The deal was sealed on a drive along Sunset Boulevard, an iconic asphalt stretch spanning 22 miles. Arriving at the Pacific, I glimpsed toothpaste-white sand beaches the width of football fields, bolted from the rented VW bug, and ran into the sea. Afloat in the summer-warmed Pacific, I melted into a puddle of tears.
I was 18 and reborn as a California girl.
Though I would continue shuttling back and forth to New York City for work and life, I knew I was done with frigid winters and dreary weather. Admittedly, there was the necessary escape from family and other woes. I needed every one of those 3,000 miles as a buffer. It’s not called the City of Angels for nothing.
L.A. promised more than just escape; it offered reinvention as its currency. In L.A., you could change your name, alter your story, and transform your life. The entertainment business — The Industry — was created by escapees for escapees.
I had come to L.A. on summer break from NYU, initially confused about where the airport ended and the city began on the drive out of LAX on La Cienega Boulevard. (Also true: La Cienega means swamp in Spanish, a fair warning about possible impermanence.)
By week’s end, I knew the haunts of the Sunset Strip: The Roxy, The Committee Theater, and Turner Liquors — the source of all elixirs and solace, where you could bump into Jim Morrison.
In L.A., cars reigned supreme, whether VW vans or Bentleys. Sunset Boulevard was more enticing than Route 66, and speed (velocity, and for some, the pills) became the drug of choice. Just west of the Strip, Sunset merges into the lush landscapes of Beverly Hills, with the flats on one side and the canyons on the other. Street signs chimed in melodious Spanish: Cielo, Angelo, Rodeo, Loma Vista, Moreno. Each bend of Sunset revealed another wonderland of towering palms plucked from the pages of Dr. Seuss: Beverly Glen, gated Bel-Air, the sprawling UCLA campus, straight through to luxe Brentwood.
Just past the deep curve of Sunset Boulevard cradling Will Rogers State Park, I reached the Pacific Palisades, a village embodying Wally Cleaver-family perfection. Not the oversized mansions of Bel-Air nor the sun-beaten stuccos of the Hollywood flats, but what seemed, at first glance, an upper middle-class neighborhood with kids shooting hoops in driveways. Rolling up into the hills on a carpet of green lawns, its southwestern flank was filled with shops, a church, a synagogue, and a spectacular school campus on Temescal Canyon Road — the iconic Pali High (a magnet school that my nephew, living in the Hollywood flats, later attended). One could gauge the degree of the Palisades’ bliss by the naming of its main drag, Via de la Paz. You just knew that Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed – well, all the cast of “It’s a Wonderful Life” – lived here.
Nearly two weeks after the onset of flames, the Pacific Palisades’ universe of aspiration and perfection is now a memory. Vast swaths of Malibu and historic Altadena have been incinerated, resembling Dresden in the final month of World War II. Last night, another warning emerged that the demonic Santa Ana winds have a fierce blast on the horizon, or as the Los Angeles Times highlighted, “Threat of Extreme Weather.”
Weltschmerz – world sadness – encapsulates the depth of mourning after WWII. With 40,000 acres turned to cinders, dozens dead or missing, Angelenos understand this feeling deeply.
Admittedly, I ran with a fast crowd and a series of Mr. Wrongs that led me into virtually every cranny of sprawling L.A. I spent months ensconced at the Landmark Hotel, rock ‘n’ roll central on Franklin Avenue (naturally, Janis Joplin and Alice Cooper were neighbors in adjoining suites); a stint in a modest Silver Lake clapboard rumored to have been Rita Hayworth’s residence; a small Craftsman with a front porch in the parched Hollywood flats south of Sunset; a Spanish colonial near Lake Hollywood we affectionately called Golly Go; and a guesthouse on Gardner Street not far from Didion and Dunne’s A-List party house (and a stone’s throw from where Lenny Bruce prematurely shed his mortal coil).
Later, I upgraded to the renovated basement of an ode-to-God mansion bordering Beverly Hills. A young couple resided on its upper floor – a striking longhair named Dennis with pulsating eyes and his beautiful hippie girlfriend. Dennis never seemed to sleep and claimed he was editing a movie he made with his friend Peter. Did we want to see some footage, he asked through long inhales of an oversized joint. He was contemplating calling it “Easy Rider.”
There was a stay in Topanga Canyon, a romance in Malibu flats, and another in a stilt-sited clapboard on the PCH — and even a stint in adjacent Ventura. In the 1980s, I resided for a long summer at the ranch house of a hard-drinking film producer, just a 10-minute walk from Will Rogers’ historic home.
In every corner of L.A., it seemed New Yorkers were embracing their reinvention. On a commune called The Farm on Barham Boulevard near the Warners lot, you could find musician John Sebastian (of the Lovin’ Spoonful), rock photographer Henry Diltz, and some wise guys who started The Fire Sign Theatre and later the Credibility Gap, precursors to “Saturday Night Live.” A soulful gal named Annie Thomas was always experimenting with large barrels of steaming tints and dyes. Soon, everyone on the rock scene was wearing Tye Dye Annie’s psychedelic fashions. You could confide in Annie, knowing she was a vault for your secrets and a hug for your heart.
In case we forgot, there was always Joan Didion reminding us, unceasingly, that we lived in a tinderbox … So yeah, we knew.
Not all the girls on the scene would be your friend. Two would inevitably sleep with your boyfriends: Janis Joplin and writer Eve Babitz, then a collage artist known for her self-proclaimed “bodacious boobs.” Neither was a standout looker in the land of glam blonde slenderness but countered with extraordinary talent, grit, and appetite. They loved L.A. — loudly!
The big L.A. bonus for me – a young reporter who had covered punk star Sid Vicious’ murder trial – was the city’s unprecedented crime. What screenwriter could conjure the plot and cast of the Manson Murders? Or Ronald Reagan’s best pal, Alfred Bloomingdale, being suspected of murdering — wait for it — his S&M mistress? Or Robert Evans’ coke-queen girlfriend masterminding the Cotton Club Murders? Or a well-born, closeted Pasadena neurologist watching “Double Indemnity” on TV with a young hustler, then committing murder for a million-dollar insurance payday? (And yes, ending up as a three-part series in Vanity Fair by yours truly.)
There was so much savory crime in L.A. that when Jay Levin launched L.A. Weekly, I became its first Crime Editor. The late great Mike Davis also contributed to the Weekly, and his 1998 book “Ecology of Fear” was the clarion call for the city’s inherent flammability. The Chumash and Tongva Indians, Davis reminded us, annually set the hills of Pacific Palisades and Malibu ablaze to clear the dead brush that was sure to ignite. In case we forgot, there was always Joan Didion reminding us, unceasingly, that we lived in a tinderbox.
Like most Angeleno converts, I kept exploring L.A.’s adjacent wonders – its deserts, mountains, and islands – and found a second refuge. The FAX machine, internet, and later Zoom enabled me to come into the city for work and friends, bypassing its daily freeway snarls.
But no matter where you go in Southern California, one truth remains: you cannot escape fire. There’s no city, municipality, or county in SoCal that has not burned. The 1973 Sycamore Canyon fire devastated parts of Santa Barbara, followed by the 1990 Painted Cave Fire, the Tea Fire, and the Jesusita Fire. Until the Palisades Fire, the mother of all infernos was the 2018 Thomas Fire that ravaged Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, nearly eclipsing the record-setting Santiago Canyon Fire that leveled 300,000 acres in 1889.
For me, California fires have led to eight evacuations. Yup. Eight. Eight flights in the ember-lit, ash-snow nights, staying with family, friends, or in hotels. And if it rained afterward, that meant mudslides, equally deadly. Seven years ago – around the same day that the Palisades fire razed the town – 23 residents were washed away in mudslides crashing over Montecito.
For the time being, the exodus has reversed. Highway 101 had been chockablock with L.A. fire refugees fleeing north. But that can change on a dime. A few days after Altadena burned, a fire ignited in the Ventura River Basin, quickly jumping to 55 acres before containment.
A desire to comprehend impermanence inspires millions to study Buddhism, mindfulness, and more. For the actual experience of it, come to Southern California.
Impermanence. Denial. OK. But I still love L.A.
A.L. Bardach, a former reporter for Vanity Fair, won the PEN Award for Journalism and is the author of “Cuba Confidential” and “Without Fidel.”
The post I Still Love LA: In Reverie With a Veteran Fire Survivor | Guest Column appeared first on TheWrap.
