Life at a Sacred Carwash

There used to be a Chevron station and carwash at the corner of Ventura Boulevard and Winnetka Avenue in Woodland Hills. I got gasoline there and sometimes oil, and on occasion had my car washed. But I never saw it as a shrine.

I never knelt before the Chevron sign at the corner of the property and never felt the water that poured down on my Pontiac was holy. Brownie, who was the station manager, never blessed me and I never asked his forgiveness when I sinned.

Therefore, when they tore the place down a few months ago to make way for God-knows-what, I did not fall sobbing to my knees and propose that the ruins be declared a cultural treasure or, at the very least, a monument to the ancient tradition of getting gassed and washed.

I figured, OK, it’s gone, I’ll miss Brownie and Jose, the guy who was always careful to get the bird deposits off my hood, but there will be other Chevron stations, and perhaps I will find Brownie and Jose at one of them.

I mean, man, this is L.A., the city of re-runs and re-building, both of which unquestionably prove the existence of life after death. Lucille Ball isn’t gone when she’s still setting her nose afire on the tube, and a gas station isn’t dead when a new one opens somewhere else.

So what’s the big fuss among actors and others over the ugliness in Studio City?

I’m talking about the combination gas station-carwash-coffee shop granted divine status by a group of noisy activists with no other cause to pursue than the one that rises like a rusty sunburst at Laurel Canyon and Ventura boulevards.

A developer wants to tear it all down to build a mini-mall, and political prep leader Jack McGrath has stirred the locals into a feeding frenzy of righteous indignation to preserve it as a monument to our sacred past.

They are calling it the Gateway to Studio City. Some are suggesting it ought to be called the Gateway to Jack McGrath’s Political Future.

This all began a few months ago when McGrath--real estate salesman, political huckster and one-time City Council candidate--heard that the gas station-carwash-coffee shop was on its way out.

The station dates back to 1929, but the carwash and the coffee shop were built in the 1960s. In L.A., that is equivalent to the early Pleistocene.

Local activists, stirred by McGrath, gathered petitions and appealed to the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission to declare the carwash a landmark. The commission chuckled and, last Wednesday, said no.

Symbol of the dispute is that 55-foot-high steel sunburst atop the carwash. Once considered junk art, the edifice has suddenly assumed the sacred properties of the icon that overlooks Rio de Janeiro from Mt. Corcovado.

When the rusty sunburst is gone, say its worshipers, something hallowed will have been desecrated. It will be like tearing down the temple where Jesus had his Chevy waxed.

I went by the Sacred Place the other day to have my Grand Am scrubbed and to see if any miracle occurred while I was there. Nothing happened.

My back hurt when I arrived and it hurt when I left. I saw no visions of Christ in the hot wax and no heavenly voices admonished me to leave Studio City alone.

As a carwash, the place was OK. As a Lourdes of L.A., it’s a flop.

I asked McGrath how it had assumed such empyrean heights. First he denied with an easy shucks-no that he sought any political gain from this little hassle.

Then he added with the childlike innocence of a Dan Quayle, “I never dreamed it would even go this far.”

It was just that he had been raised in the area and it was his, now get this, “corner of memories.” I like that. We apply similar logic to slums we won’t clean up. They are somebody’s corner of memories.

“Sharon Gless is seen there often,” McGrath said, “and other actors.”

He’s right. Cultural giants like Roddy McDowell and Telly Savalas want the carwash saved. Ralph Bellamy and Gavin Macleod too. Take that, Cultural Heritage Commission. And that.

McGrath says they’re going to the City Council next and will fight to the last actor to get the carwash declared sacred. I thought I heard faint hosannas in the background.

I should probably be more excited about the whole thing, but I keep remembering when everyone was fighting to keep gas stations and carwashes out of their neighborhoods.

Someday, I am certain, a mini-mall of manicure houses, trattorias and yogurt palaces will also be considered cultural assets, and Lord how we’ll call for a Second Coming to save them too. Yahoo and amen.