Andy Chase

Our apartment building and its identical twin next door have been getting repainted for the last month and a half. This is mostly a good thing; the color scheme since we moved in has been a lovely battleship grey with dusty blue-grey trim and doors. The new color scheme is white with dark green trim, and it certainly does lighten things up a bit.

Along with the paint, though, have come a couple of less graceful renovations. The first was the installation of some new light fixtures outside everybody's apartment doors. The old ones had become mismatched over the years, but the original fixtures had these great cone-shaped shades and complemented the building's late-40's architecture perfectly. We were lucky enough to have one of these outside our door.

The new light fixtures are these ugly, oval things that more closely resemble drop-lights than residential fixtures. And because they're using those newfangled compact fluorescent bulbs, it's like having a searchlight outside your door.

I don't know what happened to the fixtures they took down; I'm assuming they were thrown away, but I saw no sign of them in the dumpster the night after they made the switch.

The other clumsy renovation was the replacement of our mailboxes. Now, these definitely needed some kind of improvement; they were so small that anything more than a couple of bills and a few circulars would result in half of your mail getting ripped as you yanked it out of the box. But what the contractors did was terrible; they ripped out the old mailboxes, slapped pieces of plywood over the recess in the wall, and mounted these new aluminum boxes on top of the plywood without bothering to refinish the wall at the gaps around the edges of the plywood. So where there were once nicely recessed mailboxes that matched the style of the building, there are now these big, shiny boxes sticking about 12 inches out of the wall, with ugly gaps on either side where the plywood doesn't quite cover the hole where the old mailboxes used to be.

The most ominous change that I noticed happened to the other building, which got repainted first. High up on that building's facade was a sign labeling the building as "Sherman House" - similar to the sign on our own building reading "Sherman Terrace". Both signs were rendered in a classic postwar pseudo-script of the type which graces older signs and buildings all over L.A. About a week after they finished painting the walls and trim of Sherman House I noticed that the sign was gone. I held onto hopes that they would repaint the sign and put it back up, but as the weeks went by it seemed pretty clear that the sign was gone for good.

As they began to paint our building, I kept a close eye on the "Sherman Terrace" sign. One morning last week I noticed the sign laying in an unceremonious pile in front of the building; it had been taken down to facilitate repainting the front wall. It lay there up until yesterday afternoon, when I saw one of the painters pile it into a shopping cart and wheel it back behind the building. I didn't follow him, and thought perhaps they were going to repaint this one, since it was lower on the facade than the "Sherman House" sign and thus easier to put back up.

Nothing doing. I spotted the sign in the dumpster last night. My immediate inclination when I saw the sign sitting on the ground last week was to grab it then and save it from its brother's fate, but I held off lest they really did put it back up. Now that it was in the dumpster it was fair game, and I resolved to save it as soon as it was light out again. It's currently sitting under a tarp in front of our parking space in the car port, awaiting some minor repairs and a couple of coats of Dutch Boy Molokai Blue paint.

Aside from the obvious cool/kitsch factor of having this sign hanging on a wall somewhere in the apartment, the notion of saving the sign from some anonymous landfill took on the importance of a holy mission as soon as I noticed the other sign missing. I am haunted by my experience with the Sundown Drive-In Theatre, and although I could never have saved a part of the Sundown, I could save the sign from our own apartment building.

I discovered the Sundown quite by accident in September of 1998. I had to run an errand in Whittier, A city I had never been to before and wouldn't have much reason to visit again... I drove east around a curve on Washington Boulevard and came face to face with the giant screen of the Sundown. It was a beautiful old place, built in 1954 and closed as a drive-in in 1990. After two years in Los Angeles, I had driven by my fair share of 50's architecture, but the Sundown was the best-preserved example of high-1950's exuberance I had ever seen. By the time I saw it, it wasn't even being used as a swap meet any more, although I didn't know it at the time. I managed to return to the Sundown once more that month to take some photos with my low-quality, blurry Casio QV-100 digital camera.

At some point during the year that followed, those pictures got lost due to a hard drive failure (or possibly sheer file mismanagement.) I'd had my excellent Olympus digicam for about a month when I decided to take a Sunday afternoon and drive down to Whittier to get some proper photos of the old drive-in. Before I left I did a quick internet search on the Sundown to find an address to feed to Mapquest, and that was how I found out the Sundown had been torn down 8 months earlier. I still get crestfallen just thinking about it. So profound was the impression the Sundown made on me that for a while I named my erstwhile freelance pseudo-business and web site after it. I eventually dropped it, because the best domain I could get was sundown-media.com, which was too close to sundownmedia.com (An adult web site company, as it turns out) for comfort. And the domain I really wanted was sundown.com, which somebody in Ohio has been squatting on for years now.

The loss of the Sundown Drive-in is a little easier to bear after salvaging a piece of Sherman Terrace. Like some twisted variant of Gift of the Magi, it was a merry Christmas morning indeed. I saved a bit of classic Los Angeles and picked up a one of a kind wall decoration at the same time.

Sherman Way at Sepulveda Boulevard, Van Nuys, California

This is the same Muffler Man I shot a little over two years ago. Until I got up close, I didn't realize that not only had his kerchief been repainted, but his beard has been painted over with skin color; only the dastardly pencil moustache remains.

From a distance all you can see is his lantern jaw, but up close the flesh colored ridges of his beard look terrible.

Canoga Park Bowl - 20122 Vanowen St (at Winnetka), Canoga Park, California

Although the rest of the bowling alley, its associated coffee shop, and the nearby hotel look like they’ve been victimized by rampant remodeling over the years, the Canoga Park Bowl sign is still in good shape. I took the liberty of digitally removing the barbed wire and security camera which is attached to the left-hand pole above the "L" in "BOWL".

The time of day and cloudy skies were working against me, but a backlit photo is better than none at all.

How big of an a-hole do you have to be to drive onto a Christmas tree lot with your big SUV and have the attendant tie it to the top when you're ready to go?Ok. When I saw somebody doing this last year I laughed and shrugged it off as a random incident, bound to happen in a place as saturated with SUVs as Los Angeles.

But this year I've seen it happen three more times (most recently this afternoon), and it's not funny any more.

Now, it's a given that about 99% of the people who buy SUVs in Los Angeles aren't going to actually use them for all the stuff they show in the commercials;

"But if I drive on gravel or dirt I might pit the paint!"

"But if I drive through a stream I might get mud un the undercarriage!"

But for the love of God, if you drive a Sport UTILITY Vehicle with ALL THAT CARGO ROOM and you buy a Christmas Tree from the corner lot, DON'T TIE IT TO THE TOP OF YOUR FORD GODDAMN EXPEDITION!!!! THAT'S WHAT THAT BIG EMPTY SPACE IN THE BACK OF YOUR GODDAMN 5 MPG "MINIVANS ARE BELOW ME AND I'VE GOT MORE MONEY FALLING OUT OF MY ASS THAN I KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH" STATUS SYMBOL IS FOR!!!!

How big of an a-hole do you have to be to drive onto a Christmas tree lot with your big Jeep/Ford/Chevy/Honda/Toyota* SUV and have the attendant tie it to the top when you're ready to go?

I mean, if you didn't buy the damn thing so you can at least use the cargo space, what did you buy it for? Where do you draw the line for what you'll deign to allow in the back of your SUV? Lumber? Nooooo, you might get a splinter in the upholstery. Potting soil? Nooooo, the bag might burst and get dirt everywhere! A big screen TV? Nooooo, a staple from the carton might snag the carpet!

What the hell is wrong with people? It's shit like this that gives Los Angeles (and California in general) its flaky reputation.

* Lincoln/Cadillac/Lexus/BMW SUV owners are excluded from the list because the act of buying a "Luxury SUV" is in itself an act of supreme assholery, and I'm sure no self-respecting Luxury SUV owner would ever let anything so crude as a Christmas tree see the inside of their vehicle; it might get pitch on the Corinthian Leather!

Finally, one week before the start of calendar Winter, it's Autumn in Los Angeles. Apart from a couple days last weekend, days have been in the 50s and 60s with nights even cooler.

Today it started raining again, which always puts me in a cozy sort of a mood. I ate lunch late and consequently by myself, so I sat near the cafeteria windows so I could watch the drizzle.

Over a rooftop on the next street I saw a large tree whose leaves had turned a brilliant orange. A few other deciduous trees up and down the street were showing their colors, while others had lost their leaves altogether - giving them the Scooby Doo graveyard look.

Fall foliage is pretty against a deep blue October sky, but I've always liked the striking effect the trees create against a neutral gray sky; the yellows, oranges and reds become quite intense when they don't have to compete with the blue of the sky.

I got a cup of hot cider (well, a cup of hot water and a packet of hot cider mix) and looked at the trees for a while. It felt like Halloween is a week and a half away, not Christmas. Because I could only see the treetops, it was easy to imagine that I was looking out a window somewhere in New Hampshire or Vermont, and behind that one bright orange tree was nothing but more trees in all different colors, Maples and Oaks and Birches for miles and miles.

In reality of course, there's nothing but dirty streets, strip malls (not to mention a few strip clubs), and suburban sprawl beyond that tree. Sprawl that goes nearly uninterrupted all the way up to Valencia.

Why do people live here?

Moorpark Avenue, Sherman Oaks, California.

The dog got me up extra early one morning, and I decided to run back outiside with the camera since I'm hardly ever up at the crack of dawn.

So I've started watching hockey again, and actually rooting for the Los Angeles Kings. This is another disturbing milestone for me, like starting to say "It's cold" instead of "It's cold -- for Los Angeles".

Back when we lived in Massachusetts, there were a couple of years where my Dad got season tickets to the Boston Bruins, for the purpose of entertaining clients. Once in a while, there would be no business contacts for him to take, and us lucky family members would get to head into Boston and take in a game at the Garden (this was pre-Fleet Center.) It was a pretty good deal, and got me into watching hockey on a fairly regular basis, thanks to the Bruins games broadcast on pre-UPN channel 38 and ESPN.

I don't think we went to any games after moving to New Hampshire, although I still watched the Bruins play when I had the chance. When I went to school in Rochester, New York in 1992, that was pretty much it for keeping up with the Bruins; Rochester only has a minor league team called the Americains, and I don't recall games ever being televised. The closest NHL team was the Buffalo Sabres, but I never really got into them because, after all, I'm supposed to be a Bruins fan.

Since arriving in L.A. in 1996, the only time I've really watched hockey has been on the infrequent occaisions when the Kings or the Mighty Ducks play the Bruins, or maybe the Sabres; again, I'm supposed to be a Bruins fan, right?

I should note here that I'm mostly baffled by the whole sports fanatic thing. I got caught up in the big Patriots Vs. Bears thing for the 1986 Superbowl. ("Berry the Bears", remember that one?) That fall was the only time I've ever watched a whole World Series, because the Red Sox were playing the Mets. As a kid I always admired Larry Bird in the various TV spots he did for the Boston stations, but for whatever reason I've never gotten into basketball at all. I do wish I had invented those dopey Lakers car flags that seem to be mandatory for every citizen of Los Angeles County if the Lakers make it to the NBA championship. I'd be able to afford to move back to Celtics/Red Sox/Bruins/Patriots country. :)

1986 was fifth and sixth grade for me. In a town where most of the other boys start out with tee-ball in first grade and play in Little League until they reach the upper age limit, the only sport I had ever played outside of school was soccer... and I didn't particularly enjoy that. Those Patriots and Red Sox championship games were fun to get caught up in, but usually baseball and football have been the sort of things I watch if I happen to be in the mood when a game happens to be on. But for the most part, I just don't understand how guys (and some girls) get so into sports that they can rattle off not only names and stats for every player on this year's team(s), but also those of teams from 20 or 30 years ago. Or let their favorite team's defeat ruin their entire next day or week. Or let their favorite team's victory cause them to riot and loot their own damn city.

I run screaming when people start talking sports, because the most I can hope to contribute is "Yeah, I saw most of the game." It's alienating and a little bit creepy to me how passionate people can be when they get to trash talking other teams and reminiscing about their own teams' glory days. I sometimes have the impulse to yell "IT'S JUST A DAMN GAME!" at them, (I also wanted to yell this at the bellowing parents on the soccer sidelines of my youth.) I just can't get interested in learning everything about players on teams other than the ones I root for, or keeping tabs on who are the hot prospects coming up from the minors or college teams, or who's getting traded for who, blah blah blah. I watch, I hope my team wins, I get on with my life whether they do or they don't.

Nevertheless, I've noticed myself watching the Dodgers more and more often over the last few years. Like a lot of people, I got all misty about baseball as an old-timey, all-American institution back in 1998 when Mark McGuire broke Roger Maris' home run world record. Combine that with my increasing need to find something that can connect me to this place, and you've got me watching the Dodgers on KTLA fairly often during the season. I still haven't been to Dodger Stadium, though - that's one of those things I've been meaning to get around to for a few years now.

Hockey has taken longer, because I really do feel this silly loyalty to the Bruins. But over the last month or so I think I've watched at least one Kings game per week, and I'm getting that gratifying feeling of having memorized a lot of their names and getting familiar with their styles and strengths. After taking the subway for the first time last month and finding it to be a great way to get downtown, I'm keen on getting down to Staples Center for a Kings game this season.

Dear God, I'm adapting to this place. If Ray Bourque ever reads this, I hope he can find it in his heart to forgive me. I promise I'll come back to the Bruins camp just as soon as I find myself living within broadcast range of Boston or a reasonable trip to the Fleet Center... but in the meantime I've decided to get the hell on with living in L.A. without devoting every ounce of my energy to hating the place for not being everything that a city like Boston is.

Darby's Coffee Shop in Canoga Park.20901 Sherman Way (at De Soto) Canoga Park, CA 91303

I had an appointment in an unfamiliar part of the Valley today (Canoga Park) and since I had some time to kill beforehand I thought I would grab lunch, preferably in a non-McFastFood type restaurant.

A Coffee Shop was what I had in mind, actually, but I didn't know of any notable ones in that part of the valley, and a Google search for "Canoga Park coffee shop" was fruitless. All it told me was that once upon a time there had been a Big Boy which has since closed.
I drove along Sherman Way, looking for my cross street and keeping an eye out for a promising place to eat. It wasn't until I doubled back to De Soto avenue by way of Valerio that I saw the bright blue sign proclaiming Darby's Coffee Shop at the corner of De Soto and Sherman Way. I made a quick right into the parking lot, and looked the place over - I do love supporting old coffee shops, but not if they're dirty and/or creepy. The health inspector had given the place an "A", which was encouraging, and the sign looked original and well-maintained, which is always promising.

I went in and sat at the counter, which was immaculate. Looking around at decor I would hazard a guess that the last major remodeling was done in the late 60's/early 70's, but the vinyl upholstery has either been kept very clean or, if replaced, carefully colormatched to the shiny avocado/moss green (stools) and brown (booths) of the last remodel.

A very cozy little place, which seems to have been there for quite some time - one of the signs out front said something about a 50th anniversary special, which would date Darby's to 1951.

It was about 1:00 when I sat down to order lunch, and there was only one other customer there. I had glanced at the hours on my way in and noticed that they only open for breakfast and lunch. I had apparently missed the lunch rush, and that was fine by me; An attentive waitress took my order, and about 5 minutes later I had my tuna melt and fries.

The rye bread was grilled to perfection and the fries had the perfect crispy/mealy ratio. The tuna salad was very tasty, if not quite warmed all the way through. Next time I'll ask to have the tuna somehow warmed up, either by grill or by microwave, but at the time I was too hungry to complain. Overall, the sandwich was good.

Total cost for a tuna melt, fries, and a coke: about $6.50. Not too bad, and better quality, bigger portions, and better service than you're likely to find at a Denny's type restaurant. I didn't find the tuna salad all that off-putting, because I got the impression that they would have been happy to heat it up for me if I'd only asked. Next time I'm out that way I'll have to stop in and try their coffee. I'll bet they do good breakfasts, too.

Taken during an afternoon coffee break at work. You can see the new tower construction in the background. The lousy quality of the image is due to its original resolution being 320x240. I've tried to compensate in Photoshop, but it will probably still be quite grainy after getting resized to 504 pixels wide.

11/25/2001 - 4211 W Riverside Dr, Burbank, California.
Looking up at the Toluca Lake landmark sign.