Episode #127: Fighting For the Soul of Los Angeles

You Can't Eat the Sunshine

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Join us this month as we talk with preservationist John Girodo about his struggles to preserve Hollywood’s historic built environment as that small neighborhood experiences hyper-gentrification. We’ll also visit with social justice advocate Adrian Riskin of MichaelKohlhaas dot org, to discuss his satirical exploration of the shadowy world of Business Improvement Districts and how BIDs influenced the controversial recent defeat of a Skid Row Neighborhood Council.

We’ll also discuss the fate of the Peabody-Werden house, Richard Neutra’s Chuey House, a proposed aerial tram for Dodger Stadium, the Healthy Housing Foundation’s purchase of the nearly empty King Edward Hotel, Jill Stewart of the Coalition to Preserve L.A. on the challenges facing Los Angeles, L.A. Times art critic Christopher Knight laments Brookfield’s selling off public art on Bunker Hill, the L.A. Times’ dedicated historian Darrell Kunitomi’s long goodbye to the newspaper’s historic downtown home, a set of newly digitized photo albums from the Cuffe movie ranch in Lone Pine, Burbank’s Book Castle – Movie World bookstore closes its doors after 51 years, peril for Arts District landmark the Pickle Works Building, and the developer who plans to demolish the exquisite streamline moderne Dr. Jones Dog and Cat Hospital in West Hollywood is arrested on Federal bribery and public corruption charges. So stay tuned. . .

URLs for Interviews

Michael Kohlhaas dot org

Los Angeles Poverty Department exhibition: Zillionaires Against Humanity: Sabotaging the Skid Row Neighborhood Council

Hollywood Heritage

Upcoming Events

September LAVA Forensic Science Seminar

Closely Watched Trains

Fate of the Peabody-Werden house, moved to make way for a Boyle Heights housing development, remains uncertain.

Richard Neutra’s Chuey House, which was mysteriously pulled from landmark consideration by the Los Angeles Conservancy, is back on the market–but not as a teardown this time.

Aerial tram proposed for Dodger Stadium.

The Healthy Housing Foundation purchased the nearly empty King Edward Hotel with the aim to renovate rooms and fill it by mid-summer.

Curbed interviewed Jill Stewart of the Coalition to Preserve LA on the challenges facing Los Angeles. We like her idea of turning Parker Center into homeless housing rather than tearing it down.

L.A. Times art critic Christopher Knight laments Brookfield’s selling off public art on Bunker Hill: “This Miró masterpiece will be sold to the highest bidder. It belongs in a museum instead.” (The price realised at the May 15 auction was $9,425,000). We’re broken up about Brookfield’s demolition of the Halprin atrium, too.

The L.A. Times’ dedicated historian Darrell Kunitomi is on Facebook saying a long goodbye to the newspaper’s historic downtown home, and offering guided tours of the building until the threatened move to El Segundo.

A set of newly digitized photo albums from the Cuffe movie ranch in Lone Pine contains amazing snapshots of C.B. DeMille’s 10 Commandments ancient Egyptian film set in the Guadalupe dunes.

In vanishing independent bookstore news, Burbank’s Book Castle – Movie World closed its doors after 51 years.

The Pickle Works Building, an Arts District cultural landmark, is in peril from an expanding MTA project. The public Comments for DEIR for the Division 20 Portal Widening and Turnback Facility project just closed. (PDF link.)

The developer who plans to demolish the exquisite streamline moderne Dr. Jones Dog and Cat Hospital in West Hollywood was just arrested on Federal bribery and public corruption charges. Who else was paid off and how many landmarks lost?