Welcome to the blog of writer and musician Andrew Martin. Here I'll post original photographs and observations as I encounter the history and culture of the San Fernando Valley, the City of the Angels, Alta California and the far-flung Pacific Rim… but mostly the Valley.
…but they would certainly have prevented it ever happening. So, for that matter, might the beavers’ replacements in power, the Dutch, if they had kept charge of the middle-Atlantic watershed. They’re half beavers themselves.
“There goes the neighborhood!”
Oddly, while researching the Van Nuys saga I’ve been intensely Viewing the geography and historic watercourses and settlements along the rivers of New Netherland — the South (Delaware), the North (Hudson) and the Fresh (Connecticut). These huge watersheds — including the Schuylkill, Millstone, Mullica, Raritan – are exactly what got pounded last night, and are still underwater.
Well, fat cats hate water. Maybe subway stations underwater will finally convince some pretty powerful people in Lower Manhattan that global warming is a — oh wait, what am I saying. They’ll just helicopter onto the roofs of their skyscrapers to get to their offices tomorrow morning. They won’t even notice the harbor’s in the lobby.
“Slow cooking a brisket as Texas Barbecue!” — Stockton’s Top Chef, Ken Albala
The View has correspondents all over, and this weekend we honor America with some snapshots of Life, As She Is Lived, Here, Now. Happy Independence Day from the View!
That beautiful shot of the Ben Franklin Bridge over the Delaware towards Camden’s fireworks, was taken by Bobbi Block — who also sent Philadelphia’s Fireworks Over the Delaware, Live From Penn’s Landing! VIDEO CLICK BELOW. Can’t you just inhale that thick, smoky, rusty, July on the Delaware Air? What a way to celebrate Independence!
Fancy a 20-year snooze? Fall under the enchantment of the CatskillMountains, America’s magical forest, as depicted by Mr. Jocelyn:
CICADAS: You thought it was all over with the Cicadas? Nightlife is back in the swing — Kayre Morrison and Damon Kirsche and Dean Mora’s Orchestra brought LA’s Cicada Club throbbing back to life this weekend.
THE DESPERATE WATCH: C. Butterman, our man in Florida, witnesses the awful scene in Surfside this holiday weekend.
Meanwhile, in the middle of another landfill island, in the middle of another bay on another coast…View Chris Martin’s alluring and colorfulback garden in Alameda.
ASHOT IN THE ARM for the U.S. state that ranks 50th in tourism: Larry Freedman!
“Bully! Bully!” After Medora, Larry winds up his Twister Tour of North Dakota at Jamestown!
CRUISING VALLEY VILLAGE: 1949
VV was developed by Bob Symonds beginning in 1947. The style he chose epitomized post-War America; a mix of LA’s homegrown Hollywood Regency, with a progressively popular Bauhaus element brought experimentally to the Valley by Jews fleeing fascism; while the third, and binding, element of the Valley Village style is Moderne, which was largely a culmination of the economies and miniaturizing of Wartime design, much of that work done locally at Lockheed. For better or worse, a Mid-Century Middle Class paradise for the automobile.
Cities back east have their bunting and their hansom cabs in the park, or Tall Ships in the Harbor, to help citizens celebrate the summeriest day of American yore. Seeing things like horses and ships, or hearing a town-crier’s bell, where they once were and suddenly are again, is part of our continuing theatre of living history. In California, nothing recalls “the Good Old Days of Summer” so much as a car parade of vintage roadsters, hipped-up, souped-up, dropped-down, cherried-out, taking over downtown and luring the local kids to (ahem) jump in each others’ back seats to take a ride. Well, wouldn’t you, if the cars looked like this?
The name of the chop shop is First Class, and I’ve never seen prettier low-riders in my life. These sleek cars are from the Mid-Century, late-‘Forties through the ‘Sixties, when our neighborhood was built. They so perfectly match Valley Village, and seem so at home on Magnolia, and so perfectly Doris Day-parked there, I figured it must be a commercial film-shoot. I looked around for the Art Director but there was no crew, nobody filming except the View. Still the First Class family must have carefully chosen this spot to show off their cars. The point is, these cars were made too look good cruising Magnolia Boulevard. And they still show it off to fine advantage — even if one or two of the booths are Covid-marked by “American Grafitti.”
What happened to cruising? Nancy Reagan moved to Sacramento, ‘nuff said.
The View has it from Bobbi Block, who was there, that the People in Philly have been turning out to defend the historic Reading Terminal — now Philly’s Convention Center — from the organized gangs of crypto-fascist thugs that have been trying to stop the ballot count. Jerks. There was even a terrorist plot foiled there today.
The good folks of Quaker City would have none of it, and rallied the citizens to surround the building with a cordon sanitaire, protecting the ballot counters and cheering them on for the count.
Bobbi is my new hero, I’m so proud of her and the Philadelphians. It looks like she, and Seth Rozin, and my other loved ones there may have made a big difference.
I planned to write an introduction on the proud tradition of art presses and printing in the Bay Area. But I’ve decided I don’t want to dim the lustre of Henry George, the subject of this fine book. Just note, that this book is part of a craft-printing tradition, and a labor of love from a husband and wife in the Oakland hills in the 70’s.
The volume is slim, elegant and traditional, like Henry George himself, but it is wrapped in a cover of the wildest exoticism, as were his (revolutionary) theories. Dig that sock-it-to-me Bill Graham-Fillmore Theatre color: the nauseating “pop” psychedelics of chartreuse against burgundy.
At least I dug it, when I pulled it off the thrift store shelf. Hand-printed, manually bound, made of plummy paper, I flipped through it for 20 seconds or more before I realized it was a biography of Henry George. Well, heavens. $4.99? I had five dollars; I was in good condition. How on Earth, could this rare book possibly have fallen in my hands, of all people?
I first “met” Mr. George years ago, walking around Philadelphia.
Ordinary, modest little row-house on hard-working 10th Street.The man was a genius, taking an anthropological and sociological, rather than a financialized, View of the constantly vexing problem of why societies routinely, regularly as clockwork, trip, stumble and fall.
I was immediately intrigued by the (new, then) marker. I’d never heard of George. None of my history, business or economics professors at Penn had dared mention his name or ideas. I looked up Progress and Poverty, and I read it by scrolling through an e-book online.
Golden honey drips from George’s pen; he is one of those authors whose e-leaves flip by quickly. The scales fell from my eyes, and I understood why “econ” had made my head hurt and heart ache, and why it didn’t make sense, and why it was “dismal.” (Hint: because classical economics is bunk.) His work is the firm theoretical foundation for the radical idea that “the rent is too damn high.”
Patient Reader, he is an intellectual hero of mine, and he started feet-on-the-cobbles in Philadelphia, and made his great career Franklin-style, as a printer and newspaperman, out in San Francisco during the Gold Rush. [“A dashing place; rather faster than Philadelphia.”]
As a famous author, economist and speechifier, he moved to New York and ran for reform Mayor, losing ONLY to (the most famous reform mayor in history) Teddy Roosevelt.
This man loved, and walked, the cities I’ve loved and walked. The notion of urbanity, of the human city, is central to his ideas. He was a founding member of the Bohemian Club, thus San Francisco royalty; and — get this — he was Agnes de Mille’s uncle. Thus, consider the geniuses one American family has given us: Henry George, Agnes de Mille, William de Mille, Cecil B. de Mille, and Hollywood actor Anthony Quinn. Only in the View, dearies, only in the View.
The Valley Village View 