Hoops and Hallways

The National Basketball Association draft was held last Thursday and the Los Angeles Clippers chose Indiana freshman Eric Gordon with the #7 pick. I liked the selection of Gordon, but the player I really coveted, Texas point guard D.J. Augustin was drafted two slots later by the Charlotte Bobcats. Why Augustin? Because he's relatively small, an inch or two under six feet and probably around a buck-sixty eight; and, I think small is always underrated.

People fall in love with size, be it basketball prospects or real estate. Hey, square footage is square footage, and I wouldn't necessarily kick it out of bed; but, nothing beats a good floor plan (or floor general). Most can note the obvious waste, labyrinthian hallways, oversized landings, or bloated foyers; but, often the space kept clear to allow the passage of people is what's most limiting.

Just as some NBA teams are "going small", the AIA (American Institute of Architects) report a downsizing trend in new home construction, inspired by sustainable design principles, the housing slowdown, emerging weakness in the national economy, and a growing "Hummer house" backlash. Some municipalities have begun to impose restrictions on height and adopt tough lot coverage ratios as well.

Of course criticism of large homes isn't new, it occurred during the Gilded Age too; and now, as we stand on the edge of another cultural precipice, perhaps we'll come to appreciate the Augustins and Iversons and the T.J. Fords, as much as we do the Yao Mings and the Shaq O'Neals.

The 'Hood (Part 1)

The neighborhood, that real estate morsel gets smaller and smaller, and often more rarefied, North of this, South of that, highlands, lowlands, canyon. Most every American metropolis brands itself a "city of neighborhoods, " often capitalizing on a nostalgia for smaller, so-called simpler places (and times). Sometimes a place name is nothing more than an organizational overlay, or the latest marketing come on; but in other places, the distinctions remain relevant and valuable.

Faced with an urbanized realm of multiple, overlapping and often competing identities, boosters seek to assert uniqueness, emphasizing local amenities, topography, architecture, or ethnic concentration. Often though, identities and associations are imposed rather than elected, nasty proclamations, part imputation and allegation, race regard and raunch.

For years, West Adams has gotten a bad rap. Boyle Heights has too. So have many other neighborhoods in parts of South and East Los Angeles. There's a few reasons why. One is the nature and extent of contact outsiders have with the community, residents, and amenities. For many, West Adams means USC or the Coliseum, and a brawl-riddled Raider game in 1987. A few have been to Exposition Park, or a car dealership on Figueroa. Seldom have outsiders probed the idyll of the West Adams Avenues or stately Wellington Square. Seldom had they reason to.
Simultaneously, in communities wherein residents have less economic and social mobility (even potentially as a result of age), or feature a degree of ethnic insularity, the opportunities to ameliorate negative perceptions are stunted, contact is limited.

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Sunday's Open
2892 W. 15th ST 90006
2 - 5 pm
Original light fixtures
Unpainted woodwork
Detached garage
Copper plumbing
Fab masonry details
Oak floors
Clawfoot tubs
Trees and more trees

No Club to Join

Here's my latest sales pitch: experienced buyer/seller agent available for assignment, no club to join.

I can't even buy a measly tube of toothpaste without bothering over some plastic strip. I've so many club cards they've outgrown my wallet. A few retailers request a phone number instead--preferable, but still sometimes confusing. Might the account list the home number, or the cell number, the office number or the wife's cell number?! "Fuck, just give me the discount," I once blared, "and don't make me feel like a profligate loser!" A cluster of pancake-sized Guatemalan ladies, also in line, shook their heads in disapproval.

So that's it, no club to join, no cancellation fees, no contracts (unless it's a listing of course), no junk mail, no outsourcing. Lots of opinions....Hmmm, maybe that's where I've gone wrong.

My Absence (Part 2)

While the Walker Art Center hogs the headlines, a highly visible emblem of modernism, a tumble of aluminum clad cubes, promising not just paint but pixels, performance, and Wolfgang Puck. I visited instead the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, to see the collection naturally, but also to consider the building's architectural accretion, nearly equal parts McKim, Mead & White, Kenzo Tange, and Michael Graves.

Graves addition came most recently (in 2006), and feels less like his flamboyant high wire act and more like a sideshow hustle, cartoon classicism (perhaps an ode), with Paul Bunyan sized dowels, or columns, checkerboarded about in a field of white.

Tange's contribution, for a master of movement, feels a bit static. (Maybe the client's to blame?) Porcelain smooth surfaces, dinner ware without decorative roughage, the crackle of McKim, Mead, and White's matchless classicism and ornament (see photo top).

From the Prairie School gallery (yes!), the Minneapolis skyline is purposely framed. The view is accompanied by a detailed placard, buildings are identified and attributed, architecture offered as more than mere canister or amenity. Yes!
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Today's open: 2892 W. 15th ST 2 - 5:30
The best all-around property for sale in West Adams!
4 beds, 2 baths, music/bonus room, butler's pantry
The backyard is loaded with trees and shady spots (see left).
Come see the laundry chute. When's the last time you saw one of thems?

I'll have some Gatorade on ice.

Gas the Dutchie (Part 1)

As some seek to connect spiking fuel prices with housing market woes, others wonder if my real estate beat, hard-headedly fixed on the "old core" or "the early sprawl," is awash with petrol refugees, exurban escapees, eager to swap Victorville for Vermont Knolls, Frazier Park for Jefferson Park, and Westlake for Westlake.

Certainly, the near downtown market is performing differently than others, unevenly, with less value lost at the high end; though, I'm not sure if the "urban pioneer movement" (as it insultingly came to be known in the 1980's) is occupied with birthing breath, or on the verge of a lung expanding second wind. Maybe even revolutions respect the repose of the place.

Increased energy costs, even in a city state with tremendous economic decentralization, may hasten buyers to our basin-central burg. Unappetizing retail still disappoints some, while the coming Expo Line and LA Live projects are billed as difference makers.

Some of the bandwagoners are jumping on, "it's a culture victory, viva New Urbanism."
Of course, I'm zigging rather than zagging, concerned with even greater development pressures, and those sitting duck neighborhoods, without the smallest of adhesions, or even a viceroy to lead the charge.

Get ready for the next hard sell.
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Sunday's Open: 2892 W. 15th ST 4 beds, 2 baths $759,000
2 blocks North of Venice, 2 blocks East of Western
Harvard Heights!

My Absence (Part 1)

The entries slowed, sidelined by work, deals concluding and discontinued, a zany hailstorm of activity. That, and I took a vacation.

Family, neighbors, and clients voiced concern, "you need to get away, your work is devouring you, go somewhere, decompress."
"Where," I asked, "Cleveland's on my wish list, but the Museum of Art is closed till late June."
"Maui, St. Thomas, Cancun," suggestions fired like a Hubbell heater, each a bit more desperate and thoughtful.
"Near water," I puzzled.
"Yes, " they implored.
"Maybe a river," I continued.
"That'll do," sounded the chorus.
"The Mississippi River, " I concluded, "the Twin Cities."

So off I went, armed with Larry Millet's AIA guidebook to the architecture of Minneapolis-St. Paul, hoping to learn more about the city's great builders, the original starchitects, like Cass Gilbert, Clarence Johnston, Harry Jones, and the Prairie School poobahs Elmslie & Purcell.

Instead, I realized that American cities are almost all the same. (No bad thing, with something in each to love.) So many cities underwent tremendous growth in the 1880's, shedding absolutely their small-town forms, force fed by industrial advances, and burgeoning transportation networks. In 1920's another boom time facilitated downtown growth, great apartment houses, and a continued outward push. Periods of war are marked by inactivity in the built environment. PWA Moderne projects typify the 1930's (except notably in Los Angeles). In the 1950's and '60's, downtowns and main streets are decimated by large land clearing projects, freeways, and pedestrian malls, as civic leaders respond desperately to suburban dispersal and fading influence. In the early 21st century, high density in-fill (and adaptive re-use) pockmark re-imagined city centers with "luxury" condos, townhouses, and artist lofts. Under the cover of smart-growth mantras, most puncture the sensitive integument of scale and mass.

END PART 1

Archeology

What happened here? Ok, the chimney was removed, possibly lost in a temblor. Asbestos shingles were installed atop the wood siding prior to the chimney loss. Then...the chimney void was patched...with wood siding? How considerate...I guess.

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Sunday's Open:
2892 W. 15th ST 2 - 5 pm
Harvard Heights, West Adams
Los Angeles, CA 90006
United States of America
Planet Earth
Milky Way Galaxy

Hate Crimes, Loving Responses (Part 2)

The response to Hate Crimes (like some of my previous stucco diatribes) has been intensely supportive. Desperado critic and Arts & Crafts au fait Jane Powell offered her endorsement, and has penned a more extensive, similarly flavored piece for publication. Stucco Liberation Front leader Lisa Auerbach added choice comments. Hernandez Hernandez intriguingly blamed the auto industry, and its consumerist conditioning. Michelle Emard delivered flyers (pictured) utilized by the Anaheim Colony Historic District.

Many communities distribute similar hand-outs, and most tout the importance of education.
With perhaps a touch of cynicism, I argue for regulation, HPOZ's, design review boards, etc. Typically though, some lunk-head objects to the oversight, 'I don't want the Man telling me what I can and cannot do with my home,' goes the riff.
"Move to the outback then," begins my vinegar-y response, "because the Man already exercises control, with occupancy and use restrictions, zoning, permitting processes and building codes."

'Are we to saved from ourselves?' sneer the property rights zealots.
"We're mostly prisoners of our times," I might respond, undeterred by accusations of patriarchy, "sufferers of historical astigmatism, guilty of egregious environmental disregard (of both the built and natural). Who doesn't regret the destruction of Penn Station, the herding of low income African Americans into bunkerized, neo-brutalist towers, hill-topping, and the loss of architect masterworks like the Larkin Building, or Sullivan's Zion Temple?"
'So is it planners you're championing, or planners you're decrying?' question the critics.

"I'm championing preservation, simple preservation".

Three Responses

1. I will write a piece about the Althouse Brothers, probably in a couple months time, after I've snooped around Alhambra a bit.

2. The abandoned cars were not a mural, but the remnants of a firefighter exercise on Manhattan Place between 20th & 21st streets.

3. Another example of dayplanner doodles.

2892 W. 15th ST 90006

Due to escrow contretemps, 2892 W. 15th ST has rejoined the ranks of the active. Consequently, I'm back in showing mode, with opens scheduled today (11 am - 2 pm) and Sunday (2 pm - 5 pm).

To left, the beloved sun room/sleeping porch, located on the second floor's unobstructed South side.

A few reminders, 2892 W. 15th ST is listed for $759,000. An architect designed house, it features four full bedrooms, two baths, a bonus/music room, and a detached single car garage.
The property is on a restoration charged block in the established Harvard Heights neighborhood, a Historic Preservation Overlay Zone.

I've a full slate of reports on this property, Title, Natural Hazards, Termite, all of which I can share and all of which are quite glowing.

Note the egg-and-dart detailing along the ceiling ("box") beams and around the beam light. Just one of many choice living room details.

Located two blocks North of Venice, two blocks East of Western. Look for the green signs.

Is it Safe? For the Umpteenth Time....

This series, a journal of my nightly non-adventures plying the reputedly, possibly, erroneously, tough streets of South Los Angeles, has become my most requested, contested, misunderstood, corroborated entry.

For starters, we live in a world where bad shit happens to good people. In the city of Los Angeles bad shit happens to good people too. Some of it happens within the neighborhoods in which I amble, mostly between Wilshire and Vernon, La Brea and Figueroa (and increasingly a bit further East).

But my contention is, has been, continues to be, more bad shit is presumed to occur within these boundaries than actually occurs. West Adams and environs were never the city's toughest neighborhoods, others can/could claim that distinction, and to the extent they were ever tough--they've gotten less so.

Still, I've hesitated to post additional entries. In part because one wrote about being attacked at USC, an anecdote different from those vagrant and destitute of valuable details. I began to reconsider my position. Perhaps, accompanied by canine condottiere, and other stern enthusiasts, I'd become stupidly ferocious, an impious adventurer, uncharacteristically calmed by intervals of unaccountable streetside stillness, oblivious to the possible ladrones and matreros, the knots of men at bus stops and near bars.

Then again, I looked at the numbers, those having to do with crime and USC. Since 1992 all colleges under the Jeanine Cleary Act have been required by federal law to compile and distribute annual statistics about crime on their campuses and remote facilities (including frat houses, residence halls, etc).

Universities: sanctuaries far removed from the threat of crime? Hardly. But we know this, and VA Tech was just the latest, grimmest reminder. So while USC tabulated a greater number of offenses than some other California colleges, it also exhibited below average rates of on-campus auto theft and robbery. Rapes occurred nearly everywhere, even at sacred cow institutions like Cal Berkeley and UCLA. When I compared USC to other "inner city" schools like Marquette or Columbia, Penn or George Washington, the numbers seemed in step, better in some cases, with schools recording great variations year to year. (UCLA, for example, reported fifteen rapes one year, seven the next.)

Perhaps I'm not stupidly ferocious, but of mean appearance, a leonine faced, early mid-lifer, passably athletic, bound for bald. Maybe the streets require some seasoning and a little spider sense. Maybe my vocation motivates my borough boosterism. Maybe it just ain't that bad out there, or at least only as bad--or as good--as everywhere else.