I would love to visit LA one day it seems so beautiful š
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LA Radio Dream Dial
- Thread starter Saladressing
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Your image of it and the reality of it are almost certainly contradictory. Sorry I had to be the one to tell you.
Those of us who worked in LA could not wait to either retire or be able to work from a home office. I've lived in or worked in dozens of cities in over 20 countries, and Los Angeles is right down there with San Salvador as places I never want to go back to.
All my relatives in LA are looking at places to move away to.
But the weather is nice, lol.
Totally depends on where you go. Just got back a week and a half ago from nine days there. Venice Beach has gotten way worse. Pacific Palisades, Beverly Hills and Bel-Air are pretty wonderful. So's Pasadena. Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach are still great little beach towns and Palos Verdes doesn't suck.
And while MacArthur Park has been a must to avoid for decades, the best pastrami is still at Langer's and while the neighborhood leaves a lot to be desired, I didn't feel unsafe.
As I used to tell friends who thought L.A. was too big before they thought it was too dirty or dangerous, stay north of the 10 (today, I might make that Pico), west of the four-level interchange downtown (today, I might move that to Highland) and south of the Hollywood Hills and you'll be fine. Pasadena and Toluca Lake are optional.
And while MacArthur Park has been a must to avoid for decades, the best pastrami is still at Langer's and while the neighborhood leaves a lot to be desired, I didn't feel unsafe.
As I used to tell friends who thought L.A. was too big before they thought it was too dirty or dangerous, stay north of the 10 (today, I might make that Pico), west of the four-level interchange downtown (today, I might move that to Highland) and south of the Hollywood Hills and you'll be fine. Pasadena and Toluca Lake are optional.
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If I end up vacationing there I'll ask you where the safe areas are to stay.
Happy to help.
If you would like your car stolen, feel free to go anywhere in Hollywood, especially near the strip, at night.
After having to get a cadaver of our event stage area (pre-killed and deposited there) about 30 years ago, I would say that the best way of seeing MacArthur Park is in pictures from the 50's and 60's.
Add to Toluca Lake much of Burbank, and Glendale from the Galeria to the north.
Yeah. Not that Hollywood has ever been all that great. Itās been sketchy most of my life, more so since the 70s and 80s.
This time, we cruised Sunset just to see what theyād done (first L.A. trip in four years) and had dinner at Yamashiro (too steep a hike for car thieves to bother trying to rip off the valet).
But Hollywood isnāt representative of L.A., and if I lived in L.A., apart from dinner at Yamashiro, Musso & Frank or Miceliās, I canāt come up with a reason Iād go to Hollywood.
When I was with KWKW in the earlier 70's, we were at Hollywood and Highland, and that was "touristy" but nice then
1992-1994 was a Hollywood and Wilton, which was not particularly nice except for the Ferrari dealer next door. Then almost 7 years at Hollywood and VIne, with a view of Capitol Records and the tattoo parlor and home to the nightly Hollywood Pickpocket Club meeting where packing in night hours was a good idea.
If I had it to do over again, I would not have left "home" in Puerto Rico.
And really, thatās the part of the narrative that California cities are hellholes that bothers me.
Donāt go to Skid Row in L.A. unless youāre a social worker. In San Francisco, if you walk through the Tenderloin at 2:00 am counting from a roll of hundred dollar bills, youāre making bad choices.
But there are plenty of places in both metro areas to have a lovely time. Hollywood and under an overpass in Oakland arenāt among them.
Donāt go to Skid Row in L.A. unless youāre a social worker. In San Francisco, if you walk through the Tenderloin at 2:00 am counting from a roll of hundred dollar bills, youāre making bad choices.
But there are plenty of places in both metro areas to have a lovely time. Hollywood and under an overpass in Oakland arenāt among them.
At least back then all you had to worry about was leaving a cake out in the rain there and then not having a recipe!
The cake would not stay out in the rain long... one of the park's numerous flashers would take it.
Did you drive though West Hollywood, that small little area between Sunset and Santa Monica Blvd.? ( It's close to Beverly Hills, so it used to be less sketchy than downtown Hollywood). It's bordered on one side by San Vicente Blvd., the Sunset on the north and Santa Monica Blvd. on the south.
There were a number of clubs we used to go to - decades ago. Places like Whisky a Go Go and The Roxy on Sunset ( somewhere around the 9000 block), and the folk/ rock music club, The Troubadour, on Santa Monica Blvd. I guess that's all kind of touristy now, out in what used to be called "WeHo". But it was fun and energetic, "back in the day." Some of those clubs don't exist anymore.
I haven't been there since about 1998. It used to be "cool", with fun shops, coffee places, and restaurants. But "cool" places can become sketchy quickly, especially if many of those fun restaurants, clubs, etc., went out of business during the pandemic. - DL L.A.
P.S. 93 KHJ's studios used to be out on Melrose Ave. in this area, and their transmitter was in the Fairfax District, slightly to the east and south. KFWB used to be at 6419 Hollywood Blvd. Their studios were up on the second floor of the building, and they were very strict about not allowing anyone in. ( unless you were a family member of a DJ, or unless you had an appt. to promote a record).
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I saw this brief shot in a Venice resident's video last month. Homeless camping all along the sidewalk of a street filled with multi-million dollar homes. Time offset: 6:34
Can we stay on topic?
I hate it when a thread gets derailed
I hate it when a thread gets derailed
I took my Langer's pastrami sandwich across the street to Macarthur Park to eat when Langer's was take out only early in the pandemic. The worst thing that happened was when a bird swooped down, grabbed a few of my fries and then flew off.
Venice has always had issues.
Worth noting---real estate values in Southern California are such that 1,500-square foot tract homes built in the late 40s in Torrance are literally "million-dollar homes".
And yeah, the homelessness problem is huge in certain parts of L.A., San Diego, Sacramento and the Bay Area. The latest count estimates that 115,000-ish homeless people are in California.
It also estimates that for the U.S. as a whole, itās 552,000. So 80-ish percent of the nationās homeless live in a state other than California.
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We didn't drive Santa Monica Boulevard this time, but we drove Sunset from Vermont all the way out to PCH. WeHo (it's still called that) is gentrifying fast---a lot of mid-to-high-rise new construction---but the Whisky, Roxy and Rainbow are still there.
KHJ's studios were in Hollywood, but nowhere near WeHo or the strip. They were at 5515 Melrose, adjacent to the Paramount lot, between Vine and Western. That building is now the office for the Paramount Pictures Studio Tour.
KHJ's transmitter (and later, studios for KRTH, KROQ and other CBS/Infinity stations) was at Venice and Fairfax (5901 Venice).
The towers came down nine years ago ( video here: https://www.rbr.com/93-khj-radio-tower-demolished-in-la-video/ ) and housing was built on that part of the lot. CBS moved the stations still using the Venice studios (I believe KROQ, AMP and JACK at the time) to 5670 Wilshire (all the CBS, now Audacy, stations are there) and the Venice building is now a Kaiser Permanente testing facility.
As for KFWB, that building was condemned after the 1994 Northridge quake (KFWB itself had moved to an old supermarket on Yucca decades earlier), and was torn down. It's still an empty lot.
Most radio stations in L.A. had the kind of security and no-visitors policy you describe. KRLA was a rarity.
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