Author Archives: Nathan Marsak

TL;DR — having two parks called Biddy Mason is silly, and stripping the Pershing Square name is wrong. Click here, hit the “NEW” button, and leave a comment for City Council telling them so. →→→ IMPORTANT! Your comment will NOT go to Council unless you “verify” it. After you post your comment to the site,Continue reading “Act Now to Save Pershing Square”

On Saturday, September 19th, the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles is having a cocktail shindig in the basement speakeasy of Clifton’s. Waitaminnit, you say, I’ve been in Clifton’s and don’t remember a basement speakeasy! No, you don’t: it’s something that previous owner Andrew Meieran worked on for years (before giving up the ship) andContinue reading “Clifton’s Lecture! September 19th!”

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 siteContinue reading “Big News on Cooper Donuts”

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: TheContinue reading ““Third and Figueroa” by Lisa Napoli”

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,Continue reading “The OTHER Angels 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 collectionContinue reading “New Chavez Ravine Archive!”

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 orContinue reading “First German Methodist, Bunker Hill”

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… …butContinue reading “The World Trade Center — in Peril?!”

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 ofContinue reading “Free Lecture! Bunker Hill vs. Modernity! April 19th”