Showing posts with label hollywood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hollywood. Show all posts

Monday, September 14, 2015

Kitty Litter from Target: Pasadena: Trash Food: Time Travel






I work exactly across the street from the school I attended in Kindergarten and First Grade.  Another biographical fact is that I used to live with my mom in Pasadena on the weekends, and with my dad and Stepmom on the Westside the rest of the week.  Mom was poor so I lived poor on the weekends too, giving “You wanna start something?!” scowls at people in line at the grocery store who sighed exaggeratedly as she fished out wads of food stamps from her pockets.  The rest of the week, when I was middle class, and happened to be in a grocery store, I always made sure not to scowl at people in front of me in line  when the fished out wads of food stamps from their pockets; I always tried to make it seem that I wasn't noticing anything. Some people think it’s nice to go out of their was to smile and fuss over someone who is feeling embarrassed, but I usually find it's kinder just to act like whatever disaster they’re undergoing is the most natural thing in the world.  I think that people who go out of their way to smile and fuss over someone who is feeling embarrassed, they just want a big pat on the back for how caring they are.  In some Raymond Chandler novel, it’s explained that Hollywood used to be just some pioneer town with dirt roads, and rich people lived in Pasadena.  Now it's  an eyesore of tacky live-work buildings and shops like Abercrombie and Fitch.  Still, I see some things I remember from before, from when I was a kid.



I cannot fully accept the idea that time travel isn’t possible.  There’s a movie theatre in Pasadena that I go to with my husband and son sometimes.  It’s been there forever.  When I was a kid, mom and I lived so close, we walked there all the time, like, every weekend.  I can’t help but believe that if I just started heading in the right direction, her apartment would still be there, with me sitting on the front steps. 



Another reason I find it hard to accept the impossibility of time travel is because of how quickly people age when we become grown ups.  Children seem to take all year to grow a year older.  Adults blink away whole years.  I am 36, and I remember so many details from childhood.  I remember my 3rd grade teacher Ms. Wilson correcting a poem I’d written for being grammatically incorrect.  It started dramatically with the statement “Flowers.”  I remember showering in the public shower with my grandma after taking a swim in the faculty swimming pool at Michigan State University; everyone else kept their bathing suits on out of modesty, but there was another woman showering with us who was completely naked and  old.   She sweetly smiled at us when we made eye contact and it made me feel sorry for her for some reason.  I also felt sorry for her because she used a bar of soap to wash her hair, and I’d been taught not to use soap on hair because it dries it out.  I think I’ve used this woman as a character in maybe a million short stories and little autobiographical non-sequitur ramblings like this.  It’s just that she seemed so perfectly content to use whatever was available, the little sliver of soap from the soap dish.  It’s hard to believe that she’s not still there in Michigan, sudsing her gray pubic hair, so unselfconscious and tangibly content.  Grandma and I were able to use the faculty pool because grandpa was a professor there, and now he is dead.  Other people are dead too.  My friend Bill is dead.  Almost every night I dream about him.  He is pretty much his usual self in the dreams, except a little testy, which he almost never was in life.  We do our activities with mom, who was his best friend and the love of his life.  Sometimes the activities are absolutely awful, like picking food off the floor in a hoarder’s apartment to eat for dinner, or visiting Bill’s old bookstore just to look at how it’s so wrecked, no roof and rubble everywhere with most of the books charred.  One particularly sad activity that Bill, mom and I repeatedly act out in my dreams is that of wrapping up the utterly worst pieces of trash in the world to give to each other on a Christmas day with no fanfare.  Pigeon brains, empty bags of Ruffles chips, dirty underwear.  Other times, we are all just doing fairly commonplace errands together like picking up a repaired pair of his shoes or buying several bags of kitty litter from Target.  One thing is always the same in these dreams, though.  I always have to break it to Bill that we’re in a dream, and that he’s not really alive anymore.  Sometimes I warn him that he will be dead when I wake up.  He always believes me when I tell him that, and he just tries to take his lumps.



Is there any way to bring him back?  Is there any way to stand up, smooth my skirt over my big fat curves, here at work, walk to the elevator with a head full of mischief and hope, cross the street to my old Kindergarten, and just stay there forever?  Just stay there and wait for it all to come to me, all the things in this world that I like?  My son could come to me in the classroom where I am sitting in my old seat.  “You’re going to really like your new teacher, Ms. Hays,” I’ll promise him, even though she’s long gone, dead as a doornail. 

 
russian time machine

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Commute Curiousity

It used to drive me crazy that there was no way to live simultaneous experiences at once; this is what would give me a sense of longing when I used to be on buses or driving through neighborhoods in states I'd never been in before, and I would be lucky enough to look into someone's living room for a second if they had their curtains open, their lives on momentary display for me like the set of a play about the secret richness of the lives of common men.

I'm a boring old bag now so I don't have those thoughts as often, but yesterday when I was stuck on Santa Monica Boulevard forever, I did get to wondering again about what the interiors of some of these wrecked-looking buildings looked like.  Like, what is the story with some of these places that I love to look at but will never have first-hand experiences with.  It occurred to me that with careful research I could at least figure out a little bit about these ghost-frequented Los Angeles mysteries.

Gold Diggers




It's true that I've always been curious about what it's like inside Gold Diggers, but I didn't bother doing too much research on it, because, ironic as Angelenos like to consider themselves (I'd call it boredom), every place that was an authentic depressing hang out that resembled scenes from Barfly is now blithely called a "Dive Bar," and while it's true that old men who live within walking distance who "aren't in on the joke", as the saying goes, often frequent these bars, or strip clubs, in an authentic way, there comes some witching hour, like 10 pm or so, when these landmarks of a lonely alcoholics' safe place turns into a hipster place.  Nonetheless, when i'm stuck in Santa Monica Blvd traffic, i still do wonder what it's like inside.

The Old Sears Building
after and before





This Sears building has been closed since the Rodney King riots.  Unfortunately I couldn't find any photos of the interior, either in its heyday or in its ruin.  There has been a plan for some time to turn it into a mixed use building, the whole lofts on the upper floors/storefronts on the first floor thing.  I read the L.A. city Planning commission report on it, but surprisingly, it was a snoozefest.  I thought there aesthetic stipulations were interesting though, especially the amount of detail:

Environmental Impact Report Conditions (MM)
5. Aesthetics
a. All open areas not used for buildings, driveways, parking areas, recreational facilities or walks shall be attractively landscaped and maintained in accordance with a landscape plan, including an automatic irrigation plan, prepared by a licensed
landscape architect to the satisfaction of the decision maker.


b. Prior to the issuance of a grading permit or building permit, a plot plan prepared by a
reputable tree expert, indicating the location, size, type, and condition of all existing trees on the site shall be submitted to the City of Los Angeles Department of
Planning and the Street Tree Division of the Bureau of Street Services. The plan
shall contain measures recommended by the tree expert for the preservation of as
many trees as possible. (MM)
c. Any trees removed during project implementation shall be replaced by a minimum of 24-inch box trees in the parkway and on the site, on a 1: 1 basis, to the satisfaction of the Street Tree Division of the Bureau of Street Services and the decision maker.
(MM)
d. Removal of trees in the public right-of-way shall first require approval from the Board of Public Works. All trees in the public right-of-way shall be provided per the current Street Tree Division standards. (MM)
e. The genus or genera of the tree(s) shall provide a minimum crown of 30 - 50 feet.
(MM)

f. Every building, structure, or portion thereof, shall be maintained in a safe and
sanitary condition and good repair, and free from graffiti, debris, rubbish, garbage,
trash, overgrown vegetation or other similar material, pursuant to Municipal Code
Section 91.8104. (MM)
g. The exterior of all buildings and fences shall be free from graffiti when such graffiti is visible from a public street, public walk way or alley, pursuant to Municipal Code
Section 91.8104.15. (MM)


h. The subject property including associated parking facilities, sidewalks, and
landscaped planters adjacent to the exterior walls along the all property lines shall be
maintained in an attractive condition and shall be kept free of trash and debris.
Trash receptacles shall be located throughout the site.


i. Wall (Trash and Storage). Solid masonry block walls, a minimum of 6-feet in height,
shall enclose trash and other storage areas. There shall be no openings except for
gates. The areas shall be buffered so as not to result in noise, odor or debris
impacts on any adjacent uses. The area shall not be adjacent to any single-family
use. Recycling bins shall be provided at appropriate locations to promote recycling of
paper, metal, glass, and other recyclable materiaL. Trash pick up shall take place
only between 7:00 AM and 8:00 PM Monday through Friday, and 10:00 AM to 4:00
PM on Saturday. There shall be no pick up on Sunday or legal holidays.


They don't expect their mixed use building to be instantly covered in graffiti, apparently, and for the residents' trash bins to be odorless.  Shalimar-soaked masonry walls?


The Harvey Apartments

This building has particularly intrigued me for years.  it looks like such a flophouse a la Bukowski or Fante novel.  

none of these are my own photos, by the way.  They are from Google Street View, except for the one of the interior of Gold Diggers, which was from their Facebook page.

It's sort of funny that this is the building most mysterious to me, because there is actually a fair amount of demystifiying press on it.  

This story appeared on the CNN Justice site:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/12/02/publicist.killed.apartments/

In brief, back in 2010, a popular celebrity publicist, Ronni Chasen, died in what was an apparent suicide, but the details surrounding the suicide were suspicious, and there was a person of interest involved in the death, who was holed up in the Harvey Apartments, where he ended up shooting himself dead in the lobby.  True to my Harvey Apartments fantasies, it's described in this article as  the type of place where "[t]here's a lot of screaming goes on and hollering and the kind of ruckus you wouldn't find in the traditional apartment complex."