Ch-Ch-Change

Change is the only constant in urban quarters, the most prevailing characteristic.  A challenge then, is to view place not as still, but moving.

University Park, for example, amidst efforts to reframe the Figueroa corridor and USC's

 manifest destiny, might resemble a time lapse effect.  Flashy eateries and popular chains are sprouting along Figueroa, as is a mid rise cluster of student living complexes.  Once the district was a moribund slum.  Earlier still, it was home to the city's elite. 

Fifteen years ago Palmdale was an up-and-coming bedroom community with new municipal works, and a celebrated growth pattern.  Today, the city's image has been radically reset by meteoric foreclosure rates, and mounting social problems amongst its latch-key youth.

Like the expanding universe theories, different neighborhoods

move at different rates of speed.

A few nights ago, I attended a United Neighborhood Neighborhood Council Zoning & Planning

meeting, wherein two of the agenda items concerned Jefferson Park.  The meeting was held, without significant fanfare, on a weeknight, during the final game of the World Series.  Still, over a dozen residents attended, to further the drive toward a historic designation, one of the invisible rudders that helps steer transitional neighborhoods to productive waters, by more effectively managing change.

Candid Camera

Some object to security bars, which in neighborhoods that lack the moderating capabilities of landscape, can seem repressively encircling.  In many higher income communities, features of potential alienation are shrunken, if not more unsettling.

Home Security Cameras are an example of such, fixed to eaves, above entrances, atop high walls. Residences, even neighborhoods, blazon their deployment.  

As the systems drop in price (a package with four dome-shaped infrared cameras and a four channel DVR with 250 gb, costs around $1,000.00), their employment mounts.

The proliferation is also connected to the rise of the home office.  Increasingly, sound and image related professionals, in flagging entertainment industries, are forsaking rental space; instead, housing expensive equipment in re-purposed 

garages, basements, and rumpus rooms.

I asked one Hollywood Hills home owner if he'd utilized his multi-camera surveillance set-up. 

 "Yes," he replied glowingly, "we identified the cat spraying our front door."

Wall of Sound

The artery severing damage imposed by freeways is old news, cleaving into neighborhoods, destabilizing, imposing new and unsympathetic patterns of use.

Following the 1972 Noise Control Act, and its 66 decibel standard, many of these concrete marauders were outfitted with Soundwalls or Noise Barriers, producing a measure of separation.

Soundwalls are commonplace today, lining most interurban highways and byways.  Most, but not all.  Shockingly, an at-grade section of the 10 freeway, lies agape in Pico-Union, while further West (in West Adams Heights) an off-ramp pierces residential idyll.

Besides unmitigated sound, these defenseless neighborhoods are exposed to greater doses of harmful particulates, a debilitating visual excess, and a lack of protection from flying cars.

Jadedly, I assumed those susceptibilities were limited to areas with diminished advocacy; until, a showing on Cahuenga Terrace, in the rarefied Hollywood Dells (see image #3).  Wide freakin' open.  

Is the city to blame?  Partly, politically I'm sure, but the ultimate responsibility lies with Caltrans.  In reviewing the Caltrans Strategic Plan 2007-12, the usual spate of road building projects are detailed, along with public awareness campaigns on drunk driving, measures to protect fish during bridge construction, and  anti-terrorism efforts in ports.  Fifty seven pages and not a mention of soundwalls.  

What could be more important?  

Tree Houses

In real estate dream #4a, I'm staging a tree house, with bakelite radio and army issue binoculars, mosquito netting, maps of the Ubangi River, and a dog eared copy of Lord Jim, or The Swiss Family Robinson.

Some arboreal structures are cobbled together from partial sheets of ply and builders waste (see top). Others employ fine finish materials, inspired by fantastical architectural, or the tree dwelling tribes of New Guinea.

Pitchford Estate in Shropshire County England claims the oldest extant tree house, believed to date from at least 1692.



But while constructing a woodsy roost used to be a rite of passage, chief staging for hideouts, secret clubs, and sleep overs, the pre-fab play structure seems to have commandeered the kiddie commorancy niche.

But who needs all that outdoor imagination stuff when you have video games?

Not So Smart Buildings (Part 2)?

(See Not So Smart Buildings Part 1 from 10/29/08)

Over the years I've worked many a home tour, often as a docent, which has happily led to contact with tour takers, strangers, and the occasional exchange.
Them: "I love these old homes, but I couldn't live in one."
Me: "Oh yeah, why not?"
Them: (some combination of) "They're too busy/It's all a bit much/I need a simpler palette."
And these are the sympathetic folk, who can hold their balance in a Queen Anne parlor, unsettled by Malibu tile and William Morris inspired wallpaper?!

What can I say? We're living in a era wherein concrete floors and a field of white is championed as good design (and it might be, for the few it truly serves). The return to minimalism in contemporary building and design is likely, typically, a response to preceding movements, the playful, sometimes cloying, affectations of post-modernism, and the excessive structural pursuits of computer age architecture.

While I may seem overtaken by the sentiment classique, it is rather that I resist the embalmers, those who would label that which falls outside today's International Style redux as ideologically astern.

This current fetish, for atomic age modernism, the boxy and planar, clerestory windows and machine age materials is fad, standard fad, neither the divinations of the design gods nor the ultimate vessel for 21st century man, but merely another point on the architectural continuum.

Ironically, the era recalled eschewed historical precedents and references, and sought to formulate new concepts of form and space. The revival amounts to sincere appreciation, nostalgia, marketing snap, and cyclicity. The revival is, at times, pure cliche.

(Five images of six wonderful buildings from six different eras.)

That Naughty Beverly Center

I'll not revisit my billboard rants, complaints about the scenery scarring effects, the new, intrusive light boxes, L.A.'s pitiful regulation. But I will tiptoe outside my usual bounds.

Is anything in society exempt from sexual interjection, is anything sacrosanct? Hunky Santa and the Candy Cane Girls, what a pathetic marketing pitch--and cynical! Whatever happened to quality merchandise, attentive service, and price savings?

Admittedly, I've once or twice been distracted by beautiful women, but I'd rather my hosiery purchase not be accompanied by erotic dance.

Of course, I think the whole Santa's lap thing is a little weird. We lecture our kids about the possible perils of strangers, then clamor for a photo op with some fatso in red skivvies.

Gas the Dutchie (Part 1)

As some seek to connect spiking fuel prices with housing market woes, others wonder if my real estate beat, hard-headedly fixed on the "old core" or "the early sprawl," is awash with petrol refugees, exurban escapees, eager to swap Victorville for Vermont Knolls, Frazier Park for Jefferson Park, and Westlake for Westlake.

Certainly, the near downtown market is performing differently than others, unevenly, with less value lost at the high end; though, I'm not sure if the "urban pioneer movement" (as it insultingly came to be known in the 1980's) is occupied with birthing breath, or on the verge of a lung expanding second wind. Maybe even revolutions respect the repose of the place.

Increased energy costs, even in a city state with tremendous economic decentralization, may hasten buyers to our basin-central burg. Unappetizing retail still disappoints some, while the coming Expo Line and LA Live projects are billed as difference makers.

Some of the bandwagoners are jumping on, "it's a culture victory, viva New Urbanism."
Of course, I'm zigging rather than zagging, concerned with even greater development pressures, and those sitting duck neighborhoods, without the smallest of adhesions, or even a viceroy to lead the charge.

Get ready for the next hard sell.
************************************************
Sunday's Open: 2892 W. 15th ST 4 beds, 2 baths $759,000
2 blocks North of Venice, 2 blocks East of Western
Harvard Heights!

The Fast and the Photographic

I was racing down Hauser when this apartment building caused the breaks on my truck to lock. Since I don't know how to do the Toyko Drift, I instead settled for a tire shredding screetch, and poorly composed photo.

I dub thee 'the Minaret Parapet', I announced to a few startled neighbors, one of whom wet her finger in order to write my plate number on a dirty car door. "Would you prefer the Deco drip," I bellowed as I sped away.

Most are suspicious of my picture taking. Some ask if I'm an appraiser. Few believe in my fandom. In East Adams, a woman yelled from her door, "Why are you taking a picture of my house?"
"It's a fantastic house, " I responded.
"Why are you taking a picture of it then?" she continued.

Many are concerned that I'm trying to capture their likeness, perhaps for deportation purposes. "I'm photographing turrets," I'll offer disarmingly (then show other images in the camera memory). Sometimes I tender my card, in a gesture people accept as legitimizing. "If you'd ever feel comfortable letting me in, I'd love to see the interior," I've asked.

One man responded, "Nobody gets in, not even mama."
"When was the last time somebody got in?" I inquired smiling.
"I lets the cable guy in," he returned, without a trace of humor, "he don't stay long."

PLUM part 3 or more on McMansions

America's latest hare and hounds, Mansionization the campaign, square footage the quarry.

The space race, is it Jones'n, keeping up with the Jones', or subcortical sabotage? Or partly a response to increasing urban density, this hoarding of interior space?

Los Angeles, frequently billed as the swami of decentralization, continues to become more dense, now the 8th densest big city in America, leap-frogging Baltimore and Minneapolis. More pointedly, of the ten most populous U.S. cities, LA ranks fourth in persons per square mile, trailing only New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

Concomitantly, the creation of valuable green space, open space, grand public space fails to keep pace (ergo the popularity of bogus public spaces like the Grove). Interiors have swollen to compensate for lost exterior space, a residential DMZ.

McMansions are frequently the end yield of teardowns. They are homes assembled from mass produced parts, with stock plans often used to reduce costs, an artless assemblage of borrowed signifiers, cheesy Mediterranean revival elements paired with colonial kitsch.

They are actually very useful for illustrating the importance of proportion, because they almost always get it wrong. Tiny windows appear even more diminutive, shrunken against sheer stucco face. Party-sized balconies jut into perpetual space, porches are reduced to open air broom closets.

The free world's 21st century version of ruinous 1950's-60's era urban renewal, destroying cohesiveness in the name of progress, like the terrible fabric discarding re-muddles that transform L.A.'s great early housing stock into the next blight.

Traffic Czar

I haven't an opinion on the mayor's plan to alter traffic patterns along Pico and Olympic. I have in the past however, jokingly lobbied for the pseudo position of Traffic Czar, dedicated to the research and consideration of traffic streamlining measures, coordinating the efforts of planning, engineering, and transit. How's that for a job description?

Fascinated by some of the traffic calming measures implemented by other cities, notably Berkeley (see images), I'd favor significantly more street closures along/perpendicular to major thoroughfares. Support among community groups would be high, in praise of the insulating value of the cul-de-sac.

Likely, I'd just funnel as much money as possible toward rail growth, abandoning any precept of build it/fill it freeway expansion projects.

I'd likely impose a commuter tax too, ala Philadelphia, and not a payroll expense tax. How about a tax on drive-thru's? I'd go tax crazy! The power is corrupting already! Seriously, I think the citizens of Los Angeles will pay for demonstrable capital improvements. It's easier to sell people stuff they can see and use.


********************
I will be open at 2241 and 1/2 W. 24th ST. tomorrow (Sunday, February 17th) from 1 - 4:30 pm. The property is located nearly one block East of Arlington, on the North side of the street.

Window Replacement Part 2

Q: What's the difference between window replacement and pornography?

A: One is a multi-billion dollar industry that exploits human weakness with the promise of increased performance and potency. The other sells sex.

Depressingly, conformity is generally hand-cuffed to mass production and "affordability". Manufacturing prowess marketed as progress, deus ex machina, all that jive talk.

Perhaps the Utopians hail the abduction of detail and variation as a democraticizing measure, the present ever-insufficient, hampered by the bogus romantic.

Still if it were about plain utility, the waxy, band aid muntins would take a hike, 'cause divided lights read "stylish".

But what a turn on! Dear neighbor, we've the same vinyl windows, hollow core doors, and granite counters. We've each infused our lawns with turf builder, bordered by identical plantings. Our carpet and wall color choices are similar and agreeably neutral. Were we any more similar, I might agree to carpool.

A funeral anyone, for art?

Gotham

Driving through through Koreatown, along 6th St. in particular, one nearly expects hard hat checkpoints. The bulky new, blots out the never before considered quaint, old. Steel frames emerging, Transformer-like, from parking lots, mere cracks in the pavement.

As one of my readers noted (under Those Dangerous White Suburbs comments), the United States has long held an anti-urban bias, freely associating the city (as opposed to the rural or suburb) with moral and social ruin (the impact of ever more intensive urbanization and immigrant tensions). This association may finally be kaput, steamrolled by the interest of builders, a full, mature generation of suburban expats, and an era of remarkable urban safety.

The 1950's status image of cookouts, huge, glistening slabs of meat, cocktails and a backyard putting green has been replaced by another developer led mirage: burghal immediacy, cosmopolita, laptops, a universe of sexy singles (albeit in office inappropriate clothing), and faux fro-yo, or what I call "cutsie commerce".

On cue, Los Angeles transformers herself from a collection of villages, from a pioneering city of neighborhoods, arguably the 20th century model, into the next overstuffed Gotham.

Money is the answer. The question being why promote new housing, so much new housing, as a social necessity? There's plenty of housing after all--cheap housing, in Detroit, St. Louis, and Baltimore (to name very few). While the employment market in those places may be less stout, and perhaps that's the role government should play (better incentivized federal enterprise zones, like the sort in the Gulf), in some places there aren't the jobs because there aren't the people.

This isn't Nimby-esqe gatekeeping, rather a question of asset management. Is Los Angeles losing herself, her essence, to subsidize the growth machine? Hoarding the financial frankfurter while Flint, Gary, and Buffalo starve?

The unimpinged, free flowing Los Angeles of Woody Allen's Annie Hall has been replaced, perhaps to the Manhattan mahatma's chagrin, by the new strata. Super-sized buildings and developments, schools, malls, single family dwellings, swell to fill available land and air space. Citizenry and the political elite brainwashedly champion the cause, and the steady accretion of downtown continues as convergent boundaries overwhelm. Neighborhood groups meet, fret, and hand-wring, hoping to install developer resistant measures, fingers in dykes.

Plum Part 2

There are several pathologies in the “how we live now” or "contemporary lifestyle" argument for teardowns and mansonification. The first is the typical American reflex to resist and resent any compromise or mitigations. Cons want a 6,000 square foot house, in a single family idyll, with ironclad property values, and total freedom of use and expression regardless of context.

Some are willing "to build green", as if that exonerates their resource intensive pursuit. A 6,000 square foot home can be made energy efficient in relation to other 6,000 square foot homes, but never in relation to 3,000 square foot homes, no matter the low perm housewraps, wabi sabi landscapes (in what little yard remains), and re-circulating systems. Still, it's a canard. Energy efficiency isn't the pursuit--except as gravitas--status and the stuff shuffle are.

The stuff shuffle.

Twenty years ago I worked as a furniture mover, for a small mom and pop operation in Oakland. My boss had clients he'd relocated five and six times, houses he'd visited over and over again. In the early 1980's he claimed the average property contained twice the volume (of possessions) as in 1950. A mere anecdote, yet the storage industry--unheard of thirty years ago, and once the provenance of moving companies--is now a $20 billion a year enterprise. Americans hoard so much crappola that it's consumed their attics, basements, garages, and now has to be stored off-site as well. For many, the solution is to build a bigger home, a much bigger home.

A bit of the added booty might be understood: telecommuting, cheaper garments that are easier to launder, more record keeping, the extra appliance. Still, the average new build in America is twice the size of its European equivalent and growing, despite declines in the average number of persons per household (now 2.5).

End Part 2

PLUM/Mansonification Part 1

I spent a hunk of a week ago Tuesday at City Hall, at the Planning & Land Use Management (PLUM) committee hearing. Amongst the agenda items was a proposal regarding Mansonification.

The turnout was impressive, the speakers impassioned. Both sides were represented, the negative effect on property values was proclaimed by all. Groups favoring lot coverage restrictions, touted the improved property value performance of HPOZ's and other neighborhoods with strict design guidelines (like Palos Verdes Estates). Opponents argued instead that property values are patently linked to unbridled redevelopment possibilities.

Cowardly, a study was requested concerning economic impacts. But how can such a thing be quantified? How do you calculate the value added by a massive re-do, and the corresponding value loss for the encumbered adjoining property?

Asked to report for the West Adams Heritage Asssociation Newsletter, I submitted the following:

The proposed ordinance meant to amend several provisions of the L.A. municipal code and reduce existing Floor Area Ratios (FAR), was shuttlecocked by council, after lengthy and divided--though largely favorable--public comment. An economic impact study was retiringly requested, as if subjunctive conditionals might be tabulated by abacus and forefinger, without regard for that ol' yellowing concern: quality of life. Regardless, the proposed code amendments were lamentably limited to R-1 lots (not otherwise located in Hillside Areas or the Coastal Zone), bupkis for the orphaned majority of West Adams. That's yiddish for beans, people.

Egads, try telling joe public they can't live in 4700 square feet, and they'll have to make do with a mere 2650. Not families of 10 mind you, but couples coveting a sub kitchen big enough to park a Winnebago in. Of course we wouldn't want to change "how we live now", particularly when we can afford a cleaning lady, gardener, pool boy, 12 burner Wolf range, 62 inch something or other, and relatively cheap energy.

The issue of space--or the supposed lack thereof--is a frequent justification by the teardown/McMansion adherents, and like most justifications, it is usually specious.
Sensitively scaled additions can be considered, a detached office or outbuilding constructed, basements can be expanded and sometimes attics, particularly in pre WWI buildings can be finished.

END PART 1

Those Dangerous White Suburbs

During a break in Sunday night's hectic WAHA Holiday tour, I conversed with a new area resident who moved, she explained, after her daughter left for college. The daughter, she confessed, disliked the parents new surroundings in Adams-Normandie, and preferred instead their previous home in Manhattan Beach, "where the schools are good and it's safe".
"It's safe here too", I added, perhaps showing a bit of the chip on my shoulder, and also eager to challenge the dominant ideology.

What I've wanted to add, for the longest time, probably inappropriately is, "safe unlike those places outside city centers. You know, the places with the mass-killings." Leaving Virginia Tech out, because college campus craziness is a category onto itself, and yesterday's dire news in Omaha, we're still left with the Amish classroom tragedy, Columbine, the Tacoma Mall, Wakefield, Red Lake High, the Honolulu Xerox repair manhunt, the San Ysidro McDonald's massacre, and others. None of which involved "negro stick-up men", Crips, Bloods, La eMe, or rap-star posses.

For a change, I don't mean to be flip or indifferent, this is about people losing their lives. As much as I prefer to prick the hegemon and serve a little 'come get yours whitey' comeuppance, when Christmas shoppers are gunned down in a mall, it's sad news. When a 24 year old black man is shot dead on a street corner--it's also sad news (even if he wasn't a pro-bowl safety), and it's no more natural or environmentally ordained.

In El Pueblo stories abound of terrified outsiders, begging off dinner invitations and asking for escorts to the driveway on account of a graffiti scrawl three blocks away, avoiding the 110 freeway lest car trouble require surface street interaction, and mistaking film shoot pyrotechnics for street gang warfare. Probably fueled by yellow media, some legitimate hardships, and big screen depictions like Keven Kline's near car-jacking in Lawrence Kasdan's bromidic Grand Canyon.

Maybe urbanites should instead play the biggety fool, asking prickly questions about retail outlets in Thousand Oaks, or assuming cover formations whilst visiting relatives in tiny New England hamlets. Maybe then America would really get serious about gun violence, and recognize the universal vulnerability it has wrought.

Halloween Night

After a short walkabout, my son and I hung with some Hobart homebodies, astonished anew by the zero conduct: costume-less teenagers (and young adults) ferried by (not-so) mini-vans and sport utilities, collecting candy as if part of some black market resale venture.

The city is plastered with obesity warnings, and yet we collect and distribute enough saccharine offal to bloat a nation of ballerinas.

"Nada de disfraz, nada de dulce", sometimes we chide the plainclothes opportunists, too lazy even to don a goofy sportcoat, or pair a jersey with cleats, bat, or hat.


The treemonster on Hollywood Boulevard has the right spirit, and he ain't in it for a polysorbate 60 sucker.



Of course, West Adamsers did Halloween in their own inimitable style: cardboard tombstones that advertised smoking related deaths, candy givers in vintage lace, eerie sound loops from '30's radio shows.

Trick or treating which appeared to fall off after 9/11 is all the rage again. Were parents concerned about terrorist tampering? Or did we just collectively become less intrepid? Into Iraq and into milkduds?

Partially inspired by neighbors who handout skeleton key chains, I'm going candyless next year, maybe gifting raisins or peanuts. I'll probably get egged.

*********************************
Sunday's Open: 2361 W. 20th St. 2 - 5 pm. One half block East of Arlington. One block South of Washington.

Barriers, Real & Imagined Part 1

The thoroughly acclaimed Western Heights Tour is past. Receipts are being totaled, home owners are catching up on lost zzz's, docents are resting their strained larynges. But an iota of controversy remains. A primary tour focus was to raise money for permanent, landscaped, traffic-calming features--full and partial street closures.

Such a thing wouldn't raise eyebrows in Brentwood, Bradbury, or Bixby Knolls, but in anti-establishment West Adams, anything that smacks of elitism or exclusion comes under instant fire (and rightly so, I say). Several West Adams area neighborhoods (most notably Victoria Park and LaFayette Square) have already closed off streets, mostly in an effort to abate non-resident cut-through traffic. The Victoria gates (like the Van Buren Place cul de sac) block the sidewalks as well. These are not gated communities, like Fremont Place or the late/great Chester Place, with sentry shacks and restricted pedestrian access; but for some they're discomfortingly similar.

Personally, I'm in favor of traffic-calming measures. Not just for Western Heights, but for all the Near West downtown neighborhoods, from the Crenshaw corridor East, and on beyond zebra.

West Adams was especially defiled by the 10 freeway*, saddled with five on/off ramps in a measly two-and-a-half mile span: Arlington, Western, Normandie, Vermont, Hoover. Residential streets like Arlington/Wilton and Normandie were resultingly tranformed into key North-South arteries (which resulted in additional malevolence). Residents ought to be able to consider compensatory measures.

To Be Continued....

*Nobody, but nobody got sucker-punched like Boyle Heights, bearer of the 5, 10, and 60 freeways.

Civic Embarrassment

My other big-city friends think I'm moonlighting for the Chamber of Commerce, such is my fealty.

"You're a booster," they tease, "but your city has the worst traffic in the country."
"It may have the lengthiest average commute," I counter, "but only because a bunch of loons drive from Tehachapi to Carson, or from LaPuente to Lomita, which is like the equivalent of travel between Crystal Lake and Robbins." "Well that's nutty", the agitators admit, "who'd try to do that?"
"Exactly."

"But there isn't any nightlife," they complain. "No, it isn't in the open," I respond, "there're clubs and bars and late night restaurants, maybe not a district per se like the French Quarter, though West Hollywood and the Sunset Strip come pretty close. The difference is, plenty of entertaining goes on in the home. People aren't fleeing cramped apartments or winterly isolation, they're hosting dinner, sometimes alfresco, in large, lovely formal dining rooms, or on poolside banquettes."

"What about leadership," they'll pepper, "what in the heck is Villaraigosa doing?"
"Tree planting."
"Good, what else?"
"Stumping for more money for the 405 freeway expansion."
"Lame. Bloomberg's mandated hybrid taxis."
"Presiding over the grand opening of a downtown supermarket."
"Come on", they chant becoming more disagreeable, "the downtown thing was already in the pipeline, as was Bratton."
"Schoolboard control?"
"Control?! Some influence is more like it."
"He bedded a looker from Telemundo?" Predictably, this breaks up the exchange and only draws sorry comparisons with the better complected Gavin Newsome. As I stammer on about Los Angeles becoming less about more, and more about better, and what a sea change that is, I do start to wonder.....

Priorities

I know it's expensive to maintain a house and not everyone's got the bread. But some of the roofs in my neighborhood, why it's a miracle residents haven't been swept away. A re-roof is expensive, 10 grand or so; still, how many of these miserly souls--sitting on hundreds of thousands in equity--are paying up the wazoo for tv?! Plenty. I know television's cheap entertainment, but there's cheaper, at the public library for starters.
Yeah I can anticipate the feedback now: Dear Mr. Real Estate house culture Tom Silva wanna-be, why don't you take your righteous ass and.... spare me.

There's plenty undone at my house, but I'm working on it, and I don't look the other way while my roof petrifies, chimney dislocates, or porch subsides. Sure there's projects I can't afford quite yet, but I ain't blowing dough on video poker, a Mercedes lease deal, or white trufffles at Bastide.

A house doesn't hold its condition--its condition is either improving or worsening. But this isn't purely economic, it's cultural as well. The house for many is temporal, mere utility, and not entirely different than a melting popsicle. My slacker next door neighbor cares little, even about asset protection or resale value, he's in his house till death do he part. If he leaves his decedents a soggy, tilted, dry-rot mess, lucky they'll be to have it, he probably figures.

I say, if you don't want the burden of maintenance, get an apartment.

Modernism Part 1

One of the museum world's most celebrated recent shows, Modernism: Designing a New World 1914-1939, has ended its run at the Corcoran Gallery; and yes, I admit seeing it back in April.

The next sentence is a throat-slasher: I'm not a big fan of Modernism (or more exactly, the comtemporary re-cast of Modernism). Am I hostile? No. Might I need my head examined? Likely, because those things that constitute the modernist revival fanfare: geometrically rational, NY loft, mid-century, grid-like, atomic ranch, post-and-beam, suprematistic, dymaxion, unornamented, cosmic, sterility--are at the zenith of their popularity! (And perhaps therein lies my aversion.)

Alternatively, try showing 19th century housing stock to today's cool couples. The scale, they'll note, in the public rooms is impressive; the verticality, exotic and intriguing; the bedrooms, small and claustrophobic. A real housing option? Not at all. People can neither visualize themselves nor their things in L.A.'s late Victorian and transitional era dwellings.





Our brokerage sold the Pierce House (1891) earlier this year. I envisioned covetous buyers dueling with flintlocks; instead they fretted about the adaptability of their Florence Knoll furniture.




Does the Craftsman style and its iterations, so dominant in the early 20th century, still have mass appeal? (I hope so, because I sell more of it than anything else!) Those examples that are clean-lined and open, perhaps still weighty but not overly adorned, prove especially seductive to buyers. Throw in a little back-yard green-space facing glass face or access, and you'll have buyers galore. People still appreciate good interior wood finishes and inherently beautiful materials, but once things get precious or dolled up--no matter what the craftsmanship, the average buyer reaches--like a vampire slayer for a cross--to a rolled up copy of Dwell magazine or a Case Study compendium.

Sadly, double and triple parlors fail to titillate. They did, back in the 1970's when Victoriana made a comeback (or a revival). The colorist movement set in, psychotherapy was re-examined, and sunburst motifs were everywhere.

Now a day doesn't go by without a prospective client telling me how much s/he likes mid-century modern. But really how much of that is there? Sure, there's examples of Koenig-esqe masterworks in every other NBA finals commercial, but trying counting the examples on your block. Most of these architect designed dandies are pinned to elusive hillside sites, upscale enclaves, or the Illinois countryside.

Yes the fifties and sixties are alive and well in places like Lakewood, Downey, Rosemead and Woodland Hills, but mostly what you'll find there is the vernacular, two parts Ranch, one part Modern(e); one part Traditional, one part Swiss Chalet, maybe with a slanted roof over the garage, a concrete floor in the public rooms, and a kidney shaped pool. You'll also find a galley kitchen, a carpeted bath, and rather than floor to ceiling glass, a trio of dented aluminum sliders. All of which can be cool stuff, but won't necessarily recall the Julius Shulman photographs of A. Quincy Jones, the Alexander Homes of Palm Springs, or a boozy Sinatra.

To be continued......

Master Bedroom

Recently I completed the sale of 1522 S. Hobart Blvd, the magnificent Mission revival in Harvard Heights. Amongst its many fabulous features: a master bedroom (or master's bedroom, or, in the interest of non-discriminatory language,"owner's retreat") that conforms to today's standard--that is, large, multi-closeted, physically separate from the other bedrooms, and with a full bath attached. Such a thing, uncommon amongst my inventories of Pre War housing, seems increasingly desirable.

In the early 1800's the average American home was about 600 square feet, and children often slept 2 - 3 in a bed. Task separation dictated layout, as cooking and household tasks were divided, usually by a ground floor hall. An adjacent parlor, which sometimes doubled as the parent's bedroom, served as the space for dining and receiving guests.

Health-based concerns, but also just plain ol' affluence [insert five pages here on the connection between cultural values, morality, and consumer trends] contributed to the move to separate sleepers, and the trend continues still, with today's adult-focused sybaritic sensibility. Between 1970 - 2002 (according to the US census and the NAHB), the average household size decreased from 3.1 to 2.6 persons, yet the average new home size increased from 1,500 to 2,300 sq. ft. Privacy and separation are equated to status. Master suites today, multi-suites tomorrow.

"Where is the master?" impatient consumers would ask, whilst touring the grand Emard House (see earlier posts) on Oxford.
"The principal bedroom," I would answer, "is this one", showcasing the largest of the four second-floor bedrooms.
"But it hasn't an attached bath", they'd complain.
"Few did in 1904", I'd continue, "it wasn't then a consumer expectation. However, let me show the attic."

The attic, over 500 square feet, connected to a full bath. Most were satisfied, and most imagined the attic as owner's retreat. I was surprised really, because I prefer to sleep in the smallest rooms, so that I might spend my day in different, larger spaces. I also don't feel like banishing my kid to the houses' hinterlands.

I guess I'm in the minority. Again.

When Architecture Turned Bland

I have a cousin who lives in Lakewood, California. The Lakewood made famous again by D.J. Waldie. These are photos of houses on her block, or was it the next block? The one after?


The early 1950's can be a yawner. Mass homebuilding had come of age, most notably in post-war housing tracts like the paradigmatic Levittown(s), and in "instant city" Lakewood.


Idon't intend to embark on an essay about American post-war optimism and prosperity, expansionism, and pragmatism. I simply find the relentless near self-replication aesthetically reductive.













Some p.o.'d mod-commer'll write me now, with praise for post-and-beam this, and googie that. I ain't riffing about the modern or the moderne, only the vernacular suburban tract home that blots out large parts of the L.A. basin. Yeah I know, some still had wood windows and wood floors, a molding thicker than your thumb. Go tell it to your boomerang laminate or cracked ice vinyl banquettes. I've got some gingerbread I need to dust.

Front Yard Tents

A poor man's arbor, a porte-cochere for the less fortunate, or just another unsightly garden accoutrement?



Want shade? Plant a tree, or use your front porch for crimineysakes. Need protection for your car? Put it in a garage, a back-yard car port, or under a car cover.




This tent is decorated with Christmas lights, a tactless and insulting declaration of status and permanency. After all, would you ring lights around a front porch umbrella stand, spotlight your composting chamber, or dress your sprinklers with flowery tassels?






Gosh, what ugly neighborhood-degrading thing can I put in my front yard?

How about a weight set? It'd be nice to lift beneath the clean-smelling Eucalyptus trees. Who cares if the cast iron plates and silvery Olympic bar collect bird droppings and become streaked in a coppery rust color.

I could set up an outdoor workshop, with large power tools fixed to a concrete base. Plentiful light, easy access, and a shady north side would make me the envy of many a woodworker. Furthermore, think of the public service: the late afternoon breezes would blow mulch-enhancing saw dust into many a neighboring yard, improving azelea and camelia blooms.

But really, who cares about others?

Fiiiiire!!

Invariably, the fire originates from some over-stuffed shit-can, breezeways littered with sidewalk play equipment, choked with a trapeze-like swirl of drying lines, and sagging, potted crops.



Commonly, in even the smallest bedrooms of these over-burdened court-style buildings, large electronics consoles dominate, trophy possessions, powered by crimped, undersized, extension cords daisy-chained in an disjointed bramble.











As part of some broader laissez-faire social contract, the occupancy limits go widely unchecked, the burdens usually borne by shell-shocked home owners in marginal neighborhoods, previously victimized by decades old capital flight and economic re-tool.





In this case, my favorite two houses on the 4100 block of Woodlawn escaped nearly unharmed. The fire spread to the carriage house of "Big Yellow", compromising the structure and likely resulting in five years of higher home insurance premiums for the owner.

The water sogged burn wood lay along the parkway for three weeks. Several times I was tempted to salvage the window hardware from a charred, double-hung. Dump items attract dump items, and for a time the pile grew outward, topped finally by a laundry basket of boys clothes and a cotton-twill suit.

Finally, one day it all disappeared.

Friday Filler

Youngstown, Anyone stirred 'em up. (Incidentally, I will be reconfiguring the blog soon to allow for comments.)

South of Jefferson strong man Allen Lulu added the following: Using a site called "measuringworth.com", I have come to learn this: the median price of a home in 1967 which you have listed as $24000 is, in 2006 dollars equal to $140,000. Aside from urban centers, this does seem to jibe with the rest of the country.

the real difference comes in the money from 1915. that 3200 house would only buy a 64000 house today. The dollar has changed, significantly, apparently. And inflation had a LOT to do with it, post 60's.



24K, the Cadillac kid, a surprising and at times abradant critic of economic expansionism, opines: this here is one of them hidden costs of growth. You got more people, you need more shelter. They ain't making more land, and some materials get scarcer. Of course it starts with jobs. Places are cheap in Youngstown cause there ain't no jobs. Few that pay good anyhow.

Thanks 24K, remember when they brought the Avanti back to the Steel Valley and Youngstown? Maybe you should go with a trade in.

The Ugliest Residential Building in Los Angeles

At the corner of 42nd & Main.


Really, what is there to write? Is that a 9.5 gauge galvanized steel wire fence? Yes. Am I sure it's occupied? Yes.



Close by, in a chain maille hat box, the acclaimed Accelerated School operates. Perhaps I ought to organize a field trip, for the young and impressionables.

Some of you four-year olds may become architects or building contractors. You may be forced--by need--to take jobs, or perform work, that does not comport with your sense of self, wherein you are exploited, and your ideals besmirched.

Regardless, you mustn't broker in this sort of aesthetic waste. That architecture is not pure art is obvious, but it is also more than the merely practical. It is part of the public trust, for that which builders do, is visually consumed by all.

Washout

The Laundry Debate

We all agreed, the current laundry set-up, choking a back entry way, was problematic. But where else might the washer/dryer/utility sink go?

The owners bucked for their un-California like basement, a high ceiling-ed space, nearly 300 square feet, with only a furnace and a rusty game table.

"Too far from the bedrooms", the contractor argued, "Inconvenient carrying all those baskets up and down."

"We're talking laundry here folks", I quipped, "not bags of cement."

Outside was considered, and quickly shot down. "Who wants to do laundry when it rains", went the refrain.

"What's that", I sassed, "Fifteen days a year? Besides it'll put you next to the clothes line. Perhaps that's the most convienent option of all."

Their eyes fell upon me. An evesdropping workman unsuccessfully supressed a laugh, the cable installer silently shook his head, Seymour the cat lost interest in my hemp Addidas. I knew what they were thinking: 'how vulgar, how unsophisticated.'

Nobody bothers with a clothes line any more, even my wife likes the towels better out of the dryer, "less coarse", she insists.

"What's wrong with drying and exfoliating," I ask.




Sadly, even in the Eco-hoods no one uses a clothes line. There are some communities in California where they're prohibited altogether. In the projects, the drying greens appear deserted. Some prefer to hang inside, on a clothes horse, so as not to be detected by judgmental neighbors. Only the Chinese immigrants in Alpine Village, with their rotary carousels, seem impervious to the status shaming.

I like using my nerdy rack, and I don't care if it takes longer. It's a little more trouble to separate my garbage into three cans too, but I do that also.

The Put Downs

I was at lawn party Saturday (can you just imagine me and the Gatsbys?!), trying my darndest to blend, without axes to grind, when it started.

The put-downs.

Overheard: 'L.A. is such a transient city'.

"It's an attractive, international destination", I countered, "full of dynamic people. Certainly more 'transient'--whatever that means, and perhaps what it means is good--than Akron, Ohio or Birmingham, Alabama, but no more transient than New York or Washington D.C., other peer American cities".






Later, I googled 'transient cities'. Little hard data sadly with which to make my points, but references aplenty to cities such as Phoenix and Las Vegas (nuevo sun belt), New York and San Francisco (mondo expensive), D.C. (political cycles), Miami (growing internationalism), Seattle (fast changing), Atlanta (emerging regional hub) and Boston (college mecca). Kyoto, Melbourne, Milan, Dongguan, Rome, pretty much anywhere you'd want to live has been labeled transient.

Strikes me as an upper middle class perception, 'cause I doubt anybody living in Nickerson Gardens, the William Mead Homes, or Aliso Village, thinks of L.A. as
transient.




A bit faster moving than Kansas City I concede, or wherever it is mom and dad hibernate, especially if compared to the West L.A. youth ghettos. Still, I live on a block with 44 houses, and in six years only four have changed ownership.

What I wouldn't give for a little more transience!

Woof Roof

I'm a walker. Out with the son, out late with the dog, sometimes with others.






I certainly get barked at, by dogs, behind fences, in front yards. If a dog's going to bark at anything that moves, s/he ought be kept in the property rear. They're still likely to bark, just at less, heard by fewer.

But dogs on a roof?! This canine pair had me spotted a block away. I've heard of early detection systems, but this is ridiculous and inconsiderate. Particularly as neighboring dogs, cued as if were, continued the shepard serenade.

Here's another intrusion: the peddling pork rindadora. Apparently she thinks there's a corollary between horn volume and sales volume, because she works the handle bar horn like it's a blood pressure cuff.

What am I angling for? Noise ordinances. New York City just updated its code, with special mention of Ice Cream trucks and monster-bass car audio systems.

If Koch could enforce the pooper scooper, I figure Bloomberg's got a shot with Mr. Softee.

Coming Soon: Hooray for High Gas Prices--No More Ice Cream Trucks

Rain Brain

I'm not necessarily in the debunking business; but man, do I catch a lot of wild lines, mostly from other agents who don't seem to know what they're selling, or much about the place they're selling it in. While not necessarily related to real estate, there's no refrain that bugs me more than: 'Los Angeles is a desert'.

Los Angeles is not a desert, never was a desert, no matter the taunts of cackling San Franciscans apparently oblivious to the climate differences between las playas and Las Vegas. In point of fact, Los Angeles is a coastal plain with a climate categorized as 'Mediterranean'. The traditional geographer's definition of a desert is a place wherein the annual rainfall is no greater than 25 cms. While precipitation totals in Los Angeles are highly variable, the downtown average is nonetheless closer to 38 cms. a year (15" inches).

Early photographs of the terrain seem to show scrub and plant life more commonly associated with the chaparral biome, wildflowers and fields of clover. Not exactly, towering sand dunes and Socorro Cactus.

Still, the desert mythology persists, with doomsdayers prophesing sandy reclamation. As if, in the absence, of political pilfer and Owens Valley elutriation, a withered, evaporation-scarred top surface would displace the black, loamy soil, denuded by vengeful Santa Ana winds.

Listen to the early So-Cal boosters who promised a fertile, edenic, Shangri-la. Ok, that may be artistic excess; still, Yuma we ain't!

Inflation Infuriation

Do I think housing prices are inflated? I think a lot of things are inflated. I'm not well qualified to sling macro perspectives and geopolitical hash around; but, when I read about milk wars stemming the rise of inflation, I want to know whose tether is really getting yanked.

This core index stuff that strips out the so-called "volatile costs" like energy and food and housing, doesn't seem like a terribly relevant measure. I mean even if you're a latte drinker, with a two-year old, and a late night cookie habit, how much can you spend on the dairy? 35 bucks a month?! Who cares, the car ain't running on the white stuff, and the housing payment is still close to three bills.

Inflation running at 2 to 3 percent? Bah, I think it's probably closer to 8 or 9.
Shoot though, let's go make some milkshakes while we still afford 'em.