Bunker Hill, Los Angeles

Yes, I know—the last piece I wrote about the subject, fifteen months ago, was literally titled My Final Words on Cooper Donuts. But the other day a journalist called out of the blue to talk CDN, which meant I glanced at the Cooper Do-nut website for the first time in a long while...and…yeahhhhh. The site has added a piece of breakthrough news, albeit buried in an ill-conceived jumble of claptrap. My final words were evidently anything but, for while I certainly tried to ignore these new developments, they were too juicy to withhold comment. Plus I was repeatedly mentioned by name, so, can’t not pick up that gauntlet. And here we are.

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The Evans descendants—heirs to and gatekeepers of the Cooper Donut legacy—revamped their website recently. The new version contains a revelation: there was a Cooper Donuts in the 500 block of South Main!

This is a significant discovery. My very first post about the subject five years ago contended that Rechy’s account—already improbable on several levels—was particularly suspect given his assertion that a Cooper’s existed in the 500 block of South Main Street. I had researched photos, maps, phonebooks, directories, DBS records, etc., to conclude and counter-assert that no such shop existed on that block, nor nearby.

Lo and behold, Jacqueline and Keith Evans have uncovered evidence from two separate sources of a Cooper’s at 517 South Main Street. Not only that, but despite my only recently stumbling upon this via their website, they revealed this data all the way back in March! And nobody told me? Jacquie Evans could have at least shot me an email (a triumphant ha! added to boot). After all, for the last five years and change, the closing comment in my initial Cooper post has read:

Point being, the Evanses’ discovery is the first major building block in retelling the Cooper story, and I am happy to report it here.

That said, the Evanses’ new website doesn’t just report on the 517 South Main unearthing; it proceeds to take my entire body of research to task in a point-by-point refutation. And their claims, theses, and postulates? Good grief. I should leave it be, but that’s not how I’m wired.

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I assume you’re up to speed (having read all my work on the subject!), but to recap:

There are two separate but connected stories: one is that John Rechy — pioneering chronicler of LGBTQ+ life since his breakthrough autobiographical novel, 1963’s City of Night — was present at a late-1950s riot on South Main Street. The story goes that a group of gay doughnut shop patrons beat back the harassing LAPD by pelting them with trash and rocking police cars, leading to a massive police response that cordoned off Main Street till morning.

The second story is involves the Cooper Donut chain more broadly, including Nancy Valverde—the trailblazing Chicana cross-dressing lesbian whose legal acumen dismantled long-standing homophobic laws.

Because I’ve poked holes in these narratives, the Evans clan has whipped up a ten-point refutation of my work in a new section of their website called THE EVIDENCE.

We’ll begin with a brief investigation into 517 South Main Street (#3 on their list) and then we’ll take a look at the rest of….THE EVIDENCE.

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#3 on the Evanses’ List — THE LOCATION ARGUMENT (←this is a link, click it)

As mentioned, the discovery of a Cooper Donuts at 517 is major news. Rechy has stated that the doughnut donnybrook didn’t happen at a Cooper’s, but, whatever: a CDN at 517 at least jibes with one of his accounts, in which the fracas happened “between Harold’s and the Waldorf” and while 517 is definitely not between Harold’s and the Waldorf, it is, at least… close? Anyway, let’s look at the site.

As we now know, 517 appears as a Cooper Donuts in this 1962 guide:

And as well here:

Naturally, we now have to know all we can about 517, and any further when/where/how that might emerge.

517 is an address in the Kalisher Block, 513-519 South Main Street. Louisa Kalisher— recent widow of prosperous Prussian-born dry-goods merchant Wolf Kalisher—hired architect Abram Edelman to design this two story brick commercial block in 1889.

Jack’s BBQ occupied 517 until at least 1956. By 1960/61 (per the Frommer guide and People v. Shepherd) it had become a Cooper’s. By the time the 1963 directories were published, it had morphed into Angelo’s Pizzeria.

Frustratingly, no Cooper Do-nuts at 517 appears in the directories during the precise window of the Shepherd arrest or the Frommer mention:

It isn’t as if CDN went out of their way to avoid directories; here are their yellow page listings from August 1959 and August 1962:

What else can I say about the Kalisher Block, possible/probable home of a Cooper Donuts? It had its second story removed in the spring of 1959, and the building was demolished for a parking lot in late 1967.

Again, this is an excellent find, and kudos to Jacquie and Keith Evans for locating it. With enough of these building blocks, perhaps we can eventually erect a mighty edifice of proof regarding the purported riot.

But now it’s time we move on to the rest of —

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“THE EVIDENCE”

First things first, Rechy at the Riot:

#1 on the Evanses’ list — THE SOURCING QUESTION (←this is a link, click it)

From the outset, I had noted it was curious that Rechy failed to include a seminal, late-1950s gay riot in his seminal book about late-1950s gay life; instead, he waited forty-five years to tell the tale. The Evanses’ retort? That “the absence of an event in a novel is not evidence that the event didn’t occur.” Look, I understand the principle of non-falsifiability. I can’t “prove” it didn’t happen. I am simply pointing out that it is passing strange that the man who made a career of chronicling gay Los Angeles never mentioned the “super-important-uprising-that-predated-Stonewall”—not in that book, not in any subsequent book, not to a journalist, not anywhere—for half a century.

What also truly irked me is the ubiquitous false claim that “the Rechy-riot is obviously true because he immediately wrote about it in his 1963 book!” argument. This falsehood has achieved the status of urban legend—and is naturally, therefore, part of the Rechy wiki page. It is of course a feature of the City of Night wiki page:

And if you doubt that I am in fact the only person to have ever read the book, click here.

The Evanses go on to say that “oral testimony of lived events is a recognized and methodologically sound form of historical evidence. The timing of its disclosure does not determine its validity.” To which I say, no, the timing is strikingly suspect, but more to the point: while oral histories are not without value, they sit at the very bottom of the historian’s evidentiary ladder—well below physical artifacts, contemporary documents, and even written memoirs. I have far too much to say on the limitations of oral history to pack it all into this post, so I’ll make my argument here.

#2 on the Evanses’ list—THE CONSISTENCY ARGUMENT:

I noted previously that Rechy’s account was plagued by inconsistencies. I never claimed this disproved a riot; I simply noted it as “grist for the mill” (especially given that the first time he told the story, forty-five years after the fact, was during the same period he was making up fake reviews of his own books). The Evanses counter that because the riot was “traumatic,” we should expect the details to shift. To support this, they cite a 2023 Philosophy of Science article. It’s a textbook example of “standpoint epistemology”—a methodology I won’t dismantle on this page, though you can gauge my critique of the article here.

Then, they invoke Alessandro Portelli. That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while! For the uninitiated, Portelli—a literature professor, emphatically not a historian—is the patron saint of the “my truth” school of historiography, a man who mistook his own inability to fact-check for a profound literary insight. He took the basic human propensity for misremembering, rebranded it as “subversive memory,” and invited us to marvel at the depth of the deception. It’s an elegant grift: if the archive contradicts your subject, simply declare the archive a tool of oppression and the error a masterpiece of folklore. It is creative, certainly, but it is not history; it is a curated collection of comforting fictions for the terminally sentimental.

The Evanses go on to contend:

This is a bold claim, considering Rechy’s own “consistency” is nonexistent. Rechy’s primary accounts of the event include, for example: Rechy and four others were hauled out of the shop (2019); Rechy and two other men are detained (2005); Rechy and one other man (“Chuck”) are the focus (2019, 2021); or four men are involved, and Rechy wasn’t even one of them (2006).

If you’ve never read Rechy’s actual quadruply-told-tale, here you go:

#4 on the Evanses List — THE NEWSPAPER ARGUMENT

I have oft asserted that had there been a riot—men pelting police with trash, rioters rocking black-and-whites, and the blockading of Main Street until dawn—it would have left a mark on the historical record. For reasons known only to history, this gay uprising went unmentioned in ONE magazine (whose offices were blocks away on Hill Street) and appears in zero oral histories for forty-five years. But setting that aside, I maintain that a riot of that scale would have been in the papers. I’ve combed the Times, the Herald-Express, the Examiner, and the Mirror-News, as well as local papers, including the weeks spent reviewing unpublished issues on microfilm. Nothing.

The Evanses counter that this massive event—witnessed by hundreds just a stone’s throw from the major newsrooms—was ignored because LAPD Chief William Parker enforced a “media blackout.” They claim there exists “specific documented action restricting press access,” arguing that because reporters were denied access to after-the-fact arrest ledgers, they would have been incapable of knowing a riot occurred. The Evanses’ proof is in the form of two articles documenting how the City Council, over Parker’s objection, eventually forced him to restore the freedom of the press.

Pardon the testiness, but, that’s all horseshit, all of it. The Evanses apparently assume you’ll never dig up the original articles but of course I have them (and a dozen others on precisely this subject, since there’s a heavy Chavez Ravine angle) and I can state emphatically and without fear of contradiction that their narrative is the literal opposite of the truth.

The facts: In the spring of 1959 there was a huge kerfuffle surrounding the chaotic evictions of the Arechiga family in Chavez Ravine (read about them here). A beat reporter for City News Service trawled through past police records to find prior arrests and thus smear the family’s character. An angry Chief Parker, siding with the Arechigas (yes you read that right, Parker went to bat for the Arechiga family) temporarily suspended the press’s access to historical arrest records until the City Council could formalize a policy. Bear in mind, there was no legal requirement that the LAPD hand over past arrest records to the press; it was merely a tradition of professional courtesy that had, in Parker’s view, gotten out of hand, since — despite these being public records — there was a confidential nature to old arrest records, now being willfully misused. Past arrest records could be used to blackmail people and Parker was worried that innocent people might be adversely affected (remember, a simple arrest record contains no indication about whether there was a conviction).

So Parker said “hey, City Council, come up with an actual policy, and we’ll follow that.” And then that’s what happened. And the best part is, Parker was very much IN FAVOR OF letting newsmen have access to records; he just said there should be some sort of policy so it wasn’t abused by bad actors. At first, Council refused to draft an ordinance, allowing media access; Parker made a personal appearance before the lawmakers to urge that the press be given access to arrest records. So, the Evanses characterize Parker’s sixteen-year tenure as a “media blackout” based on a short window of bureaucratic policy-making. (I shouldn’t have to remind you that having old booking ledgers is not what being a newsman is about, which I will touch on here.)

In short, the Evanses’ “villain,” Parker, was actually against the restriction. The primary figures pushing to keep arrest records private (and therefore “the bad guys”) were progressive Latino Democrat Edward R. Roybal—who feared records would be used to ruin rehabilitated ex-convicts—and the ACLU. Yes, the same ACLU that stood as the institutional defender of gay rights at the time; they opposed the measure, arguing media access infringed upon an individual’s right to privacy.

But for the sake of the argument, let’s just say the riot happened exactly during that window in 1959 when the restriction was in place (which again, wasn’t Parker’s idea, but was made necessary temporary policy because of criticism from a beleaguered Mexican family). Even if we indulge the Evanses and pretend the riot occurred during that window it wouldn’t have mattered. Reporters don’t need access to archived booking ledgers to report on a riot that shuts down Main Street. In 1959, Main Street was teeming with life, and every bar in the vicinity was crawling with grizzled reporters (the Hearst papers were a few blocks south and the Chandler HQ a few blocks north) angling for a scoop. Are we to believe a riot of this magnitude happened, yet not a single reporter—or a single wire service—heard the sirens?

Now, you and I, from our world-weary tower atop 2026, don’t blink an eye when a major street is shut down for a basketball riot or a street takeover. In 1959, this would have been the biggest news of the year—dwarfing the Chavez Ravine evictions, the Jack Whalen murder, or the death of Bunker Hill. Other instances of civil disobedience seen in the streets of Los Angeles (e.g., the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots, the 1923 longshoreman demonstrations, the 1913 IWW riot in the Plaza) had consumed reams of newsprint. Somehow, though, a riot in the literal ground zero of Los Angeles (it’s called Main Street for a reason) evaporated like morning mist. That dog don’t hunt.

Also, the Evanses claim newspapers didn’t report on gay arrests anyway, because they only covered homosexuality through “abstract social commentary,” which is quite possibly the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever read (click here for a reality check).

Finally, as for their claim that Nancy Valverde read about the Main Street pastry pandemonium in the paper the next morning? I recall no such Valverde statement. To my knowledge, she only mentioned a “Cooper uprising” once—sixty years after the fact, while in hospice at age 87, and only after being pressured to “recall,” specifically, that she’d heard about something second hand. (Which raises the question, if there does exist documentation of her saying she read about it in a newspaper, why did she change her story?)

#5 on the Evanses List — THE RECHY RETRACTION ARGUMENT

I was also saying that the brouhaha about Cooper Donuts was ironic, in that the mighty oak of tattoos and t-shirts grows from the Cooper riot acorn — but though Rechy initially claimed the riot happened at a CDN, but then retracted that, and said it didn’t happen at a Cooper’s. The Evanses manage this contradiction by claiming that when Rechy was told no Cooper’s existed between Harold’s and the Waldorf—which, of course, it didn’t—he merely “adjusted his account accordingly” because he was “pressured into doubt.” Now, call me old-fashioned, but when I tell the story of my life, I don’t change my story (“adjust my account”) just because someone pokes holes in it.

#6 on the Evanses List — THE CHARACTER ARGUMENT

And here we shift gears, leaving the purported riot behind, and move into Evans family territory.

The Evanses take issue with “my” argument that Jack Evans was “simply a capitalist who took everyone’s money” and that he ran Cooper Donuts as just a place that “takes everyone’s money” despite my never having said that. What I did say, in this article, in reaction to repeatedly being told Evans was a trailblazing trans ally who went out of his way to serve the gender-nonconforming, was: “I believe Jack Evans didn’t turn away customers if they had money. That doesn’t make him an ally, that makes him a capitalist.”

I stand by that. The Evanses predictably misunderstood me. To them—and to the average Angeleno—”capitalist” is a slur, the foulest epithet in the urban lexicon. I consider it the ultimate compliment. It means Evans believed in the creation of value and the freedom of enterprise, imbued with a builder’s spirit that favored merit and innovation over some state-dependent malaise. But I’ll never expect normies to grasp that.

You pearl-clutch at the label, but let’s talk about Jack Chester Evans. He had a business model—the bedrock of capitalism. His model was the engine that directed his capital and resources. It required the allocation of risk and the stewardship of money to provide a small luxury—donuts and coffee—at modest prices in underserved neighborhoods that corporate entities habitually bypassed. Operating in an economically depressed area demands operational excellence, consistency, and volume; you don’t survive on price-gouging, you survive on efficiency. More than that, Evans was a local entrepreneur building social capital; he became a familiar face and a source of order. He maintained his independence, treated his employees like community members, and kept his gaze fixed on building a sustainable, profitable reality rather than chasing government subsidies. In short, Jack Evans was a credit to the capitalist order.

Evans did not get into the business of serving the disenfranchised with the intent of turning away his neighbors—that would be bad business, and that is why I said he was a capitalist. Was he a “trailblazing trans ally”? Who knows? I’m sure he was kind to his children and nice to dogs. But the family insists on canonizing him as a LGBTQIA2S+ saint, relying on testimonials that amount to little more than “he gave me a job” or “the donuts were yummy.”

A testimonial that “he hired people in need” is fine, but as someone who spent significant time in the Union Rescue Mission archives, I can tell you that “people in need” back in the day were overwhelmingly white male alcoholic veterans in early recovery, not trans POC. One patron of the early-60s downtown gay scene noted (in an anonymous online comment) that Cooper’s didn’t turn people away, but that falls under basic commerce, not the old debunked chestnut of “you’d be arrested because of MC5022.” Furthermore, relying on anonymous online comment sections is the verbum ex nihilo school of historiography—the “trust me, bro” method of citation.

They even suggest there is “proof” that to Jack Evans, inclusion outweighed the profit motive—

— and yet, curiously, they couldn’t manage to provide a photo of that page in the archive, or even a transcription of the sentence that apparently reads “we must dismantle systemic power structures to center intersectional voices, ensuring radical inclusion and equity for every marginalized, diverse lived experience” or whatever.

#7 on the Evanses List — ADMINISTRATIVE ERRORS ON THE CITY MOTION

In this post, I dismantled the motion penned by Tony Hoover—bolstered by his impassioned pleas, convinced the City Council to make Second and Main “Cooper Donut/Nancy Valverde Square.” Click here to read a breakdown of the hallucinations contained in Hoover’s motion, and here for the speech he delivered to Council.

Hoover’s narrative is replete with ahistorical hokum, which Council swallowed hook, line, and sinker. The Evanses, though, reframe this travesty as “an administrative error” and “a bureaucratic error” and state “the ordinance reference error is a citation mistake in a government document,” a spin so nauseatingly disingenuous it caused me to syntax-error-stare until my eyes shriveled into sun-dried grapes of intellectual frustration.

Oh, and they write —

#8 on the Evanses List — THE VALVERDE LEGAL TIMELINE

Half of Hoover’s motion deals with Nancy Valverde; naturally, I dissected that, which has in turn irked the Evanses. Because everyone since the dawn of time has uncritically accepted the greater Nancy Valverde story, I poked a few holes in it, their response being “wait just a damn minute, you’re conflating two different things!“

Except, no. Anthony Hoover — a City official acting in an official capacity — conflated those two things. And since I certainly never conflated them, the Evanses must be talking about Hoover, or some other bungler..oh, wait—no, look at that! They are talking about me:

Let me be clear: not to blow my own horn, but literally everyone conflated the two events until I came along, the first and only person to untangle this mess. My jumping off point came via the Community Impact Statement from the Downtown LA Neighborhood Council, and the subsequent motion before Council—which read:

The idea that Valverde got a lawyer and reversed her harassment comes from Gay L.A. (which the Evanses cite in “Sources,” as “the authoritative scholarly history of LGBTQ life in Los Angeles”) in which Valverde herself provides the date as 1959, via a November 2004 interview of her by Lillian Faderman.

Yet, the Evanses assert that in 1951 she “discovered” a 1950 ruling that ended her harassment. This is historical nonsense: that ruling was on the front page of the Los Angeles Times (and in every other newspaper) in 1950. (Think of it this way: imagine a guy named Bob Smith who claimed in 1937 that the Hindenburg exploded, but no one believed him. A year later, in 1938, he “fearlessly uncovers” a widely circulated news report proving the Hindenburg exploded, and suddenly, everyone believes him. It’s that dumb.) The timeline only makes even a modicum of sense if we accept the 1959 date—perhaps in nine years people simply forgot the landmark ruling—but even then, it’s a stretch. The notion that she “provided her lawyer with that information” is equally absurd, as even the world’s most incompetent attorney would be aware of basic, publicized case law.

So, instead of lazily claiming “Lydia Marsak is wrong to conflate the two,” the Evanses should simply admit the truth: in the face of the unbearably sloppy “research” produced by Tony Hoover, Lydia Marsak is the first person to treat the Valverde tale as a story worthy of actual study and the first researcher to decouple the two conflated narratives. (And I’m still not sure why you’re calling me Lydia; is this an attempt to deadname me?)

#9 on the Evanses List — THE UNDERLYING LOGICAL PROBLEM

This brings us to the “absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence” bit—though they’re misusing Sagan to blur argumentum ad ignorantiam with a quote from geologist Thomas Shepherd, who was expressing that absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. It’s a cute phrase with a grain of truth, as historians don’t work with random samples; we work with sources produced by specific institutions, conventions, and scribal habits. That makes silence interpretable. The “argument from silence” is only a fallacy if you skip the step of asking whether the evidence should be there in the first place.

But the Evanses argue that the evidence is there because it isn’t, claiming the record-keepers were corrupt. They insist we know why the records are missing: the LAPD destroyed their records from the late 1950s! They purged them! To which I say, so what? There isn’t a police force in the nation that retains records that old. Be advised, there is zero reason for LAPD to have its records from back then. I sure as hell wish they did, because I could solve a thousand other mysteries that plague me. But LAPD doesn’t have their records, and I’ll tell you why (click here). Oh, and on a related note, here’s a fun fact they’ll never tell you: Chief Parker, during the time of the supposed riot (when he was busy arguing for media access into arrest records, see #4 above) spoke out against the destruction of records:

Then the Evanses repeat the whole “Chief Parker restricted access to criminal records” which, again, I debunked above.

And that’s it. Well, except the final section, which consists of statements so irrefutable that I’ve decided to refute them anyway.

#10 on the Evanses’ list — WHAT NO ARGUMENT HAS SUCCESSFULLY CHALLENGED (don’t forget this is a clickable link)

This is just a list of … stuff. Six statements which are more or less true—some more than others—but which they label “The Solid Ground.” Briefly:

1. Cooper Donuts was a real business and it started in 1952. Fine, no-one doubts that.
2. There was a Cooper Donuts at 517 South Main. Yes! And this is the exciting news I came here to repeat! (Though the Evanses write that Cooper’s was “next to Harold’s and the Waldorf, precisely where Rechy has always located the event.” To be strictly factual, Rechy only mentioned Harold’s and the Waldorf in one of his repeated tellings, and he did not indicate it was “next to” them, but between them … but now I’m just splitting hairs.)
3. LAPD harrassment of LGBT people was systematic. That may be, but Los Angeles was nothing special in this regard. It was a routine enforcement of the social order that existed in 1950s America—a post-WWII period, particularly following the 1947 federal “Red Scare” and the subsequent moral panic regarding subversives (including the “Lavender Scare” figures like Sumner Welles, Nils Skavang, and Charles Thayer), that saw a massive push across all American cities to cleanse urban centers of “deviants”. Specifically, the Evanses assert “under Chief Parker, LGBTQ arrests increased 86.5% over the prior decade. This is established by multiple historians,” etc. Except: nope. Notice they don’t provide a citation, despite writing at the top of the page “A number of specific arguments have been raised against the Cooper Do-nuts story. This page addresses them directly — with citations.” Shockingly, the 86.5% number is bullshit. Don’t believe me? Click here.
4. Cooper Donuts was a “place of genuine welcome.” Ok, cool.
5. John Rechy still says something happened on Main Street. Ok, and? Yep, Rechy hasn’t retracted the story and never will, which surprises precisely no-one.
6. There’s a Cooper Donuts/Nancy Valverde Square at Second and Main. Yes, we know. That’s all fine and good, but the Evanses mysteriously add “The City’s Historic Cultural Monument process requires independent research and review” (click here). This is true — I’ve worked on a few, and HCM noms require a formal application, field surveys, evaluation by the Office of Historic Resources, and consideration by the Cultural Heritage Commission, and recommendation by the Planning and Land Use Management Committee. But the Evanses adding this statement is pretty funny, as the naming of the square had absolutely nothing to do with the Historic Cultural Monument process. Square Naming triggers zero reviews by Office of Historic Resources, or the Cultural Heritage Commission, or, to be accurate, anyone — there is no oversight panel, no historic evaluation, no nothing. All you need is a narrative and one councilmember to sponsor the thing, and it’s done. Let me be clear: when they assert the process “requires independent research and review” I’d reply yeah I effing wish, because Cooper Donuts/Nancy Valverde Square entailed zero independent research and precisely zero review.

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Ok, and that, I hope, will be my final words on Cooper Donuts.

One last thing, again,

…who the hell is Lydia Marsak?

Hey all! My pal Lisa Napoli published a nifty piece in LA Local this week, called “The four corners: How I watched downtown LA rise, fall and reinvent itself” (my apologies to Lisa for changing it to “Third and Figueroa” in my much-shortened blogpost title!) and if you haven’t seen it, check it out:

The four corners: How I watched downtown LA rise, fall and reinvent itself

The four corners of Third and Figueroa are a pretty neglected part of the world (most tourists, and even residents, rarely venture west of Hope Street, save for the Bonaventure to the south, and the Broad-connected metro stop to the north) so it’s neat to see the four major buildings covered. Those being, of course, the Sheraton Grande, The Park, the Bunker Hill Apartments, and the World Trade Center (a recent post one the WTC, here). Each of these projects gets their own entry in Marsak’s Guide, of course:

And since we’re on the subject of Third and Figueroa, I can’t help myself but provide some then n’ nows featuring some lesser-seen images of Bunker Hill:

It’s 1973. You wake up and as you blink through the smog, what do you see? Vietnam slogging on, Johnson’s “Great Society” in complete collapse, and various countercultural crusades have dismantled the social scaffolding that once provided you with clear roles and status. What do you do? Succumb to enervation and aimlessness in a fractured, filthy present, lurching toward a sterile, alienating future?

No! You go backward. The only bulwark against modern alienation is its wholesale rejection. Next thing you know, your local pizza parlor has player pianos and Tiffany lamps; Tiny Tim is tiptoeing through the tulips; The Sting has suffused the landscape with Joplin ragtime; and your cultural touchstones are The Waltons, Paper Moon, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Go outside, and girls are less go-go than they are Gunne Sax.

You think back on Bunker Hill as it existed just ten years ago. It wasn’t a bleak and blighted hellscape, yet; it was more Railway Children than it was Omega Man. As the reverie overtakes you, you realize what you truly miss: Angels Flight. The City scooped it up in 1969 and promised its return in “a couple of years.” It’s been four years now—how much longer will you have to wait?

But then, you get wind it IS back. Angels Flight! Reborn! Atop the new downtown Hyatt Regency! You conjure images of flocked wallpaper, Gibson Girl waitresses, and charmingly amateurish murals of Meredith P. Snyder shaking hands with Teddy Roosevelt.

But then you actually get there and it’s just covered in mirrors, reflecting not just your own weary face, but the inherent narcissism and cocaine use for which 1970s Los Angeles is so rightfully known.

Oh well.

ANGEL’S FLIGHT

Here, then, for you viewing pleasure, are some shots no-one has ever seen, of Los Angeles’ brand new revolving restaurant/cocktail lounge Angel’s Flight, in November 1973.

RECORD SCRATCH! Not long after this post went live, I got a message on my Instagram from Adsausage (presumably the esteemed Mr. Englender himself) hipping me to this link: https://www.adsausage.com/southern-california-in-print-paris-match#broadway-plaza and hooooooo boy!

Angel’s Flight revolving — in color!

Some scans of its menu (mailed to me out of the blue by the incomparable Chris Nichols):

Angel’s Flight spun and spun all through the 1970s and into the 80s. When and why did Angels Flight disappear? Tough to be certain. You could still spin into the New Year of 1988:

But the last known mention of the place was just a couple months later, in a Jack Smith column about how restaurants had become so annoyingly loud:

Maybe Nann Miller convinced them, because there are no further mentions of Angel’s Flight—and neither are there subsequent references to there being a revolving room atop the Broadway Plaza.

THE BROADWAY PLAZA

At this point you say, wait, what, so, Angels Flight bar and restaurant was in something called the Broadway Plaza? Which had a Hyatt Regency? And it was at Seventh and Flower? What the heck are you talking about?

In 1966, Broadway-Hale and Ogden Development began work on the Broadway Plaza, a massive project bounded by Seventh, Eighth, Flower, and Hope Streets. It is formally announced in February 1969: 500 room hotel, 32-story office tower, wrapping around a two-level shopping mall. All designed by Charles Luckman, head of Ogden Development.

On November 16th, 1973 the Philharmonic Affiliates held a “Promenade Party” to benefit the Philharmonic.

They sold 9500 tickets at $10 a pop and the event was the affair of the season:

The next day, November 17th, Mayor Tom Bradley was on hand for the official ribbon cutting:

Fast forward fifty-some years, and the mall has been blown out and opened to the elements, after the whole thing was remade as The Bloc (sorry, THE BLOC).

THE SPACE TODAY

At this point you are, undoubtedly, asking so what’s up there now? Does it still revolve? Can I get an Angels Flight Delight cocktail while spinning around in a circle? The answer is no, though the space has retained its amazing view. It is now the fitness center of the Sheraton Grand.

ANGEL’S FLIGHT RESTAURANT AND LOUNGE — THE REBOOT

Angels Flight was again reborn…in 1993. The Hotel Inter-Continental (Marsak’s Guide, p. 51) opened in December of that year, and included nods to Old Bunker Hill (naming the meeting rooms Bradbury, Crocker, Widney, etc.) up to and including a restaurant called Angel’s Flight:

Angel’s Flight Restaurant & Lounge opened January 1993 (read a review here), but did not survive long — Steve Harvey noted in August 1994 it had shut down “a few months ago.” In mentioning the late Angel’s Flight at the Broadway Plaza, and the demise of the Angel’s Flight at the Inter-Continental, but conversely noting the actual Angels Flight funicular was being returned to Bunker Hill, Harvey quipped:

ANGELS FLIGHT — THE CLOTHING LINE

As long as I’ve got you here, and we’re talking about “the other Angels Flight” and “another other Angels Flight” how about we cover one more:

And you’re like yeahhhhh…I’ve been in thrift stores and seen terrifying polyester outfits with this tag? What’s the deal with that?

Well, Tobias Kotzin (b. 1897) was a Jewish kid from, of all places, Covington, Kentucky (just over the Ohio River from Cincinnati). After wartime service as a corporal in the tank corps, in 1920 he lit out for Los Angeles seeking employment in the garment trade. He began the A-1 Manufacturing Co. on East Pico, became president of the Menswear Manufacturers of Los Angeles, and married into the prosperous Finkelhor family of Beverly Hills.

Kotzin, aged 78, dies in March 1976. Very soon thereafter, his company gets…weird. I know it was the 1970s and all, but even by 1970s standards, his apparel becomes downright prurient. And the name of the particularly salacious clothing line? Angels Flight, of course.

Why Angels Flight? Maybe there’s something suggestive in the trolley “rising up” … in any event, the first ads for Angels Flight clothing begin to appear in November 1976. Their raison d’être: Angels Flight trousers assist you in exhibiting your penis to random girls. Yes, that sentence is as accurate as it is disturbing.

Advertisments for Angels Flight clothing peter out (see what I did there) through 1985 and finally disappear altogether.

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Angel’s Flight — the revolving lounge, the posh restaurant, the manhood-shaping trouser — are gone, though we have had their namesake, Angels Flight, returned, of course. Remember, as well, that while we have lost our revolving Angels Flight restaurant, we still have the national treasure that is the Bonavista Lounge, the greatest revolving cocktail bar on planet earth, if not the greatest single interior space on said planet (St. Peter’s Basilica and Trinity College Library pale in comparison, yeah, I said what I said).

Our mission now is to remember the wild 1970s interior that was once the Broadway Plaza, and never forget the revolving wonder of what was once…Angel’s Flight.

I’ve been hearing for ten years that Loyola Marymount University was at work on a Chavez Ravine archive project, and last Thursday, the internet lit up with this press release. Lo and behold, it had been released to the public, and you may see it for yourself by clicking here.

It is a fascinating collection — 222 documents in total — containing some incredible material. I encourage you to wade through all of it and discover its many facets yourself, but just for fun, I’m going to share a dozen of my favorites. (And, because I found LMU’s metadata a trifle thin, and cannot help but nitpick where there is nitpicking to be done, I shall do that as well.)

I realize my penchant for precision may border on pedantic nitpickery. I understand that this is a new project and that there are kinks to iron out—for instance, when images clearly captured in the late 1940s are dated to the spring of 1905:

Beyond those occasional quirks, I am mystified by LMU’s omission of basic data. One wonders whether they possessed location information and opted to withhold it, or if it simply slipped through the cracks. But I’m not here to disparage the work — it’s outrageously important to share these rare images, and we not only delight in them, but, I intend to put them to good use:

The history of Chavez Ravine is, on numerous fronts, fiercely contested, up to and including the size of its population. The prevailing statistic cites CR contained 300 families, but —

Fact is, nobody knows how many people lived in Chavez Ravine, because nobody has actually counted. Though there has yet to be a rigorous house-by-house count, it is my professional estimation that the total stood at approximately 275 families—totaling around 1,100 individuals—a calculation based on structure counts, square footage, and average occupancy. We will not have a definitive answer until every residence is mapped against the 1950 census. I have already begun this project in Scrivener, mapping every available facade image to its corresponding address, attaching every resident, etc.

Another element of this being, while I love the idea of keeping the memories of these displaced families alive — I am primarily an architectural historian, and it’s long past time for a systematic survey of interbellum working-class vernacular residential typologies in Chavez Ravine! The tales of topographic adaptation, material salvage, growth patterns, and communal spaces endemic to this particular landscape of autoconstrucción interplay with incremental architecture as it applies to traditional massing vs. organic construction integrating structure into a verdant terrain! Sorry, I get excited.

So that’s what I’m working on. In the meantime, I will always deconstruct the mainstream narrative when I see fit. No surprises, but LMU’s “historical background” concerning the subject is not without its issues—beyond simple flubs like the date of the famous 1950 letter or the persistent myth regarding Aurora Vargas (who was never a resident of the house from which she was removed and, in fact, lived ten miles away at the time). Suffice it to say I’ll just say it has issues (rather than pick it apart as I did to John Laslett) and leave it at that.

Ultimately, this project is a monumental achievement. I offer my heartfelt congratulations and gratitude to the team behind it. I, and the rest of the community, look forward to the continued expansion of this collection.

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If you’re interested in Chavez Ravine, and haven’t read my other work on the subject, see here:

The Truth About Chavez Ravine, Pt. I

Chavez Ravine, Pt. II: What is Chavez Ravine?

Chavez Ravine, Pt. III: Calm Before the Storm

Chavez Ravine, Pt. IV: The Rise and Fall of Elysian Park Heights

Chavez Ravine, Pt. V: Here Come the Dodgers

Chavez Ravine, Pt. VI: The Arechiga Family

Chavez Ravine, Pt. VII: What Have We Learned

Channel 5 Flubs Chavez Ravine

Deflating More Chavez Ravine Nonsense

Disneyland Gets the Chavez Ravine Treatment

Chavez Ravine in John Laslett’s “Shameful Victory”

Checking In on the Bunk

The remains of Old Bunker Hill are few and far between. Yes, we have Bunker Hill captured in still images, and in cinema, but actual archaeological residua is scant. We have a house, of course, but attempts to analyze the greater Hill’s physical, material culture is generally limited to, for example, a retaining wall or two, and a couple pieces of wood. And a doorknob. So any time we rediscover an original remnant of Bunker Hill, it’s news! And I’ve got news!

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I was recently digging into the history of the First German Methodist Church, at 449 South Olive Street, on the southern edge of Bunker Hill. My need to document the church stemmed, in part, from regret it hadn’t been included in my book Bunker Hill, Los Angeles. The book featured the Olive Street synagogue on the northern end of the hill, but not the Olive Street Methodist church at the southern tip—omitted, but not disincluded for lack of trying, because if there’s one thing you learn about producing books like these, it’s that you can’t include everything. (You can try, but the editors will excise most of it, and then gently remind you that there are few buyers for 50-pound 1,000-page books.)

First German Methodist had been demolished in 1988, and I began to look into the status of the congregation. Had they survived? Maybe moved on and into new digs? Turns out they had, but what I didn’t expect is that they took a part of Old Bunker Hill with them!

This, then, is the story of some incredible, beautiful survivors from Bunker Hill.

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THE GERMANS

Before we get to German Methodists in particular, let’s talk about Germans in general. The German contribution to the first century of Los Angeles—roughly from the 1840s through the 1940s—was foundational to the city’s transition from a dusty outpost to a global metropolis, proving absolutely essential to the economic, cultural, and political architecture of early Angeleno life. One hears a lot about, for example, our Spanish founders, and the ever-important French, and the primarily Anglo-Saxon and Scots-Irish Midwestern migrants of the boom years, but because of their propensity for assimilation (made more pressing due to anti-German sentiment in and around the wars) and intermarriage, the Germans rarely get examined. Traditional German sites like Alpine Village have faded away. When Germans do get mentioned as they relate to Los Angeles, it’s usually the interbellum-era intellectual class (e.g., this/this/this/this) who were largely irreligious, Jewish, or both; less so those of the earlier variety, whom we’ll examine here.

Germans had the numbers; in 1900, among the foreign-born population in Los Angeles, the Germans ranked first (those born in England ranking second). Their social institutions—including the Turnverein (athletic clubs) and various German-language newspapers like the Süd-Californische Post—wielded civic and political influence. Los Angeles was the winemaking capital of California largely due to Charles and Henry Kohler and their partner, John Frohling. The Maier and Zobelein Brewery, later known as the Los Angeles Brewing Company, became one of the largest industrial operations in the city, providing stable labor and significant tax revenue that funded early urban expansion. Anaheim was a massive German undertaking, back when it was still part of Los Angeles County. Germans were instrumental in banking (Hellman), mercantile trades (Newmark), manufacturing (Entenmann), and on and on.

And architecture? People think Romanesque Revival originated with that Franco-English guy Richardson, but it was in fact the product of Germans importing their Rundbogenstil (Round-Arch Style). Without the German tradition of Heimatstil—and its focus on woodcraft, exposed joinery, and natural materials—we would have neither the bungalow nor Craftsman home. Furthermore, we wouldn’t have Modernism. And no, I’m not merely talking about Gropius and Mies, Neutra and Schindler, Wachsmann and Pfisterer; I’m talking about the German-trained engineers who conceived the early American daylight factories, and whose structural calculus built them—the true progenitors of Modernism.

America’s educational system, agricultural mastery, and advances during the Industrial Revolution? Largely German. The German national consciousness brought to America a deep-seated cultural and philosophical tradition defined by the concepts of Kultur, Bildung, and Ordnung. This consciousness provided a structural backbone to the American experiment, grounding it in a heritage of disciplined intellect, vocational mastery, and high civic engagement. (And in case you’re wondering, no, I personally have no German ancestry, so I’m not trying to toot my own ethnic horn.)

Now, with all that in mind, for our purposes today, let’s not forget Los Angeles’s German churches. These include the German-language St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, at 12th and Los Angeles Street; German Baptist at 8th and Maple; German Lutheran at 8th and Flower; Trinity Evangelical German Lutheran at 18th and Cherry; the German Evangelical Association at 618 South Olive St. (later the location of Clifton’s Pacific Seas); and the German Evangelical Church under the Synod of North America, AKA the Friedensgemeinde, on San Julian Street near 7th, among others.

And then, of course, there was First German Methodist.

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FIRST GERMAN METHODIST

When you think of the Germans and their religion, what comes to mind is Western Christendom’s famous fracture between Lutheranism and Catholicism. Methodism in Germany was a later, less influential arrival, arriving in the 19th century through missionary efforts; it remained a “free church” movement, never gaining the deep institutional and historical ties that Lutheranism and Catholicism possess.

Methodism emerged from the eighteenth-century Anglican revival led by John Wesley. It emphasizes personal holiness, social concern, and an experiential relationship with God. Once a reformist movement within the Church of England, it evolved into a distinct Protestant denomination centered on methodical discipline, conversion, and global evangelism. I am far from a religious scholar, so I turned to one, asking about the difference between the Methodists and Lutherans. She wrote: ‘In essence, Lutheranism is a theology of the Cross—focused on the objective reality of what Christ has done for the sinner—while Methodism is a theology of Holiness—focused on how that grace manifests in the observable, sanctified life of the believer.’ Turning to another scholar for perspective on Catholicism, he noted, and here I am greatly paraphrasing: ‘Catholicism is an institutional and sacramental system that emphasizes the Church as the necessary vessel for salvation, whereas Methodism is a pietistic and revivalist movement that emphasizes the individual’s practical experience of holiness and the active application of faith in the world.’

Now that we have defined our terms, we turn our tale to Dr. Johann Carl Zahn. Born near Halle an der Saale in 1822, he became a doctor in Saxony, and in 1848 emigrated to Australia. In Melbourne, in 1869, he met and married an English girl, an Anglican Church missionary named Frances Sharp. They moved to San Francisco in 1871 and come 1873 headed south for Los Angeles. While Los Angeles had the Turnverein Germania (the German gymnastics club) and the Teutonia Singing and Social Club, there were no German churches. Zahn built a house on Spring Street, between Fourth and Fifth, which included a congregation hall, and on July 5, 1874, he founded an independent German Protestant congregation.

There had been Englishmen practicing Methodism in Los Angeles since 1853. The Annual Conference of Methodists had been established in California immediately after statehood, and a Southern California Conference followed in 1875. That set the stage for the arrival of Gottlieb Bollinger.

Gottllieb Heinrich Bollinger had been born in Hattenhofen in 1829, emigrated to America, where he gained experience among the German Methodists of Cincinnati before being transferred to California in 1865. He founded many congregations and built churches and parsonages throughout the Sacramento area. Upon his arrival in Los Angeles in 1875, Bollinger was placed in charge of the Southern California Conference of Methodists, but his first move was to pay a visit to Dr. Johann Zahn. Zahn already operated the aforementioned German Protestant church—of which more than half the congregants were Methodist—which he then handed over to Bollinger. (Zahn and family went on to build a house on Bunker Hill, of course.)

In November 1876, Bollinger organized the congregation as the German Congregation of the Methodist Episcopal Church of the Southern California Conference. For its first three years, the German congregation met within the structure of the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles, built in 1868 on Fort Street (now Broadway) between Third and Fourth. In the fall of 1879, the German Methodists completed their own church on Fourth Street, between Fort and Hill streets.

With the church established, Bollinger was transferred in 1883. He was followed by a number of successors, and the church continued to grow. Eventually, several more German Methodist congregations were founded—in Hollywood, Pasadena, Anaheim, and San Pedro—to the point that these congregations split from the American Methodist conferences to form the California Deutsche Konferenz in 1890.

The downtown German Methodist congregation on Fourth Street flourished and prospered; within the church, countless baptisms and marriages were performed. Eventually, it became time for the building to expand. One of the congregants, William Knickrehm—who had been married in the church—was a building contractor well-established in the house-moving and house-raising business. In March 1897, Knickrehm did the work of raising the one-story building and constructing a ground floor underneath, where stairs, assembly rooms, and offices were placed. A pipe organ was added to the church as well.

Above, the home of First German Methodist after the 1897 addition, but before it gets hauled off…

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THE ARRIVAL ON BUNKER HILL

In 1901, the congregation sold the Fourth Street property seen above (for $23,000, having paid $750 for it in 1878) and purchased a lot on Olive, north of Fifth Street. William Knickrehm was again in charge of moving the church, but this time he hauled it a block and a half east on Fourth and a block south on Olive, plopping it down in its new Bunker Hill digs.

At 451 South Olive St. —

A quick aside—the church builds a hospital on the neighboring lot:

Dr. Zahn died in 1901, bequeathing $16,000 to the church. The congregation decided to build a hospital, so they purchased the house next door and welcomed nurses sent by the German Methodist Deaconess Motherhouse in Cincinnati. However, the church had grander plans: soon, a new hospital was under construction, which opened as the German Deaconess Hospital on February 8, 1904.

The church soon realized that running a hospital wasn’t in their business plan, and it was leased to the Clara Barton Hospital, who had outgrown their location at Hope & Pico.

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THE NEW CHURCH ON BUNKER HILL

In 1908, the church took on a new pastor. His name was Jakob H. Durhbahn—an American by birth, but one whose father had come from Schleswig-Holstein. The congregation had swelled, they had money in the bank, and it was time either to move from the now-too-tiny church on the southern tip of Bunker Hill or to demolish it and build anew. Durhbahn, the board, the congregation, and the superintendent decided on the latter. Thus:

In February 1910, the Times published this rendering of the new church, with Albert Raymond Walker as the architect. For a German church, it is a rather English design—more an Edwardian interpretation of mid-19th-century Gothic Revival than pure Gothic Revival itself, if there can be such a thing. It appears to have roots in the enormously influential 1847 Trinity Episcopal Church in Columbia, South Carolina, which was itself based on York Minster. In the spring of 1910, however, Walker partnered with John Terrell Vawter, and by June, they had reconfigured the design:

The style remained Late English Gothic, though with considerably less glass, likely due to financial considerations. The cornerstone was laid August 14, 1910, and the church was dedicated July 11, 1911.

When finished, it looked like this:

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THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH, 1911-1988

Its greatest flowering was during the 1920s. During the pastoral leadership of Rudolph Zurbuchen, between 1919 and 1933, the church had more than 250 members and many friends.

In the mid-1980s, average attendance was about 75 people at Sunday services, but the sanctuary would be packed to the gills during the Advent and Christmas seasons for traditional Christvespern, as well as for confirmation and cantata services. The mixed choir, men’s choir, and handbell choir helped draw in people, as did the monthly ‘Organ Concert at Noon.’ The church also produced a weekly half-hour radio program on AM KTYM and maintained a weekly column, ‘Word for a Sunday,’ in the German-language newspaper, the California Staatszeitung.

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A NEW CHURCH

It’s 1988, and downtown is in a serious period of doldrums. This was before the loft-conversion boom, so there were few actual residents. New commercial towers were sprouting up, especially on Bunker Hill. It was time for the German Methodist congregation to find a new home, so they sold the property to Maguire-Thomas Partners in May. MTP pulled the demolition permit that November and razed the church—after which lots 2 and 3, block 107 of the Beaudry Tract, became part of the greater footprint of the Gas Company Tower:

But before the wholesale wrecking began, the First German Methodist Church of Los Angeles took stuff. They wisely removed some important parts of their historic building and placed them into storage, awaiting the time they could build anew. These materials remained in storage for about a decade, while the congretation (who meanwhile held services in borrowed quarters at St. Barnabas Episcopal in Eagle Rock) looked for a suitable forever home. At last they found a spot of land in Glendale, hired Fields-Devereaux to build a new house of worship, and in August 1997 opened their doors:

And now, ladies and gentlemen, you may remember I mentioned the German Methodists grabbed a couple things on their way out the door…I may have undersold that a bit. Are you ready? Deep breath:

That’s right, they brought their giant stained glass church windows!

The window opposite Christ, in the chapel, is this beauty:

But wait! We’re not done! Let’s say you stay after service for a fellowship meal that’s held here—

And that’s not all! Other material brought from Bunker Hill:

And that is the story of how the German Methodists brought the greatest and most important remnants from Bunker Hill to Glendale!

You may be wondering how I managed to get all the wonderful images that accompany this post. Earlier this year I called up the church, and after determining the windows were in fact there, I made arrangements to go photograph them. This I did, of course, by going to a Sunday service, and watching Rev. Kurt Poland in action at the pulpit:

Pastor Kurt delivered a marvelous sermon, and it was a lovely service in general—beyond simply being surrounded by all that stained glass! I asked Pastor Kurt if he would be so kind as to allow me to poke around in the church archives, and he was gracious enough to say yes.

Remarkably, I happened to visit on the very day the congregation decided to change its name. Church name changes are routine, and First German Methodist is no exception; however, this was the day they elected to once and for all remove German from their name:

Naturally, it saddens me when the last vestiges of Teutonic influence disappear from the landscape; such reflects the sad state of our Zeitgeist. Still, whatever they need to do to help spread the gospel can’t be all bad.

So! Instead of spending your Sunday morning doomscrolling over avocado toast, go enrich your soul at International Community UMC. Tomorrow’s Pentecost Worship Service begins at 10:30am! Music, scripture, prayer, and seeing all that glass in person is the cherry on the top. You get wise! You get to church! — click here.

The World Trade Center! Important! Incredible! And…doomed? Well, no, but…sort of?

You know about the World Trade Center because you have undoubtedly been there to marvel at its wonders, but if you haven’t, you’ve at least seen it in the book Bunker Hill, Los Angeles…

…and in the book Marsak’s Guide to Bunker Hill…

…but should you not be familiar with the wonders of the World Trade Center, let me bring you, quickly, up to speed:

Once upon a time, the Bunker Hill redevelopment area superblock bounded by Third, Fig, Fourth & Flower was slated as site of “The Bunker Hill Center” retail mall, and then the “Los Angeles International Financial Center,” and wound up as The World Trade Center, for reasons I won’t go into here, but you can read all about it in this Instagram post. (While we’re on the subject of Instagram, I would suggest you go to amazing bonaventurehotel fan page, specifically their three recent WTC-related posts here, here, and here.)

Anyway, the World Trade Center opens in January 1975. It is a development by Edward K. Rice, who was chairman of the board of Conrad Associates, the Van Nuys architectural firm who designed the $30-million complex. Rice was an absolute titan when it came to concrete innovation, at least on par with Whittlesey.

Point being, the World Trade Center exists. It is one of the strangest, most wonderful, and sublime spaces in Los Angeles. For now. Check it out:

Ok, maybe you’re not wowed by Late-Modern Sculpturist glass skin towers. Fine. Let’s go inside then:

It’s an absolutely transcendent space, one of the great intact 1970s lobbies. I know, people my age might scoff at the prospect that 1970s architecture is cool, but the kids (can we still call Millennials kids?) love the stuff. The WTC lobby is within spitting distance (or, in this case, pedway distance) of 1970s interiors found in the Bonaventure Hotel and Bank of America (née Security Pacific), truly some of the best in the world. But this one has Tony Sheets:

This is a five-foot-high, 1000-foot-long poured-in-place concrete mural about the development of mercantile trade, called The History of World Commerce. This is Sheets’ masterpiece. In 2019, back when Jamison was going to build a residential tower on the site, an assessment was made of the building: it stated that because the artwork wasn’t fifty years old, and the artist was still alive, it wasn’t eligible to be considered for…anything. Of course, now the artwork is fifty years old, and Tony Sheets is deceased. But someone may read the report and descriptions of History of World Commerce featuring lines like “it does not articulate a particular, unique concept of design that would lead it to express an aesthetic ideal or high artistic value” which is embarrassingly stupid. In fact, the report goes on to say that post-redevelopment Bunker Hill is not a significant or distinguishable entity, and its components lack individual distinction. Which resets the bar for embarrassingly stupid.

Flash forward to today. 2019’s residential tower is dead, but the City (despite Los Angeles leading the nation in numeric population loss) says we need housing! So, they’re turning it into a public housing project: 512 subsidized units to the tune of $104million ($203,000 a unit). The effort, according to Mayor Bass, is to “continue decreasing homelessness,” but this sort of project has been difficult, because “city regulations stood in the way.” As subsidized housing projects go — 512 units — this one is massive. Consider: Pueblo del Rio was 400 units, but across 18 acres; Rancho San Pedro was 285 units, across 13 acres; William Mead was 449 units, 15 acres; Estrada Courts, 214 units, 10 acres; Avalon Gardens, 164 units, 15 acres; Hacienda Village, 184 units, 18 acres; Imperial Courts, 498 units, across 36 acres; there’s another half-dozen examples but you get the idea. Consider the densest projects: Jordan Downs, with 700 units on 50 acres, therefore provided each unit 3,111 square feet of land, and it had to be torn down in part because it was too dense. The WTC project makes Jordan Downs look like freakin’ Alpine County.

So, removal of amenity spaces, without those pesky regulations…makes one wonder. Now, it seems that the Sheets mural will remain:

Now that brings us to today. They’re ramping up to begin Phase One, which is 241 units, located wholly in the area seen in the image immediately above. (What about the other 271 units? Because DBS clearly says it’s 512 units, but, this only mentions 241, which would mean the cost per unit —and remember, they’re not buying the building! — is not $203,000 as mentioned above, but $435,000…what, we can’t buy ’em a house?)

I worry that completion of the 241 units, access to the lobby will be limited, as will access to the pedways (and the pedways are both historic and awesome).

Of course, the Powers That Be have stated that this project will have “no significant impact on the human environment.” Which again redefines “embarrassingly stupid,” but it’s a statement straight outta Sacramento, so what else do you expect. Plus, they have a big fat 96-page report called a FONSI (Finding of No Significant Impact) and since my tax dollars paid for it, who would I be to disagree with…me?

Anyway:

Comments received on or before May 13 (basically tomorrow) “will be considered” even though the works is a done deal. Yep, that’s the one thing you can do: tell Elizabeth Brown, Loan Administrator, California Housing Finance Agency — eabrown@calhfa.ca.gov — that the mural and pedways should stay open and accessible. Now, Elizabeth Brown might be the nicest person in the world, but I doubt very much a Sacramento loan administrator for CalFHA will have much say in how the people of Los Angeles might enjoy a shared cultural resource. But it’s literally the only crumb they’ve tossed us, so, you never know! Get emailing!

Well that’s ↑ over, of course, but I’ll keep you abreast of developments!

Come on out Thursday the 23rd, 7pm, to hear me go on about our lost 19th century built environment, the world of Arnold Hylen, and what it took to republish his masterpiece, Los Angeles Before the Freeways.

Greetings fellow Hill fan!

Bunker Hill fascinates us largely because of the way it responded to, and resisted, modernity.

And a large part of modernity, in general, springs from speed. Transport. Modernity’s drive to systematically annihilate space and time, reorganizing human life via acceleration. Stuff like that.

Thus a central part of the story of Bunker Hill—which blossomed largely due to the railroad—is how it reacted to and was morphed by the horse-cart, the streetcar, and the auto. Technological progress both avoided and penetrated the Hill, isolating and integrating it, in unusual ways inconsistent with the development of greater Los Angeles.

Want to learn more, and look at pretty pictures while you do it? Come on out to the Lanterman! I don’t have to tell you that any trip to the Lanterman is a joy (learn more about the Lanterman here) and that it was designed by Arthur Leonard Haley, who concocted a number of Edwardian-era apartment buildings for Bunker Hill (e.g., the Touraine, the Munn, the Mission, the Waldron, the Francis).

Click here:

https://www.lantermanhouse.org/list-of-events/history-of-bunker-hill-and-transportation

Early 1980s, I’m about fourteen, and I saw Death Race 2000 on KHJ Channel 9. At which point, as you might imagine, I said holy crap, this is the greatest movie ever made. Of course it was heavily edited, but a buddy of mine with Showtime told me it was going to be on Showtime, so I invited myself over to see the picture in all its uncut glory. When I got my driver’s license a year later, suffice it to say, Death Race 2000 had not been a good influence on me.

Anyway, the other day I was musing over how lucky 1970s filmmakers were to have 1970s architecture scattered about the landscape, with which to depict futuristic dystopiae. Yeah, I know, Get Carter and Clockwork Orange, but I mean specifically Southern California; consider Conquest of the Planet of the Apes making use of Century City and UC-Irvine, or Buck Rogers shooting at the Bonaventure. I decided to revisit Death Race 2000, because through the foggy veil of forty-some years, I recalled it contained some “let’s use Brutalism to depict the coming dystopia” lurking in there.

I was not disappointed. Death Race 2000 holds up as great unhinged trash cinema, and I was correct about brutalism-as-future in various DR2K scenes, e.g. the final act takes place at the Chet Holifield Federal Building in Laguna Niguel (as designed by Pereira, who designed Apes-era Irvine, so there you go). Plus there’s a bunch of other L.A. locations, like this scene shot at Pereira’s Union Oil just west of Bunker Hill.

What I hadn’t expected to see is some Bunker Hill!

This scene was shot in the fall of 1974, on South Grand Avenue, between First and Second.

Should you wish to view the Bunker Hill clip in its greater context (that is, by watching the Greatest Movie Ever Made) the movie is online here (though not of the greatest quality; I viewed it on Amazon Prime), and the Bunker Hilliness begins at about twenty-four minutes in.

Greetings fellow Hill enthusiast!

Admit it, you wake every morn and muse “that Bunker Hill place sure is intriguing, but I wish someone would guide me through the area for hours on end discussing where this building stood, where they shot that noir picture, but that’s never going to happen, so I shall suffer in the perpetual darkness of ignorance.”

Well suffer no more! Two weeks from today, via the intrepid work of Esotouric, I’ll be leading YOU and a whole collection of like-minded individuals across the landscape, navigating its vanished architectural strata and cinematic mythology, walking and talking Bunker Hill until you emerge from the darkness and ascend into the light of truth!

You may sniff at the fact that I’m a mere academic attempting to grasp our topic in the abstract, and you’d be right to do so. That’s why the other tour guide come March 21st is Gordon Pattison, who lived on the Hill in its pre-redevelopment era! My theoretical knowledge can only go so far, so Gordon’s experiential knowledge—a deep, biological, and psychological understanding—will lead you into greater comprehension and insight. Together, we shall bridge the divide between abstract inquiry and embodied memory, granting you an unparalleled immersion into the essence of Bunker Hill.

Click this link!

BUNKER HILL, DEAD AND ALIVE

And if you (for some unfathomable reason) don’t own my books, I’ll have them available after the tour. I’ll have cash with which to make change but I take Venmo/Zelle/PayPal and all that stuff. Buy them from me on Bunker Hill and we can dispense with pesky nonsense like shipping and sales tax!

Buy two, I’ll knock off five bucks. Buy three, I’ll knock off ten bucks. Buy all four, shave $20 off the total!

See you there!