimed for his live performances, contributions to international publications & legendary city tours. Poet, journalist, historian, tour guide, teacher, he's published in the L.A. Citybeat, O.C. Weekly, New Angeles, L.A. Weekly & many others. This 3rd generation L.A. native graduated from U.C.L.A. in 1997. His book I AM ALIVE IN LOS ANGeLES! has been added to the curriculum of several universities & received rave reviews. Mike's performed his poetry coast to coast at college campuses, museums, bookstores, nightclubs & just about any venue you can imagine. His Los Angeles city tours combine poetry and history and have been written up in the New York Times, THE UK Guardian, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, L.A. Weekly, L.A. Citybeat & many others. Mike started tour guiding in 1997 working most extensively with Red Line Tours, the Museum of Neon Art & the Museum of Architecture & Design.

Come ready with curiosity and questions.
-- L.G.
(photo caption: mike the poet doing his "thing"
photo credit: flikr pool creative commons)

Los Angeles during its growth spurt: Richard C. Miller @ Craig Krull

THE OPENING was last night. Richard C. Miller was there surrounded by friends, family, art collectors and a videographer recording the moment. Three rooms of images that represent more than 60 years of work and Los Angeles's growth. Article is up. More to follow. Above: tools of the trade.

Los Angeles during its growth spurt - latimes.com

Posted using ShareThis

photo captions:
top: Craig Krull Gallery
bottom: Richard C. Miller's miscellany
photo credit: Lynell George

Zoot Suit Riots on American Experience

FOR THOSE of you interested in delving in a little deeper PBS is airing a documentary on the Zoot Suit Riots on March 1st at 9pm. Check your local listings. Here's a brief synopsis:

In August 1942 the murder of a young Mexican-American man ignited a firestorm in the City of the Angels. In no time at all, ethnic and racial tensions that had been building up over the years boiled over. Police fanned out across the city in a dragnet that netted 600 Mexican Americans. Among those accused of murder was a young "zoot-suiter" named Hank Leyvas -- the poster boy for an entire generation of rebellious Mexican kids who refused to play by the old rules. As he and sixteen other boys headed to trial, the mood of the city turned violent. The deck was stacked against the defendants, and a verdict of guilty would spark a series of brutal riots. The convictions were ultimately overturned, but the city and its inhabitants would be forever changed.

-- L.G.

Photo Credit: American Experience, PBS

With So Much Sunshine, Who is Left in The Dark?

AFTER WATCHING the various videos about Los Angeles’ past, I was most inspired by the Chavez Ravine story. Throughout our discussions in class, there has been a lot of emphasis on what it means to be from LA or move there from somewhere else. Many themes that arise are pursuing fame and fortune, endless opportunities and possibilities, and the LA “boosters” who marketed Los Angeles as a place of beautiful weather, agriculture, and growth. After watching the story about Chavez Ravine, I could not help but think about how so many people—who were forced to move out of their homes so that the Dodger’s Stadium could be built—were completely left out of this picture. As I researched further information about this event, I realized how much of a façade was placed over Los Angeles to make it look like the city where dreams come true, while many residents who could have used the “endless opportunities” the most, were denied them and suffered from Los Angeles’ growth while others prospered in their place.
Reflecting on this aspect of Los Angeles history, I thought about if there has ever been a time when I or someone I know has experienced such injustice—I couldn’t think of a thing, nothing that comes close to what Mexican-Americans faced during those times. This, I thought, is the prejudice reincarnated. Although my peers and I have not directly experienced Chavez Ravine or the Zoot Suit Riots, there is something to be said in that it happened not too long ago, and it is an issue that is regarded as being something of the past; yet many of the Chavez Ravine residents could be alive and well, maybe even living in Los Angeles to this day. It seems as though the story of Chavez Ravine has been considered a ‘blip’ in the image of “The City of Angels” which must be forgotten to preserve face. Artists like Vincent Valdez have attempted to make the Chavez Ravine story present in the Los Angeles mindset, yet it seems all too clear that LA prefers rejecting negative history and replacing it with another shiny billboard of how much better it is today from yesterday.
Had I not taken a class which emphasizes these historic Los Angeles events, I may have never known the tumultuous past of the people who believed in the LA dream and were betrayed by it. It is extremely important for those living in Los Angeles to remember where our population has come from, and the suffering that has occurred for those in pursuit of taking advantage of what LA promotes and claims to offer everyone. With so much sunshine, no one should be left in the dark of Los Angeles’ past.

-- Lauren McHale




(photo caption, top: Aurora Archega, carried out by the police, with all of her belongings, on May 9, 1959, photo caption middle: photo caption: Chavez Ravine is now the home of Dodger Stadium, which was built for the L.A. baseball team in 1962.
Credits: The City's Project, Flickr Stream
photo caption, bottom: Artist Vincent Valdez and "El Chavez Ravine"
photo credit: Genaro Molina, Los Angeles Times )

L.A.: The Unfinished Sentence

THE PHOTO at right is not spot news. Neither is it a lost-now-found record of a forgotten L.A. disaster. Rather, it documents the beginning. Long before L.A. became a breathless, run-on sentence, it was an unfinished thought, a smattering of neighborhoods yet to be connected. To see Los Angeles before its super-structure of elevated roads -- its freeways -- creates a different sort of narrative. Richard C. Miller was there to watch L.A. transform. Lucky for us, he brought his camera with him. A new show that opens next Saturday, at the Craig Krull Gallery, features Miller's six decades of work in and around Los Angeles. Many of these pieces are "snapshots" he made with his 35mm or 4-by-5 while tooling around town between his paying gigs. Miller, now 97, arrived in Los Angeles early last century and copiously documented incidental details -- parking lots, street corners, traffic lights, Good Humor Ice Cream trucks and, most dramatically, the construction of the Hollywood Freeway -- the four-level and all. Miller saved everything and we benefit from the gift of it. I'm in the midst of finishing up a piece for the Times about the show. A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to be able to spend a good portion of the day in Calabassas with Miller and his daughter and some close artist/photographer friends. They were packing him up and moving him to New York's Hudson River Valley.
I saw stacks of prints, pillars of boxed negatives and transparencies packed into closets and beneath beds. Everything was being cleared and sent to a air-controlled vault -- blessedly. Also, since then Miller has had some work hang at the Getty and is flying back here for the gallery opening. Imagine, coming of age when L.A. came of age. Imagine, riding back-and-forth on the freeway just for the thrill of connecting the dots faster. Miller's work allows us to visualize those transitions, L.A.'s own there to here story. Arguably, connecting the dots of the city put fine punctuation on another era, a pastoral quality that so many older Angelenos recall. His work speaks to that, diagrams that complex sentence.

Show information:

Richard Miller: Over the Long Run
Vintage Carbro Prints, The Hollywood Freeway and L.A. in B/W

February 27 - April 3, 2010
Reception: February 27, 2010 4-6 PM
Bergamot Station
2525 Michigan Avenue, Building B-3
Santa Monica, California 90404
Tel: (310) 828-6410
info@craigkrullgallery.com

-- L.G.


top photo caption: "#37"
middle: The Four-Level
bottom: The Cahuenga Pass
Photo Credit: Richard C. Miller

The Endless Night

NOW THAT you've done some knocking around your L.A. Noir chapter, take a look at some of these images that grew out of this environment. There was a reason why so many novelists, directors and screenwriters set their studies of isolation, dislocation and cynicism in a very particular Los Angeles. Just as Louis Adamic, peered deep into "the jungle," these artists were looking at the underside -- often using nighttime Los Angeles as not just environment but a character itself. Take a spin through these. Does anything come to mind? Why do you suppose Los Angeles inspired these storylines? Are there moments that are indelibly Los Angeles to you?



-- L.G.

The Profile: Ebert on Movies

THIS, of course, is not quite about L.A. but it is about the "factory" that makes its home here: Hollywood and movies. Last night we talked about the arc of the profile and I shared some samples of stories with the class. I'll be sending you links to other well-crafted, lyric, provocative, moving profiles but I wanted to post Chris Jones' Esquire profile about film critic Roger Ebert's battle with cancer here and, today, Ebert's own response in the Chicago Sun-Times, his hometown paper. Below, a sample that speaks to what we discussed about observation and a writer's choices (note the comment about the "commissioned portrait"):

It was also well written, I thought. "When I turned to it in the magazine, I got a jolt from the full-page photograph of my jaw drooping. Not a lovely sight. But then I am not a lovely sight, and in a moment I thought, well, what the hell. It's just as well it's out there. That's how I look, after all. . . . . My theory was that if Chris had an article to write it was not my place to write it for him as a favorable press release about myself. Let him write what he observed. Oliver Cromwell is said to have commissioned an official painting of himself, "warts and all." He apparently never said any such thing, was misquoted a century after his death, and his official portrait showed no warts, but never mind: He should have said it."

-- L.G.
photo caption: Film crtic, Roger Ebert
photo credit: Esquire magazine

L.A. Neighborhoods in Cyberspace

THE TREND is catching on. A new Facebook page, "Who Remembers East L.A." is really a lovely valentine to the streets that stretch out "over the bridge." If you have a Facebook account check it out. I'll be checking in to see when they actually launch a webpage. But here's a sample of photos from back in the day:


The Lorena Bridge

Atlantic and Telegraph

Around Blanchard and McBride

Atlantic and the 5 Fwy


The Canter Brothers (Boyle Heights)


The Floral Drive-In, East L.A.

All photos from "Who Remembers East L.A.?"

Vanished Los Angeles: The Ambassador Hotel

TAKE A LOOK: Hidden L.A. is beginning a series of clips of the once grand, star-studded Ambassador Hotel. Legend has it that Zelda Fitzgerald (F. Scott's wife) lit her lingerie on fire in one of the bungalow bathtubs; history has recorded it, that it was the site of one of America's shocking tragedies -- the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. After that moment, the hotel, once one of the jewels of Wilshire Boulevard, went into steep decline. By the 1980s it was run-down-at the heels and musty but still evoked an air of elegance -- great bones, you know. For most of its final years, before it was closed to the public in 1989, razed in 2006, (after a protracted battle) the site was often rented out for filming (Hoffa, Forrest Gump, Pretty Woman, L.A. Stories). But truly, if you were quiet enough, you could hear the ghosts dancing in the old grand ballrooms or sitting in the rose garden adjacent to the Palm Bar where natty Korean businessmen and East Hollywood types, with their chipped black-lacquered nails and bed-hair, shared barstools. L.A. at it most old-world-swank and stately. It's one of my most special pieces of L.A. history, lost.

Gone.

-- L.G.

top photo caption: entrance to the Ambassador Hotel

top photo credit: www.hollywoodheritage.org

photo credit: Diane Friedman, from the website, Location Managers Guild of America

bottom photo caption: One last look at the Ambassador, shot from the fire escape of the Gaylord Apartments, February 15, 2007