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The old Los Angeles, the city of streetcars, steel signs, orange trucks, red cars, brick buildings, men in hats, ladies in skirts and high heels; the city of overhead wires, decorative lampposts, cops and conductors, kids on bikes, corner drugstores, ice cream parlors, neighborhood movie theaters; they are all alive and bustling and visible on the pages of the Pacific Electric Railway Society.

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The dismantling and destruction of public transportation and the elevation of the automobile to the status of a deity has destroyed the richness and civility that once characterized the City of Angels.

 

Go visit the page, make a contribution, and gain some understanding of what we lost and what we might try to rebuild as we again go back to trains.

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In the words of the organization:

 

“It is a non-profit association dedicated to the preservation of the memory of the Pacific Electric Railway. The goals of the PERyHS are: to preserve and maintain historical documents, visual images, oral histories, and historical studies; to make these materials available to the general public via publications (monographs), presentations and displays to non-profit groups and organizations and to assist other non-profit organizations in their efforts to preserve the legacy of the Pacific Electric Railway.”

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Rocketdyne mechanics, Canoga Park, circa 1960/ CSUN Digital Collections

Years back, manufacturing jobs were a mainstay of prosperity in the San Fernando Valley.

Huge aerospace, automobile, electronics, and construction companies fueled a vibrant, strong economy.

New immigrants, and working people from other states came to California and were able to find employment at General Motors, Teledyne, Ford, Lockheed and McDonnell-Douglas.

Today, there are almost two million people living in the San Fernando Valley.    The unemployment rate in Los Angeles is 11.6% but many, many more are barely earning enough to survive in low paying and part time work.

And in Craigslist, a grand total of 46 manufacturing jobs (6 or 7 a day) were advertised in the San Fernando Valley for the entire week of May 15-22, 2012.

On any one block in Van Nuys, there are probably seven people looking for work.

Here are the jobs:

Tue May 22

  1. Mechanical Design Engineer - (Chatsworth)
  2. Field Service Engineer - (Chatsworth)
  3. Machinist / Machine operators wanted -
  4. Chemical Engineer - (Chatsworth, CA)
  5. BINDERY - (NORTHRIDGE)
  6. Full-Time Seamstress Wanted - (Burbank, CA.)
  7. CNC Milling Machine Operator -
  8. TOOL / MOLD MAKER - (VALENCIA)
  9. Sheet Metal Fabricator - (Van Nuys,Ca)

Mon May 21

10. Machinist Set up/Operator -

11. Internal Mfg Logistics Specialist - (Montrose)

12. Service and Sales Rep - (Van Nuys)

13. Shipping and Receiving Warehouse Position - (Chatsworth)

Sat May 19

14. Purchasing/Inventory Control Manager - (Simi Valley)

Fri May 18

15. WAREHOUSE ASSEMBLY & PACKAGING POSITION - (CANOGA PARK)

16. Manufacturing Test Engineer - (Chatsworth)

17. Conventional Machinist - (Van Nuys)

18. Warehouse/Shipping/Inventory/Logistics - (San Fernando Valley)

19. Programmer, CNC Lathe Operator - (Burbank)

20. CNC MILL OPERATOR WANTED - (SF VALLEY)

Thu May 17

21. Conventional Machinist Needed!! - (North Hollywood)

22. handyman needed - (van nuys)

23. Machine Operator / Grinder Operator - (Chatsworth, CA)

24. Receiving Dept, Lead person - (Van Nuys, Ca)

25. Maintenance/CNC/Mechanical Engineer (Many Positions) - (Santa Clarita)

26. Regional Distribution Manager - img

27. Tech Assistant - (Northridge, CA)

28. Creative Seamstress/Prototype Maker Needed [pt] - (Tujunga, Ca)

29. CNC Machinist – Mill & Lathe - (Simi Valley)

30. Injection Molding – Set-up Technician - (Santa Clarita)

31. Die Casting Machine Operator / Die Setup person - (North Hollywood, California 91605) img

Wed May 16

32. Pre Production Assistant - (Chatsworth)

33. QUALITY INSPECTOR – MACHINED PARTS - (Chatsworth, CA)

34. Manufacturing Engineer - (Santa Clarita)

35. Inspector Class A or B - (Chatsworth, CA)

36. Shipping Clerk- 2nd Shift Positions - (Chatsworth, CA)

37. Receiving Inspector - (Valenica)

38. Jr. Material Handler - (N. Hollywood)

39. Sewers - (ProtecTARPS, SUN VALLEY, CA 91352)

40. Purchasing Manaager - (Santa Clarita)

41. Warehouse/Inventory Control Manager – Bilingual - (North Hollywood)

Tue May 15

43. CNC Programmer/Manufacturing Engineer/Machinist - (Santa Clarita)

44. Program Manager / Project Manager / Manufacturing - (Valencia)

45. Quality Assurance / Control - (Valencia)

46. Warehouse Positions - (Santa Clarita)

Crime Story: Van Nuys, CA 1959

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Photograph caption dated November 18, 1959 reads, “Thief Stole Their Wedding Gifts — Mrs. Mary Jim Tuttle, 17, and her husband, Army Pvt. Willard Tuttle, 18, look at shattered window which thief smashed before stealing all their wedding gifts from locked, parked car in Van Nuys. Wed three months, they were on their way to assignment in Ft. Lewis, Wash.”

On my outings down to Studio City I will reveal a personal and possibly shameful act of selfishness: I park on Laurelgrove Avenue, on a street of single family houses north of Ventura Boulvard.

After I park, I walk, and cross a pedestrian bridge and enter the business district.

Today, I again followed routine and entered a hot, inexplicably bustling, crowded street. Who are these people who can afford to shop here, those blogger moms who write about cupcakes, balloons, children and paint colors and their boyfriends and husbands, out of work since Home Improvement went off the air? The sources of income in Studio City are as mysterious, to men like me, as the daily life of God.

At Peet’s Coffee, I passed a friend, a blonde, beautiful and bubbly young woman, a real estate agent, sitting with her mother. We had not seen each other in a year or more, and all I know of her is what I read on Facebook, posts with smiles and exclamations and her 650 sun-kissed, shapely friends.

I asked her what she was doing drinking coffee on a Saturday, a day which in her creed is holy and sacrosanct and, by tradition and practice, belongs to house selling and house showing.

She told me a friend’s father had tried to kill himself last night, jumping off a bridge, but had survived. He was distraught over losing his house, a house he still had equity in, but could no longer afford. Her mother and she had been in the hospital with the friend, and were now just tired and spent and “taking it all in”.

She spoke of another client, also losing his home, who hanged himself in a closet and whom my realtor friend discovered post-mortem and pre-closing.

One does not hear darkness and death from a realtor. To hear it from her sweet lips, in the sunshine, on Ventura Boulevard, to hear why death came and nearly came, was darkening and saddening.

Sane people can turn insane when enough events go wrong.

It takes a walk away from the computer, to not look at a smart phone or tablet, and to simply go out in Studio City and speak to a friend to learn that what we imagine online, the glittering world of Jeffrey Marks and Ross Cassidy, the luxury hotels, the exotic spas, the buff and photoshopped, the stylish and the tasty, all those material goodies we watch on our screens fly by our eyes every second, that is not life.

California is haunted by fear, by scarcity of money, the unaffordability of health care, housing and college, all the basics that a benevolent government once regulated and which are now operated only for the benefit of one percent.

And every time I cross a bridge, by foot or by car, I think there by the grace of God go I.

LA Bus, originally uploaded by ifmuth.

“Gregory took a long, slow bus ride down La Brea and got off at West Adams.

He passed, on foot, the surviving remnants of the dying hood: auto body shops, crosses and churches, student murals, liquor stores and lottery signs, steel gated store windows, shop fronts in plywood and poster.

Mr. Obama painted like an icon with the words HOPE and CHANGE and YES WE CAN on a red brick wall.

At Hillcrest, he turned right and walked south past the silent windows and empty pews of the Southern Missionary Baptist Church, where he had once sung in choir and prayed in earnest.

Hillcrest was bright and treeless, lined with old stucco apartments and small houses. Neglected and aging African-Americans churched, worked and lived here, but lately the XXXL black-shirted Latinos had taken over. “

- Excerpt from “Lush Life” by Andy Hurvitz

It’s tough to write and tough to get others to read my short stories. 

I recently set out to challenge myself to write three short stories based upon the music of a composer whom I admire, the late Billy Strayhorn.

Somehow the songs from “Billy Strayhorn: Piano Passion” entered my sub-conscious and inspired me to write.  I listened to the music and let my imagination breathe.

In “A Flower is a Lovesome Thing” a peaceful gardener is taunted by a neighborhood thug, a small tale that involves the Armenian genocide and a young man’s death on the streets of Los Angeles.

“Something to Live For” takes us to Woodland Hills where a department store clerk, working in a dead end job, comes to idolize a rich, older, mysterious man with a tragic past.

“Lush Life” paints a story of a sour success, a Los Angeles decorator who seeks to ruin a rival by destroying and seducing the rival’s client, and, in the process degrading and demoralizing himself and others.

In my work, I again return to familiar themes of Western anomie and people adrift online and in life, searchers and artists and wanderers who yearn for approval and recognition but often end up shamed and despised.

There is a strong urge in America to build up and build out, but there is also a corollary force of self-destruction, manifested in our long working hours, obesity, and what Mencken called “our libido for the ugly”:  the billboard, fast-food, freeway and condo wasteland.

I won’t be so arrogant as to proclaim my fiction true, only to modestly state that I hope some truth is present in my writing.

I try to entertain and create and write something of value and artistry. It is a small pin on the map.

But I would rather start with a small diamond circle of integrity than create a large circle of lies encompassing the globe.

The dehumanized environment of sprawl, the mania for fame, the race for riches, the destruction of nature and the cheapening of life, the debasement of entertainment and the loss of privacy, these are some of the themes stamped onto my work.

San Diego Way, originally uploaded by Here in Van Nuys.

In Carthay Circle, not far from Fairfax and Wilshire, I stumbled upon a neighborhood of old homes, gracious and traditional, smack up against glass skyscrapers.

Calm, clean, prosperous, and quiet, it represents one of those anomalies of life in Los Angeles, which people either find exhilarating or deadening, the idea that you can have a suburban house in the center of the city.

In a few years, a subway stop will exist only a block north of here, making this area even more convenient, and blessedly less car-dependant.

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