A Piece of the Berlin Wall

 

All Flags Flying

 

Clinton Or Bust

 

Time Capsule

 

Last Light

 

Someone Remembers, Even Now

 

Preparing For Veterans' Day Display

 

"Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Los Angeles Chapter of Veterans For Peace ceased operations of the Arlington West Santa Monica Memorial. But be that as it may, the message of the memorial remains; the cost and consequence of war is not a one-sided coin."

MLK

 

Noir

On Tuesday evening, November 12, 2019, at approximately 11PM, Los Angeles Police Department patrol officers were dispatched, code three, to a report of a kidnapping in the Leimert Park area of Los Angeles.

At approximately the same time, residents in the 3800 block of Third Avenue heard a woman screaming “Help me! Somebody help me!” and a male voice responding “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”  These voices were captured on a doorbell camera along with the image of a white, 2003-2008 Toyota Matrix or Prius fleeing the scene toward 39^th Street.

Southwest Division officers could not locate a suspect or victim.  In a subsequent investigation, no missing persons reports were filed and there was no conclusive evidence that a crime had been committed.

Living in Los Angeles, one becomes used to the macabre and bloody. Seared into memory are the names:

Charles Manson, Kenneth Bianchi, Angelo Buono, Richard Ramirez.

Unsolved mysterious deaths only add to Los Angeles lore:  Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia; George Reeves, the murdered Superman; Ned Doheny and Hugh Plunkett, possible lovers and participants in the Teapot Dome Scandal; Bugsy Seigel, the gangster; Biggie Smalls, rap star.

The locations of murders also continue to attract, public attention:  that vacant lot on Norton Avenue in Leimert Park where Elizabeth Short was found; the condo on Bundy Drive where Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman met their untimely end; the house in Los Feliz where cardiologist Harold Perelson murdered his wife and attempted to kill his daughter before taking an overdose of drugs causing his own death by suicide—his mansion remained vacant for sixty years, and in all that time, the Christmas decorations were still up from the night of the murder; the Ambassador Hotel, now demolished, where Robert Kennedy was shot on that June evening in 1968.

The most infamous crime scenes:  the house on Cielo Drive where the followers of Charles Manson shot and stabbed five people to death and the house on Waverly Drive in Los Feliz where more of Manson’s group murdered supermarket owner Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary.

Strange but true: the Cielo Drive house was later rented by Trent Reznor of the band Nine Inch Nails who recorded much of the band’s album, The Downward Spiral (1994) there.

There are also no shortage of people who believe they have solved cold cases.  Steve Hodel, a former LAPD homicide detective, believes he has solved the Black Dahlia murder case when he put a name to the unknown killer:  George Hodel, his father.  The macabre pose of the victim’s exsanguinated and dismembered body, according to Hodel, was inspired by a Man Ray photograph he found in his father’s belongings.

And writer James Ellroy fictionalized her case in his novel, and believes that he, too, has solved her murder:  she was another victim of the same serial killer who murdered his mother when he was just a young boy.

All of this—murder, mayhem, clues, crime scenes—it is all circular in Los Angeles.  It all comes back to the detective, that student of human psychology and degradation, who runs the case down like the soles of his leather shoes.  Veteran homicide detectives will tell you a case is solved with shoe leather, not some moment of divine realization.  No bolt of lightning; just endless shadowy darkness and the relentless detective, doggedly pursuing the illusive murderer.

So the LAPD could use some help finding out what really happened last month in Leimert Park, yet another mystery in a city full up of the strange and surreal.  A month on, and no reports of a missing person.  From analysis of the doorbell camera and other security videos, they know that the Matrix or Prius had a broken front passenger window covered in opaque plastic.  The victim heard screaming was a black female, and her hair was being pulled from behind while she sat in the passenger seat.  A male black was driving, and the hatch on the vehicle was open.

The Fire and Rain Have Left Town

Only in Los Angeles can one go from summer on Monday to winter on Wednesday.  In November.

The fires have died for the most part, as we all must someday, but we are still displaced from our offices until, tentatively, mid-January due to the Getty Fire.  At least we still have our home.  That is the disaster mentality of L.A.:  “only a few out buildings burned, but people and animals are safe and the house still stands.”  A few news outlets confused “out buildings” with “outhouses,” which, of course, means something completely different to those of us who remember the implication.

We learned several weeks ago that the fire was caused by a tree branch falling on power lines along Sepulveda Boulevard in the pass just north of the Getty Center.  This according to the LAFD Arson-Counterterrorism Section.  Our office and buildings withstood the fire thanks to the hard working fire fighters, but the place needs some clean-up to remove ash, debris and burned foliage.  The air quality also needs to improve because it still smells like an ash tray outside.

And now we have the rain which rolled in with tremendous, thunderous aplomb yesterday.  Rains after fires can create some additional problems with mudslides, but rain also freshens the air, and the cool breezes were a welcomed relief from the stagnant 90 degree temps of Monday.

The traffic to and from work was a slog before the fire.  Now that we are commuting to our temporary work space downtown, each day we realize how lucky we were before the fires.  Vermont Avenue, one of the main north-south thoroughfares around the clogged 101/110/10 freeway interchange, is slow but colorful:  sit in comatose traffic while inching along through Little Bangladesh; Wilshire Center and the Metro Station; Koreatown; Pico-Union; West Adams; University Park.  Vermont offers a measure of real down-to-earth life we do not see in Brentwood on our former commute every morning and evening.  Sprinkled along the Vermont sidewalks are stands with street food and fruit and homeless denizens wandering up and down seemingly stunned and confused or just plain angry.  One person in a stuffed black bra and underwear screamed “Give me my money!” at the passing traffic.  A nearby restaurant shouted in neon “Pick your chicken, we kill it, cook it and serve it hot to your table!” Through it all, USC students bike to class with laptop bags slung over their shoulders.

Los Angeles:  where every commute is an adventure through several countries and social strata.

For now, no fires; no floods; and a city very much alive.

Vermont Avenue in the old days: still too much traffic

Fire and Flood

Photo courtesy of Fox11 Los Angeles

“There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air this afternoon,” Joan Didion writes in her essay, “Los Angeles Notebook” (1965-67), “some unnatural stillness, some tension.  What it means is that tonight a Santa Ana will begin to blow, a hot wind from the northeast whining down through the Cajon and San Gorgonio Passes, blowing up sandstorms out along Route 66, drying the hills and the nerves to the flash point.”

Fifty-four years ago and dead on.  That’s Joan Didion.

It happened again this past week—the Santa Ana winds kicked up and we faced an afternoon commute with multiple fires burning in Los Angeles.  High heat, low humidity, and dried vegetation equaled a recipe for disaster.  The fire took some homes and outbuildings, threatened a lot more, but in the end, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire), Los Angeles County Fire, and Los Angeles City Fire managed to get a handle on the separate blazes.  For a while, though, it was touch and go.  Residents, builders, landscapers, and Sheriff’s deputies jumped in initially with no more than garden hoses to try to keep the flames at bay until the heavy equipment arrived.  Multiple aircraft circled the areas doing water drops and spreading the distinctive red-pink retardant.

This is fire season in Los Angeles.  Although cause has yet to be determined, the blaze in what is known as the Sepulveda Recreation Area, the Sepulveda Dam, or the Sepulveda Flood Control Area—all really the same area—may have started in a homeless encampment.  How did a wilderness area behind a dam come to be in the middle of one of the most populated suburban neighborhoods in Los Angeles?  Why is this land, a little more than twenty miles from downtown and devoted to recreational use, subject to dangerous fires and flooding?

Photo courtesy of the Los Angeles Times

Our story goes back in time to 1938.  L.A. was beset by two massive weather systems at the end of February and first of March.  In just a few days, the region had one year’s worth of rain dumped on it from the two storms.  Over one hundred people died in the flooding.  After the Second World War ended, a massive improvement project kicked in that involved a dam to be built on the flood plain in the middle of the valley in the hope of preventing catastrophic flooding from endangering life and property in the future.  The Los Angeles River was redesigned as a series of concrete channels that would direct storm runoff south into the ocean.  This was known as the Sepulveda Dam and Flood Control Area.  Today, it has become a region used by all kinds of people for sports and recreation, while specific areas became wildlife and bird sanctuaries.

Unfortunately, because of the heavy brush and trees, it also became a popular camping area for the region’s homeless population.  The danger from their campfires as well as from criminal activity, added a negative note to this wilderness oasis.  This past July, a homeless campfire erupted into a brushfire necessitating a rapid response from fire officials and police officers.  This most recent conflagration this past week almost certainly looks like another possible campfire ignition, and that has started a war of words on social media.  Los Angeles is grappling with a homeless epidemic now, and Mayor Eric Garcetti has introduced measures to fund homeless housing and has been outspoken in his desire to solve the problem.  However, several communities have refused to allow low-income residential housing to be built in their area.

Photo courtesy of Gene Blevins / Los Angeles Daily News

The great floods of 1938 were certainly not the only time residents were in jeopardy.  Twenty-five years ago, the area flooded again in what scientists came to call a 100-year flooding event.  However, over the years, systems were put in place to shut down Burbank Boulevard leading into and out of the area so cars would not become trapped.  Homeless people are evacuated, the facilities shut down, and the area fills with water behind the dam and post-storm, drains off into the concrete canals moving down south into the Pacific.  When safe from flooding, people are free to use the area’s numerous biking and pedestrian trails, dog park, cricket fields, Japanese Garden, Lake Balboa and municipal golf course.  The city also has a major sewage treatment plant in the basin.

Whatever is done, it must happen soon.  Climate change plus outrageous housing costs plus illegal camps of people living off the grid in places like the Sepulveda Basin equal disaster.  Fire and police officials must scramble to evacuate these camps when a fire breaks out or a flood threatens, and it is a difficult and delicate process.  Many times, people have their entire world of belongings in a shopping cart and for obvious reasons, they are reluctant to leave their worlds behind to escape the flames or rising water.  It is a credit to city officials that we do not have a higher death toll in these catastrophic fires and floods.  How long will we continue to be so lucky?

Photo courtesy of ABC7 Los Angeles