This past holiday season was the first time in 15 years that I didn’t send out electronic holiday cards; I’ve been bogged down by so much depressing news about life in Los Angeles as well as the sad state of world affairs that I just lost track of time (here’s a sampling of past holiday cards). I’ve also been reading Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli’s “The Order of Time,” which utterly destroyed my notion of time and aging.
Time, as Einstein and all the physicists that came after him tell us, is not continuous but is relative to matter and gravity — time at the top of a mountain, where gravity is weaker, runs differently than time in the flatlands. Time is not uniform and universal, moving from past to future. Rovelli postulates a universe where at the most fundamental level time disappears. Basically, there is no such thing as time — past, present, future — as we know it. Time, according to Rovelli, is something inherent to an event and not something independent of it. Rovelli claims that what we are now faced with is a world comprised of events not things. At the deepest levels of reality, there is no arrow of time. The world is continual change; a collection of processes rather than a collection of things. Our sense of the flow of time is due to our inability to observe all the microscopic details of the world. Confused?
This has been hard to think about and every time I sat down to write or create I got lost in time.
Anyhow, I took time out to find this salute to the New Year — life grows out of even the weirdest of places.
What was time like in Los Angeles, 2023? — it’s a wild-and-wooly place that’s beginning to resemble Dodge City — murders, muggings, car-jackings, burglaries, flash mob robberies, street take-overs, mass shootings — the Gunfight at the LA Corral. And despite all the best efforts of Mayor Karen Bass and some of the LA City Council members in knocking back the ranks of the homeless, the numbers of homeless in the city has increased by another 10 to 20 percent.
La buena vida homeless in Hollywood
LA by the numbers:
Forbes ranks LA as the No. 4 “Best Place to Live in California in 2023,” behind Sacramento, San Diego and San Francisco — but does not appear in any lists as one of the best places to live in the world.
Los Angeles is the 8th most expensive city for rentals in the US (California is the most expensive state to live in the US, based on rents). But when you factor in cost-of-living, LA is the second most expensive in the country, preceded by San Diego and followed by Miami. California also leads the list of states with the highest gasoline prices (beat only by Hawaii). Southern California has seven of the top 12 dirtiest beaches in the country — and that includes Santa Monica Beach. The Los Angeles metro area has the fourth-highest electrical rates in the country. And Los Angeles has the second-highest homeless population, approaching 74,000, behind New York City (which surpasses $80,000).
Los Angeles County has the highest countywide vehicle accident rate in the state. Throughout 2022, more than 52,000 car accidents occurred in Los Angeles. This works out to roughly 1,000 per week and more than 140 per day.
LAPD Traffic Division data indicates that 2024 could become the deadliest year on city streets in more than a decade: 336 people died in traffic collisions in the city last year.
The LA Fire Department estimates 54 percent of its calls are related to homeless encampments.
The most-read stories at the LA Times web site in 2023 (ranked by overall number of visits):
1 “Friends” star Matthew Perry dead at 54, found in hot tub at L.A. home
2 Authorities identify 72-year-old man as suspected gunman in Lunar New Year mass shooting
3 Widespread flooding expected as intense Hilary pounds Southern California
4 California workers who cut countertops are dying of an incurable disease
5 Tucker Carlson departs Fox News, pushed out by Rupert Murdoch
Not among the Top Five: The battle over the Speaker of the House; the rising war in the Middle East; Donald Trump’s indictments and his rants and raves; the WGA and SAG strikes; the gigantic earthquake in Turkey; the Hawaiian island Maui wildfires; the mental breakdown of many Republicans and their office holders (Senator Ted Cruz of Texas was taken in by a fake photo of sharks swimming on the “flooded” 405 freeway; representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia posted on Facebook that Jewish Space Lasers ignited California wildfires; biotech entrepreneur and Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy repeated a false narrative about the January 6, 2021 Capitol Riot found in far-right spaces online, saying that protesters were “invited” into the Capitol and the riot was somehow staged or instigated by federal agents; there’s a theory being spread by some on the political right suggesting the NFL is rigging games to help the Kansas City Chiefs and raise the profile of Taylor Swift, whose boyfriend is the Chiefs’ Travis Kelce, so she can endorse Biden this year; Georgia Republican district chair Kandiss Taylor posted on X, “I tried to warn y’all back in October that the influence of @taylorswift13 on our youth with witchcraft was demonic, evil, and Luciferian. Of course, Satan wants to use her now to elect Joe back into the White House to destroy what’s left of America. No surprise here”; Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas has railed against the purported shadow-banning of Republicans on social media by “master algorithms”; and on and on).
And, last but not least, there was a plethora of restaurant and “hangout” closures this year –spots that many long-time Angelenos enjoyed, for both food and camaraderie.
Silver Lake’s Cafe Tropical closed after 48 years of serving great smoothies.
Cassell’s, long a home to some of the best burgers in the city and well-known for its great horseradish-laced potato salad, closed its famous Sixth Street outlet several years ago and moved further east to downtown; that branch, on 8th Street, closed this year.
Beloved Jewish bakery Diamond Bakery closed on Fairfax Avenue after 77 years.
The Overland Cafe in Palms, long-time hangout for westside hipsters, closed after 50 years.
Sharky’s Woodfired Mexican Grill in Hollywood closed after 30 years.
Mimi’s Cafe in Atwater, long a family-restaurant fixture in the area, has closed. The restaurant was founded by American airman Arthur Simms, who was stationed in France during World War II and named the outlet after a French woman — possibly of ill-repute —he met in a party after liberation. The chain still has some 40+ other locations in 12 states. The Atwater branch will be replaced by a Chick-fil-A.
Lucy’s El Adobe Restaurant, which closed in 2019 after a legal dispute erupted when founder Lucy Casado died in 2017 — her brother-in-law and daughter fought over ownership — was supposed to reopen in late 2022/early 2023 — but it never happened. Lucy’s became famous when Linda Ronstadt was introduced to Jerry Brown in 1971, leading to a lengthy romance; it also was home to rock stars (the Eagles’ Don Henley and Glenn Frey, songwriter Jimmy Webb, singers J.D. Souther and Jackson Browne) as well as a host of Hollywood movie stars.
The West Hollywood IHOP (International House of Pancakes) has permanently closed after serving the WeHo Community at that location since the late 1970s. No reason was given, though pundits cited problems with the homeless.
All six locations of the Sweet Lady Jane Bakery permanently closed after 35 years. Despite customer loyalty, the bakery said sales were not strong enough to continue to do business in California.
Nick’s Coffee Shop on Pico near La Cienega, serving good home-cooking since 1946, closed during the pandemic and has not reopened. They had a gigantic menu (especially for breakfast); I raised Lizzie there on M&M pancakes. There’s an interesting story behind Nick’s that I’ve tried to piece together. I’m not sure when Nick died, but Alan Love took over the place in the 1990s.
His wife, Kathy Love, was a waitress there beginning in the 1970s. The restaurant ran into financial problems and Alan cashed out his IRA in 1997 to buy Nick’s out of bankruptcy as a gift to her, saying “Honey, YOU are my IRA.” Having always wanted to own her own restaurant, Kathy ran Nick’s as a neighborhood refuge for seven years (even giving meals away on occasion) before dying of cancer. Alan continued to run the place with his kids but he knew they wanted lives of their own so he wasn’t keen to re-open after the pandemic ended. When he died in February 2022, his kids decided to honor their dad’s wishes and kept the place closed. Now they’ve put the building up for sale — with the hopes that it will remain a neighborhood fixture and hangout.
And, sadly, the Sunset Strip’s Book Soup and Pasadena’s Vroman’s book stores are up for sale. Vroman’s was founded in 1894; Book Soup opened in 1975 and was acquired by Vroman’s in 2009.
“Vroman’s deserves new ownership with the vision, energy, and commitment necessary to take it successfully into the future,” the 80-year-old owner, Joel Sheldon, descended from the store’s founders, wrote in a statement. “As I approach my 80th birthday, it’s time to begin the process of retiring and finding new ownership.” He vowed “no national retail chains.”
The long-gone Fairfax Theatre, part of an Art Deco style building constructed in 1930, with seating for 1,504, has pretty much been demolished despite being listed on the National Register of Historic Places and officially proclaimed a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 2021. The theatre, on Beverly just west of Fairfax, fell on hard times in the 1980s and was bought by the Canadian chain Cineplex-Odeon in May, 1986, and was “tripled” as a multiplex with 400 seats in the main auditorium and two 200 seat auditoriums. It closed permanently in 2012, though several mixed-use shops remained active on the Fairfax side of the building for many years. Alex Gorby, of Santa Monica-based B&F Associates, bought the property before its historic designation, and he has been under no obligation to honor its historic standing. But a long battle by the community to save the theater resulted in an agreement by Gorby to do a “facadectomy” – which would preserve the Art Deco exterior, theater marquee, entrance facade and terrazzo. As of now, he has demolished the interior, with plans to replace it with 71 apartments, according to Urbanize Los Angeles.
The West Hollywood Shakey’s Pizza, at Santa Monica Blvd and Orange Street (part of Route 66) since 1964 and long a family hangout during the day and a West Hollywood streetwalker attraction at night, has closed, to be replaced by, hold your breath, a Tesla 24-hour diner, drive-in theater and supercharger station. X marks the spot.
All this makes me angry and grumpy, but I get angry and annoyed very easily these days. And not necessarily for things that have to do with me (though I have been accused, at times, of taking things too personally). Lately I’ve begun to complain about all the small injustices I see around me. I get angry and annoyed when people run stop signs or double park or park in the red. I get angry and annoyed when people cut in line. I get angry when people act stupid at the post office or fill out their forms at the window, wasting my time. I get angry at people talking loudly on their cell phones, speakers blasting out their conversations. I get angry at the sad state of the streets in this city (potholes galore). I get angry at the large amount of rubbish on our streets, the illegal dumping, the abandoned cars. I get angry when I see someone littering, or not picking up their dog’s poop. I get angry when people get off their rented electric scooters and leave them blocking sidewalks. I get annoyed when people walk down the street, obliviously looking down at their iPhones or Androids and lost to the world (I get doubly annoyed when said phone-walker is also walking their dog and not paying attention). I get annoyed when drivers use their high beams in the city. I hold special venom for people who park illegally in handicapped spaces. And I’m continually annoyed by my upstairs neighbor who, it seems, has hired a troop of acrobats to join his circus act. I just don’t suffer fools gladly (thank you, Saint Paul). And, of course, I get angry at Donald Trump and Mike Johnson and Matt Gaetz and Clarence Thomas and Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin and the Koch brothers and Kanye Omari West and the Kardashians and the Sackler family. And there’s plenty more to complain about in local, national and world affairs. Don’t get me started.
But, looking back, this may be a pattern all my life, from getting angry about being bullied at elementary school or about nuclear proliferation or the war in Vietnam or the assassinations of two Kennedys, a King, a Moscone and a Milk. It’s enough to make one a misanthrope. In fact, at one job, my nickname was grumpy, because I was always acomplaining about things.
Lately I’ve tried to ameliorate my anger by mimicing Moses Herzog. In Saul Bellow’s book, Herzog writes letters to family, friends, lovers, colleagues, enemies, dead philosophers, ex-presidents. He complains about inequities and injustice and how he — and others — have been wronged by society. He wants to set the record straight. The letters, of course, are never sent.
Dear Donald:
Boy, do we miss you. Not that you haven’t been in the news since your indictments and your bid for the 2024 Republican nomination, but there’s just not enough of you on television lately. Sure, we hear your snide asides to judges and prosecutors; sure we hear you paraphrase the Nazi-esque mantra, here about immigrants (“They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country, from Africa, from Asia, all over the world … This is an invasion. This is like a military invasion. Drugs, criminals, gang members, and terrorists are pouring into our country at record levels. We’ve never seen anything like it. They’re taking over our cities.”) No, Mr. ex-president, I miss the almost 24/7 coverage of your antics. It was comedy relief for the horrors of the world.
During your four long years as president, I thoroughly enjoyed TV — tuning in to the talking heads at MSNBC and CNN as they belittled and shone light on the outright lies and misinformation spewed forth by your press secretaries and spokespeople. It was absorbing to watch you as you tried to destroy education, the environment, the first and third through the 20th, 24th and 26th amendments; as you gave money away to friends, crooks, swindlers and corrupt officials, enhancing the greed of bankers, oilmen, lawyers and developers.
Boy, do I miss your corpulent, orange visage that took up my screen; I miss your co-stars: your snarling, smirking, swarmy son-in-law and his Stepford wife; your Eastern-Euro-trash wife whose English was modeled after Natasha in “Rocky and Bullwinkle”; the miscreant advisors, lawyers and generals that hung around you; and the three “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” spokeswomen: Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyanne Conway and Kayleigh McEnany. I miss the guest appearances by your two dim-witted grown-up sons. I miss your love affairs with Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Viktor Orbán.
It was a short four-year reality show and I miss it; I hope you’ll be renewed in 2024 since your replacement, the Joe Biden show, is a bore.
Hello Cecil Fangon, CEO/President of Ralphs Grocery Company:
I would like to file a complaint against one of your Ralphs markets, commonly called “Rock and Roll Ralphs,” at 7257 Sunset, LA 90046. Over the last several months I have found that some of the shelf prices do not correspond to the scanned price that appear on the cash register receipt.
The latest happened recently — the shelf price was marked at $3.99 but the scanned price was $6.49. When I called it to the cashier’s attention, she had to hold up the line while someone went to check the price. Indeed, the price was $3.99 — someone had neglected to change the shelf sticker to the current price — and though I was refunded the difference, it was time-consuming and a pain.
What if I hadn’t taken a look at the receipt, like I imagine many customers do not do? How many customers were charged incorrect prices? This is the only Ralphs with which I have encountered this problem.
But there’s other problems shopping at Ralphs — all the Ralphs stores — and that’s misleading signage. For example, a sign with gigantic letters will declare “Special — $x.xx each.” So you grab the “Special” but get charged a different price. The reason — in very small print at the bottom of the sign is the wording: “Only when bought in multiples of three” or “With digital coupon only.” This is a major disservice — especially to elderly shoppers whose eyesight is weak. Though certainly not illegal, I guess — nevertheless this advertising is deceptive.
I have the receipts from my recent transaction and can send copies to you via email if you need them.
By the way, last week I ended up buying a six pack of Indian Pale Ale that was stacked on sale thinking it was a tribal version of Canada Dry Ginger Ale. Go figure.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
PS: Why are your three Hollywood stores (Rock and Roll, La Brea Marketplace and East Hollywood) so dirty? Opened food containers and trash clog the aisles, shelves are always in a state of disarray (with products not in their designated locations), the floors are dirty, everything looks messy and unkempt. Sometimes I leave those stores feeling like I need to take a shower. Not so for your Ralphs located in Beverly Hills or Studio City or Burbank. Those markets are almost immaculate — closer to the Hollywood Vons and Pavillions in tidiness and cleanliness. Your managers are paid decent salaries — from $54k to $83k a year (almost twice as much as your cashiers, who top out at $30,129.) You, of course, make almost nine times that — $237,000 a year.
I don’t need to tell you that Ralphs is owned by Kroger, a grocery conglomerate that owns Fred Meyer, Harris Teeter, Mariano’s, Fry’s, Smith’s, King Soopers, QFC and others in 35 states. The company has nearly 2,800 stores and employs nearly 500,000 workers. Kroger’s annual gross profit for 2023 was $31.77 billion, on revenue of $147 billion, according to the Macrotrends website; it gave away a whopping $2.2 billion worth of shareholder rewards in 2021. Kroger’s highest-paid employee is Rodney McMullen, CEO since 2014, who was given a base salary of $1.388 million in 2022; stock awards and incentives pushed his total compensation up to $19.209 million, according to an annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That’s an awful lot of money that could be ploughed back into keeping your urban stores neat and clean.
And now the company wants to merge with (takeover) the Albertsons-Vons-Pavillions-Safeway chain in California, reducing competition and diversity. Can you do something about this?
Dear Mark Reuss, General Motors president; Jim Farley, Ford CEO; Carlos Antunes Tavares Dias, Stellantis CEO (Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Maserati, Citroen, Opel, Peugeot and Vauxhall); Koji Sato, Toyota CEO; Toshihiro Mibe, Honda CEO; Oliver Blume, Volkswagen Group CEO (VW, Porsche, Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley); Makoto Uchida, Nissan CEO; Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Euisun Chung (Genesis, Hyundai and Kia; and Oliver Zipse, Chairman, BMW Group (BMW, Mini, Rolls Royce):
Love your new car colors — the glossy grays, greens, tans, browns and blues that have muted earth-like tones and that lack the light-reflecting metallic flake that is typically mixed in with car paint; they’re still shiny but not too bright
And thanks for jumping on the e-car bandwagon.
But, please, lower the volume on the car stereos you install in new cars. You don’t need 10 speakers and subwoofers and 5000 watts of power to listen to music in the closed cabin of a moving piece of steel. Back in the day my dad hated rock ‘n’ roll and my mom wondered what that “screeching sound” was coming off my Joan Baez albums. As I drive down the street and find myself assaulted by heavy metal, hip-hop and rap in earth-shattering noise have I turned into my parents? The boom of gigantic subwoofers is mind-boggling. You don’t need high volume to listen to Patriot Radio (nor a high IQ for that matter). Maybe you could install sound-limiters geared to the car’s windows — when the windows go down, so does the volume. And please, forget those subwoofers.
And while I have you here, please, please add more grab handles in to your cars. It seems that most Toyotas and Nissans and Hondas — and even the new Ford Mustang Mach-E — have them. They’re great for getting in and out of a car — and for grabbing onto when a driver takes a turn too fast or hits too many bumps — which is why they’re sometimes called “oh shit” or” “Jesus Christ” handles. Not enough of your models have this convenience.
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This just in: LA’s latest tourist attraction: A trio of 30-floor high-rise towers at Figueroa and 11th, across from the Crypto.com Arena (home to the Los Angeles Kings, Los Angeles Lakers, Los Angeles Clippers and Los Angeles Sparks). The abandoned $1 billion Oceanside Plaza towers has become a canvas for local graffitti artists as well as a sanctuary for drug dealers and the homeless. And after a spate of news articles, some adventurous Angelenos have even been base jumping off “Graffitti Tower.”
The high-rise, begun in 2015, was going to house 504 luxury condominiums and a 184-room Park Hyatt hotel but the project stalled in 2019 when the Beijing-based billionaire Chinese developer ran out of money. The businessman was allegedly connected to the kickback scandal surrounding convicted ex-Los Angeles City Council member José Huizar, who was wined, dined, bribed and given prostitutes by building developers. Huizar was sentenced to 13 years in prison for racketeering and tax evasion; the Chinese businessman has fled back to China. And the city can do nothing about it — no developer will take over the project because it would cost so much ($2.3 billion) to finish it that any investment could not be recouped. And there’s no one in China to send a bill to if the city were to tear it down.
I kind of like this new building sculpture — it’s an imposing artwork that rivals monuments by Claes Oldenburg and Anish Kapoor – and it’s a symbol of the fallen angel that Los Angeles has become. I suggest that the Eli Broad Foundation purchase the structure and turn it into an ongoing art project for everyone in the city.
Banksy ain’t got anything on this
“Who can protest an injustice but does not is an accomplice to the act” — The Talmud
“This city is going crazy,” my Lyft driver muttered, as we watched a car make a left turn right in front of a speeding ambulance, sirens wailing to wake the dead. “People have lost respect for order and laws, they’ve lost their human kindness and dignity,” he said. “And that hurts.”
It’s been more than six months since I wrote my last “Letter From LA,” and my only excuse: health problems and general ennui about life in Los Angeles. The first is easy to get over — and in fact is almost over — as I’m buttoning up a two month immunotherapy treatment after a mid-June weeklong stay at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital for bladder surgery (a stay that I would not wish on my worst enemy — the care and food was so bad that I’m still reeling).
Turkey Meatloaf?
The hurt from the treatment gets less and less as time goes by. But the worst hurt is what’s happening to my beloved Los Angeles and Hollywood.
This year began with torrential rains that were described as “atmospheric rivers” (relentless storms wreaked havoc on roadways — a massive sinkhole in one neighborhood swallowed a car and a truck, leading to a dramatic rescue by firefighters) — followed by wildfires; late in the summer we had a hurricane and then earthquakes. But what’s horrible is the rampant crime and disorder:
Smash & grab crime waves, also called flashmob crimes (30 to as many as 50 people, all believed to be between the ages of 18 and 25, barged into the Nordstrom at the Topanga Mall in Canoga Park, getting away with $300,000 worth of merchandise; trashed an Yves Saint Laurent store at the Americana at Brand; robbed a Nike store in East Los Angeles; a Costa Mesa Gucci store; and other, smaller high-end mom & pop jewelry stores on Melrose)
home invasions
violent dog-napping
a spike in arson attacks (car fires, dumpster fires, trash can fires)
roving gangs of catalytic converter thieves (who use a reciprocating saw and cut the unit right out of a car’s exhaust system in less than three minutes; the parts are worth up to several hundred dollars for the value of its precious metals, which are platinum, palladium and rhodium, all used in a broad range of high-tech applications)
now that gas prices in LA have risen above $6.00 a gallon, there’s been a rash of gas-stealing crimes in which intrepid thieves drill through gas-tank flaps/doors to siphon fuel
trash ridden streets (the city is being smothered in garbage from the proliferating homeless encampments)
homeless encampments popping up everywhere, mentally unstable men and women walking around everywhere — making the streets seem like a set for an episode of “The Walking Dead” (by the way,the LAFD estimates 54 percent of its calls are related to homeless encampments)
fentanyl overdoses by teenagers thinking they’re taking ecstasy
crazy, reckless drivers: with the proliferation of Lyft and Uber taxi services and pandemic-fueled home deliveries, double-parking has become a way of life, blocking streets and causing traffic jams. The proverbial rolling “California stop” has now become an epidemic. Tail-gating and crazy speeders have become the norm (According to Allstate, “when it comes to the worst cities to drive in, Los Angeles takes the top spot. Not only do its citizens have to endure long hours of traffic jams due to the concentration of cars, but they are also at a higher risk of getting into an accident. Nationally, Los Angeles is the sixth most likely city to be involved in an automobile collision. LA also has the highest rate of motor vehicle incidents resulting in injuries and fatalities”
copper wire theft: Copper wire thieves have targeted the Metro rail system and street lights on Los Angeles roads and freeways, costing the city about $4 million a year; Caltrans has spent about $24 million over the last four years in repairs according to the Los Angeles Times (I used to take my friend’s dog on walks through a grassy area in the Hollywood Bowl parking lot; one day some gigantic boulders appeared randomly in the green areas and I couldn’t figure out why until saw their exact placement — over the access panels to the park’s street lights)
bad air: A report by IQAir a company that helps track global air quality, found that LA has the most polluted air out of over 2,400 cities analyzed in 2022
LA is the second-most vulnerable city for rat infestation in the US, behind only NYC, according to a 2023 study by home service industry website Home Gnome
real estate developments all over the city are replacing smaller, older apartments with high-rise, mixed use “luxury” buildings with jacked up rents where renters pay $3500 a month for a one-bedroom apartment which, in turn leads to …
a dearth of affordable housing with apartments and homes priced out of reach for most middle and lower class residents; more than half of Angelenos are renters, and almost half of renters spend at least half their income on housing. That’s way beyond the federal definition of unaffordable housing (devoting over one-third of household income to housing). And it correlates with a rise in homelessness
The Los Angeles Next Door social media platforms are a hotbed of worried Angelenos citing muggings, break-ins, thievery, shootings, car-jackings, problems with the homeless — so much so that it’s amazing that anyone leaves their home. In fact, when I posted a complaint at Next Door Hollywood about some egregious homeless activity, Next Door lit up like crazy and my post received thousands and thousands of views and comments: there were 12.5K views in five days compared to 1.4K views over a photo and complaint about people not picking up their dog poop — right under a dog-poop-bag dispenser.
And some neighborhoods are more susceptible to crime. According to an article, “10 Worst Neighborhoods In Los Angeles 2023: Beyond the Glamour,” in the Southwest Journal web magazine, Hollywood is 109% more dangerous than the national average, total crime is 109% higher than the national average, violent crime is 231% higher than the national average, property crime is 84% higher than the national average and the chance of being a victim of crime in Hollywood is 1 in 21.
Despite the anecdotal, tabloid-like media reporting, crime in Los Angeles is actually down this year — and more than a little. Homicides are down 24%, from 269 in 2022 to 203 this year (through August 26). Rapes are down 17%, robberies 12%. Citywide, property crimes are level for the last several years. But personal and other thefts have increased 14% this year and are up 42% from this time two years ago, while motor vehicle theft declined by 27%.
Some of this is hyperbole but I really think that life in Los Angeles has hit a new low.
Which leads me to the “mean world syndrome,” first coined by mass media researcher George Gerbner, who developed a “cultivation” theory that postulated that long-term exposure to television shapes how consumers perceive the world; the more television people watch, the more likely they are to hold a view of reality closer to what television depicts; because of the violence on TV, people start to see the world as more dangerous than it actually is. He tested this hypothesis by surveying people who watched violent TV shows, assessed their views on violence in their neighborhood, then compared that to actual crime statistics. Invariably, TV watchers saw the outside world as much more violent than it really was. Though Gerbner did his research in the 1970s and 80s, it’s not hard to extrapolate his finding to the negative influence of violent movies, reality TV shows and video games, and the further amplification of a mean world via social media (Next Door, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.). And this doesn’t even take into account the myriad studies that make a direct connection between violent TV, games and movies with violent behavior. That’s for another day.
Not to be all doom and gloom: While in a garden near my apartment, I was surprised to see several Monarch butterflies fluttering around the bushes and trees. In the last decade, there was widespread fear that their numbers were precipitously in decline. But since last year, new data shows that Western Monarch butterfly numbers in California has increased to almost 250,000. This one-year trend doesn’t mark a full recovery since, historically, Monarchs numbered in the millions along the California coast. Still, that’s a bright spot in our current ecological disruption.
And those butterflies are emblematic of a Los Angeles-past, a time of happiness and endless possibilities for kids growing up on the West side of the city. In the 1950s and 60s, LA and Venice and Hollywood seemed like golden plains of never-ending fun; the beaches were glowing bastions of warms sands and cool waves; the streets were wide open and safe and beckoning to young drivers to find new vistas. Especially if you were white and middle class. And went to any of the West LA high schools.
This weekend marks the 60th reunion of my Venice High School graduation class, and though I won’t be attending — my immunotherapy treatments make traveling too difficult — I began to ponder lost dreams, lost desires and lost friends. Earlier this summer, before my treatments, I was driving on an errand, wondering what had happened to one or another of my classmates, when the Four Seasons came on the radio:
Sherry baby (Sherry baby) baby (Sherry baby)
Sherry can you come out tonight?
(Come, come, come out tonight)
Sherry baby (Sherry baby)
Sherry can you come out tonight?
(Why don’t you come out, come out)
With your red dress on
(Come out) Mmm. you look so fine
(Come out) Move it nice and easy
Girl, you make me lose my mind
Sheri S. was my first high school love. It was the summer of 1962 and I was just coming into my own as a social person. I had lost a lot of weight and began wearing fashionable clothes (button down pull-over shirts were popular that year). I was in an off-campus social club (The Escorts), getting ready to start my senior year and, best of all, I was driving. I was 16 1/2 and though my first car was a hand-me-down, beat-up 1951 four-door Chevrolet sedan (with a steering column mounted automatic transmission gear-shifter that rose and fell as the car accelerated), I was the king of the road. I don’t recall exactly how I met Sheri, but she was the younger sister — one year younger — of one of my classmates, Steven S, with whom I had been close with in Junior High but had kind of drifted away from … but still remained friends. Sheri was beautiful, lively and — to my eyes now — sexy, and older than her years. We hit it off right away and began dating. Sheri was an imp — one time, when I visited Steven on a Saturday afternoon, Sheri snuck into my car and hid on the floor of my car’s back seat, popping up to “surprise” me a few minutes after I had driven away. We dated for awhile during that senior year; sometimes we would just drive around, with her best girlfriend in the back seat, aimlessly cruising around the city. At one point Sheri started to go out with a rich guy from another school — he drove a gold-colored Corvette Stingray — and when I asked her about it she said she was just doing it to make me jealous. But then our dating went sour. She stopped accepting my date requests and returning my calls — and then I was informed that she just wanted to be friends. Bewildered, I asked a female friend to take her aside to find out what had happened. “I really, really liked Harley,” she said, “but he never kissed me.” I don’t know if I ever saw her again after that, but I think of her often — and my naivety haunts me to this day. Some broken hearts just can’t be mended.
Magnolia Pictures will release JOAN BAEZ I AM A NOISE in NY theaters on October 6, 2023
Expanding to LA & Additional Markets on October 13, 2023
Directed by Karen O’Connor, Miri Navasky, and Maeve O’Boyle
Executive Produced by Greg Sarris, Parri Smith, Josh Braun, Ben Braun and Terry Press
Neither a conventional biopic nor a traditional concert film, JOAN BAEZ I AM A NOISE is a raw and intimate portrait of the legendary folk singer and activist that shifts back and forth through time as it follows Joan on her final tour and delves into her extraordinary archive, including newly discovered home movies, diaries, artwork, therapy tapes, and audio recordings. Baez is remarkably revealing about her life on and off stage – from her lifelong emotional struggles to her civil rights work with MLK and a heartbreaking romance with a young Bob Dylan. A searingly honest look at a living legend, this film is a compelling and deeply personal exploration of an iconic artist who has never told the full truth of her life, as she experienced it, until now. Directed by Miri Navasky, Maeve O’Boyle, and Karen O’Connor, JOAN BAEZ I AM A NOISE is produced by Navasky and O’Connor, and edited by O’Boyle. Executive Producers are Greg Sarris, Patti Smith, Josh Braun, Ben Braun, and Terry Press.
In honor of Super Bowl Sunday and the Chinese surveillance balloons that flew across the country for several days two weeks ago, I decided to revisit John Frankenheimer’s 1977 “Black Sunday,” a thriller about terrorists who commandeer the Goodyear blimp with a plan to murder 80,000 spectators at the 1976 Super Bowl in Miami, Florida. The film stars Bruce Dern in his typical over-the-edge hair-flying wildly acting mode as an ex-Vietnam War POW who wants to wreak revenge on the American public for his mistreatment after seven years of imprisonment in North Vietnam; after he was brainwashed by the Viet Cong into making a filmed apology for the war, he was returned to the states and court-martialed. He now is a Goodyear blimp pilot for CBS News. Guiding him in this endeavor is Marthe Keller, a member of Black September, a Palestinian militant group that was responsible for the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Hot on their trail is Robert Shaw as an Israeli counter-terrorist Mossad agent.
Frankenheimer, who was a master of a cinema of alienation and paranoia, was just past his creative peak with this film, having directed “Birdman of Alcatraz” and “The Manchurian Candidate” in 1962, “Seven Days in May” and “The Train” in 1965, “Seconds” and “Grand Prix” in 1966. After a string of mediocre outings he returned to boxoffice success with 1975’s “French Connection II”; as a reward, Paramount and producer Robert Evans gave him the helm of “Black Sunday.” One of his last films was the highly successful “Ronin” (1998), which featured great non-CGI car chases, a web of political intrigue, and an international cast that included Robert De Niro, Jean Reno and Jonathan Pryce.
“Black Sunday” was based on the 1975 book by Thomas Harris, who went on to pen “The Silence of the Lambs” (1988). The screenplay was co-written by Ernest Lehman (“The King and I,” “North by Northwest,” “West Side Story,” “The Sound of Music,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” “Hello, Dolly!”), Kenneth Ross (“The Day of the Jackal,” “The Odessa File”) and the great screenwriter and man-about-town Ivan Moffat (“Giant”).
The film is a pretty straight-forward thriller, with plenty of violence, blood, car chases, and a few twists and turns. The direction and editing are intelligent and about as fine-tuned as one can get on the big screen. The production had the cooperation of the National Football League, which allowed filming during Super Bowl X on January 18, 1976, at the Miami Orange Bowl. Dern held the film together with his performance as a deranged PTSD Vietnam veteran; Swiss actress Keller, who rose to fame in the US as Dustin Hoffman’s girlfriend in “Marathon Man” (1976), lacked charisma and depth in her role as a terrorist; she subsequently went on to work in the theatre and opera in Europe. Shaw — who played Israeli agent Kabakov as if in a trance — made his US film breakthrough with his role as a Russian assassin in the second James Bond film, “From Russia with Love (1963); he subsequently earned a Supporting Actor Academy Award for “A Man for All Seasons” (1966). He played mobster Doyle Lonnegan in “The Sting” (1973), a subway-hijacker in “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” (1974) and, of course, the shark-obsessed fisherman Quint in “Jaws” (1975), probably his best-known role. He died quite young — 51 — of a heart attack in August, 1978.
All in all, “Black Sunday” is fun viewing and will keep you on the proverbial “edge of your seat.” So after today’s game, crack open that last can of beer, open up that last bag of chips and wings, and enjoy the fictional mayhem. The film is streaming now on Amazon Prime; Arrow Video will release a special edition Blu-ray loaded with features on March 28.
The only thing missing from the film was the result of the day’s championship game: The Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Dallas Cowboys 21–17.
According to the online newspaper Alternet, “a study published in the journal Neuropsychologia has shown that religious fundamentalism is, in part, the result of a functional impairment in a brain region known as the prefrontal cortex. The findings suggest that damage to particular areas of the prefrontal cortex indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by diminishing cognitive flexibility and openness — a psychology term that describes a personality trait which involves dimensions like curiosity, creativity, and open-mindedness.”
From writer Jill Lepore’s article about facebook in the July 26, 2021 issue of “The New Yorker” (“Mission Impossible: How Facebook’s pledge to bring the world together wound up pulling us apart”): “more than half of all Americans were getting their news from social media” and “studies have consistently shown that the more time people spend on Facebook the worse their mental health becomes; Facebooking is also correlated with increased sedentariness, a diminishment of meaningful face-to-face relationships, and a decline in real-world social activities.”
Back in my July 2021 Letter I lamented the introduction of the Lamborghini and Ferrari SUVs; now comes even more mind-boggling news on the automobile front. Apparently, Ford introduced an all-electric Mustang-SUV crossover in the 2021 model year; despite modest sales of 28,089 in the first nine months of 2022 (about a quarter of the sales of Tesla models) they have not been in evidence on the streets of Los Angeles. I finally caught sight of one — parked in front of a 99 Cents Only store in Hollywood — and I wasn’t impressed. The automotive press has had mixed feelings about the Ford Mustang Mach-E — “despite the name it’s no Mustang” and a “Mustang crossover is sacrilegious,” but Car and Driver was impressed enough to give it the magazine’s inaugural EV of the Year award in 2021. And this year’s version — with a starting price of $47,495 — has a GT Performance model that zooms to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds. Better to get the kids to school on time.
This issue of Letter From LA is being sent out via email and the Substack publishing platform. Substack, founded in 2017 in San Francisco, provides an easy-to-use publishing template that not only sends out professional-looking email newsletters and posts, but aggregates those emails in web-based archives. Substack has become very popular with mainstream and independent journalists, critics and authors; some of the writers that use the service include investigative journalists Glenn Greenwald and Seymour Hersh, culture critic Anne Helen Petersen, music essayist Robert Christgau, and food writer Alison Roman. The beauty of Substack is their hands-off attitude; there is basically no censorship. And it’s up to the writers whether or not they want to charge for their writing (Substack takes 10 percent of subscription prices).
Letter From LA on Substack will, of course, remain free. But there is also the option for readers to opt in for a subscription — it’s always nice for a writer to get paid for their work. So, unless I hear from you otherwise, I’ll port your name over into my Substack mailing list (just for Letter From LA; and, to reiterate, it’s still free).
Swaying palm trees, cool evening breezes, night-blooming jasmine, ruby red and purple bougainvillea, golden sun at twilight: these are some of the cliches that describe Los Angeles — and they’re true. But here’s another version of LA’s reality, from the famous French sociologist, philosopher and cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard: “There is nothing to match flying over Los Angeles by night. A sort of luminous, geometric, incandescent immensity, stretching as far as the eye can see, bursting out from the cracks of the clouds. Only Hieronymus Bosch’s hell can match this inferno effect. The muted fluorescent of all the diagonals: Wilshire, Lincoln, Sunset, Santa Monica. Already, flying over San Fernando Valley, you come upon the horizontal infinite in every direction. But, once you are beyond the mountain, a city ten times larger hits you. You will never have encountered anything that stretches as far as this before. Even the sea cannot match it, since it is not divided up geometrically … Mulholland Drive by night is an extraterrestrials vantage point on earth, or conversely, an earth dweller’s vantage point on the galactic metropolis” (from America, 1989). LA is unique, yes. But in one respect, LA is still just like every other major American city — riddled with corruption. LA’s past has had its share of robber barons and cheats and thieves and politicians on the take — from the Huntingtons and Chandlers and Dohenys through William Mulholland and Mark Taper. LA’s past has been riddled with police and city council corruption — just pick up a copy of “L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City” by John Buntin for a litany of LA scandals.
But lately it seems that the sewage is bubbling more often than not to the surface. Former LA City Council member Mitch Englander was sentenced to federal prison last year for obstructing a corruption probe, former Council member José Huizar was indicted in 2020 on bribery and other federal charges for allegedly favoring developers, former Council member Mark Ridley-Thomas stepped aside after being charged with facilitating public contracts to the University of Southern California in exchange for favors (Marilyn Louise Flynn, the former dean of the USC School of Social work, was implicated in the bribery scandal; the 83-year-old was sentenced to a $100,000 fine and 10 years of house arrest. Ms. Flynn was the stepgrandmother to Tess, my daughter Lizzie’s best friend during her teenage years).
USC has been a hotbed of scandals: there was an FBI sting of a basketball coach, sexual abuse allegations by former patients of a campus gynecologist who they say sexually abused them (USC agreed to pay more than $850 million to settle), cover-ups of on-campus rapes, and a blatant influence-peddling scheme around college admissions in which some Hollywood stars and elites bribed their kids’ way into the school. USC’s rival across the city has also come in for its share of scandals, chief among them the indictment of a former UCLA campus gynecologist for sexually abusing female patients; a Los Angeles jury found Dr. James Heaps guilty in a criminal case that came after the university system made nearly $700 million in lawsuit payouts.
And Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva has come under intense scrutiny for blocking an investigation into excessive violence by deputies against inmates, and for his denial that violent Deputy Gangs permeate the Sheriff’s Department.
The latest: three LA City Council members and the head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor were caught on tape last year discussing ways to consolidate power in Los Angeles at the expense of Black leadership; during the conversation anti-Semitic, anti-Black and anti-Armenian remarks were made. When the tape was leaked last month, City Council President Nury Martinez, who disparaged a white colleague’s adopted 2-year-old Black son, stepped down, as did Ron Herrera, president of the labor organization. The two other council members, Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León, have yet to resign, despite a public outcry, and there’s no way that the men can be kicked off the city council short of a voter recall. Cedillo will term out this December, but de León has two years left on his term, which will net him about $568,000 in combined salary and pension. What a rat.
Speaking of vermin, Los Angeles has been named the third “rattiest” city in the country (it was second last year). Exterminator company Orkin released its annual list of the most mice-and-rat invested cities last Wednesday; Chicago tops the list followed by New York, LA, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco in the top five. The survey covers September 1, 2021 to August 31, 2022. According to Orkin: “Each fall, mice and other rodents invade an estimated 21 million homes in the United States. They typically enter homes between October and February looking for food, water and shelter from the cold. And unique to previous years, with the influx of outdoor dining structures brought on by the pandemic, rodents have found the perfect place to dine, live and multiply … with some displaying more aggressive behavior than in the past.” When I lived in Beverly Hills in the 1990s and 2000s, that wealthy city had a terrible rat problem. As far back as 1999, the Wall Street Journal reported that “Once concentrated in fields and crowded urban areas, the reviled rodents have started to invade some of the best addresses in America … How did rats wind up scampering into the lap of luxury? With urban rodents reproducing at epidemic rates after two consecutive mild winters, overcrowding has induced them to trek, street by street, to suburban settings … the suburbs are easy street: lavish leftovers in flimsy plastic bags, high-end pet chow, birdfeeders everywhere.” Beverly Hills still has a major rat problem and though not enough to make Orkin’s top-50 list, it still jangles the nerves of the city’s affluent residents; according to WickedLocal website, “Beverly City Councilor Stacy Ames said she has received more calls and emails related to the rodent problem than any other issue while she’s been in office.”
I hang out a lot near the Hollywood Bowl, walking a friend’s dog, and I see many interesting things. There’s a lot of cruising and speeding along Highland Avenue past the Bowl — it’s a long stretch from Franklin leading up to the Hollywood Freeway (101) and I guess some young men of a certain adolescent mentality love to rev their engines and “hot-rod it” up the street with mufflers that make earthquake-like rumbling sounds (hey, wait, didn’t I do this when I was a teenager?). There’s also a lot of motorcycle gangs that tool up the street (why don’t these bikes have mufflers these days?), followed by 18-wheelers, garbage trucks and buses. Lots of noise. There’s also a lot of homeless people walking up and down the street — only a couple of blocks away there’s a gigantic homeless encampment lining both sides of CahuengaBlvd. under the 101 overpass, as well as in a park area above the Hollywood Heritage Museum (the original Lasky-DeMille Barn that served as one of the first Hollywood studios in the 1910s), which sits in the middle of the Hollywood Bowl parking lot. Some of them come down the hills like coyotes, scavenging for food and recyclables in the neighborhood trash cans. But the weirdest thing I saw recently was an older gentleman pulling into the Hollywood Bowl parking lot one morning. His car was a late-model BMW X7 (probably a 2021 or 2022 since the California license plate began with a “9”) with a sticker price that starts at $73,000. With long gray hair flopping out from under a baseball cap, the man opened the rear car gate, pulled out a personal shopping cart and walked over to a line of trash cans. He rummaged through the trash, pulled out some bottles and cans, then began walking up into the Whitley Hills (a wealthy residential area adjacent to the Bowl), checking out the garbage cans as he went. I can only surmise one of two things: He just lost his job and needed the cash he could make from collecting recyclable bottles and cans – or – the guy has figured out how to make enough money from scavenging to buy a BMW. As I walked by his car I peeked in a side window and saw a bunch of LA city maps unfolded on the passenger seat. Nothing like planning out your scavenger hunt.
I’ve always liked the smell of fresh-cut grass — it reminds me of summer days growing up in Mar Vista, when, as a kid, mowing the front lawn was a weekly chore. But now it turns out that that smell that so many people like is really a cry for help. According to an NPR report, two University of Missouri researchers say that freshly cut grass blades are not too happy about being shorn. “For more than 30 years, husband-wife team Jack Schultz and Heide Appel of MU’s Christopher S. Bond Life Science Center have studied how plants react to stress. For example, when a plant is wounded, it can sometimes release airborne chemicals to attract birds and other insects to try to eliminate pests that are causing the damage. So when we cut the grass, Schultz says the grass is trying to find something to help.”
Back in the late 1960s, early 1970s, I rented a great apartment in Echo Park, in what is now known as Elysian Heights. In the early part of the 20th century, nearby Edendale was the home to most of the major movie studios on the West Coast, with such companies as the Keystone Studios, Fox, Pathe and others clustered along what is now Glendale Blvd. Because of its close proximity to these movie lots and, later to Hollywood, the hilly, forest-like Elysian Heights became the home to wealthy Angelenos; the area was also a bastion for artists and communists in the years leading up to World War II. After the War the neighborhood started to slide economically, and its cheap rents became a magnet for hippies and bohemians. Some of the homes at the top of Echo Park Avenue were veritable mansions: the apartment I rented was the bottom 1/3 of a gigantic three-bedroom house that had been broken up into smaller units (my next door neighbor’s house — which was shared by three bearded young men — had an expansive gardenia garden as well as an indoor swimming pool). I lived there from 1969 to 1976 and loved it; the house was perched at the very top of the hill, with a sunken dining room that had a view toward the lights of Glendale and Eagle Rock. It was secluded, with a long flight of eerie cement steps leading up to an overgrown back yard and dirt-filled pond. Off the dining room was a small utility room that — even in the heat of the summer — was always cold. The rest of the apartment was circular: you would enter from a back door, through the kitchen into the living room. A right turn took you up some stairs to two bathrooms, one with a toilet, the other with a shower. At the top of the stairs was a long hallway that butted up against the building’s basement; at the end of the hallway was a spacious bedroom. Another flight of stairs lead down to a small vanity room, then back down to the living room — a complete circle.
One night I was awakened by the screams of my lover: “Harley, there’s someone in the hallway,” she yelled. I jumped up and, as I headed for the hall, saw a yellow orb of light floating away from me. There was no one there. This happened a few more times — awakenings in the middle of the night — then they abruptly stopped. Cold room, floating lights — was this place haunted? As it turned out, the house was owned by Elizabeth Hampton, my landlady, who had lived in Echo Park with her husband, Roy, in the 1930s and 1940s. Roy was an LA City Councilman from 1939 to 1943, and was involved in some political controversies during and after his terms in office. He was a graduate of the University of Southern California and of its Law School and worked as a journalist as well as an attorney. In 1953 his body was found in a motel on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu; Sheriff’s deputies said he had taken his own life. Was that Roy floating down my hallway in 1973?
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