Bureaucrats Deal Unkindest Cut to Stylist

It was the best of signs, it was the . . . well, hardly the worst of signs. But Michael Ruth, hair stylist, is still peeved over one particular condition of the Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan.

Still struggling to recover from the Northridge earthquake nearly 2 1/2 years earlier, Ruth recently leased a new space in the resurrected block of Sherman Oaks that was once known, with apt ambiguity, as the Scene of the Crime. This referred both to the bookstore that had once been there and, more recently, to the fact that for the last seven years, this prime commercial stretch was vacant and boarded up, a blight caused by developers’ folly.

Ruth, 61, leased adjoining storefronts. There were two stoops leading to two entrances with two little crescents above the doorways that were obviously intended for two signs. The stylist figured twin Michael Ruth Salon logos would complete the symmetry.

You can’t do that, a bureaucrat told him. The Specific Plan is very specific: A business may not have identical signs facing the same street.

“So what you’re telling me,” Ruth remembers replying, “is I could have Michael Ruth Salon on one sign and Bill’s Fish Shop on the other.”

He settled for one that says Michael Ruth Salon and one that says Michael Ruth Wigs.

*

His accent betrays his roots. As a boy, Ruth had witnessed the Blitz of London. One time he emerged from a bomb shelter and discovered that German bombs had wiped out half the block where his family lived. Neighbors pondered the devastation in a daze. Then, after awhile, someone passed around cups of tea.

“Could be worse,” the neighbors said between sips.

It was that sort of spirit, Ruth says, that he witnessed again after the morning of Jan. 17, 1994. That day, he and his wife, Janice, left their damaged Woodland Hills home to inspect the new Studio City salon.

After several years in North Hollywood, they had proudly opened shop there only four months before, in a small plaza on Ventura Boulevard. Now Ruth walked amid the broken mirrors and shattered shelves and wept. Then he and Janice started cleaning up.

A few days later, he’d hung a couple of new mirrors and was styling customers’ hair. Some neighboring businesses never reopened.

But, as many small businesses discovered, quake recovery would prove very complicated. To make a convoluted story short, the failure of landlords to commence repairs on the cosmetically damaged building within 14 months of the quake resulted in a bitter feud. But in the end, the Ruths discovered some of the quake’s silver lining--an array of people and programs committed to helping ease the pain of recovery.

This started, Ruth said, when he met Jim Jacobs, a consultant with the nonprofit Valley Economic Development Center (VEDC). Jacobs had been operating his own business consulting firm from his Sherman Oaks condo when the quake hammered his home and his practice. When VEDC, bolstered by emergency funds, offered Jacobs a job helping businesses cope with the quake, he accepted and asked to focus his efforts on Ventura Boulevard.

Quake damage forced VEDC to broaden its horizons. The agency had been founded in 1978 to try to revitalize struggling Van Nuys Boulevard. It had expanded its efforts into Pacoima. Ventura Boulevard, with its trendy shops and restaurants, had not been the sort of place where VEDC was thought to be needed. When Jacobs walked the boulevard offering free consulting services, business owners initially eyed him with suspicion.

Jacobs and his colleagues helped hundreds of businesses obtain Small Business Administration loans and helped businesses renegotiate their leases. Jacobs put Ruth in touch with the Melmour Co., property owners eager to revive the infamous Scene of the Crime block.

For Ruth, several hitches remained, largely because the Melmour property wasn’t finished. The stylist rented a small space in another salon in the interim. Where once he had a dozen employees, only five remained.

Meanwhile, he was dealing with the headaches of city regulations. Long before he put up his dueling signs, he encountered dueling plumbing inspectors. But something remarkable happened. Whenever he hit a bureaucratic snag, he says, Miriam Jaffe of Mayor Richard Riordan’s L.A. Business Team and Sharon Mayer, field deputy for Councilman Michael Feuer, helped smooth it out. A can-do spirit prevailed.

The sign problem, however, was another matter.

*

There are, of course, a million quake stories in the naked Valley--actually, more like 1.4 million. The Studio City mini-mall where Michael Ruth had once operated has since been rebuilt. And up and down Ventura Boulevard--throughout the Valley, for that matter--there is the sense that recovery has come a long way but still has a way to go.

“Certain sections of it are remarkably resilient,” Jacobs says of the boulevard. “But other sections . . . I get this feeling it could go either way. I’m not saying it will turn into a depressed area. But you see a tattoo parlor spring up here, a video liquidator there . . . It’s like creeping in. Is that going to crowd out the good companies?”

At Michael Ruth Salon one recent day, a reporter who usually opts for Supercuts was getting a $30 haircut and wondering if he could justify it as a business expense. Elsewhere, a young woman was getting a blond dye, an older woman a perm and a man a manicure.

There were also several vacant stations. Beauty, Michael Ruth said, is a tough business, with ups and downs even without quakes. Now he’s looking for a few good cosmetology grads.

This salon, Ruth made it clear, wasn’t half-empty. It was half-full.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311. Please include a phone number.