Bunker Hill, Los Angeles

Each of Marsak Manor’s five felines is possessed of markedly distinct opinions and temperament. So, the kitties having perused our recently-published Marsak’s Guide to Bunker Hill, I asked them to discuss their favorite building. Read what they have to say, below: 

PUMPKIN PATCH

“The Subway Terminal is my favorite, as its design references the glories of Europe, but was also built to facilitate interbellum technological prowess. I just purr over that sort of delicious interplay. That said, I’ve heard the structure has since lost its monumental rooftop urns, which hurts my heart. Please tell me that amongst your many endeavors, you are working on their restoration?”

GHOSTIE

“The Courthouse and Hall of Administration, obviously. They evoke the calm, confident charm of the Late Moderne, arguably the most elegant of Postwar building styles. Note the cool hand of Paul R. Williams. It’s a shame these two structures are so misunderstood.”

BORIS

“What’s funny is, it’s the worst buildings on Bunker Hill that intrigue me, which makes them my favorite, in an odd way. I mean, people make a lot of noise about the spiritual emptiness of those muscular granite-clad Reagan-era office towers, and those intrigue me too, but for my money it’s really the whole collection of Kamnitzer-Cotton projects on the Hill that are both insanely forgettable and yet burn themselves into your memory with a sort of aggressive vacuity. I see this guide covers Peter Kamnitzer’s bland Promenade condo complex and the goofy Grand Promenade Apartments, but the most egregious of his work has to be Promenade Towers. Which are great, if you dig jagged, angry concrete filing cabinets. Kind of our version of the khrushchevka yet somehow even worse. Like, it’s common to think of the eighties as just so much new wave-colored depthless giltz, but this perfect storm of overbearing ugliness typifies the true heart of 1980s America, wouldn’t you say?”

LARB

“Nathan, I have glanced at your book containing images and descriptions of Bunker Hill’s contemporary architecture. The very idea is, of course, distasteful, and the actual physical production of this little effort of yours is both garish and crass. While I have issues with your first book, Bunker Hill Los Angeles, at least therein you discussed Andrew Jackson Downing and Charles Eastlake. This product, though, is a gauche, gaudy delve into a debased modern world, to which I prefer not to be exposed, thank you.”

MR. PINEAPPLE

“I like this one cuz it’s funny!”

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Should you (or your cats) wish to gauge the worth and merit of Bunker Hill’s architectural offerings—from the 1901 Third Street Tunnel to the 2023 Regional Connector Station, and everything in between—be sure to pick up this nifty, 64-page guide! They are $25 postpaid, which you may remit via Paypal to marsakster@gmail.com or Venmo to eckener@kingpix.com, or send your cash/check to PO Box 412636, Los Angeles, CA 90041. They are as well available on Amazon and eBay.

This is a limited run, and when they’re gone, they’re gone!

I’ve written about Cooper Do-nuts for two years, but has anyone listened? Of course not, as simple truths are both unacceptable and unwelcome to fact-denying government ideologues and their gullible subjects. Oh well! See the previous posts: Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Congratulations to Tony Hoover of DLANC and the Evans family for getting the “Cooper Do-nuts/Nancy Valverde Square” motion passed. On the day before the vote, I stated it would pass unanimously, and of course it did (be sure an attend the ceremonial plaque unveiling/Square dedication, on the LAPD lawn at Second & Main, Thursday, June 22, at 9am. The ceremony will be repeated Saturday, June 24, at 11am).

Naturally, City Council passed the motion despite every word of said motion being untrue. I’m not being hyperbolic, or “challenging,” or whatever, I’m just stating fact. Are the Council corrupt, or inept? You might argue it’s equal measure of both, and who would I be argue with you.

All of the motion is fanciful? Really, Nathan? Yes, really. It is composed largely of outright fabrication, sprinkled with assertions and suppositions unsupported by facts or logic. Don’t believe me? I’ll tell you what, let’s go through the motion now, line by line. (This I do at the risk of becoming “late Lenny Bruce.” That reference being: Lenny Bruce made history as an acerbic, insightful commenter on society, but at the end of his career he had been cancelled by The Man so many times he spent his time on stage tediously reading from legal documents. So, shall we wade into similarly tedious waters? Let’s go!)

First, a bit of background on how the “Cooper-Valverde Square” motion came to be. It began a year +½ ago, with Tony Hoover’s December 2021 DLANC letter to Council, which asserted “The first recorded instance in the LGBTQIA+ community of gender-transgressive persons resisting arbitrary police arrest occurred at Cooper’s Do-nuts at 215 S. Main Street in Downtown LA in 1959” thus let’s have a big memorial square there.

Mr. Hoover and his brethren-in-government were then disabused of this notion, having learned no such thing happened at Cooper’s in general, and particularly not at Second and Main. Thus a year and change later, de León’s subsequent new & improved motion to Council alludes to the purported uprising only in passing. They’ve shifted focus to a new concept, that Cooper’s was the place Los Angeles’s gender nonconforming found sanctuary, oh and by the way, an important woman named Nancy Valverde ate donuts there.

This is the motion that passed Wednesday June 7:

The motion consists of two main paragraphs. As you can see, the first is about Cooper Do-nuts; this paragraph is comprised of unsupportable claims and fanciful untruths. 

Its second paragraph, concerning Nancy Valverde, is similarly composed of untruths, which I hesitate to call lies, because the author may have honestly thought the stories contained therein were truths. I’m being diplomatic when I say these four sentences are, at best, highly inaccurate statements regarding improbable events of dubious background. 

So! Let’s do this, line-by-freakin’-line:

PARAGRAPH I.

Sentence 1. “Cooper Do-nuts, formerly located at 215 S Main Street in Downtown LA, distinguished itself as a safe space for the LGBTQIA+ community.”

Distinguished itself when and how and according to whom? We have one account of Nancy Valverde and her betrousered ladyfriends hanging out there because it was near her barber school. Otherwise, there are zero accounts of Coopers having any sort of relation to the LGTBQIA2S+ community, save for some unsupported assertions, sixty years after the fact, by a grandson. 

Go read the guidebooks to gay-friendly LA from the 1960s—e.g., Bob Damron’s Address Book—and tell me, in the multitude of listings, is Cooper’s there? 

Of all the Cooper Do-nuts locations, I’m willing to believe the one at 441 South Hill may have been frequented by gay men, given its proximity to Pershing Square. Perhaps, as well, the one at 628 South Olive, for the same reason. But 215 South Main? Away from The Run and across from the Archdiocese and the Union Rescue Mission? Nope, I reject that totally. Similarly, the Cooper’s locations at 316 E 5th and 807 W 3rd, no, never happened. 

2. “Despite the neighboring businesses, a strip of bars known as ‘The Run’, catering to gay men, gender non-conforming individuals were often excluded from these establishments for fear of the bars losing their licenses as a result of LA Municipal Ordinance No. 5022, a city-wide ban on cross dressing between 6pm and 6am.”

First of all, Cooper Do-nuts didn’t “neighbor” The Run. The Run didn’t extend nearly that far north. 

Also—as I pointed out publicly before the Council vote—there WAS NO Municipal Ordinance No. 5022. MC 5022 hadn’t existed since 1936. (How is it that you work for the City and know nothing about your own damn laws?)

De León’s Hoover-penned motion is attempting to refer to MC 52.51, the section of Municipal Code that stipulated against masquerading. Yes, under MC 52.51 an individual could be charged with cross-dressing without a permit, which neither constitutes a city-wide ban (“between 6pm and 6am” or any other time), nor involved businesses being punished. Have you wondered what the law actually said? Let’s read it now:

3. “Cooper Do-nuts, however, remained a safe haven for all members of the queer community regardless of gender presentation.”

As I said with Line 1, there’s no evidence of this, save for a) an Evans grandson just, you know, says so, and b) Nancy Valverde said she enjoyed being a patron there during her stint in barber school, at a time when women were thrown in prison without due process for wearing slacks, and c) John Rechy’s contentions that “gay people got together at Cooper’s Do-nuts” (and when he stated that, he was specifically referring to the Cooper’s on Main near Sixth, which after it was proven that location did not exist, Rechy then stated things didn’t happen at Cooper Do-nuts). To be clear, no transwoman, MtF, cross-dressing man, or AMAB person has ever come out and claimed Cooper Do-nuts was a “safe haven.”

4. “Many also claim Cooper Do-nuts was the site of the first LGBT uprising, occuring [sic] in May 1959 after Los Angeles Police Department officers reportedly attempted to arrest two drag queens and two gay men suspected of sex work and were met with a barrage of spoons, coffee cups, donuts, and coffee thrown by Cooper Do-nuts patrons, forcing the officers to flee without making the arrests.”

Um, no. There is no “many claim” because precisely zero actually claim this. There was, once, a single witness to the event (who also said it happened blocks away), who has specifically stated the whole thing most assuredly did not happen at a Cooper’s. So there you go. I should mention that this one-and-only-person-in-the-history-of-everything who told the story about the riot? His name is John Rechy, and he makes things up for a living (and then makes up reviews about the stuff he made up). 

Atop which, when giving interviews, John Rechy tends to just, you know, say stuff, specifically, stuff that’s wrong. For example, in this Los Angeles Magazine interview Rechy states “the Mattachine Society, the people who were going to jail for publishing One Magazine…that had articles about stuff going on around gay people…and the publishers were arrested. They went to jail.” Certainly sounds like an authoritative statement from someone who was there at the time, but that doesn’t mean it is in the least bit true. No-one was arrested for content and dissemination, and certainly no-one went to jail; the ONE editors were subjected to law enforcement interviews (by FBI agents) about some of their sources, but they declined to cooperate—no arrests, detainment, charges, or imprisonment. And yet because 1000x more people will read Rechy’s interview than will ever read this post, what he said will become the unquestioned (and unquestionable) canon till the end of time.

With Rechy being the lone riot source, it’s important to remember, those who were not there (much less, even born yet) subsequently “claiming” an uprising happened, when backed by no evidence and no eyewitness accounts, aren’t claiming anything; they’re just making stuff up. (And no, despite what you’re told, Nancy Valverde never claimed it, either. She said once, in 2019, that she heard secondhand that something happened, though there was no mention of Cooper’s.)  

5. “News of the incident spread throughout “The Run”, prompting angry Angelenos to fill the streets to protest this particular injustice and the ongoing discrimination endured by the queer community in LA.”

Damn, that’s a bold fabrication out of nowhere. Seriously…the Cooper riot story has been repeated ad infinitum and every time the telling gets inflated and elaborated upon, but this is some next-level concoction. Consider: in the seventeen years the riot story has existed, de León’s motion of May 2023 is literally the first time any one on earth has made this fantastic, spurious claim. Amazing.

PARAGRAPH II.

Sentence 1. “Contemporaneously, Nancy Valverde and her friends Audrey Black and Delores Newton were students at Moler’s Barber College at 265 S. Main Street a few doors down from Cooper Do-nuts which quickly became Nancy and her friends’ regular spot.”

Well, ok. I won’t nitpick the “few doors” line despite Moler being near the opposite end of the block. I will hammer home that if Valverde was at school “contemporaneously” i.e. May 1959, there was no Cooper Do-nuts at 215 South Main. Because the building was torn down in January 1958, and was still a parking lot in May 1959. A new one opened in the late fall of 1959 (and I might its address was 213, not 215, the address in de León’s motion). 

So we’re told Valverde only patronized Cooper Do-nuts because she attended a nearby barber school in 1959 when she was 27 years old. Yet according to the Los Angeles LGBT Center, she didn’t go to barber school. Well, which is it?

2. “As a masculine presenting woman, Nancy was routinely arrested for violating Ordinance No. 5022 and thrown into Lincoln Heights jail in a section known derisively as the ‘Daddy Tank’, reserved for women suspected of being lesbians.”

Again, no, Valverde was NOT charged with violating Ordinance 5022 because it didn’t exist, and hadn’t since she was four years old. 

But let’s say she was arrested for violating its successor code MC 52.51. Nevertheless, there was no“Daddy Tank” at Lincoln Heights jail. LA’s Daddy Tank is actually quite famous, the topic having been treated in numerous scholarly papers, and was the scene of lesbian protests; it existed at Sybil Brand. 

3. “Determined to address this discrimination, Nancy, with the help of a clerk at the LA County Law Library, found rulings that supported her defense that wearing men’s clothing was not a crime.”

Valverde states this happened in 1959. 

The rulings she purportedly found were certainly not some esoteric knowledge. Valverde, we are told, began being arrested for cross-dressing in 1948; the law against female-to-male cross dressing was tossed out in 1950, which was front page news. Nine years later she didn’t remember that happened?

This was of course huge news among any slacks-garbed females. (What, you say maybe Valverde and her friends didn’t read the Times? Every newspaper, major and minor, carried the story, e.g. the Valley Times, the Citizen News, the Daily Press Journal, the Daily News, the Mirror, etc., as can be seen here and here.)

So: women-dressing-as-men was deemed legal in 1950. Valverde certainly knew that in 1950…but then somehow forgot this fact…and in 1959 and had to go to the Law Library to rediscover this knowledge?

Point being, there’s a problem with this narrative, which only gets more problematic and improbable:

4. “Nancy informed her lawyer, Arthur Black, of what she learned and he was able to use these findings in her defense. Nancy’s tenacity and perseverance led the way to ending laws targeting LGBTQIA+ individuals, particularly gender non-conforming persons, in LA.”

Interviews with Valverde, and subsequently de León’s motion, states she informed her lawyer Arthur Black in 1959, but: Arthur S. Black wasn’t admitted to the bar until 1962. 

The way we have been told the story, Valverde was arrested repeatedly, as early as 1948, on a law subsequently reversed by Superior Court judges in 1950. But for nine years she kept getting arrested on something a judge could not legally charge her, up to and including jail terms as long as three months, until she “discovered” this incredible bit of information that was, inarguably,  known to every lawyer in Los Angeles. Apparently it then took her three years, from 1959 to 1962, to find the one and only lawyer who somehow wasn’t familiar with the law, take this knowledge to him and enlighten him, which thereafter, somehow, ended her routine arrests…twelve years after that law was no longer enforced.

The reason Arthur S. Black gets added to the story, apparently, is that he’s the attorney who had that infamous “masquerading ordinance” 52.51 finally and completely overturned in 1963. Now remember, said masquerading ordinance hadn’t applied to women for thirteen years, but was enforced in a “men shall not dress like women without a permit” spirit of the law until dealt its death blow in October ‘63. 

Charles Melvin Martin (1941-2014) was in drag on the corner of Soto and Fourth Street, late August of ‘63, and got popped for it. Martin hired newly-minted lawyer Arthur Black, who argued that this particular section of our Municipal Code was made invalid because it contradicted California State Penal Codes, which thus voided local application of the Municipal Code. The well-known 1950 case law Valverde “discovered” in 1959—whereby Appellate Court jurists legalized women in men’s clothing—was not involved here at all; rather, the 1963 Appellate Court jurists conceded that our law was superseded by State PC sections 185 and 650.

I should add that in ending 52.51, Black hadn’t done anything ingenious or new; he basically copied case law from People v. James Arthur Lane, Jr. whereby San Francisco’s version of the same Municipal law (anti-masquerading Section 440 SFMC) had been similarly made void and invalidated by State law. 

At this point you might say, wellllll, perhaps the decision In re Martin (1963) 221 Cal.App.2d 14, contains some mention of Valverde, I mean, have you read the full copy of the decision, above and beyond the abstract?  I’m glad you asked that, because, can’t say we didn’t try. Journeyed to the Law Library, (yep, the very same one that Nancy Valverde purportedly went to), and pulled bound volumes of the Second District Court of Appeals in search of full case transcript of Crim. No. 9354. In the volume that covers 9350-9367, however, 9354 just ain’t there. Irritatingly, the cases bound within jump from 9353 to 9360. Next thing you know we’re on the phone to Sacramento, with the State Appellate Court’s head librarian, now tasked with finding the full text of the case for us. Perhaps we’ll discover out it’s full of mentions about Nancy Valverde! Spoiler alert: it won’t be, but, you can’t say research here lacks due diligence. 

If Nancy Valverde played any role in ending enforcement of LAMC 52.51, what was it? Even if her help existed, it appears to be vastly overstated—the 1950 Guynn and Granato precedents were not obscure. What’s funny is that if Hoover/de León et al. actually studied some gay history, they’d know this. Faderman & Timmons’ Gay L.A. points out that the Guynn and Granato decisions were included in an annotated volume of the 1956 L.A. Municipal Code. More to the point, Gay L.A. specifically discusses the perennially-misused 5022 vs. the actual law, which was 52.51…but gosh, what a surprise, our local government acting on behalf of gay L.A. can’t be bothered to learn about local government or read the basic textbook about gay L.A. appropriately titled Gay L.A.

To sum up, despite Valverde’s “tenacity and perseverance” she did not in fact help women, obviously, who were instead aided by panel of Judges Jess Stephens, Hartley Shaw and Edward Bishop, appellate division of the L.A. Superior Court in the widely-known People v. Guynn, 1950, CRA 2551 and People v. Granato 1950, CRA 2552. And Valverde didn’t help men, either, as LAPD continued to make arrests for LAMC 52.51 violations until the fall of 1963, when they were prohibited from doing so by In re Martin, which utilized neither Guynn nor Granato in the decision. In short, there exists no evidence that Nancy Valverde’s encounters with the LAPD or the courts eased the path for others similarly situated between 1948-1963. It doesn’t even add up that she even helped herself by “discovering” some widely-known case law, three years before she retained an attorney, who both knew said case law and then never used it in any related legal arguments.

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Why, you might now be asking, would Council then vote for something so patently, provably, repeatedly fabricated? De León’s motion is devoid of fact and replete with falsehood, which Council likely knew (since I had, in fact, told them so, which is a matter of public record), so one may only assume Council read neither the motion nor my thoughts on the matter…but perhaps they were moved by the passion of the speakers, who addressed Council in chambers on June 7. Of all the speakers, the one with the most to say was Tony Hoover, Treasurer of DLANC, and who spearheaded the legislation. The speakers can be seen presenting to Council here, beginning at 56:00.

Tony Hoover spoke at length about the motion, his “passion project.” At 59:44 he goes off on Fletcher Bowron (whom he calls “Bowen”), about how Bowron “championed an ordinance, 5022 in Los Angeles…Fletcher Bowen felt that people who were gender non-conforming were horrendous to society and needed to be incarcerated. 5022 was a very, very, very harsh ordinance in this city…”

I guess it’s no surprise that a government employee, paid with taxpayer dollars, should have absolutely no idea about government. Bowron was a Republican it’s true, but a liberal pro-public housing politician (being liberal cost him reelection in 1953). He’s an important mayor, and if you’re going to smear him with absurd claims—famously transphobic Bowron despised gender nonconforming people and demanded their imprisonment! etc.—I’m going to need some evidence of this, Mr. Hoover. 

Ah yes, the evil Bowron, a mayor under whose watch 52.51 ended enforcement on gender nonconforming women (and for the millionth time, Mr. Hoover, there was nothing called “5022” anywhere near the time of Cooper Do-nuts or Valverde—though it’s even more ridiculous de León’s Legislative Deputy Sarah Flaherty calls it “Ordinance 5200,” thus further distancing the Establishment Narrative from reality). And besides, when Valverde got fed up with being incarcerated and allegedly had to go to the Law Library in 1959, Bowron hadn’t been mayor for six years.  

Hoover goes on to repeat the whole bit about how Valverde was arrested repeatedly because she wore pants, and was for this incarcerated for three months without due process. (Uh-huh. Valverde was deprived of her liberty, illegally and unconstitutionally, in direct repudiation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments—not for a day, but for months, just for wearing trousers—and she just took it for thirteen years? ACLU lawyers would have been all over that. Hell, the Kenny and Cohn legal team [lawyers for the Hollywood Ten, who battled HUAC], whose offices were on Bunker Hill would have taken her case pro bono.) 

We’re told these arrests and incarcerations went on and on “routinely” until Valverde did research in the Law Library, thus ending her persecution. This, despite the fact that what she found was common knowledge. Hoover goes on to state “she was able to end the enforcement of 5022 on herself in Los Angeles and potentially other people as well” …well, no, because 52.51’s enforcement against ladies in trousers ended a dozen years before her lawyer was even admitted into practice. On and on it goes, making less and less sense…

…and then Hoover calls Valverde “the Rosa Parks of the LGBTQ community,” a comment of such egregious mythologizing, I will let it speak for itself.

At which point Hoover begins on Cooper Do-nuts. He informs the Council it was located on The Run (again, it most certainly was not). He tells the Council that at that time you would lose your business license if you catered to the gay community (what statute was that? oh right, didn’t exist). At 1:02:42 he states that Cooper Do-nuts was unique in that they openly flaunted society’s strictures and hired gender nonconforming people as employees. Daaaannng, not even the Cooper family descendants make THAT claim. (Just for fun, let’s look at some of Cooper’s gender noncomforming employees, like these fellows and these guys.) 

Hoover states that Nancy’s barber school was “a couple doors down from Cooper Do-nuts,” an exaggeration I will freely admit isn’t the worst sin in the world—of course, as I showed above, her school was not “a couple,” but twenty doors away—I know, big deal, but, Hoover offhandedly stating this is emblematic of the broader, deeper bastardization of any potential truths that may lurk in the greater narrative. 

Then he brings up Cooper’s as a safe haven for “the victims of 5022.” Again, no 5022. There was 52.51, and its attendant statute 52.52, which read, to remind you, like so. And to further repeat, the idea that Cooper’s was a “safe haven for victims” began about a year ago, and out of thin air.

There were a half-dozen more speakers. All repeated the same talking points: Nancy’s bravery and determination ended 5022, CDN was a trans safe haven. Everyone had the good sense not to mention the thoroughly-debunked “riot” narrative…ohhh wait, at 1:06:30 a Mr. Paul Zappia states “in 1959 patrons of Cooper donuts rebelled against police…first known instance… etc. etc.” which caused my eyes to roll so hard you could hear them from space. 

That’s the long and the short of it. This corner is now made a monument, based wholly on hot air. The intentions of Tony Hoover, and the Evans family, might be the most noble in history, but this square will forever be stained with having sprouted from fallacies and mendacity. People will forever look at this monument to revisionist history and wonder well, if they can lie about that, what else aren’t they telling the truth about? 

De León’s Legislative Deputy stated “the intent is to honor and uplift the contributions of trans and gender non-conforming queer people and the allies.” Fine, if that’s your intent, might I suggest it not be evolved from “we have to create an LGBT monument in DTLA at any cost, truth be damned, let’s invent a bunch of stuff and throw it at the wall and see what sticks, and that’s how we’ll uplift these poor, poor people” because that particular course of action does a profound disservice to the actual history of this community, you dolts. This whole process is ugly and depressing.

Speaking of which, meanwhile, an actual site of a genuine documented gay rights activist will likely be demolished just because some Councilmember is in bed with developers. 

And that’s Los Angeles.

Special thanks to esteemed appellate attorney Robert Wolfe, author of numerous articles on Los Angeles’s legal history, for his knowledge and guidance regarding this matter

Last summer a couple of my Strasbourgeois pals from Association Relative à la Télévision Européenne were in town to shoot a short feature about the ever-important John Fante.

Fante, of course, famously lived on the Hill, where Third Street ended at Bunker Hill Avenue, in an apartment house named the Alta Vista (which Fante renamed the Alta Loma in Ask the Dust—read all about it in Bunker Hill, Los Angeles).

So they call me up and say “get yourself to Angels Flight, we need you to you to talk about this.”

Ergo:

Arte filmed some other interesting folks for the piece—including Stephen Cooper, who penned the definitive biography of Fante—and added cool vintage images, then overdubbed the whole thing into French, so who knows what I’m going on about (though I like to think that pleases the ghosts of my ancestors in Coutances).

Trust you will enjoy the video! And if you dig my mini-tour around Angels Flight, don’t forget we’ll be riding her this Saturday, and you can join in!

(Having recently published Marsak’s Guide, I thought it would be fun and instructive to post about some of the interesting extant structures on our modern Bunker Hill, as featured in the book. Today, a few words and pictures about the Bonaventure. Will we be going inside the Bonaventure on the tour, one week from now? OF COURSE WE WILL.)

I was a youthful Beatlemaniac. So was my buddy Morgan (who hangs out with Paul McCartney to this day), so for a number of years his parents drove us down to the Bonaventure for Beatlefest. 

My memories of the Bonaventure are unusually acute. Remembrances of 1970s LA are as you might expect: a bleak and blighted hellscape, devoid of trees, replete with junkies. But the Bonaventure was a bizarre sparkling jewel in a smoggy, sepia city. To gain ingress took some doing, it being surrounded by a giant brutalist concrete wall, but once inside, it was a futuristic maze, and dark as an airport bar. 

Back at home I’d watch TV and marvel that this glitzy futuropunk wonderland was not only representative of the 25th century, but a harbor for sassy waitresses! 

As I matured and my interests turned to architecture, I discovered the Bonaventure was designed by a nice southern gentleman named John Portman, whose futuristic hotels were in general legendary for their soaring atria.  I enrolled at UC Santa Cruz; Fredric Jameson had been a HisCon prof there till 1985—the year I arrived—so his presence was still felt, strongly, and of course any 80s-era study of architecture entailed reading Jameson’s critique of the Bonaventure (see x, y, and especially z, because it has such great vintage footage of the Bonaventure). 1990 saw Mike Davis’ City of Quartz, wherein he called out the Bonaventure as being part of a “single, demonically self-referential hyper-structure, a Miesian skyscape raised to dementia” which was done specifically to erase any future “non-Anglo urbanity.” Jameson is a lovable kook, and Davis an embarrassing fabulist, but whatever, all grist for the mill. Me, I just dug the Bonaventure, and moved to Los Angeles specifically so I could spend all my time in her revolving bar. 

Thirty years into my Los Angeles sojourn, after countless revolutions in the BonaVista Lounge, and with all three of my recent books about Bunker Hill featuring the Bonaventure, I can say with no small authority, have you not spent time soaking up its sublimity, or had a cocktail in the (newly-reopened after three years!) revolving lounge, you are not a person. Do not argue this fact, for you would be wrong. 

The above being my long-winded way of saying hey! let’s look at some vintage shots of the Bonaventure you may not have seen before, paired with some recent comparison captures.

That concludes my then-n-now Bonaventure roundup for the time being (at some point I shall have to scan for you my collection of amateur late-70s Bonaventure interior slides).

I trust that, again, I will see you on the 17th for our jaunt inside the Bonaventure, and a vaster tour atop Bunker Hill…so until next Saturday, I will just leave you with this.

So, there’s much movement afoot regarding Cooper Donuts, and as I have covered that topic at length (this then this then this), it seems only fitting we dive back in, with these two things:

1. The City of Los Angeles is voting tomorrow to name Second and Main “Cooper Donut/Nancy Valverde Square,” and 2. there was a piece in the New York Times yesterday about the whole business. Let’s look at both!

The idea of naming the square dates back to December 2021. That’s when it was only supposed to be Cooper Donuts Square.  The contention being, that the Cooper Donuts at 215 South Main was the location of the famed 1959 uprising, the “first known instance” of “significant rebellion”.

However, as I have pointed out before, that is absolutely impossible, for two very good and simple reasons. You will recall, there is but a single, lone account of the riot—the one from John Rechy. Rechy stated, in no uncertain terms, that it happened in the spring of 1958…or spring of 1959. But as City building records conclusively prove (borne out by phone books and City directories), there was no Cooper Do-nuts at 215 South Main during either of those times. And, reason number two, Rechy’s lone account (and thus that which constitutes the whole of canon on the matter) of the riot clearly states it happened in the 500 block of Main.

What’s galling is that now people are falsifying history to an even greater extent. For example, Wikipedia. Someone went in to the Cooper Riot page and changed it to be about 215 South Main.

So what our deceitful Wiki-editor did—over the course of ten minutes last April 21st—was add in the fairytale address, then realized it now wasn’t between Harold’s and the Waldorf (as had been stated in the only account of the event literally ever) and thus weakly reworded it to say it was “near” these bars. Three blocks away.

But look! you say. It must be true because there are footnotes!

Yeah, no surprise, none of those footnotes actually say anything about 215 South Main. Because no-one even deigned to entertain such fabricated notions until a few weeks ago, when some people got hot to pass a motion through City Council.

Ok, so we’re all on board that there was no riot there (or in any Cooper’s since the only witness/lone teller of the tale has said it wasn’t at a Cooper’s). Ergo, the focus has shifted—yes the riot is a myth, but no matter, now what’s important is that Jack Evans, who ran Cooper’s, was an ally, and that Cooper’s should be recognized as “being the sole safe place for all LGBTQIA+ persons regardless of gender expression” (as stated in the Community Impact Statement, link here)—though we’ll ignore the fact that Cooper’s at Second and Main was across from the Archdiocese and the Union Rescue Mission, inarguably a tough area for out trans people in the 1950s, who would be more welcome in establishments a few blocks south…which is why Rechy decided to place the story on Main down by Sixth Street in the first place. (I should mention that the nomination still, of course, contends “The first recorded instance in the LGBTQIA+ community of gender-transgressive persons resisting arbitrary police arrest occurred at Cooper’s Do-nuts at 215 S. Main Street in Downtown LA in 1959” which its Government Author certainly knows to be an egregious falsehood.)

We are told the nomination is important because Cooper Donuts was a “safe haven.” 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. Nevertheless, this guy—

—Jack Chester Evans, a middle-aged (b. 1907) white man from Lorenz, Iowa, we are told by the family, was an ally. Not that there weren’t allies back in the day, but they’re usually progressive Jewish lawyers, not this guy.

Apparently, there’s some deep and affecting story there about how and why Jack and his wife, Colorado-born Marge, were America’s most unlikely allies during the days of the Boise Panic and the blacklisting of Frank Kameny. Seriously, what formative moment occurred in Jack’s life to make him an ally of unparalleled bravery? We want to know!

Recently, when the nominators of Cooper Donuts Square realized the whole Cooper story was pretty thin, they tied Nancy Valverde to it. Nancy is frequently mentioned as “proof” the riot happened, though it wasn’t until 2019, when asked about the subject by Los Angeles Magazine, she suddenly recalled that sixty years ago, she had heard second hand that something had happened somewhere. No matter; what is important, we’re told, is that she went to barber school near to the Cooper Donuts, had short hair and wore men’s clothes, and was welcome at Cooper’s (where she was particularly fond of the glazed donuts).

Now, I have no problem with a Nancy Valverde square, given as she is a famed activist and was trailblazing as an out lesbian in 1950s Los Angeles. But Second and Main? Really? Consider:

We are told in the City’s Community Impact Statement she went to Moler Barber School on Main near Third Street. That said, according to the Los Angeles LGBT Center, Valverde actually didn’t go to barber school: “getting her barbers license was an uphill battle, similar to the rest of her life. She was unable to go to barbers school because she didn’t finish school. However, one day, a man came up to her and told her that if she passes an IQ test, she could get her barbers license. After a lot of hard work, she passed her IQ test and became a barber.” 

Also, she was arrested repeatedly for being butch. (And yet, she was accepted at Cooper’s!) “Valverde liked to look dapper when she was young. She purchased men’s slacks and button down shirts and got them tailored to fit her slender frame (from here).” I find it a little odd she was arrested repeatedly for just that, in that there was a fad for 1950s women looking boyish in general. Anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of women’s fashion, knows that post-1947 Bold Look into the 1950s, even the most vanilla housewife began wearing trousers with button-down shirts, and cutting their hair short; pixie cuts (and the less severe “Italian Cut”) were all the rage, e.g. Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn during the time—up to including my own mother who, 22yo in 1959, had short hair and dressed quite boyish, as was distinctly à la mode.

Point being, Valverde would have been accepted at Cooper’s because…why not? Women looking like boys was pretty common, but what Rechy specifically calls out is that boys in tight capris and midriff shirts were the picked-upon donut patrons: it would have been a lot easier for Valverde-in-trousers to go fetch herself a donut, rather than some transgressive boys, especially at a Cooper’s directly across from St. Vibiana’s and the Rescue Mission.

And yet Valverde was arrested repeatedly under LA’s arcane 1898 anti-masquerading law, Ordinance 5022…before she and her attorney overturned that law in court!  But what raises an eyebrow is there’s never any evidence of when or how this happened. What date? What court? What judge? This would be a matter of public record down at City Archives, but I’ve got enough to do without going down to Piper Tech to find out. Someone please write me and give me the details, because I’d really like to know. I mean, for example, here it states she overturned the law in 1951. And yet, here it states she overturned the law in 1959. Well? (Protip: she was in fact never arrested under, and neither challenged nor overturned, anything called “Ordinance 5022,” despite what the City’s nomination states; 5022 didn’t exist after 1936, having been renamed Municipal Code 52.51.)

As I’ve said, I’m all for recognizing Valverde, but she didn’t spend much time at Second and Main, when she (perhaps) went to barber college at Third and Main. It seems like the Law Library, or more to the point, her barber shop on Brooklyn Avenue where she was hassled by LAPD, would be more deserving of a plaque. 

Nevertheless, despite all this, when City Council votes to name Second and Main “Cooper Do-nuts/Nancy Valverde Square” on Wednesday, I have NO doubt it will be passed unanimously (just as it was passed unanimously by the Board of Public Works a few days ago). Despite conclusive proof there was no Cooper’s remotely near that corner during the time of the claimed uprising, atop the fact that the only witness said it didn’t happen there anyway; despite reasonable doubt that Cooper’s was “the sole safe place for all LGBTQIA+ persons regardless of gender expression” (Jack Evans an ally? And besides, we do have evidence of what Cooper patrons looked like in 1959, and I’m not seeing a lot of midriffs and capris); and man, this whole newly-tacked-on Nancy Valverde bit is kind of just “well, we have to put a Nancy Valverde plaque somewhere, this location is as good as any, I guess.”

II.

As I mentioned above, there’s an article in yesterday’s New York Times about Cooper Donuts. I’m in there! There’s not much I really need to add, that isn’t covered in the above. 

Wellll, except it seems there’s always one more piece of information that requires commenting upon…like some bizarre whack-a-mole of “alternative facts.” See near the end of the NYT piece, where it mentions there was a Cooper Donuts at 243 East Fifth? And then links to Cooper Donuts Instagram post?

So, there was an Evans Cafeteria (it was never a Cooper’s Donut) at 243 East Fifth, and it was only there briefly. 243 became an Evans Cafeteria in 1953, and remained so for three years until that location went out of business in mid-1956 (the space thereafter became a bar called the Pioneer Cafe). “This site was a place of refuge for the LGBTQ community, and a symbol of resistance against police brutality and oppression.” Um, what? How? While I don’t have a shot of 243 East Fifth in its brief stint as a Cooper’s pre-1956, here’s 243, converted from a Cooper’s to the Pioneer Cafe, in 1959:

On a related note, here’s an interesting tidbit: we’re supposed to believe anything Jack Evans touched equals #LGBTsupporter and #LGBTrights because he was a trailblazing ally (again, on that we have no evidence, and have to take the family’s word on the matter). But we can say this with certainty, Jack Evans sure didn’t care much for unions and union workers!

It mentions his Evans Cafeteria at 215 and, note final sentence, the associated address of aforementioned 243 East Fifth, i.e. Fewster’s “Picketed by the AFL” Cafeteria, before its three-year stint as an Evans Cafeteria. Fewster’s is also associated with Jack Evans:  Fewster’s Cafeteria was the establishment of Louis Dufferin Fewster, Jack Evans’ brother-in-law, which is how Jack took over the lease in 1953.

III.

While I have you here, let’s address the elephant in the room. You know, where you say “why is this Marsak guy being such a JERK?” Look, it’s not my fault people are altering Wikipedia with lies and I have call them out on it. Seriously, I don’t want to be the guy righting repeated falsehoods all the time; I did it two years ago with one blog post (because it was related to Bunker Hill), pointing out the impossibility of the tale, and other people keep doubling down to insist it’s true, so the thing keeps snowballing. 

In yesterday’s New York Times piece Rechy states he was was weary of the “baffling hostility that has persisted” around his account, calling it “undeserved, incorrect, malicious, infuriating and, yes, saddening.” Really? I’ve no doubt you’re infuriated and saddened, but, the only account that’s incorrect is yours, sir. Simply searching for objective reality, utilizing empirical over anecdotal evidence, and relying on discoverable facts about this tale is assuredly not undeserved, and there has been—anyone and everyone will admit—nothing malicious or hostile about it. 

Apparently, though, doing research is HATE. Let’s look at some other typical reactions to my having poked at the story:

Note in the first sentence: should you question the establishment narrative, you are part of an “activist hate group.” So, said activist hate group consists altogether of me, which is kinda rich (since as a short Jewish tweedy historian I don’t exactly come off as a skinhead or whatever), and my pals Kim & Richard of Esotouric, whose politics are ultra-progressive Left (and who I might add have a upcoming tour about Gay downtown LA). Plus no one has in any way tried to “stop” the nomination or monument process. My job as a historian is digging up the truth; what you do with the truth is your business. That you choose to ignore, or worse, deny it, is rather telling.

Another typical comment:

Note the bit “Some armchair historians have claimed that the Cooper Donuts couldn’t have taken place, but we have multiple accounts of people, like Nancy Valverde, who know of the riots and serve as proof that such an action did occur.” First of all, “armchair historian” is pretty funny, since I’m literally a historian, and have never been anything else (resulting in far too many phonebooks). But whatever, more importantly, when Mr. Zappia states regarding Cooper Donuts “we have multiple accounts of people, like Nancy Valverde, who know of the riots and serve as proof that such an action did occur” I would counter (and I hate to sound like a broken record, but) no, you don’t have multiple accounts, you have zero accounts: there was a) Rechy, lone and sole witness who told the (impossible/improbable for so many reasons) tale 45 years after its alleged occurrence and who then flatly stated “there was no riot at Cooper’s”; and b) Valverde, who wasn’t there, but sixty years after it purportedly happened and was pressed on the matter, at which point remembered she’d heard second-hand that something had happened, with no mention of Cooper’s. Those are, strictly speaking, the opposite of “proof.”

IV.

I love two things:  history, and downtown LA.  People are running about abusing both, so it’s only natural I’d try and right those wrongs. If I’m the one who’s wrong, well, no-one has even made so much as an single effort to refute my claims. Rather, they want to say that I “hate” because they feel like I should be wrong. But the fact is, history matters, and when you build it upon a specious, spurious foundation, it makes the whole thing stink.

Some stories don’t stink. Why not, for example, monument the site of Blanchard Hall, which is *actually* documented? What about the Crenshaw Women’s Center? Well the City is super hot to tear it down, so they’re tearing it down. 

What about the two sites associated with gay civil rights activist Morris Kight? 1822 West Fourth, for example, would be a great monument, except developer-lovin’ YIMBY Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez is especially active in the fight to TEAR IT DOWN. Kight’s McCadden address might have a chance, though. Unfortunately for it, it doesn’t have the sex appeal of men dancing and singing in the street and making hardened Parker-era cops flee in terror.

Again, I am quite certain the motion will pass through Council tomorrow and the corner will be our newest monument. What’s troubling—besides our society’s wanton general disregard for truth—is that this monument will forever have the stain of falsehood upon it. All the good intentions in the world do not make confirmation bias, and an ad nauseam repetition of fake news, into reality. And then calling critical thinking and fact checking “hate” is an ugly way to shut down those who question the dominant narrative. 

But, now it’s a monument, and you, having read this post, know the truth. Accuracy and fact being as useful as a chocolate teapot in this town, so, enjoy your new monument not to truth, but to truthiness.

Out now! Two years in the making, Marsak’s Guide to Bunker Hill is the only illustrated guidebook to each and every intriguing structure atop today’s post-redevelopment Bunker Hill.

You see, after Bunker Hill, Los Angeles and its companion Bunker Noir!, I thought it high time that—à la eponymous guidebooks like those of Murray, Baedeker, Fodor, Frommer, et al.—I produce a Marsak’s Guide for all those eminently visitable locations in LA’s open-air “museum of modernism.”

This all-new, 64-page, full-color guide includes a map, so that as you explore the Hill you may get your bearings and learn all about the building standing before you. But—with every Hill structure in Marsak’s Guide listed chronologically—it’s no less a joy to read while relaxing in your easy chair, taking in how the Hill’s architecture developed over time.

These are priced at $20; with shipping and handling, $25. If you are inclined to have one of these hot-off-the-presses (seriously, they’re still warm, being proudly printed in Los Angeles) send your $25 thusly:

Paypal: marsakster@gmail.com

as is the Venmo:  eckener@kingpix.com AKA @Hugo-Eckener

…or with a good old-fashioned check to Nathan Marsak, PO Box 412636, Los Angeles, Calif. 90041.  

Marsak’s Guide is also available on Amazon and eBay, should you with to go that route.

Spectrum showed up at the Flight the other day, where esteemed anchor Jada Montemarano asked some questions about what it is and why it’s great.

Take a look here!

On a related note, I also hold forth on the Flight in a video from some years ago, here:

This weekend being the LA Times Festival of Books, I expect to see you cavorting about the panels and performances but, amid your gambolling, please don’t forget to cavort on over to the Angel City Press tent (Booth #119, near the Tommy Trojan statue) and pay me a visit on either (or both) Saturday and Sunday, from 2-4.

And if I’m not enough of a draw (you did, after all, come see me last year), take a look at this stellar collection of talent:

Huzzah!

Poking about the internet today, I found this new-to-me movie posted by the Office of Image Archaeology. It’s pretty neat! The uploading fellow said if you know any locations post ’em in the comments, which I commenced on to doing, but then, ended up here.

The film has some nice shots of Hollywood, and the Civic Center, but for our purposes I will (as you might imagine) stick to the Hill—

Of course, watch the entire YouTube upload for some vintage 1960s Hollywood…which I was tempted to explicate but will leave that for the Hollywood folk.

Until next time! NM

Happy Presidents’ Day! Yes, I know it’s really Washington’s Birthday (it irks me George is not still celebrated specifically) but, I’ll accept it. After all, who morphed Washington’s Birthday into Presidents’ Day? The mighty Angeleno, that’s who: among those many things invented in Los Angeles, Presidents’ Day is among them, as it exists due to the tireless efforts of one Mr. Harold Stonebridge Fischer, he of Compton, California.

What do presidents have to do with our topic at hand? Well, among the many notable folk who have lived on or visited Bunker Hill—my recent post about Anna May Wong being one example—it is asserted by some that President William McKinley has a connection to the Hill. McKinley purportedly stayed in one of its most recognized landmarks, the Melrose Hotel, or, at least, made a Very Important Speech from the Melrose’s porch. Heck, I reported as much in this 2008 post.

The source of that information is a couple of unnamed little-old-ladies who got to chatting with Times reporter Ray Hebert on Grand Avenue in June 1957.

While chatting with Hebert, and the fellow salvaging sinks and whatnot from the doomed Melrose, one of the ladies stated she remembered standing on that very sidewalk watching McKinley on that very porch, “as if it were yesterday.”

McKinley on Bunker Hill would be a huge deal for us Bunker wonks. Love him or hate him—many being divided over his annexation of Hawaii, freeing Cuba, or purchasing the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico—McKinley was arguably the first “modern” president, and we must admire his administration for its monetary policy and a trade reciprocity that shrewdly pulled America out of the crippling 1890s economic depression. All that notwithstanding, I just get all giddy over the fact that McKinley was on Bunker Hill in one of my favorite buildings.

But, of course, it never happened. It’s a neat story, but then so is “there was a streetcar conspiracy!” and “the Dodgers kicked people out of Chavez Ravine!” and those tales aren’t true, either. More analogous is the assertion that “Teddy Roosevelt stayed at the King Edward Hotel!” which, as has been pointed out, didn’t happen either. (Not that no-one ever stayed at the Melrose; it was the hotel of choice for any number of illustrious personages, e.g. Marshall Independence Ludington, though, he’s not exactly McKinley, is he.)

At this point, you might be wondering, what is this Melrose Hotel which McKinley did not in fact visit?

The Melrose was built in the spring of 1889, for Marc William Connor, designed by the firm of Joseph Cather Newsom. For reasons I go into here, I’m of the opinion that it is from the hand of Walter Ferris, Newsom’s draughtsman.

The Melrose soldiered on through the decades, gaining a second building to its north in 1902, remaining elegant to the end, before its 1957 demolition by the County.

There were a few notes in the news about the end of the Melrose. The 1957 Times article that spoke of McKinley’s presence described the old gal as grotesque and alarming and not unlike a snake, but worst of all, “out of place,” the true sin in mid-Century America:

In April 1957 the papers had made note of Lucy Davis, sole remaining resident of the venerable Melrose, being removed from her long-time home. In those blurbs, not only McKinley but old “Rough and Ready” Roosevelt himself bunked therein!

As I linked to above, Teddy Roosevelt was comfortably ensconced in the Westminster, not the Melrose (nor the King Edward). The question then being, if McKinley didn‘t stay at the Melrose, where was he?

McKinley made his way to the Van Nuys, two blocks south and five blocks east, well off of Bunker Hill.

Mind you, McKinley didn’t stay at the Van Nuys; he bunked with fellow Ohioan Harrison Gray Otis at The Bivouac. Members of his entourage, like George Cortelyou, though, stayed at the Van Nuys. A good summation of the 1901 McKinley trip is here.

But still, the little-old-ladies of 1957 insisted they had seen a McKinley speech. And they did, delivered from the balcony of the Van Nuys Hotel:

During his welcome reception at the Van Nuys, McKinley decided the throngs deserved an impromptu address, and asked Milo Potter where he might find the nearest suitable balcony. The President was ushered to the balcony of room 22, near the northeast corner of the second floor. That would be here:

********************************************************************

So. No McKinley on Old Bunker Hill. “Awww,” you say, “now I’m sad. Surely at least one president visited Bunker Hill…”

Well, fear not! In October 1880 we were graced by the presence of Rutherford B. Hayes, who stayed at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, on Main near Temple, and then visited the northern reaches of Bunker Hill when he attended the agricultural fair at the Horticultural Pavilion. (You may claim that the Pavilion having been north of Temple Street, its location should rightly be called Fort Moore Hill rather than Bunker Hill, but, I consider the Fort Moore area a northern district of Bunker Hill, and, it being my blog, so there.)

Hayes spoke to a packed pavilion and then went off to look at all the boostery produce. Then he and his party dined at the New England Kitchen in the pavilion. Even in 1880, Los Angeles had theme restaurants; forty years before the immersive experience of the Jail Café, the ladies of the New England Kitchen dressed in Colonial garb.

Naturally, I contacted the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library, asking after any images that might exist of his Los Angeles trip. Unfortunately, while library archives contain some images of Hayes on his 1880 Western Trip, those images are of his adventures around Yosemite and Menlo Park.

As for the Horticultural Pavilion: it is oft said that the structure burned down, as so stated by Sarah Bixby in Adobe Days. However, its end was in actuality much less dramatic. The pavilion could never meet its mortgage, and it was pulled down in the spring of 1882. The area on which it stood was redeveloped as residential:

There has been no shortage of presidential trips to Los Angeles over the years, but I’m yet to discover further evidence of presidential appearances in predemolition Bunker Hill, apart from Hayes.

Bunker Hill adjacent, though…

Presidents still come to our fair city, visit downtown, and it often gets saucy, but none have the moxie (nor the mighty beard) as President Hayes, our Chief Executive of Old Bunker Hill.