Living in Jekyll-and-Hyde Homes : Proximity to tourist attractions or industries is a mixed blessing for many. : City Smart / How to thrive in the urban environment of Southern California

If your street is going to change, you figure it won’t happen within minutes. But in corners of the Southland, a peaceful tree-lined neighborhood can quickly turn into a place you would rather not be.

Suddenly, the odor of rotten eggs wafts through the streets. Or, as though unleashed from a mysterious pipeline, cars flood arteries, snarling traffic for miles. Or, the stench from sewage creeps beneath snapped-shut windows. Or, out of the blue, huge machinery nowhere near your home makes your house shake like you live atop the San Andreas Fault.

With Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde rapidity, the neighborhoods around sports arenas, like the Forum, and mega-entertainment complexes, like Universal Studios, turn into urban horrorscapes where you are trapped in nightmare traffic or jolted awake by the sounds of simulated bombs. Breathe a whiff of that foul sulfur-like smell emitted by the Mobil Oil refinery and you may decide Torrance’s affordable prices and proximity to the beach are not worth it.

Come, for example, to Julian Ogalde’s house. For the first 15 minutes, house guests think Ogalde lives in a terrific neighborhood. Hop over his back-yard fence and you’re at Universal Studios. Then his house shakes, reverberating from the Ice Tunnel, a tram tour that usually runs four times an hour and simulates an avalanche. Most first-time visitors to Ogalde’s house duck for cover, believing that it’s an earthquake.

Ogalde, an interior designer, sleeps with earplugs at night to muffle the hammering when crews construct new sets, the beep-beep-beep of trucks backing up and the crash when forklifts disgorge their load.

“Out-of-towners see our house and are wowed by it; they see the studios, the signs--all the flash and dash,” sighed Ogalde, 35. “They don’t understand what problems really occur living so close to property like this.”

In Southern California, where most available land has been developed, the buffer separating homes from urban industrial areas and entertainment complexes has dwindled and headaches have grown. Why live there? Reflecting a recession-struck economy and a dry real estate market, the mantra-like answer: We can’t sell now.

When Ogalde, 35, moved into his three-story Spanish-style home seven years ago, he had a different view of Universal Studios, which abuts his property. “I thought we could live peacefully together. We knew we were living next door to a studio; it was never explained to us that we were living next to a Disneyland,” he said.

To Ogalde’s chagrin, Universal over the years steadily expanded its role as a tourist-attracting theme park. Up on the once-quiet hillside, you now hear the shouts and yells of visitors at Universal. Bright lights bore into the night. When special guests, such as the Power Rangers, come to Universal, traffic on the freeway and surrounding streets slows to a crawl.

Sometimes the studio films explosions. Last month, construction crews worked at night preparing a set at Jaws Lake for a music video. The noise can be so loud and so constant that Ogalde often wears his earplugs day and night.

“The worst part is not knowing what they are going to do next,” Ogalde said. “Are they going to continue expanding the rides? Will we be living next to giant electronic dinosaurs?”

For Leonard Bonilla, it’s not the sounds but the smells in his El Segundo neighborhood.

Bonilla lives on a bluff with a beautiful view of the ocean. He also has an exquisite view of the Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant.

When Bonilla moved in six years ago, the plant occasionally belched the most awful fumes. He has hosted outdoor barbecue parties that had to be rushed indoors because of the overwhelming stench that filled the air. Other times the odor was so bad that he leaped into his car and spent a couple of hours driving around.

But Bonilla, an engineering manager with Hughes Aircraft Co., dug in his heels. He posted letters of complaint to his local representatives. He spoke up at City Hall meetings. He joined the El Segundo Hyperion Citizens Forum, attending monthly meetings with plant and city officials. Today, Bonilla and others agree, the plant causes few disturbances to its neighbors.

“You can’t put your head in the sand,” said Bonilla. “You have to make noise. Squeaky hinges get oiled; it’s a cliche but true.”

Jo Ann King follows a different philosophy. King lives within glaring distance of the Forum, where streets jam with throngs of basketball, hockey or boxing fans. Coping, she says, means learning how to use obscure side streets. It means creative driving, perhaps turning through service stations to get around barricades. It means changing your schedule when possible to ensure you are nowhere near the Forum at game time. On game nights, cars fill the streets, inching forward bumper to bumper. If King, a nurse, had intended to go to a movie, she will alter her plans, going out once the crowds subside. Eat out? Nah, better to order in.

“It’s a pain in the wrong place,” sighed King, 46, who has lived in her Inglewood home for seven years. “But you get used to it.”

And there is the solution of last resort: Leave town. King hopes to move to West Covina.

For Donna Heise, the problem in her tree-lined Torrance neighborhood is neither a nuisance nor an inconvenience, but a potentially life-threatening danger. Heise lives in a single-story home two blocks from the Mobil Oil Corp. refinery, where an explosion in October injured 28 workers. She and her family have lived there for 22 years.

At times, the air smells like rotten eggs. Other times, it smells like the chemical butane. Such odors come and go within an hour. Heise, whose two children have asthma, worries about the health effects of inhaling these fumes.

The substitute grade school teacher has prepared her home as best she can. Only one or two windows, at most, are cracked open. The house is well insulated. She decided against gas masks. But if there’s a smell?

“Stay inside,” she said, “or jump in the car and leave.”