Category: nathan marsak

Li’l Ronnie wielding a Japanese saber? Did his daddy pick up an NCO Shin-Gunto? Or an ever-venerated Nihonto, forged in feudal days by the solitary swordsmith? Whichever, it cut daddy real good. Thousands of swords n’ sabers were “liberated” from Japan during the occupation, but probably few saw action on American soil.

Fewer still went into action in Baldwin Park, which is best known as being, in 1948, the birthplace of In-N-Out, noble innovator of the burger-specific two-way speakerbox.

You can see how Fronimos would mistake the Parkway for a landing strip, sure. That he would end up crashing it into the light standard is pretty unacceptable. But then, liqour’ll play funny with your trajectory.

He landed here, in front of the Bryan Cleaners (Eliot Construction, 1938) – had he not hit that pole, we might have lost a nice streamline building.

Contreras was doubtless, in his attempt to balance Joyce’s humility with her hubris, more deSade than Dominican. Nevertheless, she’s in good company: St. William, St. Rudolph and the aforementioned St. Dominic all had their boys take the lash to ‘em. St. Theresa had it that the birch and the scourge took one to a state of ecstatic mysticism. Did Joyce inch toward St. Anthony-style rapture or, from a more modern standpoint, move closer to integrating her shadow, as Jung might posit?

Or was she just near-mortally embarrassed at having been whipped by a freak-boy on the corner of Second and Downey?

(You’ll have to picture the scene as looking more like this –

as this was once the site of the Ancient Order of United Workmen [who later became Mutual Life Insurance Co.] lodge from 1889 until its demolition 1966.)

Contreras probably had too much passion play infused into his psyche as a lad. Hard to say which home housed his room-the street numbers on this short, quiet street have mysteriously shot to five digits. Was it in one of these that he mixed himself into a potent cocktail of unbearable devotion and manic lust, with a floater of sadistic madness?

Walker and Rikalo understood the evils of marihuana – when you blow tea, you’re spitting in the face of the corporate oligarchy. Whacky weed had been illegal a scant decade when Carole and Carolyn copped, in flagrant violation of the Fat Cat Protection Act.

The Indian hay’d been nixed by a man named Anslingler, big enchilada at the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Anslinger harbored a pathological hatred of jazz music. You do the math.

How did he get the job? His wife’s uncle gave it to him. That guy’s name was Andy Mellon. He had a pal named Hearst. Hearst had cotton textile mills, and endless acres of harvestable trees. Had another pal named DuPont. DuPont had just patented a paper-making process utilizing wood pulp. Also had losta oil, from which one makes plastics and cellophane and whatnot. They banned hemp in ’37, came out with nylon in ’38.

Hearst sold a lot of papers screaming about reefer madness. And C&C went to the pokey. Not that these girls cared whit one about Betsy Ross’ flag being made from hemp. They wanted to take a trip with Mary Warner, and apparently knew her travel agent.

Their potpad (how did the boys in blue gumboots get in there, anyway?) has fallen to this apartment complex. In all likelihood the smoke in this Hollywood hemp hotel is as thick as our smaze-laden air on a summer’s day.

Iturbi’s home on Bedford-fitting he should go for the Spanish style.

The house on Hillcrest:

Incidentally, 1946 accounts have Maria tended to here:

Which has been replaced as such:

This is not Pierce Brothers Beverly Hills Mortuary.

Look familiar? Bears some similitude to that building we blogged on April 12? Palmer apparently elected to hire not an architect but a designer, and hire said designer only once. What other rationale explains the eerie similarity-that whisper of “Tuscan Fortress”-shared by the Visconti, Piero, Orsini, and Medici? This one, for those who can’t tell them apart, is the Medici: famous for its thin walls, dismissive management, drunken students and absence of guest parking. (While Palmer didn’t include any low-income units, to his credit, he also didn’t take a nickel in public money.) But enough of the Palmerwatch. There are still some tiny pockets of old LA in the area around 7th & Bix; good times to be had by the urban archaeologist.

That’s a lot of flora hiding 220. What-or who-is concealed within?

God help us should Huelsman have bred. If he did have a children, then a pox upon their houses. Hopefully Judge Wolford imposed some arcane eugenics law, justly used to weed defectives like Manir from what’s left of our civilization.

Huelsman’s house, and Mrs. Eastin’s just around the corner on Encinita:

The tar pit was likely adjacent Rio Hondo Wash, now site of the Arcadia Par-3 Golf Course. Or it could have been about here, at Tyler and West Hondo Parkway:

Doubly disturbing is the distance between the two points – three and a half miles of lo-speed driving. Huelsman motoring along, the dog on the seat next to him-did he talk to it? Did it whimper? Did it lick him? Hell, he may have even walked it there.

Obviously documenting this post was a difficult task. Luckily, driving down Encinita I could take some small solace in Quonset huts and a ’49 Ford.

Good for Gloria. She hasn’t gone the way of those slacks-wearing ladies. Why, women who garb themselves in pants likely smoke and perforce drink and, for the love of all that’s holy, back Henry Wallace. Of course, there are concessions to be made. Mashers are always wandering the city looking for ladies trapped in cafeterias, whose underthings could well be visible during ladder descent…but the alternative…trousers? (The winter of our time indeed, Mr. Yockey!) Thank heaven for the wide-quadricep fireman, who presses ever so close to Gloria on her rescue:

But what of the cafeteria itself? Note the buildings bottom center here:

Which have been replaced thus:

With this:

The covered skybridge has a semi-fantastic air to it, though that is unlikely what A. C. Martin & Assoc. intended in ‘66.

We tend to think of bowling alleys as full of googiefied grandeur, replete with folded-plate roofs and flagcrete walls, tapering pylons and swiss-cheesed I-beams, the assorted amoeboid whatnot and odd illuminated starburst, surmounted, or course, with a giant neon bowling pin. (America’s arguably most famous of such bowling alleys, the giant neon bowling pin-surmounted Hollywood Star Lanes, star of The Big Lebowski, was recently demo’d by the LAUSD to build Planet-Killer Elementary #6.)

But there was a time when bowling alleys were of Italianate design, or Moderne, or, in the case of the Sunset Center, grand Neoclassical affairs with giant fluted columns.

The eagle-eye’d may ascertain where the coffee shop neon was once affixed to what is now the HQ of Tribune Entertainment:

There are fewer bowling alleys in LA than bald eagles, and’re twice as endangered. An endangered, passing world. A world you’ll never know. A world where the damn rep from Red Crown Ten Pins is late; he’ll wanna try and talk you into replacing your Ebonites with his Mineralite balls again, and the American guy hasn’t fixed the Backus pin spotter so you’re gonna call Brunswick for a quote on a 20th spotter and a Telescore projector while you’re at it, and hey, maybe that cat from Acme Billiard who plays league games Tuesday can give you the skinny on refinishing your maple.