The Battle of East 71st Street

The Battle of East 71st Street

January 3, 1927
South Los Angeles

The men came marching onto County land, with their boots and their buckets and their shovels and their poles, and the ladies of East 71st Street, just east of Hooper Avenue, came out of their little bungalows, leaving their babies and their breakfast dishes and their washboards and their bougainvilleas, and they met there, in the middle of the road, and looked each other up and down.

"Why have you come to our little street?" asked the ladies.
"To install high tension electrical wires," the men replied.
"Down the middle of our street?"
"Down the middle of your street."
"Like hell you will!" was the ladies’ retort. And when the workmen returned to sink their poles on Monday morning, they found an angry mob of females who congregated around the various spots where holes were to be sunk and planted their bodies in the way of any work. One octogenarian brought a chair out and sat atop the digging spot, while others stood their ground and glared. At lunch time, other women came out and changed places, so no child would go without its meal.

The men retreated, not willing to spill female blood or risk their own safety further. On further investigation, it was revealed the city has not obtained the proper county permit to plant any such power line down 71st Street, so any such erection would be delayed indefinitely. And the next day, a spokesman for the work crew said, "They not only won, they routed us altogether. There’ll be six feet of ice at Sixth and Broadway before some of our men venture on Seventy-first street again. We ceased operations because we are not putting up any poles or lines on any street where the people object to them. Nothing will be done unless we can come to some agreement with the women."

Here’s to the heroines of the Battle of East 71st Street: Mrs. P. R. Bottomly of 1348 East 71st Street, Mrs. H. B. Dawson of #1332, Mrs. M. M. Schnell of #1342 and Mrs. W.J. Kline of #1315 and those who sat for the photograph (L-R): Mrs. Louisa H. Orr (aged 82), Mrs. W. A. Grubbs, Mrs. G. S. McIntyre (provisional general), Mrs. M. Robertson (aide-de-camp), Mrs. R. Jackson (chief of staff) and Mrs. Louise Dixson. For sisterhood is powerful, NIMBYism is nothing new in Los Angeles, and who the hell wants power lines cluttering up their view?

The Battle of East 71st Street

Christmas Cheer in a Razorblade

monroy

December 27, 1927
Los Angeles

Carlos Monroy, 35, was that precarious combination, a glazier and lush, and the missus no longer wished to live with him. So Anita, 29, took Carlos Junior, 10, and moved in with mama, Antonia Barron of 626 East 36th Place, while Carlos stayed with his mother and brother at 2915 New Jersey Street.

It being Christmas, Carlos found himself missing his family, and dropped by the Barron home, with a bottle of whiskey and a long line of apologies. Anita didn’t want to hear it. She intended to be divorced, and further, she and her sister Leonora were going downtown to shop. Would he please leave?

Anita went to the bathroom, and Carlos followed her in, where he drew a razor from his coat pocket and slashed at her throat. Anita ran, bleeding and screaming, through the spare bedroom and into the dining room. Carlos finished her off there, then turned the blade on himself. Their son and the Barron women were witnesses to the carnage, then called for aid, though it was far too late for anything but tears.

Main Street Xmas Eve: A Wake for Craby’s Joe’s

Dear Friends,

As Musso & Frank and their employees are a living testament to Hollywood and its golden age, so Craby Joe’s is to downtown Los Angeles’ tenderloin on Main street.  At the corner of 7th and Main since 1933, it will close it doors for good on Xmas eve.  It has served as a watering hole to John Fante, Charles Bukowski, and many other great souls who drew from this well of characters and atmosphere from the wrong side of the tracks.

The dance to the march of time has changed tempo of late, and commercial property owners humming gentrification and other popular tunes of the day have moved into the neighborhood.  The Cecil Hotel, already on the skids when Raymond Chandler described it in his early short stories, can boast of two known serial killers as residents in the 1980s and 90s, Richard Ramirez one of them, is now a self described boutique hotel–a destination for the discerning European traveler.  This fragile coral reef on Main Street of artists, galleries (the hub of art walk is two blocks away at 5th and Main at Bert Green’s), SROs and their long time residents and encroaching development will suffer a severe blow with the close of Craby Joe’s.

Please join us there around 10 pm this Xmas eve for what Hemingway wrote of the custom in his beloved Spain, "La Penultima–the next to last drink," for the last one is too bitter a thought. . .

I remain,
Richard
Esotouric

Find The Fox!

December 20, 1927
Los Angeles

As police scour the Bellevue Arms apartment*of "Donald Evans" (an alias for Marion Parker’s purported slayer Edward Hickman, otherwise known as The Fox), they find portions of a chocolate cake, broken golf clubs, and dirty dishes suggesting a hurried departure. Marion’s father Perry, upon discovering that the suspect is a former employee at his Seventh and Spring Street bank who he dismissed on fraud charges, says that the voice on the telephone demanding the $1500 ransom was similar to Hickman’s peculiarly blasé speech patterns when discussing his offense, but that at no time did he believe the young man meant harm to him or his family.

Little Marion’s outraged body lies in the morgue, a tiny, heartbreaking bundle with her missing limbs, hollowed core and unseeing eyes sewn open in doll-like pretence of life. In one small mercy, the Parker’s neighbor is the Autopsy Surgeon, and it’s this Dr. Wagner who makes the identification and pieces his little friend together from the parts that are brought in, wrapped in newspaper, from where they were scattered in Elysian Park.  

The reward for The Fox’ capture has swelled to $62,400, with new pledges from outraged citizens, radio stations and fraternal organizations arriving hourly. Will The Fox be snared, or will he slip away to menace other cities, other daughters? Tune in tomorrow to find out!

*attention, modern readers: the Bellevue Arms is the partly boarded up, expansive brick apartment building flush against the 101 freeway heading north out of downtown. The Fox’ lair was upstairs in the middle rear of the Western, burned-out wing. If you decide to visit, you’ll come via Sunset Boulevard, and via… MARION.

The calm before the storm

December 14, 1927
Los Angeles

The holiday is nearly upon us, and all across the city, citizens are Christmas mad. The Pacific Electric Hollywood car stalled, halfway through the First Street tunnel, and when the wire fell down and sent sparks arcing across the darkened windows, scads of package-laden shoppers panicked and stampeded, despite attempts by train staff to calm them. Several passengers suffered bruised knees, ankles and backs.

There’s naught but sadness at 4528 Amber Place, where the John Vernon Rosses mourn the death of their only child, John Vernon, Jr., aged 4. Mother was working days and father nights in downtown shops, to save enough to give the tyke his best Christmas ever, while a neighbor, Mrs. J.W. Loyal of 4600 Topaz Street watched the babe. When mother called for him around 1pm, he was dead in his cot, victim of some mysterious internal hemorrhage. An autopsy was ordered, but if any cause of death was found, it was never reported in the papers.

And down on Wilton Place, the Parker Twins, Marion and Marjorie, whisper together about what to give their father Perry for his birthday tomorrow. They cannot know that tomorrow Marion will be kidnapped from her school by The Fox, and that despite the ransom Perry pays, she will never come home again.

Stars That Shine and Smolder

December 6, 1927
Los Angeles

Calling all cars! Calling all cars! Be on the lookout for two easily-recognized scofflaws, film stars Reginald Denny and Hedda Hopper. She’s wanted for speeding at about 34mph around Melrose and La Brea, he for setting a similar pace in the 20mph zone at Sunset and Vine, and without a valid operator’s license, on November 28.

But that’s not all! Denny is also wanted for questioning in the origins of the massive forest fire which began near his cabin near Running Springs Park in the San Bernardino Mountains two nights ago, and which hundreds of men are fighting, with 50 to 75 summer cabins already destroyed.

What shall we do with these antisocial celebrities? Perhaps we should just drop by their homes and have a talk with them. Miss Hopper is reported as residing at 1416 Fairfax Avenue, Mr. Denny at 2060 North Vine.

Our Seasonal Gift Selections

Gentle reader,

Comes the season when the people who put up with you all year begin to make subtle and not so subtle suggestions that they expect to be compensated for this. Are you going to be one of those bad dads or dull honeys whose gifts end up in the hall closet, only to be regifted in some humiliating Secret Santa scenario? Or are you going to listen to your pals from 1947project, and make the holidays a little more interesting? 

Does your beloved enjoy tales of historic American misery and death? Why then, they’ll be wanting the gorgeous new box set compilation People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs 1913-1938. It’s packed with ships a-sinking, trains derailing, prisons a-burning, mines a-blowing, rain not falling, weavils munching, fiends, quakes and nightmares galore.

Or do their tastes run more towards Continental miseries? If so, Luc Sante’s new translation of Felix Fénéon’s Novels in Three Lines will pique their schadenfreude. Fénéon was a fascinating Parisian character who, as a sideline to his involvement with bomb-throwing anarchists, editing of Rimbaud and Lautréamont and discovery of Georges Seurat, contributed an extraordinary series of brief criminal and oddball news stories to the daily paper Le Matin in 1906. Imagine one of the more complex 1947project tales compressed down to its suggestive essense and you have Fénéon’s evocative and poetic formula. Sante’s elegant translation captures the poignancy, mystery and eternal grace of the otherwise forgotten traumas of one hundred years ago.

Cuddle up together and cock yer ears to the sounds that made great-grandad guffaw: Actionable Offenses: Indecent Phonograph Recordings from the 1890s,  featuring "The Tapeworm Story," "The Virtues of Raw Oysters" and "Learning a City Gal How to Milk." Or read aloud from The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps: The Best Crime Stories from the Pulps During Their Golden Age, The ’20s, ’30s & ’40s, which has short stories by recognized masters Chandler, Hammett, Cain, Gardner and Wollrich, and some newly unearthed rarities.

If it’s images of early Los Angeles that scratch your dear one’s itch, there are some fine new books to suit, among them Marc Wanamaker and Robert Nudelman’s Images of America compilation Early Hollywood and Sam Watters’ two-volume Houses of Los Angeles, for which you can pick your period poison: 1885-1919 or 1920-1935. (And you already gave ’em a copy of California Crazy and Beyond: Roadside Vernacular Architecture, right? Of course you did!) 

Then, too, you might wish to patronise the works of our 1947project contributors, like Nathan’s Los Angeles Neon or Lynn’s College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, and Co-Eds, Then and Now or Kim’s Neutral Milk Hotel’s ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.’ Or get two of us in one go by picking up Taking Things Seriously: 75 Objects with Unexpected Significance, Josh Glenn and Carol Hayes’ anthology of things and their stories from the collections of Kim, Lynn and 73 other deranged hoarders, among them Bill "Zippy" Griffith, James Kocholka, Lisa Carver, Thomas Frank, Tony Millionaire and Luc Sante. None of whom is the owner of the book’s most popular object, Christopher Walken’s bagel.

Or give ’em an Esotouric gift certificate, one, two, three or four seats aboard the most interesting bus tours in the Southland, and a Raymond Chandler Mystery Map by which to plot noirish adventures of their own. Or engage Crimebo to Clown to come over and put on a "private" show! And if you’ve ridden the Esotouric bus this year, don’t forget we’ve got a 2-for-1 seat offer on the James M. Cain tour on 12/15.

But whatever objects or adventures you exchange this season, it’s our sincere wish that the year’s end ushers in a time of peace and contentment for you, yours and all of ours. Thanks for reading, and take good care.

The Weird Tale of the Wig Lady

Nona Lesher, the wig lady

November 30, 1927
Alhambra

Meet Nona Lesher, the cool 20-something check kiter whose arsenal of multi-hued hairpieces helped disguise her during a spree of bad paper pushing, busted in a market at 305 East Valley Boulevard.

But the wigs are only the tip of a hairy iceberg. For among the suspicious items discovered in the room shared by Nona, hubby Harvey (or Harry), half-brother Phil Rohan and pal Mike Garvey at 2048 West Twentieth Street were an unheard of 61 pairs of shoes and twenty hats, plus Harry, Phil and the aforementioned wigs.

Harrt Lesher, wig lady's accomplice

Phil Rohan, wig lady's accomplice

The men soon became suspects in the November 1 drug store beating death of proprietor A.R. Miles (or A.M. Miller) at 2329 West Jefferson after Lesher allegedly confessed to friend H.S. Walton, "I pulled that West Jefferson job—I hit Miles over the head and when he came to and called me ‘Heinie’ I finished him with my feet." However, Walton later said he had been so drunk that night, he might have imagined the whole thing, had only spoken out because he’d been told charges against him would be dropped if he did, and anyway, he believed the trio was innocent.

Still, 10-year-old witness Eddie Yates ID’d Phil Rohan as the youth in a snazzy blue and white sweater who he’d seen dashing from the crime scene. Lesher and Garvey also looked familiar to the boy. Roberta Scriver, sitting in a car outside the drug store, also identified the trio. Simple robbery-murder case with eyewitnesses, eh?

But then a cop’s badge was found in Mike Garvey’s possession, leading to the arrest of 77th Street Division policeman George H. Foster, the Wig Gang’s next door neighbor, on charges that he’d used the badge to shake down bootlegger John Sykes for $57 in exchange for not noticing a quantity of liquor stored in a vacant house; Rohan and Garvey supposedly served as muscle on the robbery, and somehow Garvey ended up with the badge.

By January, the male members of the Wig Gang had been convicted of murder and sent to San Quentin for life, while back in LA, Officer Foster was thrown off the force and tried on a series of bootleg shakedown charges.

But come December 1928, witness Roberta Scriver testified that she’d seen someone else leave the murder scene, one Harry Rosenfeld. The Grand Jury reopened the case, it was noted that the 10-year-old witness was actually watching a movie during the crime, and after begging San Quentin ex-con Rosenfeld to tell all he knew (he snarled he wouldn’t do it, lest he get a knife in the back from breaking the criminal code), the hapless Wig Gang was released after two years and eight months.

Once freed, the trio sought $5000 each in payment from the state for their ordeal, while Lesher and Rohan’s mother Carrie testified she’d spent $6000 on their defense and appeals. During this hearing, which was ultimately unsuccessful, an Alhambra Detective offered the hitherto unknown information that their arrest had resulted from a tip from the Wig Lady herself, Nona Lesher. It was unclear if she had remained true to Harvey during his incarceration, but one assumes the marriage didn’t survive this revelation. At least their mother still loved ’em!

Your Dog’s Breakfast rides the Charles Bukowski bus

Radio Feature by Ryder Palmere – Your Dog’s Breakfast: Episode 105: “This is Charles Bukowski…”

A brief history of the Angelino man known as the Poet Laureate of Skid Row, who pulled poetry out from beneath itself in the 20th century. We’ll take a look at his life as partially told by the Esotouric bus tour, rolling through the neighborhoods in which he lived and created his greatest works, stopping by a bar or two in which he drank. Have a seat and bring a beer.