The Hollywood sign was a boyhood staple, least ways, on those days where I could see it.
Smog in LA was legendary back in those pre-unleaded gas days. The smog totally sucked, totally goofed with your play, and for a kid with asthma it was especially hellish. You went outside, or were kicked outside, to play and within minutes found yourself breathing hard, the deep parts of your lungs feeling seared, then leaden on the verge of wheezing.There was nothing like a hot summer afternoon in the Pico district to make you a believer in the virtues of quiet indoor play.
I was lucky, I suppose, in many ways, to grow up in that bygone era of big finned cars and high test fuel and unknown mileage variables. We got around just fine in our big pieces of Detroit metal and didn't care a bit about air pollution or the effects of all that heavy lead exhaust on our health, no more than my parents worried about the impact of their unfiltered cigarette smoking on my fragile lungs. We just happily swam along in the polluted air with the rest of the hapless fishes, pretty much sucking on the tailpipes of Big Oil, taking what we could get in the way of fresh air whenever the winter rains would come along and wash the skies clean for a few days.
Staying with my mom's folks in the summertime meant a break from the stullifying, bitter brew of my parent's life. I was always glad to get away, to take the Santa Fe on that short hour ride through old Anahiem and Pico Rivera , past the Los Angeles river, through the train yards to my terminus there at the Union Station. It meant a break from one form of fighting to deal with another, but looking back I am sure that I thought the daily sparring between my Mama and Tata was comical, or at least, escapeable. Whenever the bickering got too hot my grandfather would round me up, put away his lawn tools and the take us away in wee Ford Falcon to places that would be far out of reach of my grandmother's vocal range. When we found ourselves at the Original Tommy's at the corner of Beverly and Rampart we knew wouldn't be able to hear her cry out "Albert!", and that was a good thing, indeed.
I could sit on the couch in my grandparent's living room window see the Hollywood sign. Grant it, it small and far away and had to be on a good day, when all air quality factors were in concordance and the lighting just so. Pico and Vermont was not too far from that monument, something that I regularly saw as I goofed outround the neighborhood, as we drove up and around Griffith Park or as we headed up Vermont towards the observatory. I think of folks who come from all around the nation and the world to tourist trip around So Cal, who make the pilgrimage to see The Sign, something that I completely took for granted as a boy, something that I assumed was my birthright to see whenever I wanted because I was a native Angeleno.
I read the article posted below and thought that the purchase of the hillside was yet another turn in the worm of the tale of the Hollywood sign. It has been through alot over the years, has endured fires and vandalism and neglect. Now that it is a regional and national historical trust, it deserves space and the light all around it, and not to have view homes perched on it's crown. If I had a few million bucks to throw around I would put it towards the purchase of Cahuenga peak. Just because their might be some other little boy out there who grooves on the Hollywood sign the way that I did when I was a boy, whenever I could see it through the smog and the haze of those hot summer days in LA.
Action!
LA Times article on the effort to raise money for Cahuenga peak:
LA Landmarks: Hollywood sign lore:
A bit more lore:
Ted Van Cleave fine art Hollywood sign photos:
LA Times story: Save the peak story:
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