* Here in the San Gabriel Valley, over the past five-years, I watched the closing of "CVS", ( It had been hit too many times by black females loading up thousands-of-dollars of beauty products into voluminous shopping-bags then jumping into their get-a-way car. ), "99-Cents-Only" Stores, "Rite-Aid" & "Big Lots", the two "CVS" stores remaining have most everything behind locked plastic walls. I'm not a believer, BUT!, it's time for the black community to stop using the Seven Deadly Sins as a bucket-list. Fortunately, "Grocery Outlet" has taken the place of "99-Cents-Only" stores.
Because the "We-waz-Khangs" mob wasn't taught a lesson that riots/looting/aggressive behavior/tent cities are wrong, we now have more of the same, doing more of the same in an historic center of Los Angeles. They tore into a Sushi Restaurant in Little Tokyo. What did they looters expect to find? Boats of Sushi floating about the place, waiting for them to take "selfies" with?
I can remember when Santa Monica was wonderful. I used to go with friends to visit the beach, people watch, meet people & have interesting conversations. As with the way things were in San Francisco. I wouldn't go either place now for a million-dollars. Okay, well, maybe for a million-dollars while armed with a cattle-prod. These aren't the same people.
These are not the same people who created Jazz Clubs & danced on "Soul Train".
Who created "Blue Thumb", "Black Lion" & "Motown" records.
These are moral embarrassments destroying everything they touch.
over the past five-years I've never sworn so much & NEVER! been more disappointed.
Wow! Iran doesn't help their case by dressing in medieval robes---hasn't the country, like, evolved at all since the 1970s revolution? It seems like they're stuck at that starting point.
What I know about the geography of LA comes from watching each episode of The Rockford Files a hundred times. His very down-market friend Angel appears to live Downtown. Otherwise Jim only goes down there in search of a good bowl of chili beans in a dive bar.
I always assumed there was some interesting inside joke on the show about how a fluke of local real estate law allowed Jim to live in a mobile home oceanside on a parking lot in Malibu. But I don't think this ever got explained.
If we were to compile a list of all the unlikely—and often downright illegal—things that happen on The Rockford Files, it’d be a long one. Just a few recurring examples that show up in nearly every episode:
1. Jim gets the hell beat out of him regularly, but his teeth remain flawless.
2. His car is totaled over and over again, yet he never mentions deductibles.
3. Cops open fire on fleeing suspects—on foot or in vehicles—with innocent pedestrians in the line of fire.
I suspect that was because Peckinpah—though uncredited—was ubiquitous on set, loaded with who-shot-John and liable to fire off a live round just to prove a point, all while bellowing: “If the kid ain’t cryin’ and the marshal ain’t bleeding, we ain’t shootin’ a western—we’re shootin’ a chicken commercial!”
The actual trailer was parked at Paradise Cove, a private beach and mobile home community in Malibu, which at the time rented trailer spaces for about $200-300 per month.
I'm going through the series again right now. I rewatch it at least once every couple of years. It never gets old—especially now that I'm older and forget the plots, which makes them feel new all over again!
Thanks for the history lesson, Dave! I grew up in the South Bay, what I refer to as Baywatch, Woodstock, and Jesus Freaks. But suffering from a perpetual contact high, having a live band in my living room most nights of the week, and attending five church services and a four-hour prayer meeting (visualize several dozen hippies flailing and praying in tongues!) each week, I was too busy battling demonic forces, saving souls, and being traumatized to learn LA's history.
I know, 20 years ago I visited SM when I lived back east and eventually moved to LA because I thought SM was the greatest place I’d ever been. Now I live here and haven’t been there in years because it’s so awful…
Whenever I mention you to my wife I refer to you as my Beverly Hills buddy, and I hate change, so I’m glad you’re staying put in BH (my Santa Monica buddy has no ring).
I love Your history lessons man . Not as demented as "Chinatown " or as poetic as Raymond Chandler . You fill a niche in My head of the L.A Ill probably never see in person . Had a chance to go in 1976 but I wouldn't ride there in a station wagon full of Hippies from Phoenix AZ so back to Fla for me Mike
This last article reminded me of The Innocence Abroad if Mark Twain was a BH Jew. I too would love to read a 10-15 page Airbnb review on your SM getaway.
It seems like there was this place called Gorky's where we used to go late to get dessert stuff. I'm thinking it was downtown somewhere, and would have been on the way back from the Rialto revival house in Pasadena. There was also some performance venue downtown back then, and maybe we went to Gorky's after that, not sure.
Other than that, pretty dicey. I had to drive through a big chunk of it in the ealry 80s--not sure why--it was hot and I had the windows down. With the windows down and many stoplights, I was struck that I never heard one word of English on that trip.
I can't pinpoint the exact year Downtown turned unsalvageable, but I know that it was already that way by the time I was old enough to recognize it, circa early 1970s.
Hi Dave! This one was a double bonus. I’m a history guy too, so anytime you veer into that territory, it’s an automatic win. And that crack-of-dawn escape from Santa Monica? Just wild — part comedy, part urban horror story. I may be about as far from L.A. as a man can get (geographically and culturally), but these pieces are a highlight every time. They make me laugh, shake my head, and sometimes mutter “only in L.A.” under my breath. Honestly, they’re a treat. Keep ‘em coming.
Cool history lesson. The L.A. River is something you just forget about, unless there’s a strong rain, and then you want to see how many morons and dumb dogs need to be rescued. Didn’t the drag racing scene from “Grease” get filmed in the river?
I actually lived in downtown L.A. in the early 90’s. USC converted an old hotel into student housing. Everyone had a private room & bathroom, like hotel rooms. I had a view of a parking lot full of snazzy new cars with license plates like “2SC4LAW” or whatever else the rich parents thought would be cute on the car with the giant bow on top that junior got for being accepted into USC.
There was a dining hall that made me so sick, EMS had to be called.
The neighborhood was full of suited business people during the day. The May Company on the next block was fun to shop at. There was a famous breakfast place called “The Pantry” that I tried a few times but didn’t see the allure.
Lots of productions were filmed on the street in front of my building and I took free food from craft services a few times, nobody noticed me.
At night, all the nice suited people went home, and the lights came on at the dance clubs that I’m guessing were fronts for prostitution. I remember they put ads in the Help Wanted section of the LA Times: “Get paid for talking and dancing!”
Skid row was literally one block long. Now the tent cities have spread up to North Hollywood, which surprised me the last time I was there.
Indeed. Not only have the "people in charge" not contained Skid Row, they've let it expand. It's seemingly endless now. 2010 I was going to a friend's Downtown comedy club (now long closed) and it blew me away how Skid Row had crept onto streets that used to be walkable. I still occasionally take the trains, so I pass through the 7th & Metro station. But that's about it for me & Downtown.
They actually do pay pretty college girls to go to parties. Someone tried to talk me into that when I was a student. She was a party girl so it was fun for her. She transferred to a school on the west coast where it’s warmer.
But for her it was fun to ‘party with Mick Jagger’ which she claimed she did go to a party w/the Rolling Stones & I believe that’s prob true they were touring.
For me it sounded like it was probably cokey and not my scene. But for a party girl who’s trying to get laid anyway…prob a fit
I know a guy of about 45 who is always trying to date younger women, he goes to concerts and pays for the after parties. I’m like: they’re probably not really fans, they’re probably paid to be there and not trying to meet a guy for a relationship.
He won’t let me introduce him to anyone from my dance classes or old theatre friends. Men are stubborn sometimes. Lot of 38 year old women crushing on him, he’s divorced and misses being married but is trying to date super hot women in their 20s. He’s always getting crushed & looking like he wants to cry ‘I think she just wants me to buy things for her.’
Like I don’t think most of these women are doing much sexually, unless it’s vying to get a star or hot young guy’s attention. They let guys like my acquaintance supply them with coke & booze (coke over 40 is IMO a red flag; I don’t hang out with him as much anymore) but they’re not actually doing much sexually with them I don’t think.
But hiring pretty girls to hang around is just a party planner/concert promoter scam to get young men to buy more alcohol, not actually pimping girls from USC out. They are trying to get ‘nice’ college girls though - they’re not trying to put like a streetwalker in front of millionaires. Also less of a risk - a girl who’s dad is an executive is less likely to sell someone out to a tabloid or these days on social.
There’s also things like audience work in LA- hiring people to clap at talk show tapings if they didn’t get enough free ticket holders. Even America’s Got Talent sometimes hires people to fill out the backstage area. I know someone who did that she had to pretend to be a contestant, she couldn’t let actual contestants know she was paid to be there. They didn’t go through Central Casting, they paid her cash like under the table. The whole entertainment thing, from concerts to TV, it’s weird. You can know too much about it & then it’s less fun to go out & do these things.
Also can I just say? Mick Jagger was already grandpa aged when I was in college and the idea of partying with anyone even close to that age squicked me out so bad.
But that was the sales pitch: partying with old rock stars, basically
I’d been going to The Pantry since I was knee high to a……well, to a knee. Now that it’s closed (due to greedy heirs or greedy unions depending on who you ask), I doubt I’ll ever have a reason to go downtown again. I remember spending 4th of Julys in MacArthur Park sitting on the lawn watching fireworks and having a picnic. Try that now. Little by little everything I loved about LA is slowly disappearing.
There used to be a Grinder up the street from me, at the ass end right where Beverly Hills becomes L.A. Tore it town 30 years ago. Now it's a Starbucks.
* Here in the San Gabriel Valley, over the past five-years, I watched the closing of "CVS", ( It had been hit too many times by black females loading up thousands-of-dollars of beauty products into voluminous shopping-bags then jumping into their get-a-way car. ), "99-Cents-Only" Stores, "Rite-Aid" & "Big Lots", the two "CVS" stores remaining have most everything behind locked plastic walls. I'm not a believer, BUT!, it's time for the black community to stop using the Seven Deadly Sins as a bucket-list. Fortunately, "Grocery Outlet" has taken the place of "99-Cents-Only" stores.
Because the "We-waz-Khangs" mob wasn't taught a lesson that riots/looting/aggressive behavior/tent cities are wrong, we now have more of the same, doing more of the same in an historic center of Los Angeles. They tore into a Sushi Restaurant in Little Tokyo. What did they looters expect to find? Boats of Sushi floating about the place, waiting for them to take "selfies" with?
I can remember when Santa Monica was wonderful. I used to go with friends to visit the beach, people watch, meet people & have interesting conversations. As with the way things were in San Francisco. I wouldn't go either place now for a million-dollars. Okay, well, maybe for a million-dollars while armed with a cattle-prod. These aren't the same people.
These are not the same people who created Jazz Clubs & danced on "Soul Train".
Who created "Blue Thumb", "Black Lion" & "Motown" records.
These are moral embarrassments destroying everything they touch.
over the past five-years I've never sworn so much & NEVER! been more disappointed.
Agreed.
IDF blows up Iranian state TV live on air:
https://x.com/disclosetv/status/1934631458368262425?t=9IlOgNTKAiKnX6F7teGBig&s=19
People are furious as this is going to cause them to miss the most popular show in Iran: Monday Night Beheadings.
LOL!!!!
Wow! Iran doesn't help their case by dressing in medieval robes---hasn't the country, like, evolved at all since the 1970s revolution? It seems like they're stuck at that starting point.
I enjoyed the history lesson!!
Thank you!
Good night from Paris. Not nearly as bad as has been reported, and we've covered a lot of ground (walking and subway).
My best from a sunny Beverly Hills day!
To Sir, with Louvre!
What I know about the geography of LA comes from watching each episode of The Rockford Files a hundred times. His very down-market friend Angel appears to live Downtown. Otherwise Jim only goes down there in search of a good bowl of chili beans in a dive bar.
Yep! Jim was a beach guy through and through. Angel lived with the cockroaches.
I always assumed there was some interesting inside joke on the show about how a fluke of local real estate law allowed Jim to live in a mobile home oceanside on a parking lot in Malibu. But I don't think this ever got explained.
If it was explained, I don't recall it. He likely couldn't do that today!
If we were to compile a list of all the unlikely—and often downright illegal—things that happen on The Rockford Files, it’d be a long one. Just a few recurring examples that show up in nearly every episode:
1. Jim gets the hell beat out of him regularly, but his teeth remain flawless.
2. His car is totaled over and over again, yet he never mentions deductibles.
3. Cops open fire on fleeing suspects—on foot or in vehicles—with innocent pedestrians in the line of fire.
Lucas McCain killed at least 120 people during the course of his 168-week Reign of Terror over the town of North Fork.
I suspect that was because Peckinpah—though uncredited—was ubiquitous on set, loaded with who-shot-John and liable to fire off a live round just to prove a point, all while bellowing: “If the kid ain’t cryin’ and the marshal ain’t bleeding, we ain’t shootin’ a western—we’re shootin’ a chicken commercial!”
In the last season you learn his trailer is actually in a large park, not sitting alone as it always seems.
The actual trailer was parked at Paradise Cove, a private beach and mobile home community in Malibu, which at the time rented trailer spaces for about $200-300 per month.
Couldn't be done today.
Those spots would be millions each.
I'm going through the series again right now. I rewatch it at least once every couple of years. It never gets old—especially now that I'm older and forget the plots, which makes them feel new all over again!
Thanks for the history lesson, Dave! I grew up in the South Bay, what I refer to as Baywatch, Woodstock, and Jesus Freaks. But suffering from a perpetual contact high, having a live band in my living room most nights of the week, and attending five church services and a four-hour prayer meeting (visualize several dozen hippies flailing and praying in tongues!) each week, I was too busy battling demonic forces, saving souls, and being traumatized to learn LA's history.
Thank you for doing the LORD's work!
This was actually two lessons. The origins of downtown LA and why people should stay far away from Santa Monica
I know, 20 years ago I visited SM when I lived back east and eventually moved to LA because I thought SM was the greatest place I’d ever been. Now I live here and haven’t been there in years because it’s so awful…
Whenever I mention you to my wife I refer to you as my Beverly Hills buddy, and I hate change, so I’m glad you’re staying put in BH (my Santa Monica buddy has no ring).
After that Santa Monica experience, I can promise you that I will remain your Beverly Hills buddy for good!
I tell my wife the same thing!
The first part of the article felt like a Kafka nightmare, but then the LA River lesson washed it away for good. Santa Who?
I love Your history lessons man . Not as demented as "Chinatown " or as poetic as Raymond Chandler . You fill a niche in My head of the L.A Ill probably never see in person . Had a chance to go in 1976 but I wouldn't ride there in a station wagon full of Hippies from Phoenix AZ so back to Fla for me Mike
I wouldn't have taken that hippie-trip either!
Yeah for all the peace and love shit they talked I never trusted them. I was a Carny back then so I didn't trust anyone.
"faster ‘n a fox can catch a turtle.”
Okay, that one cracked me up!
Cheers Dave!
Will you update this with your Airbnb review?
Absolutely!
This last article reminded me of The Innocence Abroad if Mark Twain was a BH Jew. I too would love to read a 10-15 page Airbnb review on your SM getaway.
It seems like there was this place called Gorky's where we used to go late to get dessert stuff. I'm thinking it was downtown somewhere, and would have been on the way back from the Rialto revival house in Pasadena. There was also some performance venue downtown back then, and maybe we went to Gorky's after that, not sure.
Other than that, pretty dicey. I had to drive through a big chunk of it in the ealry 80s--not sure why--it was hot and I had the windows down. With the windows down and many stoplights, I was struck that I never heard one word of English on that trip.
I can't pinpoint the exact year Downtown turned unsalvageable, but I know that it was already that way by the time I was old enough to recognize it, circa early 1970s.
Who the hell buys the real estate in Skid Row?
Hi Dave! This one was a double bonus. I’m a history guy too, so anytime you veer into that territory, it’s an automatic win. And that crack-of-dawn escape from Santa Monica? Just wild — part comedy, part urban horror story. I may be about as far from L.A. as a man can get (geographically and culturally), but these pieces are a highlight every time. They make me laugh, shake my head, and sometimes mutter “only in L.A.” under my breath. Honestly, they’re a treat. Keep ‘em coming.
That's the kind of comment that really keeps me going. Thank you, Terry. Very, very much appreciated.
Cool history lesson. The L.A. River is something you just forget about, unless there’s a strong rain, and then you want to see how many morons and dumb dogs need to be rescued. Didn’t the drag racing scene from “Grease” get filmed in the river?
I actually lived in downtown L.A. in the early 90’s. USC converted an old hotel into student housing. Everyone had a private room & bathroom, like hotel rooms. I had a view of a parking lot full of snazzy new cars with license plates like “2SC4LAW” or whatever else the rich parents thought would be cute on the car with the giant bow on top that junior got for being accepted into USC.
There was a dining hall that made me so sick, EMS had to be called.
The neighborhood was full of suited business people during the day. The May Company on the next block was fun to shop at. There was a famous breakfast place called “The Pantry” that I tried a few times but didn’t see the allure.
Lots of productions were filmed on the street in front of my building and I took free food from craft services a few times, nobody noticed me.
At night, all the nice suited people went home, and the lights came on at the dance clubs that I’m guessing were fronts for prostitution. I remember they put ads in the Help Wanted section of the LA Times: “Get paid for talking and dancing!”
Skid row was literally one block long. Now the tent cities have spread up to North Hollywood, which surprised me the last time I was there.
Indeed. Not only have the "people in charge" not contained Skid Row, they've let it expand. It's seemingly endless now. 2010 I was going to a friend's Downtown comedy club (now long closed) and it blew me away how Skid Row had crept onto streets that used to be walkable. I still occasionally take the trains, so I pass through the 7th & Metro station. But that's about it for me & Downtown.
They actually do pay pretty college girls to go to parties. Someone tried to talk me into that when I was a student. She was a party girl so it was fun for her. She transferred to a school on the west coast where it’s warmer.
But for her it was fun to ‘party with Mick Jagger’ which she claimed she did go to a party w/the Rolling Stones & I believe that’s prob true they were touring.
For me it sounded like it was probably cokey and not my scene. But for a party girl who’s trying to get laid anyway…prob a fit
I know a guy of about 45 who is always trying to date younger women, he goes to concerts and pays for the after parties. I’m like: they’re probably not really fans, they’re probably paid to be there and not trying to meet a guy for a relationship.
He won’t let me introduce him to anyone from my dance classes or old theatre friends. Men are stubborn sometimes. Lot of 38 year old women crushing on him, he’s divorced and misses being married but is trying to date super hot women in their 20s. He’s always getting crushed & looking like he wants to cry ‘I think she just wants me to buy things for her.’
Like I don’t think most of these women are doing much sexually, unless it’s vying to get a star or hot young guy’s attention. They let guys like my acquaintance supply them with coke & booze (coke over 40 is IMO a red flag; I don’t hang out with him as much anymore) but they’re not actually doing much sexually with them I don’t think.
But hiring pretty girls to hang around is just a party planner/concert promoter scam to get young men to buy more alcohol, not actually pimping girls from USC out. They are trying to get ‘nice’ college girls though - they’re not trying to put like a streetwalker in front of millionaires. Also less of a risk - a girl who’s dad is an executive is less likely to sell someone out to a tabloid or these days on social.
There’s also things like audience work in LA- hiring people to clap at talk show tapings if they didn’t get enough free ticket holders. Even America’s Got Talent sometimes hires people to fill out the backstage area. I know someone who did that she had to pretend to be a contestant, she couldn’t let actual contestants know she was paid to be there. They didn’t go through Central Casting, they paid her cash like under the table. The whole entertainment thing, from concerts to TV, it’s weird. You can know too much about it & then it’s less fun to go out & do these things.
*whose not who’s
Also can I just say? Mick Jagger was already grandpa aged when I was in college and the idea of partying with anyone even close to that age squicked me out so bad.
But that was the sales pitch: partying with old rock stars, basically
...command me to stalk Judi Dench." That’s the most disturbing thing I have ever read on Substack.
Imagine how SHE feels!
I’d been going to The Pantry since I was knee high to a……well, to a knee. Now that it’s closed (due to greedy heirs or greedy unions depending on who you ask), I doubt I’ll ever have a reason to go downtown again. I remember spending 4th of Julys in MacArthur Park sitting on the lawn watching fireworks and having a picnic. Try that now. Little by little everything I loved about LA is slowly disappearing.
They tore down "The Grinder" a restaurant near USC as well. It sucked!
There used to be a Grinder up the street from me, at the ass end right where Beverly Hills becomes L.A. Tore it town 30 years ago. Now it's a Starbucks.
Dave, you remember a place called “original barbecue” on 8th and Vermont? That’s going way way back…
It’s such a pit. That whole area is so weird. It’s a shame because you can see traces of when it was a middle class area