Laurel Canyon Loitering Spot Troubles Neighbors : Access to Annoying Cul-de-Sac May Be Barred

Every night, Anthony Silver and his guard dog, Socrates, watch the cars roar past their home and climb a steep, brush-lined street called Percival Place, which ends high in a rocky ravine in Laurel Canyon.

At a secluded cul-de-sac about 100 yards up the hill from Silver’s residence, carousers gather to smoke, drink beer, sell drugs and engage in sex, he said.

Percival Place, isolated yet easy to reach, has become troublesome enough to prompt plans to block it off with a fence.

The short street, about three quarters of a mile south of Mulholland Drive on the Los Angeles side of the canyon, has become a bane to Silver and other residents who live below it on busy, rustic Laurel Canyon Boulevard. There are no homes or buildings on Percival Place, and the cul-de-sac is largely hidden from view, making it a popular gathering place day and night for lovers, prostitutes and drug dealers, Silver said.

Noise, Trash and Traffic

The sound of car engines modified for high performance and other noises echo through the ravine well past midnight, he said. Revelers and trash dumpers leave Percival Place littered with broken furniture, smashed beer bottles, lawn trimmings, paper, drug ampules and hypodermic needles; cabs drive up the street for no apparent reason other than to transport prostitutes and drug dealers, Silver said.

The commotion keeps Socrates barking and leaping against the backyard fence, said Silver, a 25-year-old shopkeeper.

“Basically, you can go up there and do anything you want,” David Hanan, 60, said. Hanan, a free-lance animation artist who lives nearby on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, said, “But I don’t want to go through there with my 5-year-old granddaughter and see two men, or a man and a woman, engaged in some carnal act.”

Silver said the partying goes on every night. “You can see them up there breaking bottles all the time,” he said. “You see them up there lighting cigarettes. I’m concerned they’re going to burn down the whole hillside.”

In fact, there is almost nothing redeeming about the street, said Jack Freeman, who has lived in Laurel Canyon for 13 years. Even the hillside above is a problem: It’s a troublesome slide area. Rocks and boulders rain upon the street, and sometimes tumble all the way to Laurel Canyon Boulevard.

“It’s like a bowling alley,” Freeman said, adding that he often wonders how the rocks manage to miss the cars.

Nevertheless, the complaints about Percival Place may lessen soon.

Acting on years of public complaints, Los Angeles Councilman Michael Woo and the city’s Public Works Department have unveiled plans to remove the street from public access, closing it off with a chain-link fence and a locked gate.

Council to Vote This Month

The proposal is scheduled for City Council action later this month. It was developed after Woo, who was elected last year, reviewed the complaints and Public Works engineer Harry Sawada visited the neighborhood.

Sawada reported substantial evidence of problems. On the day of his visit, in May, two large rocks sat squarely in the road, the largest about two feet in diameter. Trash was everywhere.

“It looked like a truck had dumped it,” Sawada said.

Officers from the Hollywood Division of the Los Angeles Police Department said the area is not plagued by an unusual amount of crime, but one described the street as notorious for its teen-age party-goers.

“Every kid in the world probably knows about it,” said the officer, who asked not to be identified. “People go up there, and they figure, ‘We’ve got a spot where no one will bother us.’ But then they leave their radios on loud at 2 o’clock in the morning. I could see where it would be a nuisance.”

Hanan, who said he has spent 10 years “raising hell” to try to clean up the street, said city efforts to increase patrols and to remove debris have resulted in only sporadic improvements. Recently the problems have intensified, he said.

His home has been burglarized twice in recent years, possibly by loiterers who know when he is not at home, Hanan said. In 1975, he lost a Navajo rug valued at about $8,000. In 1983, he lost about $2,000 in household appliances.

A lot of strange things happen up there,” Freeman said. “It’s really a problem.”

Mystery to Some

Why Percival Place exists in the first place is a mystery to some residents. When it was opened, in 1926, the cul-de-sac was expected to be part of the affluent Laurel Canyon residential community. But the paved road was never developed, perhaps because of the steep slopes that surround it, Sawada said.

“It’s hard to get a driveway in up there,” he said.

Hanan, who owns two vacant parcels on Percival Place, insists that someday the land will be developed and the street will become much like any other. Property owners continue to pay taxes on their parcels and do not want the street permanently closed, he said.