Valley, Mon Amour

This week, I shall make the trip over the hill, or more accurately, across the Cahuenga Pass, and back to Hollywood. Found a small place I can afford without a roomie.

I really love the Valley. In many ways, it's what I think of as Los Angeles. I don't think of Silverlake or wherever as the end-all. And despite everyone I know making sure I think Hollywood circa 1980 as the greatest place of all time, the Valley is the place where normal Angelenos live and work. Just as are La Puente, Downey, and other similar "bedroom communities". Hipsters have dumped all over the Valley, but it's a real place with real people and not just diletants.

The Valley has been referred to as "America's Suburb" and that may well be true. Enough exterior shots from the sitcoms of our collective youth are here -- most famously The Brady Bunch. Every morning, I walk past the school seen on Malcolm In The Middle, various places I know from Columbo, and on and on. I had memories of the place before I even got here. I've made more records here than anyplace else, too, including what will likely be my last jazz disc (a duo with Bob Dorough, coming soonish).

I'm suited to the Valley. First off, I hate the beach with a fiery passion. The Valley is a great place to go running. Another thing -- there's a ton of mid-century arctitecture here, in tact, and in some inobvious places, like Pacoima, where Big Jim's Family Restaurant is still a great burger and an even better salad bar. Fried ice cream for desert. There's all kinds of 50's/60's retail and eatin' space, some googie, some nouveau western, art deco, some slyly space age. A walk down Magnolia Blvd east of Cahuenga is full of indicators as to how optimistic Los Angeles was after WW2. The apartment buildings and motels point to a sense of playfully exotic entitlement. The names -- Belle-Mar, Dlophin Cove, Laurel Grove -- evoke something tranquil and languid. Probably a way to offset that many days in a summer bake to over 100, and there's no place to hide from the sun.

(Issac Newton Van Nuys, the guy for whom you know what is named, bought the land, divided it into lots and made sure to show it and sell it before mid-February, 1911. Of course, Van Nuys was built practically on the Tyrone Wash, so it could and did flood like nobody's business from the onset of rain.)

I briefly lived just north of Van Nuys, in Panorama City, on Blythe St, basically a gang stronghold. Not long after I left, a drug-related firefight broke out in the building.

North Hollywood/Valley Village has been most of my home for much of the past few years. I first came here in -- I think -- 2004. I was married, and we found a one bedroom in a 50s building on Tujunga, right across from North Hollywood Park (the place in "I Used To Love California"). Indie Coffee had just opened on the NW corner of Lankershim and Magnolia. I loved the neighborhood, my neighbors, the local businesses, all of it. I'd go running every day and notice buildings. Even when I didn't live close to it, I stayed close to it. The Iliad Bookstore is in part of my LA Tour, every bit as much as any known landmark the tourguides show. So are some favorite old houses along Camarillo St, where Bing lived (in a gorgeous home that was razed in the 60s). There's Bob's Big Boy on Riverside, next to that is my favorite Starbucks. Paty's is right there, good omelettes. Go west to Riverside and Lankershim, and there's the Chase bank where you can always spot sitcom actors of the past depositing their checks. The place is a bonanza after the Beverly Garland autograph show. Everyone who ever got killed on Star Trek is there the Monday after, depositing their merch money. There's also Eddie Brandt's Saturday Matinee, the greatest video store of all time, on Vineland.

Hollywood doesn't exactly want for cool, unique stuff. Spend a day with Art Fein and your head will spin. Everything from cemetaries to hot dogs, records to lampshades, the whole nine.

But because I discovered the Valley by walking around and compiling my own star map (so to speak), I feel a unique personal thing about it, and leaving to move back to the other side of the hill tugs at my heart strings a little.