Revision City

Saint Junipero Serra

Outside my office at the Catholic college where I work, there was a statue of Saint Junipero Serra, the 18^th century founder of the California missions.  Considering the Age of Enlightenment was raging in Europe, Serra was a man a little behind the times.  His desire was to convert all of the indigenous people to Christ.  No science or philosophy needed, just intense prayer and a lot of discipline.  So much so, in fact, that many scholars now claim the missions were little more than west coast plantations using the Native Americans as an enslaved work force.

This casts a decided pall on my elementary education at the local Catholic school where in fifth grade, we were tasked with making a scale model of our favorite mission.  (Does an eleven year old have a favorite mission?)  I cannot think of a more onerous task for me, the kid with no artistic ability.  My colleagues in the class seemed to excel at this:  one created an architect’s model of his mission; another ingenuously created his mission out of a mixture of box mashed potatoes and oatmeal to create the most realistic stucco and adobe I had ever seen.  A third, a girl, created a passable mission structure, but included a parking lot.  There were miniature inch-high, colored plastic Indians in a variety of war-like poses taking on cowboys on one side of her mission gardens, and on the other were her brother’s Matchbox cars glued to the parking lot.  This temporal confusion did not seem to affect her score, however, as she won the contest for Best Mission.  I had the temerity to protest her win to the nun who was our teacher.  She put me in my place, saying my mission did not even look like a mission—it looked like a chocolate cake someone dropped from a four-story building—and my young female competitor deserved to win not only because her mission spanned all dimensions of time and space, but she, herself, had a vocation to join the sisterhood once she graduated high school in just seven or so years.  The girl did not join the convent; she did, however, invite me to her wedding.  I didn’t go.

Coming back to the life-like Junipero Serra outside my office, one day, he disappeared.  No one seemed concerned, nor did anyone have answers.  I got a lot of, “Wait, there was a statue there?”  Yes, yes there was a statue there of a recently canonized saint and now he is gone.  “Oh well,” was the common response.  Could his disappearance be linked to recent revisionist history that Serra was no different from a southern plantation owner during the Civil War?  The statue was very common across Los Angeles at a number of Catholic institutions.  Did they all disappear?  Were there not posters up asking, “Have you seen this man?”  Right in front of our noses we have a plethora of missing person cases; granted, they are all the same person, but someone should be looking into this.  We should be putting up phone numbers for anonymous tipsters.  How about an Amber Alert?

 

This got me thinking about all of the places in this city that have played a huge role in my life that are not there anymore.  I can hear a certain voice in my head narrating this fantasy documentary.  Ralph Story, veteran journalist, used to have a multi-part series on PBS where he traveled around town to tell us about interesting and eclectic places that have since disappeared.  I used to love his show.  Los Angeles is a town that is continuously revising itself.  In a city known for the film industry, everything from major landmarks to mom and pop stores often get torn down and turned into something else like sets on a sound stage.  Actually, it is worse.  An acquaintance of mine who worked for Warner Brothers said if a particular movie or TV show  was successful, the studio would tack a plaque to the sound stage wall marking the historical place where the show was filmed.  Somewhere on the lot was a plaque stating that The West Wing was filmed there, or in another part of the landscape, ER was filmed here.  Real landmarks are not so lucky.  They don’t get any plaques or special notice.

Years ago, a band featuring me on keyboards played a Sunday afternoon set at the Fashion Square Mall, an open-air, upscale shopping place in Sherman Oaks.  In more recent history, the mall was remodeled with a roof and a variety of new stores.  Over the years, stores have come and gone.  I walk there occasionally for exercise, and I also shop, but when I go to the north corner outside Macy’s next to the shoe repair where we once played, guess what?  No plaque.  There is no evidence we ever played there; in fact, there is no longer any room for a band there.  Did I expect some marking of the historical occasion?  No, because we were pretty bad, but the point is, the space is gone and the mall no longer has music on Sunday afternoons.  (Okay, maybe we were so bad they cancelled future performances.  I accept full responsibility.)

On Ventura Boulevard where my wife and I used to go for frozen yogurt when all we had was a few dollars, that’s gone.  It is a porn shop.  Hamburger Hamlet, a place I’ve written about on this blog, and which played a major role in our dating and married life, sits vacant, dusty tables and decrepit plants still in place, the bar empty of alcohol.  Another place important to us was Café Cordiale.  Peter May, the owner, became a friend and we relished the food and live music there, so it was a shock when Peter announced he was closing up shop to go work at Lawry’s Prime Rib.  The new restaurant that took over the Café Cordiale space was so chic and so overpriced that they felt they did not have to put out the name over the front door.  It was just “that place with the lattice work all over the front.”  The place went under and now there is another restaurant there.

Bob’s Big Boy used to have a restaurant on Van Nuys Boulevard where acres of car lots now sit.  They were known for carhop dining.  My parents used to go there when they were dating.  My wife’s family would go there after church on Sunday.  And all of us used to go after high school football games on Friday nights.  There was the Jolly Roger hamburger joint on the outside of the Fashion Square Mall.  Gone, replaced by the mall trash dumpsters.  The Sherman Oaks Galleria is nothing like the one made famous by Moon Unit Zappa, the original Valley Girl.  It used to have department stores and a multi-level group of smaller establishments.  Does anyone remember when a plane from Van Nuys Airport crashed on the mall roof?  No, and the mall is gone and in its place is an imposter:  Sherman Oaks Galleria has an Arclight Theater complex, a number of restaurants, and business offices, and the same parking garage, the most confusing in the city.  All you can do is lumber from the movie theater to the Cheesecake Factory and then hopefully find your car when you’re done.

When I drive up the canyon through the claustrophobic streets of Brentwood to work every day, I must navigate a virtual obstacle course of flatbed trucks, cement mixers, contractors, workmen, electricians, gardeners, landscape artists, glass installers, architects, and the domestic help all employed remaking and keeping up every house on every street.  For sale signs go up, the house is purchased, and immediately a bee hive of activity swirls around the stucco and brick transforming the beautiful home into a post-modern box structure with all the curb appeal of beige that looks like a science fiction nightmare.  No sooner do the trucks and workers finish up when a new for sale sign goes up and the process begins all over again.  Does anyone actually live in those houses?  Does anyone belong to the neighborhood?  My university wants to remodel its fitness center and swimming pool, but the process has been mired for several years in hearing after hearing.  The school has had to pay for environmental reports and traffic studies.  Will it ever get built?  We can only hope, but why don’t those in the houses below us have to have hearings and meet city requirements to plant more trees?  Some of the houses have been made over three and four times in the last nine years.  A neighborhood of houses with character has been transformed into a post-apocalyptic nightmare.  Some of them have fake lawns, like an NFL stadium.

Driving around the city, places disappear, are obliterated, literally wiped off the map.  What comes after is not necessarily better.  It is often much, much, much worse.  Bleak.  Ugly.  Unlike writing, revision of the city does not make the city better.  At best it is different.  Often, it is blighted and void of character.

The other day, my wife and I were sitting at a stoplight when we both happened to glance over to a corner lot that had been recently plowed under.  Now it was just a big field of dry tumbleweeds and dirt.  “What was there before?” she asked.

I stared at the vacant space.  “I really can’t remember,” I replied.

The light turned green and the guy behind us was already honking for us to go.  Los Angeles:  always moving forward.

Saint Junipero Serra:  still missing.

Ralph Story, Host of Things That Aren't Here Anymore (PBS)