Reading L.A.: Five Views

FIVE BOOKS that firmly affix themselves to my brain as "Los Angeles."

Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West
When I first read this in college I filed it away as a cynical view of early Hollywood, a jaundiced, unhappy take on Singin' in the Rain-era Tinseltown. But the more I read about Los Angeles during the 20s and 30s the more this book becomes thinly veiled history. Not the prettiest picture of LA, but a cautionary tale that regularly gets revised and renewed with each crime of excess that lands in the national spotlight. Unfair and true to LA all at once.

The Grifters by Jim Thompson
I don't think any list of LA books can avoid some noir fiction, but where my initial thoughts were to go to Raymond Chandler -- a master writer, genre or no -- I couldn't shake off Jim Thompson. Though not as firmly anchored in the LA landscape, his characters all read like typical Angelenos; transplants from somewhere else with big dreams and bigger problems. It was pulp fiction, dime novel stuff characters in Raymond Chandler novels would buy at train stations to read and throw away when they were done, but it's pulp with Greek tragedy at its core.

Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument... by Charles Bukowski
Though Buke wrote plenty of semi-autobiographical fiction set in LA -- Ham on Rye, Post Office -- this collection of late 70s poems was the first I read, the first book of poetry I bought when I was in high school. The poems read like character vignettes, glimpses of scenes caught in passing while driving through the less glamorous neighborhoods with the windows up. For every successful person living their dreams in LA there are a dozen whose numbers never came up. Bukowski is witness and champion to the forgotten.

Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block
Native Angeleno Block gives us a portrait of her Shangri-LA as seen through the eyes of teen outsider Weetzie. This ground-breaking Young Adult novel, which I discovered after having spent some time away from LA, joyously goes about sprinkling glitter over Hollywood and environs in a way that made me realize how little I knew my home town. I read this once a decade, and I'm overdue for my fix of slinkster-coolness.


Chinatown a screenplay by Robert Towne
This may seem like a cheat, but in many ways this is the quintessential LA book. Those who study the craft of writing for films consider this to be the perfect screenplay in terms of pacing and storytelling, and Towne presents tell the social history of irrigating LA with water taken from the Owens Valley through the conventions of a film noir detective story. Ignoring everything else, Towne shines a light of dozens of LA-area locales -- Mulholland Drive, Silver Lake, Catalina, La Brea Tar Pits, San Pedro, Santa Monica -- recognizing that LA is an interconnected city of neighborhoods, pearls strung by rivers of concrete.


-- David Elzey

Getting Lost: "Old School" L.A.

TODAY I got lost, again and again and again. I really don't know how the roads in LA connect the city - so far, I've only learned about half of the freeways. I was trying to avoid the places I know and have been to before - Westwood, Culver City, Venice, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Downtown, West Hollywood and onwards - to find some place new.

I took roads I've taken before, but I took them in a new direction. I was surprised when I found myself in Koreatown when I didn't think I was headed in that direction. Living on the Westside, it's all too easy to forget that some parts of the city can take you far away from Los Angeles, where every storefront has Korean lettering and Asian imports. It's fascinating, how so few miles separate us but yet it feels like a world away.

I admired this wonder-world from inside my car, but kept on driving. It was not until I turned down an unknown street and wound up in Chinatown that I parked and hopped out to take a look around. I'd found myself on Yale Street at Castelar Elementary School. 

I hadn't heard of it before, and it was seemingly insignificant - just another school. But through my walking I saw a "historic sign" that gives background information about the place you're at - and soon realized that Castelar was one of the first schools created in the LA school district. Suddenly, with contextual knowledge, the place I had found became more than what I had first thought.

 

Through my trip I was reminded of the beauty of culture; how although these streets and signs look dim in overcast, cloudy light, in my mind, today they seemed more vibrant than ever. It's always fascinating for me to see the ways humans have shaped their surroundings, and how their surroundings have shaped them. In this location, it was easy for me to find art or beauty at every turn, although the setting seemed particularly ordinary to those who inhabited it.

 

This unfamiliar place was unknown to me in more than one way; while I had never visited Castelar school before, I am also not of Asian descent, which set me as an outsider here. It was a pleasure to explore a culture other than my own within the city of Los Angeles, the name that unites and embodies all of us. 

Did you know LA had trolleys?? I didn't!

 One of the school's murals, viewable from the road, is called "The Party at Lan-Ting." It is LA's first mural dedicated to Asian history. It is large at 17x40 feet tall, and depicts a party scene hosted by Wan Xi-Zhi, a calligrapher from China 1,700 years ago. You can read more about it here. The mural is two-dimensional and colorful, and even decorated with costume jewels and sequins in certain parts.

 

The two pillars at the left of the mural with written explanations

I didn't know until moments later, when I got back in my car and drove a few blocks down, that I was actually very close to an area I was somewhat familiar with - Chinatown. I stopped by Homegirl Cafe for a salad and a funky green smoothie drink, and then soon headed back on my way to Loyola Marymount.  

Photo Credit: Jennifer Pellerito

Motel/Moytel

A "Moytel?"
Well, can someone explain?
Chinatown, 2012

L.G.
photo: L.G.