Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2007
09:50:58 -0700
From: bronax
Subject: Re: Hi George:
what's the word from Mar Vista?
To: John
Hi George: what's the word
from Mar Vista?
George
Sounds like home to me.
Close to major freeways, 405, and 10 and PCH. Reasonably close to UCLA and USC,
Santa Monica College, etc. Less than 2 miles from Pacific Ocean, etc.
Where I live used to be
string bean and celery fields. Japanese gardeners. House I live in was built
with tract of little wood framed single story homes in 1939. House and lot then
cost $ 4500.00. Now houses cost $ 600-900,000. But then, this is just, shortage
of west side nice weather land places in LA, and inflation, or devaluation of
worth of dollar.
I realize that everything
I do is to switch on certain feelings. I am glad you had a nice family time.
Hope you took lots of pictures. My knee is still healing. No more pain meds for
me. Now just stretching and exercising and I now walk at least every
other day.
How does Rosa like her new
life style, and new law work?
Good luck
with your writing. It’s a nice compulsive activity.
I watched great American
Masters program on TV last night on the School District PBS station here, KLCS,
about Joni Mitchell, ne Joni Anderson. I may send away and order the DVD. She
was an original, like Ma Rainey, Peggy Lee, Teresa Brewer. No one else sings
like her. She is entirely self taught.
She varies the time from singing and composing and painting pictures. She is
now reunited with her daughter, whom she gave away to foster care when she was
very young and un married. First time sex made her pregant. In Scatachawan,
Canada, where she was raised on farm lands, it was too shameful to get an
abortion. One then either just got married or went into hiding. She was one of
the acts for the magnificent concert called Last Waltz, the last public
performance of The Band, where she sung White Line Fever. Great stuff.
George B
John
I apologize for the brevity of this email-- and must say I'm
missing the Wit and Wisdom of George Bronax, the Philosophe of Mar Vista.
Looked up Mar Vista in
Wikipedia.com
Mar Vista Neighborhood
Mar Vista is an
economically and racially diverse neighborhood of apartment buildings and small
post-World War II ranches and bungalows. The hilly areas near its border with
Santa Monica, whose spectacular ocean views give it its name, are somewhat more
upscale. Ironically, the most desirable areas in the district are built on the
site of a former landfill. The Pacific Electric Railway "Red Car"
streetcars ran along Venice and Culver Boulevards during the neighborhood's early
years, but were shut down soon thereafter.
Mar Vista is considerably
less densely populated than neighboring Palms, as its homeowners' associations
successfully fended off the 1960s up-zoning that changed much of Palms and West
Los Angeles from suburban areas to renter-dominated urban neighborhoods. It
should be noted, though, that the majority of the district's population lives
in rental housing, owing to the density of apartment buildings on thoroughfares
like Venice Boulevard and Barrington Avenue.
In recent years, the
escalating cost of real estate (even a 1500 square foot (140 m?), prefabricated
1940s tract house may go for upwards of $800,000) has led to a phenomenal rise
in the number of newly constructed Mediterranean Revival-inspired McMansions
and "Persian palaces" on Mar Vista Hill. Its proximity to bohemian
Venice adds a slightly artsy flavor to the neighborhood. Nearby UCLA maintains
a large graduate student housing complex along Sawtelle Boulevard near National
Boulevard, as well as a smaller housing block near the intersection of Venice
Boulevard and Centinela Avenue.
