Artist's Community

Recently I received an e-flyer, heralding a Nature Lover's Home in an Artist's Community. The cost? Nearly 2 million dollars.

Preposterous but shrewd, an agent that recognizes the value of the indefinite catch phrase, artist community. Who knows, maybe Cy Twombley is looking for new digs?

I'm asked often about the next arts community. Of course, LA is teeming with artists and even those that aren't, think they are--and why shouldn't they?! The city has artists everywhere. Everybody's doing something artistic.

Incidentally, I'm in the Real Estate Arts.

The SOHO Mythology

That in some discounted, under-served--though bakery/bookstore rich--part of the city, recent graduates of hoity-toity liberal arts colleges (often without visible means of support) are slumming with other "alternative types" in high-ceiling buildings with steel case windows. Where dainty, pacifist, water-colorists and bearded, Mao-suited ceramicists are communing with formerly delinquent youth anesthetized by the neo-hippie ethos and creative fervor, promising future gentrification and a killer return on the buck!

When asked about such a place I generally mutter something about 7th Street in San Pedro or the Lincoln Heights/Chinatown/Brewery nexus. But the average consumer can't handle the real truth: along the railroad tracks in Wilmington, or the Gage right-of-way, next to the all-night truck wash in Vernon, behind a methodone clinic in Compton. In East St. Louis.

Just once, I'd like a prospective buyer to ask about the next industrialist's community, law enforcement enclave, or accountant's retreat.