Hi Los Angeles Hater! Rating “LA’s Alternate Realities”


Every few weeks a big story about Los Angeles lands on the internet, hoping to deliver the ultimate citywide diss while lazily employing half-century-old stereotypes. Usually we laugh it off because we’re shallow losers and, like, who has time to read and stuff, but every once in a while one of these antagonistic LA essays really gets to us. This week, Martin Filler’s New York Review of Books piece reviewing the exhibition catalogues for the architecture shows Overdrive and Never Built is the object of our disaffection.

Update: Also check out my haterating of that New Yorker piece “Leaving Los Angeles”

Which got me thinking. I could write an impassioned response (like Brady Westwater already did). Or I could assemble a collection of images to prove it wrong (like I did for that one Hollywood story). But then I had a thought: This man had worked SO HARD to include nearly every tired L.A. stereotype, so why not reward him for his achievement?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Hi Los Angeles Hater! Stereotype Rating for “LA’s Alternate Realities.” Points are awarded on a sliding scale for each ridiculous stereotype, factual inaccuracy, or literary low blow incorporated into the piece. Here we go…

Title: “LA’s Alternate Realities
Author: Martin Filler (no website, Wikipedia, no Twitter)
Publication: The New York Review of Books
Date Published: May 3, 2013
Word Count: 1376 

How can the most architecturally innovative part of the United States also be such a thoroughgoing urban mess?

  • Oooookay, then! Starting off strong! Backhanded compliment bonus +2
  • “Thoroughgoing urban mess” +1

Los Angeles can boast, among other showpieces, Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall of 1989–2003, Charles and Ray Eames’s own Case Study House Number 8 of 1947–1949, and Raymond M. Kennedy’s Grauman’s Chinese Theater of 1926–1927—to name three of my favorite landmarks there.

  • Naming Disney Hall as one of your “favorite landmarks” +1

…yet LA is also a highway-strangled, traffic-choked expanse of artificially lush desert with no discernible organizing principle save for the allées of palm trees that filmmakers reflexively use to establish a recognizable sense of place.

  • “Highway-strangled” +2
  • “Traffic-choked” +2
  • Extra point for excessive hyphenation +1
  • Palm trees +2
  • Ouch! Palm trees in the FIRST PARAGRAPH? Extra point for that, bro. +1
  • Film industry reference, with first-paragraph bonus. +2
  • LA is a desert +1
  • Also, as many have pointed out, LA is not a desert. It’s a Subtropical-Mediterranean climate. +1

Describing the persistent incoherence of Los Angeles, Dorothy Parker famously jibed that it was ‘seventy-two suburbs in search of a city.’ More sympathetic observers like the British architectural historian Reyner Banham have long pointed out that it’s futile to apply traditional standards of urban design to this 469-square-mile sprawl, which they see not as a dysfunctional megalopolis but as a prophetically modern phenomenon.

  • Thanks, we heard that joke before, too… IN THE 1930’s. +2
  • “Sprawl” x mention-of-square-mileage bonus = +469
  • “Dysfunctional megalopolis” +1

Yet to comprehend why the City of Angels remains so enduringly weird to outsiders, it is not architectural specialists but rather imaginative writers—from Nathanael West and James M. Cain to Evelyn Waugh and Joan Didion—to whom we must turn.

  • “Enduringly weird” +2
  • Referencing dead writers who wrote depressing things about LA +3
  • Joan Didion is not dead nor totally depressing, of course, but he includes a photo of her, so, Joan Didion photo bonus +1
  • With Corvette Stingray to reinforce LA’s auto-centric nature +1 

Both surveys are accompanied by extensively illustrated catalogs, offering non-Angelinos a chance to reframe their imagined views of this quintessentially quirky conurbation.

  • Using the non-locally preferred spelling of “Angelinos” +3
  • “Quintessentially quirky conurbation” (with alliteration bonus) +2

…attempts to give the city’s notional center something like the round-the-clock vitality of New York’s Times Square or London’s Leicester Square have failed time and again. The few parts of Los Angeles that sustain a viable pedestrian nightlife—like Westwood Village, with its busy movie theaters and restaurants near the UCLA campus, and Los Feliz, a hipsterish enclave closer to downtown—still present a problem, for most visitors need to drive there in order to walk around.

  • LA doesn’t have a center +1
  • LA isn’t a 24-hour city +1
  • LA doesn’t have viable pedestrian nightlife +1
  • LA’s Urban Design Shortcomings in a Single Paragraph Trifecta bonus +3
  • Naming Westwood Village (no disrespect, Bruins!) as the city’s best example of “viable pedestrian nightlife.” +2
  • “Hipsterish” +1
  • Dude, come on, of all the places he could have picked: The Red Line goes RIGHT to Los Feliz. +10 (+ one Metro day pass)

Not only were such sensible recommendations ignored, but within fifteen years the Los Angeles Railway, a trolley system that served a vast north-south swath of the region, would be dismantled, in part because of what many believe to have been a conspiracy by General Motors and others to kill off the competition.

  • “Sensible recommendations ignored” (aka we’re crazy) +1
  • General Motors conspiracy theory reference +2
  • Bonus for watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit too many times +4

As Overdrive makes clear, all sorts of vernacular architectural responses to LA’s dominant car culture arose to meet the particular demands of an increasingly mobile population, with innovative forms such as the drive-in restaurant, the drive-through car wash, and, heaven forefend, the drive-in church (the most distinguished example of which was Richard Neutra’s Garden Grove Community Church of 1959–1968). Not for nothing did Moore organize his study of the city’s architectural features into a series of “rides” to be seen from a car window.

  • Car culture/car window +2
  • Drive-in/drive-through +3

In a country where personal “freedom” invariably trumps the common good, this pair of enlightening but cautionary surveys reminds us of the late and much-lamented Ada Louise Huxtable’s ever-timely admonition that “Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves.”

  • Oh no he di-int just use Ada Louise against us! +3

TOTAL SCORE: 549*

*I have no idea what this score means or how Filler’s article ranks according to other stories about LA. But I think this means that I’ll have to do this again. And again. And again.

Update: If you liked this, check out my haterating of that New Yorker piece “Leaving Los Angeles.

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Cover story

Weekly!

I’ve written before about the glory of writing for the LA Weekly: Since it’s free and available virtually anywhere, you quite literally will see it on every single block in Los Angeles. What I wasn’t expecting when I wrote this story about the Downtown Arts District was that my name would be on the cover. Meaning I’m seeing myself all over the city this week.

My first cover story for the @laweekly, on new development in the Arts District.

There are actually two stories by me inside: One on a real estate agent who’s bringing big changes to the neighborhood; and one on six new projects that will transform the neighborhood. Enjoy them now… by Thursday they’ll be a faded newsprint memory trampled into the soggy sidewalk.

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It’s a hot one

Forecast is 94 degrees and there’s smoke from a half dozen fires streaking across the sky. So much for spring, right?

If you’re not busy downing margaritas this weekend, be sure to check out Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in LA, happening all across the city. I’m writing regular “diary” entries for the LA Weekly on the exhibitions and events, here’s my first one and my second one, published today.

Have a great weekend!

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Good morning, May

May Gray.

Your May Gray has arrived, right on schedule.

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The house abides

Concrete triangle
Custom furniture by Lautner
Temple
View from the pool deck
The little skylights are drinking glasses
The world's greatest powder roomOne of many lush pathways
Guest rooms
The ship sailing into Beverly Hills
Walls disappearSteps to the sky space
He's nothing if not colorful
Jim Goldstein's awesome shoes
Standing on a glass floor
Koi bridge
Sky space
Sitting in the sky space
James Turrell's sky space at Sheats-Goldstein
A little square of sky
Mirror "skylights"

I posted some photos last night from an Architectones event I went to at the Sheats Goldstein residence. For design nerds, it’s well-known as one of the most triumphant works of renowned architect John Lautner. For hard-core basketball fans, it’s known as the home of James Goldstein, the flamboyant courtside fixture at Laker games. And for everybody else, it’s known as Jackie Treehorn’s house:

I had been to the house once before, during a visit as part of my USC Annenberg/Getty Fellowship. We were lucky enough to get a private tour from Goldstein, who graciously answered all of our questions about the house (as well as The Big Lebowski). I was impressed by his generosity in sharing the property with us, from the drinking glasses that create the skylights in the living room (no joke!) to the world’s most remarkable powder room. Goldstein bought the house in 1972 so he had a chance to work with Lautner while he was still alive, making some modifications to the property. Including—yes—a James Turrell skyspace.

What I was most impressed by was the way that Goldstein had become such a passionate steward of the house. He expressed several times to our group that he wanted as many people as possible to experience the house, and as he showed us, he was slowly turning the property into an event space and cultural center celebrating Lautner’s legacy. And this week, the fact that he’d turn his house into what was essentially an art gallery for three days proved to me that he was extremely serious about his mission to share the house with the public.

Adding a massive entertainment space

One last thing. The first photo here is of our fellowship touring the new addition to the house, many years in the making: A private nightclub and cultural center with a tennis court on top (OF COURSE). Two years later, the amazing photographer Elizabeth Daniels snapped me last night while I was sitting in the still-yet-unfinished club. It all felt very Julius Shulman to me.

You can still visit the house on Friday, April 26 as part of Xavier Veilhan’s art exhibit. Details here.

Posted in building, designing, partying | 1 Comment

I’m on “Los Angeles Nista” tonight!

You remember Eddie Solis, don’t you? The car-free rocker who wrote a love song to LA subways (above) and penned an ode to taking transit for my Studio 360 piece. Well, HE has a radio show, too, and I’m going to be on it tonight. Tune into Los Angeles Nista tonight from 9 to 11 p.m. to hear us geek out on public transportation!

Update: The audio is up!

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Have a multimodal CicLAvia

Everyone walks in LA!

Usually, when I’m begging you to come on an adventure with me, it’s something wacky, like up 100 staircases or down a dark subterranean tunnel. This time, it’s easy and accessible—it’s CicLAvia! Our now-three-times-a-year open streets festival is this Sunday, when 15 miles of streets will be closed to cars from downtown to the Pacific Ocean. Most of us look at that stretch of pure unadulterated pavement and think OMG BIKES, and yes, CicLAvia’s an event that’s become largely known for biking. But to me, CicLAvia is the one time where we can do anything (legal) on the car-free streets—one year I helped organize a Reyner Banham book club meeting on 7th, for example. So that’s why I’m making the most of this Sunday by enjoying CicLAvia on foot, bus and bike. Join me for one of my modes, or plan your own multimodal day!

Walk: Join me and the great Bob Inman for a Westside WalkLAvia with Los Angeles Walks. We’ll be starting at 10:00 am at the Culver City Expo Line station and walking five miles to Venice, with an option to continue on with Bob for a canal walk and return through Mar Vista. All details here; map of route hereFacebook invite here. If you’re more of the running type, the L.A.Leggers, a marathon training group, are holding a 5K run/walk to honor Boston.

Bus: The most magical part of this CicLAvia’s route is that buses will be running as usual down the other side of Venice. So once I get to the beach, I’ll get to take one of those 33 or 733 buses (I’m dubbing them the “CicLAvia Express”) back up Venice. The Expo Line is also an easy way to access lots of the route, as is the Red Line. And I’ll be boarding my transit with a limited edition CicLAvia TAP card that can be purchased at any CicLAvia hub for $20, with proceeds going to CicLAvia. All the cool kids are getting one.

Bike: In the afternoon, I’ll be riding my trusty Public Bike along the route back home to Silver Lake, through some of my favorite neighborhoods. Will you be biking there, too? Where’s a good place to meet up? I can think of no better way to end a multimodal day than with a multicocktail happy hour.

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If you are losing faith in human nature

If you are losing faith in human nature, watch a marathon

Yesterday, when the horrific reports began to roll in from Boston, I couldn’t stop thinking of this photo. When I ran the LA marathon in 2011, it was right around here that I understood it wasn’t as much about me running 26.2 miles as it was about 25,000 runners bringing a city together. As I wrote after the marathon, I realized there was nothing more life-affirming than seeing so many Angelenos from different backgrounds cheering for us—in the driving rain, no less:

The family who were using their feet to hold down a pop-up tent that billowed in the wind like an ascending hot air balloon over a spread of candy. The guy in the bright orange turban who smiled as he sliced navel oranges into segments. The kids who’d made signs for no one in particular, their magic marker letters bleeding into type more befitting a horror film. The man slowly waving an American flag out of his East Hollywood apartment. These were people who you could tell didn’t have much to spare themselves, but had made sure to park themselves on the curb with a cooler of bottled water and a giant bag of pretzels that would inevitably turn to mush.

Even though the spectator numbers were low, it still felt like the whole city was rooting for us (made easier by the fact that our bibs were custom-printed to include the name of our choice). As I neared the end of the race, and the residents of Brentwood passed out whole Clif bars and words of encouragement from beneath their blown-inside-out umbrellas, I realized that they were the people I really should have been congratulating. We were busy and self-absorbed, we had our races to finish, our physical challenges to surmount; they sacrificed a day when the city had ordered its citizens to stay inside, just to make us feel like it had been worthwhile.

It’s been a weird week for the world, and I was looking forward to the marathon so I could put one foot before the other, zone out, and ignore its mounting problems. Little did I know that there would be so many hints along the way about what was going right. In fact, it was spelled out for me right there on the window of CB2 at Mile 13 as we headed into the Sunset Strip: “If you are losing faith in human nature, watch a marathon.”

I hope, amidst all this anger and uncertainty, that we can find strength and purpose in the enduring spirit we’re lucky enough to witness in our cities during these events. My thoughts are with the Bostonians affected by yesterday’s tragedy, but especially those spectators and volunteers who came out to show support and ended up saving lives.

Update: My friend Nirvan sent me this story about Kathrine Switzer, who coined that quote. She was the first woman to run the Boston Marathon.

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Sprung

Poppies and stripes.
White bougainvillea for @ljoliet.
Colorful Silver Lake.
So much good spring out there today.

Lots of great spring out there this week. Happy that I could be outside walking and biking to capture it all.

Have a great weekend!

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Choose your own version of LA in 2050

If you live here in Los Angeles, chances are the LA 2050 initiative has flooded your Twitter stream. And your Facebook stream. And your inbox stream. And your dinner party stream. 279 projects that aspire to shape the future of LA across eight indicators are competing to win $100,000 from the Goldhirsh Foundation, and until April 17 you can vote for which project you’d like to support.

The great thing about LA 2050 is that there are so many wonderful ideas for Los Angeles, and the worst thing about LA 2050 is that there are so many wonderful ideas for Los Angeles.

So many of my friends have submitted smart projects which I would love to see happen that it would already be difficult for me to make a decision—however, I myself have TWO projects from nonprofits I work with in the running! See how tough this is???

And that brings me to my point. I’m highlighting the two projects I’m affiliated with (in alphabetical order) so you can read them and decide if you’d like to vote for one of them:

design east of La Brea: “Making LA”: An event series and conference where community-focused designers and architects will share how they’re transforming LA
Twitter: @de_LaB

Update: We got an NEA grant for this!

Los Angeles Walks“Hey I’m Walking Here!”: A campaign and series of initiatives celebrating and supporting pedestrians in the City of Los Angeles
Twitter: @LosAngelesWalks

Update: We launched a Kickstarter for this!

Especially if you live outside of LA, your vote will make a big difference because I think getting outsiders to vote on the kind of LA they want to see is just as important as asking us Angelenos. We want to know what you think! And if neither of these projects looks like the kind of LA you’d like to live in (or visit), please visit the LA 2050 site and vote for the project you’d most like to see. There are 277 other ideas!

If you decide to vote, thank you so much for giving a few minutes to shape the future of Los Angeles—something I’m incredibly passionate about, as you know.

A few technical notes…

  • You can vote by clicking the aqua button that says VOTE on the project pages I link to above.
  • To vote, you’ll have to log in with your GOOD account. If you don’t already have one, you’ll need to create one. It’s free and all you need is an email or Facebook account. You’ll be emailed a link to verify your address and then you’ll need to go back to the page to vote.
  • Once you’ve voted, you’ll see a verification on the top of the page that your vote has been counted.
  • You can only vote once, however, you can change your vote before April 17 if you’ve already voted: simply click vote on the project you want to vote for, and you’ll be asked if you want to change your vote.
  • When you return to the site it will likely log you out so it will look like you haven’t voted yet. This has caused great confusion among people who think you can vote multiple times.
  • This isn’t affiliated with GOOD, as some of you have asked me. The Goldhirsh Foundation is the foundation of Ben Goldhirsh, who is the founder of GOOD, so they’re using GOOD Maker, a voting platform created by GOOD.
  • A project has to make it into the top 10 of its indicator to be considered for a grant.
  • If you’d like to share one of the projects above via Facebook or Twitter I would certainly not be opposed to it!
  • Voting closes April 17 at noon PST. Thank you!
Posted in crafting, creating, designing, speaking, teaching, walking | 3 Comments