Journeys, forward and back
Sep. 16th, 2005 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonI did a slight variation on the drive home last night because I needed to go by the Mecca of bargains fabrics here on the Westside: Lincoln Fabrics. It's a seedy store in a seedy section of Venice, but the prices can't be beat. The place is a complete fire hazard, with material stacked nearly to the ceiling in a profusion of piles. But it's quality stuff, if you dig for it.
So I drove up Rose Avenue in order to get to Lincoln Blvd. I hadn't been on Rose for ages, although it used to be one of the boundaries of my universe when I was a kid. I lived on 4th Avenue, bounded by Sunset Avenue on the south and Rose on the north. The Firehouse Cafe and the Rose Cafe still sat on the corner of Main and Rose, opposite corners. The Firehouse Cafe used to be Firehouse Antiques and at one time was an old horse-drawn engine firehouse. It was featured in the opening of the movie Speed, where the first bus blows up. Somebody bought coffee there before the kablooie happened.
On the next street up, Hampton, the used-to-be Gas Company building which became the used-to-be extension campus of Antioch University now has no signage outside at all, just a lot of overgrown trees. It was flying a black pirate flag from the roof, though who knows what that's all about. The entire property was surrounded by the identical six-foot wrought-iron fence which surrounded the Public Storage facility taking up the entire next block from 3rd Street to 4th, so maybe Public Storage has taken over that property as well.
The house I grew up in and the fields I roamed as a kid used to be where the Public Storage place now sits. All gone, covered over by cement and storage units. Except in my mind, where the wind still riffles the tall grass and the mourning doves still coo; where an infinite group of children play game after game in an endless summer.
The northern side of Rose up near 5th has been taken over by funky-chic kind of places, but the Pioneer Bakery still sits on the south side. I don't know if they still bake bread there, but it filled my childhood and adolescence with a wonderful aroma.
The rest of the street to Lincoln is rather nondescript and down-at-the-heels. The neighborhood tried hard for a revival in the nineties but never quite made it. The really poor section of Venice still hovers too close in adjacent streets for the Westsiders to feel comfortable there. Lincoln Fabrics closes at 5:30 p.m. these days because none of the Westsider crafters who love the bargains want to be anywhere near with dusk closing in.
I took Palms Avenue home from there, passing from poor Venice to Penmar, which used to be a solid middle-class bedroom community until the Venice Projects were built nearby to house poor folk. They became infested with gangs. The neighborhood went seriously downhill, then the Projects were bought by developers, all the poor people evicted (whether they had gang affiliations or not). This worked a terrible hardship on a lot of decent-but-poor people, but nobody in power much cared. They were after gentrification, and didn't think it proper to waste valuable Westside property on the poor. They did hardcore renovations at the Projects, started charging high rents and speculators started buying up the priced-to-move real estate in Penmar. It hasn't come all the way back to it's middle-class pretensions, still a bit dowdy, but showing signs of rising expectations.
When the rebuilding and renovation starts, somehow the poor cease to exist in the minds of the city power structure and the developers. They always say up front that they will provide a certain percentage of affordable housing, but somehow that just never seems to materialize. I can't help thinking of New Orleans as I drive east on Palms.
Further along Palms in Mar Vista, things are much tonier. That revival started earlier and has gone much farther. Climbing up the hill on the other side of Centinela Avenue, Palms moves from Mar Vista to the Mar Vista Heights. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that any neighborhood which has "Heights" in the name is quite tony indeed. Some lovely homes up there on the Heights—beautifully maintained and interesting mid-century moderns, Victorians, contemporaries. Blessedly few McMansions. I'm wondering if there's a neighborhood association and if they've got rules against those ghastly things. Some neighborhoods are going that way, thank goodness.
I turned away from the Heights on Inglewood and back down the hill to the plebian section of Mar Vista. I don't have near enough cash—or caché —for the Heights.
So I drove up Rose Avenue in order to get to Lincoln Blvd. I hadn't been on Rose for ages, although it used to be one of the boundaries of my universe when I was a kid. I lived on 4th Avenue, bounded by Sunset Avenue on the south and Rose on the north. The Firehouse Cafe and the Rose Cafe still sat on the corner of Main and Rose, opposite corners. The Firehouse Cafe used to be Firehouse Antiques and at one time was an old horse-drawn engine firehouse. It was featured in the opening of the movie Speed, where the first bus blows up. Somebody bought coffee there before the kablooie happened.
On the next street up, Hampton, the used-to-be Gas Company building which became the used-to-be extension campus of Antioch University now has no signage outside at all, just a lot of overgrown trees. It was flying a black pirate flag from the roof, though who knows what that's all about. The entire property was surrounded by the identical six-foot wrought-iron fence which surrounded the Public Storage facility taking up the entire next block from 3rd Street to 4th, so maybe Public Storage has taken over that property as well.
The house I grew up in and the fields I roamed as a kid used to be where the Public Storage place now sits. All gone, covered over by cement and storage units. Except in my mind, where the wind still riffles the tall grass and the mourning doves still coo; where an infinite group of children play game after game in an endless summer.
The northern side of Rose up near 5th has been taken over by funky-chic kind of places, but the Pioneer Bakery still sits on the south side. I don't know if they still bake bread there, but it filled my childhood and adolescence with a wonderful aroma.
The rest of the street to Lincoln is rather nondescript and down-at-the-heels. The neighborhood tried hard for a revival in the nineties but never quite made it. The really poor section of Venice still hovers too close in adjacent streets for the Westsiders to feel comfortable there. Lincoln Fabrics closes at 5:30 p.m. these days because none of the Westsider crafters who love the bargains want to be anywhere near with dusk closing in.
I took Palms Avenue home from there, passing from poor Venice to Penmar, which used to be a solid middle-class bedroom community until the Venice Projects were built nearby to house poor folk. They became infested with gangs. The neighborhood went seriously downhill, then the Projects were bought by developers, all the poor people evicted (whether they had gang affiliations or not). This worked a terrible hardship on a lot of decent-but-poor people, but nobody in power much cared. They were after gentrification, and didn't think it proper to waste valuable Westside property on the poor. They did hardcore renovations at the Projects, started charging high rents and speculators started buying up the priced-to-move real estate in Penmar. It hasn't come all the way back to it's middle-class pretensions, still a bit dowdy, but showing signs of rising expectations.
When the rebuilding and renovation starts, somehow the poor cease to exist in the minds of the city power structure and the developers. They always say up front that they will provide a certain percentage of affordable housing, but somehow that just never seems to materialize. I can't help thinking of New Orleans as I drive east on Palms.
Further along Palms in Mar Vista, things are much tonier. That revival started earlier and has gone much farther. Climbing up the hill on the other side of Centinela Avenue, Palms moves from Mar Vista to the Mar Vista Heights. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that any neighborhood which has "Heights" in the name is quite tony indeed. Some lovely homes up there on the Heights—beautifully maintained and interesting mid-century moderns, Victorians, contemporaries. Blessedly few McMansions. I'm wondering if there's a neighborhood association and if they've got rules against those ghastly things. Some neighborhoods are going that way, thank goodness.
I turned away from the Heights on Inglewood and back down the hill to the plebian section of Mar Vista. I don't have near enough cash—or caché —for the Heights.