Letter From LA: Winter 2024
Posted on May 25, 2024
Filed Under Books, Culture, Letter From LA, Main, People, Politics | Leave a Comment
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 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.
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.
“Who can protest an injustice but does not is an accomplice to the act” — The Talmud
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