Author: Nathan Marsak

Damn trees, stealing our oxegyn (or whatever it is they do) and leaping out in front of motorists.

You’d think a Navy man would know better than to come onto dry land. Frigates are rarely menaced by child-killing eucalypti.

There’s still the detectable odor of petrochemical wafting around what’s now the Iglesia del Buen Samaritano, Inc. But that’s probably product of the various attached gashuffing teens (who beat a quick exit out of frame at the production of camera).

Nothing like keeping a grisly date. Perhaps li’l Len could have visited the crushed remains of this young lad, dented something fierce by his sporty convertible.

Your tax dollars at work. Call it subsidized housing, or call it the projects, Mrs. Waterman’s nudie-cutie apartment building has been razed to build “Beverly Manor,” a 59-unit Section 8 & 236 complex. This uninspired pile appears to be one of those thrown up in the 80s by HCD, LAHD and CACTC (and, if you live there, your rent is paid by HUD, CALHFA & HACLA. It’s fun!) Marvel at the “Southwest” pastel colors and fake red-tile roof. Of course, this could be a prewar structure, bastardized to such an extent that nothing but its massing gives us a clue to its vintage.

Perhaps Marie the Hotcha Lady lived in something more like this, just up the street at 400 Normandie. A restrained Spanish Eclectic, with, miraculously, the entirety of its original double-hung and pre-1923 inward-opening casement windows. Spanish tile, as opposed to Mission, and nice balconets. The roofline shows Mission conceit, and the corner quoins and quoined arch are a welcome touch. Ah, the scent of the Panama-California Expo is in the air.

The hustle and bustle of the produce district is still felt in the 1918 Terminal Market at Central and 7th, and the 1909 City Market at 9th and San Pedro, though the building that housed 1313 Olympic has been replaced by this modern distribution center. And the Hebraic gents who ran wholesale produce in Los Angeles have also been largely replaced.

Perhaps the trouser-snatchers thought they were in the garment district, which is in fact located five blocks west.

Nice of Bennett to provide a piece of paraphilia to today’s proceedings-What is it Auden said of the voyeur? Peeping Toms are never praised, like novelists or bird watchers, for their keenness of observation?

Was Jim just a hapless, callow youth, or drooling maniac? Perhaps he was, as was the original Tom, looking for Lady Godiva. He was simply looking for her in the Cuddy’s window. Since gone. I’d put this complex in the mid-50s.

And Bennett’s house, which contained the one neighborhood window into which he did not peer, has been replaced as such: