For Independence Day weekend, the New York Times’ Jill Cowan wrote a few days beforehand, “antsy Californians are projected to hit the road in record numbers for a newly unfettered Fourth of July holiday. And, as usual, many of us are headed for the coast.”
Your columnist, meanwhile, was headed for the San Fernando Valley.
Did I run out of gas on my way to the coast? No. A friend in North Hollywood was out of town and offered up her duplex for the holiday weekend. Sounded good.
She was hiking to the summit of Mount San Gorgonio, about halfway between San Bernardino and Joshua Tree and at 11,500 feet the highest peak in Southern California. Meanwhile, I was kicking back in suburbia, enjoying her air conditioning. Who got the better part of this deal?
For anyone unfamiliar with the geography, there are to my knowledge three contiguous Hollywoods: Hollywood, symbol of glamour and the entertainment industry; West Hollywood, gay and upscale; and East Hollywood, gentrifying.
Then there’s North Hollywood, separated from the others by the Hollywood Hills but which in 1927 grabbed the name anyway. You have to admire the chutzpah. It’s as if a city on England’s southern coast decided to brand itself North Paris.
Anyway, I was grateful to be there — North Hollywood, not North Paris — and see a bit of the Valley.
My first stop was an old favorite, and possibly the city’s main draw for many of us. Circus Liquor, with its iconic, drum-beating clown sign? No — although no visit is complete without driving by.
I’m talking about Iliad Bookshop. Ever since Long Beach’s Acres of Books shuttered, Iliad is almost certainly L.A.’s biggest and best used bookstore. It’s a veritable maze of tall wooden bookcases stuffed with books. And like any worthy bookstore, it’s got bookstore cats.
I’d brought reading material for the weekend, of course. You think I could last two days without a book? And one was for practical use: Erin Mahoney Harris’ “Walking L.A.” Of its 38 walks, I had only four left, including the one for NoHo.
Walking and the Valley don’t seem to go together, but like most accepted wisdom, it’s not really true. Especially here, in an area with an Arts District.
The tour takes in four blocks of Lankershim Boulevard past art galleries, theater companies, dance studios and more. One curiosity is the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences complex, whose plaza has statues and busts of TV pioneers.
There’s Archie and Edith Bunker on a bench under a tree, Ricky and Lucy Ricardo arguing on the steps, and Johnny Carson, one hand in his pocket, looking as if he’d just told a joke.
Harris’ 2010 book cites busts of Red Skelton, Bill Cosby and Walt Disney. Cosby’s has since been put into storage, heh heh.
The tour is supposed to take you past several live theater spaces. A few no longer exist, and the fate of others is unclear post-COVID.
Theatre 68’s 1950s marquee has two worrisome messages: “Don’t worry NoHo/We are just at intermission” and “for lease.” (The theater is putting on a virtual one-act play, “In a Hurry,” this weekend and next at 6 p.m., ending July 18)
Businesses and restaurants are in flux too. Joe Coffee appears dormant, but its exterior’s intricate B&W cartoon mural enlivens the block.
Other changes have taken place since 2010. Like the replacement of a Citibank — described as looking “more like another art project than a financial institution” — by a modern apartment complex, and the arrival of an Amazon Fresh grocery as part of another housing project.
I may need to spring for the book’s updated edition.
Not going anywhere, thankfully, is the El Portal, a 1926 vaudeville theater with a neon marquee and gilded box office, all restored in 2000 and still looking great. Through the pull-down grating, posters for various upcoming shows can be seen in the forecourt. And a visit to its website reveals that a fall schedule has been announced.
In the meantime, do as the marquee advises: “Be Like Hamilton/Take Your Covid Shot.”
Guidance comes in all forms, official and informal. I read historic markers for Nudie Cohn’s old western tailoring shop and for the area’s long-vanished newspaper, the delightfully named Lankershim Laconic.
“The four-page newspaper called itself a ‘try-weekly,’ because the publishers…’tried’ to get it out once a week,” reads the history.
A few steps on, as I admired a B&W mural of Miles Davis on an exposed wall, a man saw me and said an even better mural around the corner is of Frank Sinatra.
I followed him and indeed, there stood a multi-hued mural with three views of the singer, two of them from his police booking mug. Sardonic title: “That’s Life.”
I thanked this volunteer tour guide for the tip.
(Still later I found an audio tour guide online at Antaeus.org for NoHo’s 91601 ZIP code that has stops at the Arts District, Television Academy, Iliad and, among other sights, the Lankershim Train Depot, which I’m sorry I missed.)
Fourth of July away from home was fine. The usual activities where I live, Claremont — pancake breakfast in the park, a homespun parade, fireworks — were all canceled anyway.
At breakfast at Art’s Deli in Studio City, where I was the day’s first customer, I got lox, onions and eggs. When my server asked if I wanted anything else, I looked at my scrambled eggs and asked, without thinking, for salsa.
When she returned with a dish of it, I said, “We’ll see how salsa goes with lox.” “I didn’t even think of that until you said it,” she replied with a chuckle and walked away. She called back: “It’s Independence Day. You’re showing your independence.” (It turns out salsa and lox together are fine.)
That afternoon at lunch at Gino’s East in Sherman Oaks, the server cut my Chicago-style pizza in its pan in front of me. “Everyone else is grilling hamburgers today,” I observed. “I’m eating deep-dish pizza.”
“You’re doing your own thing,” he replied. “Do your own thing.”
And that’s why I was vacationing in North Hollywood.
David Allen writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday in the Inland Empire. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.