In Search of Main Street : The arteries that form the heart of Valley communities are not always easy to recognize. But they’re out there...

Main Street, where have you gone?

A journalist turns his lonely eyes to you--wherever you are.

Yes, we know you’re still on life-sup port near the heart of downtown Los Angeles--and that you live in the hearts of anyone who ever cast a wistful gaze at a Norman Rockwell etching.

But when it comes to searching for you out here in the suburbs, it’s about all we can do to keep from putting out an all-points bulletin or sending out tracking dogs.

We suspect you’ve pretty much gone into hiding--but where?

East side, west side, all around the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys, we can find only one Main Street.

But that Main Street--in the city of Burbank--happens to be an impostor. It’s not even Burbank’s “main” street. Maybe it was named for a water main.

So now, we’ve no other choice but to look for “main” streets named something else--streets that exude a community’s heart, if not also its soul.

Many of the San Fernando Valley’s so-called “main” streets weren’t necessarily planned that way--or, as Scott Spooner, president-elect of Northridge’s Chamber of Commerce, puts it, “It all depended on which developer got there first.”

Actually, very few communities boast streets that cry out “Main Street” in the classic, Rockwellian sense. Calabasas’ Old Calabasas Road fits the mold, as do Granada Hills’ Chatsworth Street and Glendale’s Brand Boulevard.

Some communities have at least two “main” streets--one etched deep in a community’s history, another forged out of its economic mainstream, or still another where teens and young adults go cruisin’. Examples: North Hollywood and Burbank.

Some have “main” streets that intersect--Woodland Hills and Reseda, among others.

Other communities are so new--or have “main” streets that look and feel like so many other busy streets--that even the old-timers have to scratch their heads and weigh their words before they tell you where they think their “main” street is.

And still others--notably Westlake Village--have “main” streets so elusive that you need someone not just to give you a map but to draw you a picture.

Then, too, one can argue that freeways are actually these valleys’ “main” streets--or that major thoroughfares such as Ventura and Van Nuys and Roscoe boulevards, or Sherman Way, or Soledad Canyon Road, are “main” streets because they link communities.

As Bobbette Fleschler, president of the San Fernando Valley Historical Society, points out, “Sherman Way was designed as the east-west thoroughfare for the Valley, along the lines of the Champs Elysees in Paris.”

Ultimately, these “main” streets we tour today--as with judging art or rating food--are defined as such by the eyes and taste of the beholder.

“If I interpret a ‘main’ street correctly,” Jim Mahfet, executive vice president of the Universal City-North Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, says, “it’s not just one that’s a busy thoroughfare but one that’s linked closely to a community’s identity.”

For her part, Kathy Krol, manager of Granada Hills’ Chamber of Commerce, makes a case for her community’s Chatsworth Street, with its shopping, trees and sidewalks.

“If you can’t walk it, it’s not a main street,” she says. “And I mean walk it safely .”

East Valley

BURBANK (San Fernando Boulevard): A stranger might think the main street is Olive Avenue, which sweeps from the Verdugo Mountains to the Media District. But historians say it’s San Fernando Boulevard, which crosses Olive in the heart of town. The boulevard became a pedestrian mall in the late ‘60s, then reopened in 1990 to vehicular traffic (now interrupted by the Media City Center shopping mall). “It’s the route the early Californians took from the San Gabriel Mission to the San Fernando Mission,” says Ellen Dibble of the Burbank Historical Society.

GLENDALE (Brand Boulevard): With its sidewalk trees, office towers and a backdrop of the Verdugo Mountains, Brand Boulevard offers a spectacular main street. But Brand also bears recessionary scars--abandoned stores and cinemas--and a reputation for after-dark malaise. Help may come in early 1994 with the rebirth of the Alex Theatre as a performing arts center. For now, many Glendalians find main street at the Glendale Galleria shopping mall, at the Montrose Shopping Park on Honolulu Avenue (a slice of “Mayberry RFD” with a view of downtown L. A.’s skyscrapers) or, at night, in Pasadena’s Old Town.

NORTH HOLLYWOOD (Lankershim Boulevard): Nudie’s isn’t a strip joint but a place where people try clothes on . For 46 years, it has stocked the kinds of Western wear that predate land baron Isaac Lankershim, who in the 1860s carved this thoroughfare and others out of wheat fields. The area would be known as Toluca (1890), Lankershim (1896) and North Hollywood (1927). Some consider Laurel Canyon Boulevard an economic main street, but others say Lankershim has history and destiny on its side. Planners envision Lankershim as an arts and entertainment strip, which already goes by the name the “NoHo District,” enhanced when Metro Rail’s last Red Line subway station opens around the year 2000.

PACOIMA (San Fernando Road): This community’s business heart--along one side of San Fernando Road--needs a transplant. Some of its pockets of blight are so forlorn that they seem doomed to strangle on their burglar bars and graffiti. A sign, “Lizards Loose in Tarzana,” urges Pacoimans to shop out of town--at a place called the Boot Barn.

PANORAMA CITY (Van Nuys Boulevard): Although many consider Van Nuys Boulevard the main street of Panorama City (the Valley’s first planned community, in the late 1940s), others opt for Roscoe Boulevard, an east-west route that crosses Van Nuys at the Panorama Mall. But some regard Roscoe as no more than a bumpy way in and out of town. Says Mary Wynton, a librarian who commutes from Sunland-Tujunga, “Roscoe Boulevard keeps the auto-repair shops in business.”

SAN FERNANDO (San Fernando Road): This stretch of San Fernando Road emerged after the San Fernando Mission (established in 1797) became the centerpiece of Valley life. “Even people from L. A. made special trips out here,” Bruce Cohen of the San Fernando Chamber of Commerce says. “Everything in the Valley built up around us .” Today, this city--one of America’s few that are incorporated entirely within another--occupies only 2 1/2 square miles. Its main street on San Fernando Road is anchored by the San Fernando Mall, three blocks of retail shops, palm trees and floodlighting.

SHERMAN OAKS (Ventura Boulevard): From snazzy restaurants to weight-loss salons, from high-rise banks to a movie house-turned-clothing store, from the Doll Emporium to the Pride and Joy Pet Care Center, this main street--considered by many the Valley’s main street--defines this community, named for developer Gen. M. H. Sherman, who was said to be fond of oaks. Indeed, as Ventura Boulevard snakes through the Valley, it’s Southern California in microcosm: There’s a little something for everyone.

STUDIO CITY (Ventura Boulevard): A location for many of Mack Sennett’s wacky “Keystone Cops” comedies in the 1920s, this main street leads to entertainment production companies, including the CBS Studio Center, to say nothing of shops that fix auto bodies and shape up human bodies, palm readers and palm trees and people who practice yoga and devour yogurt. A landmark is the Sportsmen’s Lodge hotel, restaurant and banquet center.

SUNLAND-TUJUNGA (Foothill Boulevard): This stretch of Foothill Boulevard appears to have a ring around its blue collar--from body shops to the mom-and-pop stores to the old-car buffs who chow down at Rudy’s Bean Pot. Tree-shaded Sunland Park breaks up the dreariness. “Dilapidated--neglected,” the Foothill Leader newspaper observed recently while reporting on new proposals aimed at reversing the decay by attracting larger businesses.

SYLMAR (Foothill Boulevard): For about a mile, between Hubbard and Polk streets, Foothill Boulevard throbs with fast-food outlets, auto dealerships and banks, interspersed with apartments. Sylmar, once heralded for its olive groves, was annexed by Los Angeles in 1915, when it made its movie debut as the setting for D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation.” It’s not true that one of those fast-food parlors--Shakey’s Pizza--was named for Sylmar’s 1971 earthquake.

TOLUCA LAKE (Riverside Drive): Flanked by sidewalk cafes and trendy shops, Riverside Drive seems miscast in a community that straddles the North Hollywood-Burbank line. After all, where else can you find a street that packs all the charm and propriety of a Pier 6 brawler crashing a mid-afternoon tea? A reconfiguration of Riverside Drive is aimed at unclogging traffic, but some community leaders want angled parking and two-lane traffic (instead of four) to lure motorists out of their vehicles and onto the sidewalks.

VAN NUYS (Van Nuys Boulevard): This chunk of suburbia has an unmistakable inner-city look. Van Nuys (named for Valley pioneer Isaac Newton Van Nuys and annexed by Los Angeles in 1915) has city, state and federal offices clustered into a civic center on Van Nuys Boulevard, also a north-south main street of the Valley itself. Here, too, are adult bookstores and the Valley Book and Bible Store, panhandlers and pawnshops, morticians and mufflers, fast food and life in the fast lane. If you can’t buy it on Van Nuys Boulevard, it isn’t for sale.

West Valley

AGOURA HILLS (Roadside Drive): It’s a Ventura Freeway frontage road, but it hints strongly at a main street, what with its Whizin’ Shopping Mall: arcade, banquet center, clock tower, antique mart, eateries, cinemas and Tommy Finnan’s Starlight Theatre. Most businesses face inside, toward the parking area, so it’s easy to miss them from the street. Kanan Road, which crosses Roadside and carries beach-goers, boasts modern shopping strips a mile north of the freeway, but it lacks the Whizin’s homespun charm.

CALABASAS (Calabasas Road): Saddle up, buckaroos! Check out the block of hay bales, plank sidewalks and rough-hewn, Old West storefronts (antiques, boutiques, eateries), across from the Sagebrush Cantina and the historic “hanging tree,” a noose dangling in the wind, outside what once was the jail. Not even the longer stretch of contemporary buildings next door can sap the main street flavor. Why, you can almost hear those old-time movie directors yelling, “Action!” as you watch Hoot Gibson and other cowboy actors galloping in from the sunset.

CANOGA PARK (Sherman Way): It’s a bustling thoroughfare with an eclectic mix. Here, in what used to be a farming community called Owensmouth (the name Canoga Park was adopted in 1931), are collectibles, restaurants, discount stores, upholsterers, auto tuneup shops. The only arts on this street appear to be martial arts. A second main street could be Topanga Canyon Boulevard, which crosses Sherman Way.

CHATSWORTH (Devonshire Street): Between Tampa and DeSoto avenues, this main street leaves no shadow of a doubt that you’re in Chatsworth. Here, you’ll find Chatsworth Cleaners, Chatsworth Tire, Chatsworth Auto Repair, Chatsworth Pharmacy, Chatsworth Animal Clinic and Chatsworth Donuts. Sandwiched among these businesses are, among others, a Ramada Inn and an eatery called the Munch Box. How did they get in there?

ENCINO (Ventura Boulevard): When a caller asks, “What’s Encino’s main street?” an Encino Chamber of Commerce employee replies, “Hold on. I’ll ask someone.” The employee then says, “Ventura Boulevard.” Question: “What’s Ventura Boulevard in Encino best known for?” Answer: “Just a minute. I’ll ask.” The employee returns and says, “Every business in Encino is on Ventura Boulevard.” Indeed, this span of Ventura brims with glitzy high-rises and shops. But the chamber’s own offices sit not on Ventura Boulevard but Balboa Boulevard.

GRANADA HILLS (Chatsworth Street): When it snowed in 1949, Chatsworth Street had only a handful of shops. Uncluttered and handsomely lined with trees and sidewalks, this looks like a main street, if not a village, with merchants named Lamp Doctor, Nail Cottage, Canine Clipper and Chatoak Pet Clinic along a one-mile strip between Encino Avenue to Zelzah Avenue. It’s fitting for a community once called “The Valley’s Most Neighborly Town,” according to authors Charles Bearchell and Larry Fried in “The San Fernando Valley Then and Now” (Windsor Publications Inc., 1988.)

NORTHRIDGE (Reseda Boulevard): Reseda Boulevard has history going for it as a main street. There, at Gresham Street, what used to be the town of Zelzah (for “oasis”) in 1913 opened its first post office. It’s enormously busy, but so is Nordhoff Street, a major cross street that rides the waves of commercialization, notably the Northridge Fashion Center shopping mall. The community (named North Los Angeles in 1929 and Northridge in 1938) has traveled light years from its days as a hideaway for stars such as Barbara Stanwyck, Betty Grable and Harry James.

RESEDA (Sherman Way): The community’s heart beats at Sherman Way and Reseda Boulevard, but its economic pulse here is tepid. On Sherman Way are a boarded-up movie house and a barricaded pawnshop next door to the Gathering, which sells music, gifts, cards and Bibles in a “going out of business” sale. “It’s dead here,” newsstand operator Hassan Jalali says. “The malls have taken away so much business.” Still, Ann Kinzle of Reseda’s Chamber of Commerce--who recalls when the Big Red Car trolleys rolled on Sherman Way--is optimistic: “We’ve got a 20-year plan that can revitalize our community.”

TARZANA (Ventura Boulevard): Once the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of Tarzan stories, Tarzana epitomizes upscale, upbeat California on Ventura Boulevard. Here, you’ll find banks, fine arts galleries, international cuisine, imported cars, sushi bars, a dog-grooming clinic and the Thin’s In Cafe. The pricey real estate here today would make Burroughs spin in his grave. Seventy years ago, Burroughs subdivided and sold part of his Tarzana Ranch for $1,500 an acre.

WESTLAKE VILLAGE (Agoura Road): Drive into this maze of immaculately groomed streets, master-planned neighborhoods and shopping strips obscured by trees and foliage, and you’ll be hard-pressed to determine which is the main street. Westlake Boulevard and Lindero Canyon Road might qualify, if only because they’re accessible from the Ventura Freeway. But a consensus is Agoura Road, which connects both streets and offers abundant shopping and access to City Hall--that is, on the Los Angeles County side. The Ventura County side of Westlake Village is served by Thousand Oaks. “Yes, it’s confusing,” says Patricia Van Evera, office manager of the Westlake Village Chamber of Commerce. Even though Westlake Village was developed as long as a quarter of a century ago, she tries to explain why a definitive main street is so elusive here: “You see, we’re still too young.”

WOODLAND HILLS (Ventura Boulevard): As with Encino, Tarzana and Sherman Oaks, this part of the boulevard is a paean to conspicuous consumption: fancy restaurants and imported cars, a cellular super-store, computer shops. Nearby are Taft High School and a Jehovah’s Witnesses headquarters. But a case can be made, too, for Topanga Canyon Boulevard--which intersects Ventura Boulevard--as a second main street. Here, you’ll find the high-rises, landscaped parkways and upscale shopping of Warner Center, notably two major shopping malls: Topanga Plaza and the Promenade. Even if you close your eyes and think back just half a century, it’s hard to imagine that movie mogul Harry Warner then called this place his very own 1,200-acre ranch--and when people talked about traffic, they could mean only Warner’s thoroughbred racing horses.

Santa Clarita and Antelope Valley

SANTA CLARITA: Barely five years young, Santa Clarita is so newly incorporated that the city’s leaders have embarked on a campaign aimed at encouraging residents to refer to their hometown as “Santa Clarita,” not Valencia, or Newhall, or Saugus, or Canyon Country, parts of which now make up the city.

Accordingly, because each of those communities has what some consider its own main street (or possibly two), Santa Clarita itself has several. “I don’t know if any has been referred to specifically as our ‘main’ street,” says Mike Murphy, the city’s intergovernmental relations officer.

What pass for main streets, then, tend to reflect the distinctive identities of those communities.

Valencia’s McBean Parkway has “master-planning” etched all over it, from its exquisite landscaping, towering eucalyptus trees and flowers in the median strip to the Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital, churches and the Granary Square shopping strip, all of which sit comfortably away from vehicular traffic.

Valencia Boulevard, too, is a main street, for it’s the address of Santa Clarita City Hall, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s substation and library and the Newhall Land & Farming Co., which developed Valencia. And where Valencia Boulevard and McBean Parkway intersect is the Valencia Town Center, which opened nearly one year ago as the Santa Clarita Valley’s first regional shopping mall.

Newhall, meanwhile, boasts a vigorous main street in Lyons Avenue, home of fast-food parlors, Victorian storefronts and a bookshop owned and operated by Santa Clarita Mayor Jan Heidt. In Saugus, there’s Bouquet Canyon Road and Soledad Canyon Road, where traffic is either bottle-necked or high-speed, in keeping with the Saugus Speedway on Soledad Canyon. And in Canyon Country, Soledad Canyon Road is a thoroughfare of shopping strips, condos and vast stretches of scrubby emptiness.

ANTELOPE VALLEY: In Lancaster, the main street is said to be Lancaster Boulevard, although it’s easy to mistake Avenue I as a main street because it’s extremely busy and is accessible from the Antelope Valley Freeway.

However, a one-mile strand of Lancaster Boulevard--between Antelope Valley College, at Division Street, and 10th Street West--has the main street trappings envisioned by Norman Rockwell: small storefronts, trees, benches, sidewalks with brick trim, old-fashioned street-lamps and the large Lancaster Performing Arts Center.

Not so in Palmdale, where busy Palmdale Boulevard is considered the main street but no place to take a leisurely stroll. It’s 4 1/2 miles of strip malls, fast food and motels, the monotony interrupted by huge expanses of brush and prairie.

The boulevard’s saving grace, aesthetically, is the Palmdale City Library, an impressive, Spanish-style structure with tan stucco, a red-tile roof and windows showing lighted chandeliers. Now that’s more like it.