Sliding Down Barham Blvd. in a Beetle in 1966

The endless summer was over and we were back in school. One Friday evening in October 1965, a group of friends and I caravanned from Burbank to Hollywood. There, as underage youth, we could buy cigars without showing identification. The Wolf Bros. Crooks brand, with their, “Rum Soaked, Dipped in Wine” motto, were our favorites. With alcohol-soaked tobacco, we pretended that we were drinking and smoking at the same time; only our lack of access to alcohol kept us sober. That night, I rode shotgun in my friend and classmate Phil Plank’s Volkswagen Bug, which he called his “V-dub.”

The only separation from opposing traffic on Barham Boulevard consisted of a double white line. On the downhill ride toward Burbank, the slope ended at an intersection with Forrest Lawn Drive, better known to us as the River Road. On our return trip from Hollywood, the road rose over a hill, and then descended, while acing slowly to the right for about a quarter mile. As Phil held his steering wheel to the right, the camber of the roadway sloped gently to the right, as well.

At Burbank Senior High School, we learned some basic laws of chemistry and physics. For instance, “Oil and water do not mix,” “An object in motion tends to stay in motion,” and “The heavy end of any object will try to lead the parade.” Pushing in the cigarette lighter at the top of the hill, Phil ignored all these laws.

As we crested Barham Boulevard, a slight drizzle began to fall. While waiting for the cigarette lighter to pop out, Phile reached down to tune in the AM radio and activate the windshield wipers. With our friend’s car ahead of us, Phil wanted good music and good visibility for his overtaking maneuver. In his exuberance to overtake, and in steadfast belief in his own immortality, Phil accelerated throughout the long downhill curve. Soon enough, all the laws of chemistry and physics came into play.

After months of a Southern California drought, oil on the roadway glistened colorfully in the headlights of oncoming vehicles. The emulsion of oil and water on the roadway provided friction like a sheet of ice. As the tires lost traction on the road, I found myself looking straight into the headlights of an oncoming car. With its rear engine design, the V-dub tried to swap ends and thus lead the way with its engine-heavy tail. In a vain attempt to slow down, Phil slammed his foot down on the brake pedal.

As we swung once again towards oncoming traffic, I saw my Maker. Who would believe that God drove a 1958 Cadillac? With unwavering speed, the heavy Caddy struck our little Bug, making contact aft of our driver’s side door. Mercifully, the impact sent us back to our own side of the road. According to one witness, we swung around three times as we descended the hill. Facing uphill, windshield wipers still thumping, we stopped just short of the intersection at Forest Lawn Drive. Less than half a mile from our final resting place that night lay the largest cemetery in Los Angeles.

Staring straight ahead, with both of his hands still clutching the steering wheel, Phil sat in shock. A telltale splatter of blood on the windshield told me that the impact had caused his nose to hit the steering wheel. Still gripping the grab handle on the passenger side of the dashboard, I exclaimed, “Phil, we f---ed your whole car.” When I received nothing more than a blank stare from Phil, I got out and helped direct traffic around Phil and his badly broken Beetle.

The whole event took less than a minute. Although my life did not flash before my eyes, as events unfolded, I knew that my life might end at any moment. That I survived uninjured gave me a startling clarity that only such near-death experiences seem to bring. I was seventeen years old and blessed to be alive.

Excerpted from the 2018 Book, “True Tales of Burbank,” by Wesley H. Clark and the late Michael B. McDaniel (1956-2024). Both authors are Burbank High alumni.

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Mulholland Drive - From Hollywood to the San Fernando Valley - 2012

 

Mulholland Drive - From Hollywood to the San Fernando Valley

During our driving tour of Hollywood, Carrie McCoy and I had already experienced several adventures. First, we had viewed a LACoFD training exercise at the Hollywood Bowl. For lunch, we stopped at Legendary Paul Pink’s Hot Dogs on La Brea Ave. After lunch, we drove toward Mount Lee to take pictures of the Hollywood Sign. Then, we departed Hollywood, via the Yellow Brick Road, better known as Mulholland Drive.

In its first mile, Mulholland Drive climbs from Cahuenga Pass to the crest of the Hollywood Hills. A quick series of switchbacks and hairpin curves introduces the neophyte motorist to the full Mulholland Drive experience. As Jim Morrison once sang in Roadhouse Blues, "Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel." If you do not, you could easily leave the roadway or mix with oncoming traffic. Until you pull over to let them pass, many drivers will tailgate you there at any speed. Over the decades, auto and motorcycle racing on Mulholland Drive has cost many lives. Since we were on a sightseeing tour, I pulled aside often, thus allowing traffic to clear.

Our first stop was at the Hollywood Bowl Overlook. Although the view down-canyon to the Hollywood Bowl was disappointing, the view east to Hollywood and Downtown Los Angeles was classic. In the foreground were the Hollywood Freeway and the Capitol Records Building. Seven miles east was the Emerald City, better known as the skyline of Downtown Los Angeles. From the overlook, on that clear day, we could see the LA Basin in all of its glory.

With tour buses often crowding the small lot, Hollywood Bowl Overlook parking is limited. Just west of the overlook, there is adequate, if crumbling street-side parking. From there, however, one must cross through traffic to see the views. Like many places with limited parking and extraordinary views, people tend to linger. For them, it is like owning the view without having to pay for it. I walked in, looked around, took my pictures and returned to my vehicle.

While walking back to my car, I looked up to see an infamous, yet iconic single family home. Designed by architect Harry Gesner, the "Haynes House", as it was originally known, came to roost on its prominent hillside location in 1975. Although another of Gesner’s houses inspired the Sydney Opera House, the Gesner house at 7000 Macapa Drive has inspired more scorn than praise.

With its Gesner-signature roof design, what I call the "Paraglider House" is the antithesis of Frank Lloyd Wright's “organic architecture”. According to FLW, building atop the crest of a hill destroys the hill. Viewed from the Hollywood Freeway below, the structure looks like an overgrown beach shack, silently screaming, “Look at me. Look at me”. I would prefer a house above the Hollywood Bowl Overlook that could project itself into group consciousness with less blatancy.

The public record on the Paraglider House is mixed. In early 2010, the owner had listed it for $2,695,000, or almost exactly one thousand dollars per square foot. Apparently, it sold later that year for $2.0 million. Even that was expensive for a thirty-five year old, three-bedroom, three-bath house encompassing 2,698 square feet. In essence, someone bought the view, not the house. In October 2011, a Google Street View showed the house stripped to the studs and under reconstruction. As of this writing, construction was ongoing.

As one might experience anywhere on Mulholland Drive, our sojourn west included many tight turns and a few confusing street signs. Needing a rest, we stopped at one of many turnouts provided along the road by the Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy. By then we were well away from Hollywood and approaching the San Fernando Valley. Having grown up in Burbank, California, I knew how hazy the sky could be in The Valley. From our perch atop the Hollywood Hills, we marveled at the clear sky and long views.

To our right, we could see Mt. Lee, famed for its Hollywood Sign and named for early Los Angeles car dealer and broadcaster Don Lee. At the top of Mt. Lee stands a communications tower that dates back to at least 1941. In the late 1930s, the first Los Angeles television broadcasts emanated from that tower. During my high school days in the 1960s, you could still drive to the top of Mt. Lee and enjoy a 360-degree view of Los Angeles and the Valley. Today, a gate far below prevents traffic from surmounting Mt. Lee. From our vantage that day, we could see an end-on view of the Hollywood sign, clinging to the far-right slope of the mountain. My father's memories of Los Angeles television history follow below.

Dr. Loron N. McGillis: “The call letters for the first Los Angeles television station were W6XAO. They transmitted from the communication tower atop Mt. Lee. When the station came on in the early evening, we watched on our 7" Motorola TV. During the day, they broadcast the traditional Indian Head test pattern, with emanating black and white bars. There was also a news tape running across the bottom of the screen. In 1948, the station became KTSL and in 1951, they changed again, to KNXT. In the 1980s, they changed again to the current KCBS TV.”

Panning my camera to the left, Spokesmodel Carrie McCoy appeared in my rangefinder. With lush vegetation behind her and a smile on her face, I could not resist taking yet another picture of the original “Valley Girl”, from Burbank, California. “Look”, Carrie said, “From here, you can see Universal City and Warner Bros. Studios”.

As I looked down from a curve on Mulholland Drive, the most prominent building in view had a huge sign that read, “NBCUniversal", with no separation between those two iconic names. In a not-so-subtly way, the resident media giants NBC and Universal Studios had melded into one. It reminded me of the dark days in the 1970s, when executives briefly renamed Warner Bros. Studios, “The Burbank Studios”. When the next intergalactic mega-media firm takes over NBCUniversal, that prominent office tower will display yet another in a long list of corporate logos.

Even in Los Angeles, few people remember who built what we now call the NBCUniversal Building in Universal City. In the 1970s, at the height of his wealth and fame, oilman J. Paul Getty commissioned the building as the Getty Oil Company headquarters. Although the building looks rectangular to the casual observer, its narrow lot and adjacency to the Hollywood Freeway dictated a trapezoidal shape. Although any form other than rectilinear creates triangular offices and wasted space, Getty and his oil company had money to burn. To make the edifice look more impressive, Getty specified an exterior clad in Italian marble. In 1976, prior to completion of the building, J. Paul Getty died.

In 1984, when giant Texaco Oil purchased Getty Oil, the building became the Texaco Building. In 1985, when Texaco lost in court to Pennzoil, that smaller company became sole owner of both Getty Oil and the Getty Building. If there was ever a Texaco sign at the top of that building, it did not last for long. As with media companies, Old Energy oil companies come and they go. Only their buildings remain to hint at their former glory. Exactly how the Getty Building morphed into the NBCUniversal Building, I cannot say. If history foretells anything, that building will not be the NBCUniversal Building forever.

Panning to the right of the Getty/Texaco/Pennzoil/NBCUniversal Building, I realized that I was looking down upon both Universal Studios and Warner Bros. Studios. In the 1960s, Universal Studios was a relatively small affair, with a concentration of buildings and activities on Lankershim Blvd., in North Hollywood. With the advent of the Universal Amphitheater, the Universal Studios Tour and Universal City Walk, most of the “back lot” succumbed to development. For reasons unknown, there is only one exception to that over-development.

On a hillside lot, overlooking the corner of Barham Blvd. and Buddy Holly Drive, a haunted house once stood. Having sneaked up to the house with my high school friends, I know that it was haunted. At night, we could see a dim light glowing inside the house. As we approached from below, I tripped over a half buried headstone and fell headlong down a muddy slope. Using a flashlight, we read the names and dates of death on several tilting headstones. After determining that one grave was that of a child, we scrambled back to our car, never to return. That haunted house is gone now, but remnants of the circular driveway are still visible on Google Earth.

All good ghost stories and all good Hollywood auto tours must end. Carrie and I still had one last stop to make at the intersection of Mulholland Drive and Interstate I-405. There, we planned to visit with Coney the Traffic Cone, where he stood guard over the missing bridge lane at Mulholland Drive in Sepulveda Pass.

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By James McGillis at 04:53 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night - 2011

 

Fasten your seat belts.

It's going to be a bumpy night.

As I look back on the first decade of the twenty-first century, I realize that it had no generally accepted name. From the Gay 90’s to the Roaring 20’s and then on to the Fabulous 50’s, we know that special decades receive special names. Perhaps the ultimate alchemical reduction was when we named the 1960s simply “the 60’s”.

 

I favor calling our recently lost “double-zero” decade. After all, we seem to be right back where we started on Millennium night 2000. The gloss and veneer might look better in high definition, but the underlying energies feel largely unchanged. Many pundits say that opposing energies are stronger than ever, thus leading us toward “energetic gridlock”. One needs to look no further than our formerly revered U.S. Senate for a prime example of gridlock thinking.

 

Appearances can be deceiving. Inside, we know that a profound shift in human energies occurred during the double-zero decade. It was a shift far larger than the global energy shift exemplified by the earthquake and tsunami of December 2005. Although the date is still unknown to most humans, on October 17, 2007 we all experienced a quantum leap in energy. Throughout the first two thirds of the decade, human energies dithered within a small range of the status quo. On 10/17/07, humanity began its inexorable movement toward a worldwide spiritual awakening. New Energy powers the new Now and thus the momentum of the unfolding shall continue of its own accord.

 

What, if anything, should we fear? We should fear nothing, as fear is not a natural part of our lives. When I think “back” to 1984, 2000-2001 and “forward” to 2012, I smile at the superstitions surrounding each of those dates.

 

In 1984, according to George Orwell’s 1949 predictive book by the same name, we faced the prospect of a nameless state taking over human destiny, disseminating false truths and thus controlling the populace. Did it happen? Some would say, “Yes”, that the world is controlled by a cabal of unseen, powerful corporations. Although that may have once been true, the world is now too complex and diverse a place for any group to dominate and control. I believe that no 1984-style person or group controls human destiny. Whether we like it or not, we are all in this together.

 

As we approached 2000-2001, collectively known as the “Millennium Year”, the Year Two-Thousand computer bug, known as Y2K was widely discussed in the media. Survivalists predicted an “end of the world” scenario and holed up in their bunkers. I wonder if all of that dehydrated food tasted good after the world did not end.

 

For those who do not know it, the ubiquitous term “computer bug” has literal meaning. In the era of vacuum tube computers, electromechanical relays controlled the logic gates. Patterned after mid-century telephone relays, the rapid-fire closing of any particular gate might crush an insect resting there, which then acted as an insulator. Loss of only one relay could crash the computer. Until operators could locate and remove the “bug”, the computer was useless. Thus, the pejorative term, “computer bug” entered our lexicon.

 

Since the Quantum Leap in October 2007, time no longer holds us as tightly to its old linear progression. Now we can look forward to 2012 as if it were already in our past. If nothing else, recent history has shown that world-ending events are not preordained. However, according to some, they are. In recent years, a cult has developed around the “ending” of the ancient Mayan calendar. When this occurs in December 2012, what form of logic dictates that the finite end of a calendar system also predicts the “end of the world”?

 

Perhaps it is time to start a new calendar, based on the ancient wisdom that created the original. I believe that the Maya truncated their calendar as a wake-up call to us. We are here in their future, ready to experience a new beginning. The message from the ancients to us is, “Wake up and live”.

 

When compared to the three tumultuous years mentioned above, 2011 appears benign. As an odd numbered year, 2011 seems less substantial or serious than 2010 or 2012. Luckily, the only predictions that the world will end in 2011 revolve around the recent unexplained deaths of a few thousand birds in Arkansas and Missouri.

 

In November 2011, we shall pass the date 11/11/11. In 1918, World War I ended on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Not ironically, more ordnance exploded in that final hour than in any other hour of the Great War. For those who died during the last minute shelling and small arms fire in 1918, we can all agree that they “went out with a bang”. At the end of World War II, utilizing nuclear fission, we witnessed a quantum leap in violence and destruction. Our misplaced attempts to rationalize the unthinkable led us to using explosives as entertainment.

 

In September 2011, we shall observe 9/11/11, which marks ten years since the shocking attacks on American military and financial institutions. In the time since those acts of violence, what have we learned?

 

While watching a contemporary Hollywood action movie, one finds corporate owned media pushing unhealthy and violent energies upon us. Most people say, “That's OK. The violence is not real, and by the way, it looks even better in 3-D”. From the ever-present pistol in the hero’s hand, to the outlandish and fiery explosions, traditional media keeps pushing our “fear-button”, all in the name of entertainment.

 

The more high-definition, surround-sound graphical violence that we feed to our individual and collective unconscious, the more we shall attract violence into our “real lives”. As long as we, both as individuals and as a culture, are addicted to violence, we shall continue to attract violence into our daily lives.

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By James McGillis at 04:34 PM | Current Events | Comments (0) | Link