Month: October 2015

Ongoing Demise of the Los Angeles Times

As a 30-year veteran of Los Angeles living, I came to be a regular and loyal reader of the Times (and did some consulting work for a few weeks at its Times-Mirror parent).  Today, brother Dennis (not only a Los Angeles resident, but a newspaper reporter in his immediate post-college days) sends me an email with the subject line that I have quoted in this post’s title), along with this content:

“​Oct. 5 issue, presented without comment.”
L.A. Times

rDay One-Hundred-Ninety-Five

Today, driving around town on errands and shopping …

* Why an interest in Airstream?  Probably because this was similar to one I had in mind in the mid-70s — the idea was to equip it as a mobile photographic lab and operations base, towed by my killer ’65 Ford truck (which co-existed with the Land Rover for a time and also figured in the Venice years).  Here’s a 1977 portrait of The Truck, a sleeper hot rod.
1977 Misc-0009-Edit-Edit

Venice – Dogtown Postscript

I’ve been (surprisingly) getting a fair amount of feedback on my old Venice image resurrections.  Some is from old friend and ex-UCLA-colleague, John, who tells me that he was coming of age then in the Dogtown (aka Venice) skateboarding culture era.   Along with many fascinating details of the sport, the music of the time, Venice itself and his own youth as a skateboarder, he reminds me of the 2001 documentary, narrated by Sean Penn, of the skateboarding scene in Venice in the 1970s.  Here’s the trailer (and I will try to see if it can be viewed online in its entirety somewhere — perhaps YouTube):

Venice Beach, Part III

Another random discovery …

And here we meet Victor, from early 1975.  He and his dog lived in an old circa 1952 Pontiac and a decrepit immobile old delivery van on the vacant lot next to the beachfront apartment where I stayed at the time.  Some say that he had a PhD and once had a career as an engineer.  Sometimes Victor was quite lucid, sometimes not at all.  He saw himself as king of the lot and sometimes tried to extract fees from people who parked there. He seemed to survive on that as well as odd jobs (I paid him once to help me out with a fix to something on the Landrover, which is pictured here with Victor and a neighbor.)  We were all quite astonished one day when, according to some neighborhood eyewitnesses, a well-dressed woman appeared in a Mercedes, claiming to be his wife, and took him away with her.   As I recall, he reappeared not long after.

Venice Beach, Forty Years Ago

I didn’t know her at the time, but my later-to-be friend, Ann Nietzke, was living almost next door to me when she wrote her “Windowlight” book about her life in the neighborhood.   The flavor of the place, and her observations and musings, came back to me as I stumbled upon a few more photographs from that time …

Incidentally, if you want to get a taste of the transformation of Venice Beach in recent years, visit the website of the contemporary Cadillac Hotel.

rDay One-Hundred-Ninety-One

By mid-afternoon, bookkeeping tasks can be put aside.  Kevin comes by in his 951, so we go riding and driving in each other’s cars and drop in to see Eric (where the most interesting car in his shop seems to be an old — ’61 I am guessing — Cadillac convertible).  In the meantime, Kim, taking advantage of the empty garage, gets the skylight repair guy over for a look (skylight access is via the garage).   And Charlie meets and greets the skylight repair guy.

rDay One-Hundred-Ninety

After spending most of the day working on financial and administrative matters, I was ready after a late lunch and nap to go walking.  Joined by Kim, after taking care of banking, we strolled about downtown, and ended up at the library (filling Kim’s backpack with new borrowings).  On the way, we looked at the changing colors of autumn, bumped into my old friend/colleague, Tracy, on the street, checked out the status of the new county building construction, filled a request by a young boy to have his picture taken, and saw a little of this and that.