Odds & Ends Around the Valley
In Boys’ Town
What do three of Harvard-Westlake’s more outspoken co-eds have to say about the newly joined schools?
The campus “is a concrete jungle,” said senior Lolita Calloway, former president of the (Westlake) Black American Culture Club. “The only spot of grass is, appropriately, the football field.”
“I miss the all-girl school traditions, like being able to wear the green uniform in your senior year instead of the gray one,” said Sarah Dammann, a member of the honor society who is active in student government. Since there are no uniforms, “here you wear the same stuff you used to wear on weekends.”
“At Westlake, the whole school had lunch together and I knew everyone,” 11th-grader Nadia Olmedo said. “Here, everyone’s lunch hour is staggered. I can never find my friends and I feel totally lost.”
Last spring, the three were at the all-girl Westlake.
Major gloom descended when it was announced that Westlake was to become the co-ed Harvard-Westlake this fall.
The gloom deepened for these three students when they realized that in sexually integrating the two schools, grades seven to nine would stay in Brentwood, while grades 10 through 12 would be in Studio City this year.
The prospect was devastating, according to Calloway, Dammann and Olmedo, all of whom say they resented having their lives changed without their approval.
All-female “Westlake was not just a place were women were encouraged to excel. It was a haven, filled with flowers and opportunity,” Calloway said.
“We were nurtured and made to believe we, as women, could accomplish anything,” Dammann added. “The atmosphere is different now.”
“I feel really stressed out this year,” Olmedo said. “It’s partially because the 11th grade is a difficult year for everyone, but having to take it on a new campus, surrounded by new people and new teachers, really makes it rough.”
All three young women say that Harvard men can be less than mature.
“The girls seem to be a lot more poised,” Olmedo said, adding that she hadn’t noticed any Harvard guys going out of their way to make her feel welcome, either.
Calloway said one boy told her that he couldn’t vote for her for the BLACC presidency at Harvard-Westlake because he “felt he should vote for a guy.”
However, not all the grades for the Harvard-Westlake amalgam are bad.
“I think the administration and teachers have tried to make us feel welcome,” Calloway said.
“I’ve had a lot of Harvard guys come up to me and introduce themselves,” Dammann said, adding that intellectually, the girls are very competitive with the guys.
Once the trio got through dissecting their feelings about the first semester in this fledgling co-ed institution, they got down to the nitty-gritty of social life on campus.
Or the lack of it.
“I am not looking for” dates from the guys here, Olmedo said. “The gossip would be brutal in a school this size, where the sexes have been traditionally separated.”
Added Dammann, whose boyfriend is in college back East: “Someone who attends a co-ed public school where relationships are always happening and unhappening can’t imagine the kind of fascination there would be in a boy and girl who are dating here.”
Raunch Removal
In July, when Tony Longval, 26, and his partner bought the Country Club on Sherman Way in Reseda--where Jackson Browne, Earth, Wind & Fire and Mick Jagger used to come to play--the first order of business was, he said, to clean up the club’s acts and years of accumulated grime, as well as its reputation in the neighborhood.
“We’ve spent three months scrubbing out the place, getting rid of employees with a bad attitude and canceling” about $54,000 worth of acts “we felt were inappropriate to our new image,” Longval said, which he described as family-oriented. “We also put in a whole new security team that will not only protect customers in the club and parking lot, but that will patrol the neighborhood.”
He said he watched some of the acts that had been booked before he and his partner took over and, after one night, pulled the plug. “I saw band members and people in the audience trashing the place. I won’t have that kind of behavior and disrespect on these premises.”
What he does want in his club is “great sounds and good people,” and one of his first bookings was a Christian rock group for Halloween.
“They prayed before their set began and then launched into some heavy rock ‘n’ roll,” Longval said.
He added that he will continue the once-a-month boxing program, and hopes to have other special events as well.
That is not to say that he doesn’t want name rock acts in his place.
“When they find Elvis, I will bring him to the Country Club for his initial comeback performance,” the new club owner said.
Longval, who moved to Woodland Hills from Atlanta and married a local woman about a year ago, said he has added a bistro to the County Club.
He hopes that the newly created Nick’s Boxoffice Cafe will attract area business people.
The cafe is being managed by Nick Koga, who is also a musician. “Nick makes the best apple pie in town,” Longval said. The cafe also offers the usual burgers, fries and upscale fast-food stuffs, as well as designer waters and coffees.
Longval, son of an Army chaplain, said he has been intrigued by and worked in clubs since he was a child.
“I would lug gear, sweep out, wash dishes or whatever, just to be a part of the scene.”
He said being able to run the Country Club is like a dream come true.
“My mentor and now partner, Dennis Coder, asked me what I would like to do in Southern California, and this is it,” Longval said.
Frigid Fowl
The apres Thanksgiving, Cold Turkey Car Rallye is the Valley version of the car race immortalized in the Burt Reynolds film “Gumball Rally.”
This year, the Turkey is scheduled Saturday between 6:30 and 9 p.m. at the Sepulveda Dam parking lot on Balboa Boulevard between Victory and Burbank boulevards.
Anyone who has a car and $12 can enter this 21-year-old event, which has been celebrated almost annually, whenever Calabasas founder and promoter Craig Konjoyay can get it together.
Unlike the Gumball, which is dashing and daring and goes across country, the Cold Turkey is quirky and tricky and is routed around Woodland Hills.
There are sometimes as many as 12 people in one rally vehicle. Top cars win trophies.
A workshop for the uninitiated is at 7:15 p.m. at the parking lot.
And if you’re interested but confused, call (818) 222-4466 for a recorded message.
The promoter said he will donate all the money from the entrance fee to AIDS Project Los Angeles and AIDS Services Foundation of Orange County.
If 200 people enter the event, Konjoyay said he will strip down to his skivvies, kiss the ground, take a lap around the parking lot and then donate another $1,000 of his own money.
It’s the Valley.
What can we say?
Hard Sell
There’s a neon sign painted on the front window of an establishment at 21834 Sherman Way in Canoga Park that says, “We want your business.”
Nothing shocking here, except that this is the window of a branch of a major California bank, First Interstate, and is part of an areawide new customer promotion, according to Dennis Shirley of the bank’s marketing department.
Carole Gramacy, manager of the Canoga Park branch, said that she doesn’t want to talk about the sign or her opinion of it, and that it was certainly not her doing, but some of the old-time Canoga Park branch customers are grumbling and calling it embarrassing.
Not everyone realizes that these days, subtle doesn’t always sell.
Overheard
“I think I would like the Shelley Duvall version better.”
--Sherman Oaks 3-year-old after seeing Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” film.
