Down by Fourth

The other day, since I was already down by Angel's Flight, I cut through Grand Central Market--still all the grand sensory overload I remember it being, with that noodle stand that always put me in mind of that one we see Harrison Ford at in the beginning of *Bladerunner*, even though it doesn't really look so much like it. I'm not sure the goat meat taco place is still there, but how could it not be?

Having thought of *Bladerunner*, and being *right there*, I have to poke my head in at the Bradbury Building. Which everyone has seen, whether they know it or not. It was built by a fellow who supposedly did it with no great knowledge, inspired by a ouija board experience and Ralph Bellamy's book *Looking Backward*. It was completed in 1894 and I don't know who it was who described it as "a fairytale of mathematics." You've seen it in movies and fashion shoots and the like forever--that place that is all light and air and spare lovely ironwork and handsome wood. International Style may be looking as dated as mantuas, but the Bradbury Building is as fresh and lovely as ever. I can't for the life of me figure out why it isn't ringed by purring steampunks. Perhaps security lures them away with scones and clotted cream....

So of course by the time I come out of the Bradbury (don't you love that the delightful writer and the vintage modern building share a name?) I'm right there by the cut-through to Spring St, so I have to stop by the Biddy Mason wall.

If Los Angeles were an Orthodox Christian town, Biddy Mason would be the patron saint of the city. Biddy Mason (1810-1900) came to the area as a slave, trained as a midwife, and in the narrow window of legal opportunity, won freedom for herself and her family. She promptly settled down and saved enough money to buy a parcel of land where her memorial now stands. It served as a base of economic operations for herself and her family, and "urban homestead" as one writer put it. She delivered babies all over the city, in all walks of life. She set up an account at the store that used to be at 4th and Spring for flood victims to use. First A.M.E. was started in her home. She lived long enough to see her children and grandchildren be a credit to her, and respected and successful members of the community All in all, the sort of person who would be a superb patron saint, for any city let alone this one.

I have never been out of the country, so I don't know what it is like in places where the current culture has been in the same location for millennia, but this day I stood in the same general area where Biddy Mason had lived and walked, and I wondered about that. What had it been like then? What had it been like to be her, living through so much and constantly imagining good works to do? What was it like to watch the Bradbury go up practically next door, and taking far longer than planned to do so? I stood on the south corner of 4th and Spring and wondered which corner that store had been on where Biddy Mason kept the account for flood victims to use. I was standing where they had stood, on their way to the place where they could get food and clean clothes and household goods, because of the kindness of a woman born into chattel slavery in the opening years of the 19th century, who had walked halfway across the country behind a wagon, who had seized that brief moment around the Dred Scott case to free herself and her children and her sister and her sister's children. Who had been trained to a profession and was good at it, and used her earnings to help not only her own family but these flooded-out immigrants too.



Maybe part of what interests me is that there is comparatively little history on this spot, for the culture that is here now. Okay, Biddy Mason was born two hundred years ago next year, but she only died a little over a century ago. Historically speaking, that is the blink of an eye. When I was standing by her memorial wall, we were separated only by some time, and not at all by space. It would have been wonderful to have stood there and have read any writings of hers. (Are there any?)



After all this pondering and exaltation--(that building on the north side of Broadway still displaying a red and gold mural of the hands raised as though in blessing, showing over the tops of the buildings to the south, where I stood, having visions of this street and mixing my poetic references freely--)--I continue my meandering toward Metropolis Books, I swear not two blocks away from all this. A bookstore is full of voices dependant upon our eyes to be heard. I did not hear Biddy Mason in there, but I could have asked.



I don't really know why chronos time thins out so easily and kairos shines through when I am downtown, but it does for me, and I will keep going back.

One for the Los Angles City Notebook

So I'm on Vermont, in the part of the city called Los Feliz, just a touch north of that corner where Vermont, Hollywood and Prospect all come together, but before Kingswell. I'd come from a bit of nice chat with the fellow who operates Blue Rooster, the only independent art supply store I am familiar with at this point--
(-- so that is where I like to get any art supplies I need. Usually gluestick and Moleskines. I was exactly there back in February of 2007 when suddenly, and that is exactly the word I mean, I took to collaging. I bought my first gluestick from him, and a Moleskine sketchbook, and collected ephemera from up and down the street, then sat in Starbucks and made a mess and was very happy with the results. So I like the place.)
--and I look over and notice that the base of the tree in its rock-laden patch of dirt alongside the curb, is covered in artfully planted succulents, in all those dreamy hazy shades of green and grey and purple that they come in out here. So I stop, and look up and down the street, after admiring this patch. I do not see another similar one. This one is in front of a storefront painted a harmonious shape of purple, I think the shop was called "Purple Circle," so this all makes sense.

The whole thing was so unexpected and unlooked-for. A secret garden of an entirely different sort from Burnett's, but with good effects.

"walking around looking at stuff"

I get alittle giddy when I'm downtown. I mean Los Angeles, I mean what can be called "the historic core," as any city expert is quick to solemnly point out, "L.A. doesn't *have* a 'downtown.'" Mhm.

So anyways, I'm at Pershing Square, just come up from the Red Line, and I'm standing at 5 th and Hill, and I walk up 5 th, toward Broadway. Now as recently as the childhoods of late-middle aged Angelenos, Broadway was a great, grand, street full of all the department stores and theaters in the highest splendor the city achieved. Running parallel, one block over from Broadway, is Spring St. Back in the day, it was called "The Wall Street of the West," and M.F.K. Fisher has made mention of how plentiful and legendarily good its restaurants were.

Perhaps fortunately, this area has been benignly neglected. These great, huge fine buildings sit in the sun, advertisements for residential hotels fading upon their side offering rooms costing per week what you could now spend on a snazzy 20 oz. coffee beverage. Little human-sized businesses fill up all the spaces along the streets, producing a very amiable bustle. No, it is not remotely as elegant a crowd as it once was, but it is a good one. Singularly eccentric looking folks greet each other pleasantly and share cigarettes and discuss the Lakers and life feels good to me when I'm there. The endless amounts of old residential hotels seem to be divvied up between still being residence hotels albeit of a different sort than perhaps they were, and rehabbed lofts. I try to make out what is going on in the upper stories of some of them, that give evidence of the remains of balconies, and second-story ballrooms and the like. One building has a pair of big gargoyles sticking out from about the third floor and I don't know why. An ancient looking woman in a motorized wheelchair gazes off into space like the riddles of the Universe just might give themselves up this time. We make eye contact and greet each other pleasantly, as strangers do, and she goes back to studying.

A big empty corner retail space on Spring (I believe it was) has faded walls, high ceilings, and hexagonal tiles on the floor that bear wear-marks suggestive of the placement of counters. Big, engaging oil paintings are lined up leaning against one of the walls. Somehow, I do not think that this is a temporary gallery space, and that makes all of it more interesting. Everyone standing at the bus stop behind me is brightly reflected in the window glass. I am too, inexplicably dark and hunched, staring like some sinister figure. It's an odd way to see myself.

I've wondered before and I wonder again what it must have been, to live here, back in 1909, 1923, 1935. What was it like to live between two of the mightiest streets in the whole region?
I walk past two hardworn men counseling each other about recovery as I head into the Nickel Diner. The area may lack its former elegance, but clearly there is no lack of dignity on these streets.

If you haven't been, you should go to the Nickel Diner. (524 Main St.) The food is good, real, comparatively affordable, and the desserts CANNOT be beat. One of the owners was chatting with me about the old menu murals painted on the walls. Apparently when they pulled down the old panelling and the lowered acoustic tile ceiling, they discovered this evidence of a diner previously in this space back in the 30's or 40's. "Sometimes a place tells you what it wants to be," she said.

I saw potted geraniums of coral and purple all up the fire escapes-to the roof-of one old building as I walked back to the Metro station. Herodotus said something I don't remember about the changing fates of cities.

the Human Size of Historic Charleston

So I was in downtown Charleston, South Carolina over the weekend. It dates back further than any city I have been in before, as I can recall. The streets are narrow to a modern eye. The buildings are right against the sidewalks, which are right against the streets, so everything is close. The houses tend to present a narrow edge to the street, then a long high gallery to meet the sea breeze. A great deal is very close together, easily walked--an open air market, the oceanfront, restaurants, parks, the works. Horse-drawn vehicles and trollies ferry people about. Plenty of trees provide shade where the close buildings don't do the job.

If I didn't know better I would have thought it was a Modernist experiment in environmentally sound, revolutionary urban design. (What the heck was all that awkward, badly-adapted-Corbu-flavored "International Style" crap attempting to produce? I may be getting my design lingo confused here I admit.)

Heehee. Forward into the past. But let's avoid as much of the icky stuff of the past as possible. Sure, chattel slavery is outlawed all over the country, but a permanent underclass is being created. Will it end up serving much of the same functions as chattel slaves did?

I suppose I'm back at the old question of how does design influence the lives lead amid it, and how does the technology available affect it all? I've long been intrigued by what connection may exist between domestic violence and domestic architecture. Looking at Charleston had me wondering again about what the unforseen fallout can be of the spaces we build; what is one generation reacting to from the previous one, only to have that hated feature picked up and valorized by a latre generation who saw how the reaction played out...