Time machines: "Classic Dining: Discovering America’s Finest Mid-Century Restaurants;" the 25th anniversary of "Star Trek: The Next Generation;" and the frozen wing of the Alexandria Hotel, locked in space and time since 1938.
PHOTOS: 'Frozen wing' of downtown LA's Alexandria Hotel to be opened after almost 75 years
If you go into business with someone, make sure you have an exit plan. And an entrance plan. William Chick didn't have either, and it probably cost him millions. The hotel wing he built in downtown LA has been closed off for 74 years; only now is a developer working on unsealing this time capsule from 1938.
Chick, according to the LA Times, ran a livery stable next to the grand Alexandria Hotel. He knew a good business opportunity, and built a fully integrated wing onto the hotel, circled below in this photo of Spring and Fifth Streets.
It made a lot of sense. After all, the Alexandria was LA's grand hotel, where Taft, Teddy Roosevelt, Churchill, and Caruso stayed.
It retained some of its grandeur for some years ...
...before becoming the SRO it is now. You can now rent rooms there for as low as $575 per month.
But back to Chick's wing. According to the Times, by 1938, the hotel and the wing were in new hands. Movie producer Phil Goldstone owned The Alexandria, and Chick's daughter Lee Roddie owned the wing. After a rent dispute, Goldstone walled off his part of the Alexandria from Roddie's wing. That wouldn't have been a problem except that Roddie's father had never built stairs or an elevator to the guest rooms in his wing. "Father made a terrible decision," Roddie told the Times in 1967 ... when the wing had only been "frozen" for 29 years. In the ensuing years, while the ground floor shops have been rented out, no owner has spent the money to fix the problem, and the upper floors have been the realm of pigeons, taggers, and perhaps a squatter or two. They're locked in time, as they were when Goldstone started building his personal Cask of Amontillado in 1938.
When I heard about the frozen wing, my mind started racing. I wanted to breathe air last breathed when FDR was in the White House, to thumb through postcards and letters left by rushed correspondents dead now for 50 years, to sit on a bed where ... well, I imagine a man and a woman-not-his-wife, sleeping late after making love, woken simultaneously by the manager's brisk knock and the sound of bricks being piled up across the hallway. If I can't live in the 1930s, this would be the next best thing.
A little over a year from now, you might be able to sleep with those same ghosts. Culver City-based developer Nick Hadim says a group of anonymous investors has purchased the building and is reportedly spending $3-million to make the upper floors usable. He's heading up the project, and met KPCC photog Mae Ryan and me at the corner of Spring and Fifth a few days ago.
Hadim, a slim, handsome Iranian, says, "A year ago, walking down Fifth Street, I noticed it. Why are the windows open, why are they shattered, why are they dirty? One part of the building looks good, the other part doesn't." So he started asking questions and learned the sad story. His plan is to turn the wing into a luxury apartment building, The Chelsea, with a lounge in the deep sub-basement and suites above designed to retain the charm and the mystery of the time capsule they are. (Target opening: December 2013.)
But here's the catch: Hadim, the man spending his time and treasure, hasn't even been into the whole wing. You can get into the basement through the leather goods store on the ground floor. You can climb onto the roof of the ground level stores and then into the first floor of hotel rooms. And you can get into the top floor of rooms from the roof of the wing. But with no stairs, no fire escape, and no elevator, the middle floors, 3-6, are inaccessible. Who knows what's in there? Hadim says he saw some furniture on one of his excursions, but later in the day, when Hadim had left us and we climbed on our own to the lowest level of rooms, there was nothing but a few bathtubs and toilets, crumbled wallpaper, old phone lines, and floors, ceilings, and woodwork in surprisingly good shape. There isn't even as much pigeon poop as you'd imagine.
Still hopeful, I climbed a fire escape across the street and peered into the upper floors through a pair of binoculars. I'd like to say I saw an Underwood typewriter, a feather boa, a chintz bedspread, and a skeleton in a fedora in the tub ... a cigarette in its teeth and a bottle of burbon in its hand ... But I didn't.
The light was wrong and the remaining windows are too grimy to see much, but it looks just like the rest. Stripped bare and waiting for an exit plan.
Archival photos: LA Public Library online photo archive.
Keepers of the Flambé: 'Classic Dining: America's Finest Mid-Century Restaurants'
Skip lunch, ditch the sneakers, and put on your sportcoat, honey, because tonight we're celebrating at the Dal Rae supper club in Pico Rivera.
It's the home of the best relish tray in North America and is one of the last bastions of tableside dining, where the maitre d' or owner wheels a cart over and makes your Steak Diane, Caesar Salad or Cherries Jubilee in front of you.
The Dal Rae is just one of the historic eateries Peter Moruzzi profiles, and Sven Kirsten photographs lovingly, in "Classic Dining: America's Finest Mid-Century Restaurants."
Here's an excerpt:
As a type, classic American restaurants range from "continental-style" fine dining, with their softly lit wood-paneled interiors, starched tablecloths, curved booths, tuxedoed captains, and tableside service, to historic establishments retaining original character, décor, ambiance, and traditional menus. Elegant French restaurants typify the former; old-style ethnic restaurants -- Italian, Chinese, German, Spanish -- the latter. Steakhouses tend toward fine dining. Seafood restaurants run the gamut from high-end to sawdust and wood benches. Polynesian palaces, if you can find them, tend toward refined Oriental fare. All share an inviting time-machine quality.
"Fine dining" is associated with the upscale dinner houses that were popular in American cities from the 1940s through the 1970s. Classic fine dining establishments serve "continental cuisine" -- an eclectic melding of French-inspired and American dishes floridly described in elaborate menus. The key elements include white tablecloths, semicircular leather or vinyl booths of red, dark brown, or black, indirect lighting, tuxedoed captains, and tableside service. Many feature dark wood paneling reminiscent of old-world European restaurants, and have banquet rooms and the capacity for entertainment. With cocktails, dinner, dessert, and live music, fine dining is an experience that often lasts the entire evening.
Classic continental-style fine dining involves all the senses. It begins with the maître d' ushering your party past an expansive cocktail bar to a darkened dining room. There, seated in an enveloping red leather booth, a choreographed ritual unfolds with a level of formality and service appropriate to the cuisine. Dinner begins with cocktails, an iced relish tray, and bread, continues through an appetizer of Oysters Rockefeller, Caesar Salad prepared tableside, Lobster Thermidor or Steak Diane as an entrée, a fully loaded king-size Idaho russet baked potato, a bottle of red wine, and concludes with flaming Cherries Jubilee (prepared tableside, of course), coffee, and cognac.
Unlike contemporary upscale restaurants that reject buttery dishes, continental-style fine dining features rich foods with dual names: the aforementioned Lobster Thermidor and Steak Diane, Pepper Steak, Oysters Rockefeller, Dover Sole, and Bananas Foster. Fine dining restaurants are warm and enveloping. Most have their original bars, with experienced bartenders who know how to make classic cocktails such as an Old Fashioned, Sidecar, Manhattan, Whiskey Sour, or Sazerac.
Flaming dishes prepared tableside offer the patron a theatrical experience markedly different from typical restaurants, which helps justify the cost of fine dining and attracts special event celebrations where elegant service and high prices are part of the appeal.
Whether fine dining or historic, classic American restaurants from the last century deserve our attention and patronage. Go to these places now. Don't wait. This may be your last chance to immerse yourself in a vanishing world.
(The Dal Rae is at 9023 E. Washington Blvd. Pico Rivera, CA 90660. 562-949-2444 for reservations and information. Many more classic SoCal restaurants are listed in Moruzzi's book.)
Study finds Americans listen to more and more dark, moody music (Playlist!)
This week, Scientific American reported on a study by two psychologists that looked at Billboard's top 40 songs over the last 50 years and found that more and more of the music we're listening to is written in minor keys.
What does that mean? I don't want to get too technical, but it's the difference between a song like
"Woolly Bully" — which is fast, upbeat and happy and definitely in a major key — and The Rolling Stone's "Paint It Black." It's in a minor key, E minor, specifically. There's the same upbeat tempo, but it sounds brooding, menacing. Take a listen to some of those songs with our Spotify playlist:
Today, songs like "Paint It Black" are more common. If you're looking for a contemporary example, think about Adele's "Rolling in the Deep," LMFAO's "Party Rock Anthem." And "Gangnam Style," one song that by now you probably never want to hear again (it's in B minor).
Dr. Glenn Schellenberg, a professor of psychology at University of Toronto, co-authored the study. He said the America's taste gradually transitioned from major to minor — the scale tipped to a preponderance of minor key singles in the mid-1990s.
His study didn't just look at tempo but at tempo, gender involvement. Obviously we listen to more women now than we did in the '60s. "But in our sample," said Schellenberg, "the highest proportion of female artists was between 1995 to 1999." Maybe if the Spice Girls and Hole reunite, we can break that record.
Though his study doesn't address the reason, Schellenberg speculated Americans listen to more minor key songs because they've grown a taste for more complex music. "I think it's kind of rhetorical in that composers write things that sound less obvious. And people want to consume products that are less obvious and more complicated. And it's kind of a marker of sophistication."
Schellenberg makes a good point, but I'm not sure it's a sign we're that sophisticated.
Songs from back in the day could be written in major keys, be songs you could dance to, and have really dark themes: "Last Train to Clarksville" was The Monkees' first song, it tells the story of a Vietnam-bound army recruit saying goodbye to his girlfriend. Electric Light Orchestra's "Mr. Blue Sky" is abut loss, and let's not forget "Leader of the Pack" — a teenage tragedy in C Major.
Writing a song like that isn't easy. Maybe we just like getting to the point quicker — or maybe we've lost our taste for nuance.
Gordon Henderson and the Adventure of the Sewer Snake
It started as a routine call to the plumber for tree roots in the sewer. But what happened next, KPCC's Gordon Henderson says, defies imagination.
Frayed: Mental illness steals David Haldane's son, and the system makes it worse
NOTE from John Rabe 12/18/2012: I'm reposting this story in the wake of the Newtown massacre. It's a really good, personal look into how hard it is to commit a truly troubled and dangerous mentally ill person, and how the problems with the system affect the patients and the families.
(David Haldane's Off-Ramp story is based on a longer article that appears in Orange Coast Magazine.)
The call I feared finally came on a Friday. A woman's voice said, "I'm a nurse at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital. Don't panic but we have your son."
Schizophrenic and homeless at 24, my son Drew was in the ICU with a blow to the head. I had imagined this conversation, or variations if it, many times. Now I rubbed my eyes and grabbed the car keys.
My boy hadn't always inspired alarming calls. Once he had a winning smile and unlimited future. Then he got arrested for setting fire to trash cans, stole candy from a liquor store, and ran away from home. We thought these were teenage shenanigans. But they were signs of something far more sinister. Drew always had an active imagination. In elementary school he had a mysterious friend named Carlos whom only he could see. He also had trouble focusing in class. The ADD meds they prescribed didn't work; Drew fell behind, eventually landing at a continuation school. For a time, under the tutelage of a caring teacher, he seemed to be reborn.
I knew something was seriously wrong when his mom called while I was out of town. We were divorced by then and Drew had recently moved to my house. "Are you home yet?" Dawn asked, confused. "Because Drew says he hears your voice." A few weeks later he drove to a construction site and nearly killed himself injesting sealant. My son spent his high school graduation day in a psychiatric hospital--the first of many stays.
I thought of all this as I drove to Hollywood Presbyterian. And I remembered his 19th birthday, when I had gone to his apartment. Before I could even knock he opened the door and began pummeling me in the hall. Then, when the anger subsided, he retreated silently into his room as I called 911. The police arrived with just one question: Did I want to press charges? I convinced them that he needed help, not jail, and they took him back to the hospital on a 72-hour hold.
Thus began the process of having Drew conserved. That's a legal procedure by which the court assigns someone to act on another person's behalf. In our case a public guardian became Drew's conservator, with broad powers and obligations including forcing him to get psychiatric care. Drew was put in several board-and-care homes, but got evicted for attacking other residents and made more suicide attempts. Finally he was sent to a locked psychiatric facility where at least we knew that he and those around him were safe.
But four years later, disaster struck anew. As usual, the news reached me by phone. My ex-wife Dawn asked, "Are you sitting down? Drew's conservatorship has been dropped." It happened after a psychiatrist missed three court hearings. The hospital said he claimed "not to have gotten the fax." So my son was set free and our nightmare went on.
Drew's situation is not unusual. In any given year, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, roughly one in 17 Americans suffers from serious mental disease. And yet only a third of them ever get treatment. There's a serious lack of funding, few empty beds in psychiatric hospitals, and strong patients' rights laws that block getting many people the help they need. Conservatorships, like the one Drew fell out of, are difficult to get and annually reviewed.
Pulling into the ICU's parking lot, I recalled another drive to Hollywood just days before. It had been weeks since anyone had seen Drew at the Lynwood board-and-care home to which he'd voluntarily been assigned. Then he called.
"Hey, Dad, what night is it?"
"Saturday," I told him. "We're wondering where you are."
"Working in LA," he said. "I'm at Hollywood and Orange; why don't you and Mom visit me wearing black ties?"
The next day Dawn and I drove to that intersection and, sure enough, Drew appeared and jumped into the car. I had never seen him like this; disheveled and sunburned with long hair and wild eyes. "Let's go!" he ordered, glancing nervously behind. "You guys are in so much trouble."
At a McDonald's, Drew said he was working undercover for the CIA, protecting the president from assassins. Did he actually know the president, we asked? Our son said he'd written speeches for him and they spoke by phone. "People keep messing with me," he said. "The cops follow me everywhere, security guards follow me around; it's all over the news."
Was he still on his meds, Dawn wondered? "Sure," he said. "Actually I make my own from stuff on the street." Suddenly, Drew growled, "Got to get back to work." And we watched him disappear into the crowd.
When I finally entered Hollywood-Presbyterian, I hardly recognized my son. And, semiconscious with a thick bandage around his head, he barely recognized me. Huddling in the hallway, I got the full story.
Apparently Drew had returned to his board-and-care just long enough to pick a fight. The much-larger man had knocked him out cold, literally bruising his brain. "Is there damage?" I asked, almost afraid to know. "If there is," the doctor said, "it will be evident from his behavior." But Drew's behavior was already erratic. In the previous months he'd been calling us at odd hours, sometimes angry, sometimes in tears. "You have five days to live," he told his mom in one conversation. Then later: "Dad, I don't know what's going on." Around Christmastime, he wrote his stepfather asking for a gun.
Here's how it's supposed to work with the gravely mentally ill: The presiding psychiatrist at a hospital to which the dangerously-acting patient has been admitted initiates conservatorship proceedings. Then, if the judge agrees, the patient is put on a waiting list for longer-term care.
How it actually works is far different: If you're lucky enough to learn that your loved one is hospitalized, you have 72 hours to respond. So you get on the horn with the hospital's social worker and fax a detailed history. The next day you learn that the social worker is off and his replacement has no idea what you're talking about. So you fax the document again, or personally deliver it to the front office, praying that it will land in the right hands. Then you get a call from your loved one saying he has been released and is back on the street.
In a year and a half, Drew was hospitalized 10 times. Each time we swung into action, making as much noise as possible. And each time we were rebuffed or ignored. The same patients' rights laws that were designed to protect him were also blocking much-needed care. Until one day, seven months after being released from the ICU, he showed up at his mother's house pounding on the front door. "I need money right now!" With the door opened only a crack, she asked, "Would you like us to take you to the hospital?"
He readily agreed, probably assuming he'd get a warm bed and hot meal. The next day we again got on the phone and manned the fax. This time the authorities listened; Drew was transferred to the same hospital where, years before, his horrific journey began. Six weeks later a judge ordered a one-year conservatorship by a public guardian. So our son is safe at least until the next renewal hearing, which we will attend ourselves.
To be honest, I can't tell you how much Drew understands. Visiting him is like being on a carnival ride; sometimes it's smooth, then the craziness pops up to holler boo. At various times Drew has told us he's a powerful drug dealer and a famous songwriter on TV. Recently he had to be restrained after violently attacking an aide.
As bad as it gets, though, we see glimmers of the boy we love. On Father's Day, he was the first to call. "Have a wonderful day," he said. "Life is a gift; unwrap it and be glad."
Yet we still live by our phones. Mine rang again recently with one of those calls I dread. "Dad," Drew said weakly, "am I going to die?" "Not any time soon," I told him. "Just cooperate with the doctors and you'll improve."
Our fondest wish is for that to be true.
"Stay calm." Matt DeBord on the hike in the median housing price
DataQuick released data on October Southern California home sales Tuesday, and while the news looks superficially good — sales are up, prices are rising, foreclosures are down — the market remains distorted.
Three factors should make prospective homebuyers wary:
- There's a shortage of housing supply in Southern California, creating a bubble, with demand outstripping existing inventory and pushing up prices. Few new houses have been built in the region the past four years.
- Money is cheap. Mortgage interest rates are at historic lows. Combined with prices that were depressed by the bursting of the big housing bubble four years ago, this is drawing buyers into the market and convincing sellers that now is the right time to put homes on the market.
- Investors are major players in the market.
Dylan Brody talks turkey (read this if you hate Thanksgiving)
(Dylan Brody is a writer and performer.)
Thanksgiving is always a difficult time for me because I am, by nature and by habit, an ingrate. For years I avoided Thanksgiving get-togethers and I believed it was because I did not like turkey. It was only well into adulthood that I realized I just didn't like what my grandmother used to do to turkey.
Every year my family would pile into the station wagon and drive to Lakewood New Jersey where my grandmother would turn a Butterball into bird-shaped particle board. I remember hours of chewing and I remember thinking that holiday food was supposed to make one salivate, not absorb all the moisture from one's mouth. A slab of my grandmother's turkey could have been used to dehumidify the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel.
At the end of the holiday weekend, we'd all get back into the car and as we pulled away my father would say, "Well. That was relatively painless." Halfway home we would stop somewhere for lunch and, after days of politely rejecting Grandma's offers of left-over turkey shard sandwiches, I would have a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup. It was my favorite meal of the year.
A few years ago, I went to a holiday gathering I thought it might be good for my career to attend. That's right. I'm that guy. While everyone else is hip-deep in holiday spirit, I'm just hoping to book some gigs for after the New Year. In any case, there was turkey at this party and in an attempt to look like a civilized human, I ate some and found out that I don't hate it. I had seconds.
Just as I was beginning to think I was getting the hang of the whole Thanksgiving deal, my host introduced the highlight of his evening. Everybody present would take a moment to state what he or she was thankful for. I hate audience participation. I don't sing-along. I don't clap on two and four. When I was a kid and we went to a State Theater production of Peter Pan, I wouldn't pretend my applause could help save Tinkerbell's cloying, shimmery, fictitious life. I was perfectly happy to let her darken and die.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not bitter. I just don't believe in artificial sweeteners. There are things in the world I feel thankful for, but they are personal things that I don't feel like telling a roomful of acquaintances just because somebody's turned basic human gratitude into a holiday-specific party game. So after a few people shared their saccharine feelings about health and the love of their families or whatever idiocy they spouted, it got to be my turn; I said, "I'm thankful that at that very first Thanksgiving everybody ignored the one wise, old Native American woman who kept saying, 'don't feed them. If you feed them, they'll never leave.'"
Everybody at the party glared at me. Apparently the gratitude game, when played properly, is utterly humorless. My wife squeezed my hand reassuringly and I knew that none of these people was going to be calling to offer a job over the next couple of months.
Yesterday I got an e-mail invitation to a big Thanksgiving dinner party in the Hollywood hills. I asked my wife if she wanted to go eat turkey with some Network and Studio executives this year. She said she'd rather just stay in, watch a movie and have grilled cheese. I nearly wept with gratitude.