Gary Gach, 8/19
Wasn't Kelbo's next to Smokey Joe's - or even connected to it, like railroad cars? Hawaiian theme next to Old West theme. Only in America, and only in L.A.My mom used to work at the kaiser in Rexall; I remember slipping into the gray EMPLOYEES ONLY doors to go see her.
Beautiful language, Liz.
Do we all remember time in terms of space? (And vice-versa) All movies for me begin (when the lights get dark) in the Pan Pacific, with Herb Steiner et al. Whatever film it is I see.
Was the weather hotter at Beverly & LaCienega, or were the buildings just more reflective of sunlight and heat?
Being born on Cochran/Alta Vista, Fairfax was a regular walk, La Cienega was a world that opened up more familiarly when I learned how to ride a bike.
When Purcell and Peter and Camille and I drove to the reunion and we passed Beverly and LaCienega, it was the first time I'd seen what had happened. Ponyland? The eternal oil derrick, with the word KEYS? Smokey Joes.
When you take them out, you can't put them back. (I heard that the Pan Pacific was put on blocks for a while, in the parking lot or something. But where else would you put it? It belonged right THERE.)
Life measured in terms of rides ... from wooden to real horses ... from slow lane to fast.
Is urban Alzheimer's unique to L.A.? Or is L.A. itself eternally in a state of Alzheimer's (wasn't there a river? Weren't there trails?
Is the world we grow up into, and grow old in, a museum of our past, constantly impinged upon by some mindless wrecking ball to make way for some garish greedy monstrance?
And you mean your family DIDn"T own Gill's in Farmer's Market?
More, Liz.
P.S.: Linda and Sandy took m e to Larchmont, partly 'cos I'd asked about it, having heard about it from a perfect stranger on the airporter shuttle bus who said i'd like it, it's like "mill valley." My sister that same weekend said she'd gone shopping with her childhood friend, charging things, but I discovered it for the first time this August ... people recognizing Linda and Sandy as we got out of the car ... and others at the restaurant ... a sense of an open space within a viable neighborhood ... a bookstore named Chevalier's that I'd like to read my new book at, when I write one ... when I grow up ...
Certainly there's more to be said about many of the Memory Sites in your initial rant against the mall, Liz -- a guide to the L.A. of Liz Gill, which does and doesn't dovetail totally with the memories of us all ... like the schpritz in Pink's secret sauce!
Herb Steiner, 8/19:
What fantastic memories Liz brought up in her memoir on the Beverly/La Cienega experience. Since I grew up one block from the site... less, actually, since my house on Beverly and Alfred St. was catty-corner from the intersection... (before we moved to Formosa Ave. in '58), I have very vivid recollections of the various joys Ms. Liz described and some she didn't mention. Among them:
Smokey Joe's... the BBQ/burger joint on the SW corner, just before Beverly Park and directly in front of the oil well. This is the site where my older sister gagged when she found a cigarette butt in her hamburger when she took me there for dinner one night. We were forbidden to eat there after that episode, though I loved the sawdust floor and the funky BBQ smells.
The log cabin looking western wear store on the NW corner... now where the hotel sits, it was always my fantasy that it was Davy Crockett's cabin. Or was it Daniel Boone's? The fantasies of a 5-year old are always so damn imprecise, expecially after 49 years of neglect.
Tail 'O The Pup... my favorite hot dog, until the big move to Formosa Ave in 1958 when the architectural wonder that was TOTP was replaced by the incredible Pink's. Incidentally, I deeply believe that the secret ingredient in Pink's chili... aside from the pound or two of flour poured into every batch... was the schvitz pouring off the foreheads of the two black guys dishing our the burgers and dogs in the 95+ degree heat.
The Rexall... Disneyland West for the pre-pubescent shopper with a dollar in his hand, and what a dollar could buy back then!! I vaguely remember when the Rexall was built (around '52?), but I can't recall what was there before hand. We did occasionally get medical business done at the Permanente Insurance company in that building, but mostly we went to Dr. Brodwin on Beverly and Sweetzer. But now I'm pushing further east, aren't I?
Speaking of further east, there was Jan's (my dad's favorite coffee shop), and the wonderful Davis Drug Store where you could get fountain cherry cokes and a free pack of baseball cards from Mr. Davis. Mr. Davis dug me because, in spite of all the crap I used to get into as a kid, he was our neighbor on Alfred St.
Incidentally, Bobbi Fischkes lived one block north in the 400 block of Alfred, and Norma Barbato lived around the corner, in between La Cienga and Alfred, as I recall.
"You can't forget memories, " as a wise Texas sage said one time... not me, ANOTHER wise Texas sage. We have lots of'em down here.
Gayle Hilbert (Peitzer), 8/19:
Isn't it interesting how much we take things for granted? We all grow upand move on, but we kind of expect the businesses of our past that we find so dear in memory to perpetuate themselves - how? - with a lack of patronage? I don't think it works that way. Obviously - it doesn't. If I've learned nothing else from the JB reunion - things need to be supported to survive. You can't take anything for granted - because it won't always be there. We can lament the disappearance of the wonders of our past but what was there before that generations before us remember and lament the disappearance of? Wide open spaces? A beautiful basin surrounded by rolling hills with breathtaking views? To those generations - if anyone is still around - Beverly Park was a travesty. Everything is relative. We inhabit places for their natural attributes and then we severely alter them for our own conveniences and wonder what the heck happen to the beautiful place that we were living in. That block was an eyesore before they built the Bev Center with it's ramshackle buildings housing Markel's, Mordigan's Nursery, Beverly Park, the oil derrick and god knows what else. People stopped going to Kiddyland. Maybe people will stop going to Beverly Center and they'll put nature back. Could we ever be that lucky?
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