Small Town in the Big City

Journeys of discovery can happen anywhere, as long as you discover something new to you. Anyway, that was my excuse for escaping one weekend several weeks ago to a place that made everybody hoot when I mentioned it. They could laugh and spend four to six hours getting to Death Valley or Big Sur. Meanwhile, the drive from my office in downtown L.A. to Culver City was only 25 minutes.

You may think I went no place. But you’d be wrong, particularly if you’ve never paid attention to that little no-place, Culver City.

Secreted in the lee of the 405 Freeway, it is surrounded by the city of L.A. and Baldwin Hills on all sides. Concrete-banked Ballona Creek meanders through it, vaguely recalling the days when the area was part of the 134,000-acre Rancho La Ballona, claimed by the Machado and Talamantes families in 1839.

Then, as now, Culver City was halfway between downtown and the beach. For this reason, a restaurant in the 1800s near the present-day intersection of Washington Boulevard and Overland Avenue was called the Halfway House (popular for pickles and wine). And just after the turn of the century, when L.A. boasted the best mass transit system in America, there was a busy Pacific Electric Red Car station at Venice and Culver boulevards, built in Mission Revival style. Recently renovated as a cultural venue, with triangular Media Park as its backyard, the Ivy Substation is a good place to begin a tour. In fact, a sign on its facade says “Welcome to Culver City.”

When I go to Malibu or Bel-Air, I often feel like an intruder. But I felt welcome in Culver City. Its population (39,016) is strikingly heterogeneous--white, black, Asian, Latino and others, according to the Chamber of Commerce’s economic profile (which has also determined that 23.7% of the residents enjoy bowling and 29.5% like to sew). Above all, though, it is a small town, with a palpable esprit de corps. A visit to the Chamber of Commerce, in a strip mall on Washington Boulevard, yields housing prices and information on issues such as the Town Plaza development, which hopes to bring a multiplex, shops and a parking garage to the historic downtown. In the new City Hall on Culver Boulevard, public artworks commemorate the city’s kinship with the film industry and its emphasis on personal involvement in government--among them a row of brick walls bearing quotations from activists like Cesar Chavez and Coretta Scott King. But the quote from Plato was my favorite: “The punishment which true wise men suffer, who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.”

Starting at the Ivy Substation, I took a pleasant stroll past old-timey lampposts and jacaranda trees to Main Street, one short block, running between Venice and Washington boulevards. Hardly as stylish as Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade, it has a hardware store, several thrift and antique shops, the Grand Casino Bakery & Cafe (for buttery medialuna pastries and oatmeal cookies) and lots of nicely restored but empty early 20th century storefronts--making it hard to tell whether Culver City is dying off or being reborn. It looks like the back lot at Sony Pictures Studios, which occupies 45 acres of central Culver City and is the town’s biggest employer.

I left work early on Friday afternoon to take the two-hour walking tour of the studios (available weekdays only). There are no bells and whistles on this tour but plenty of movie-land history. The lot was founded soon after a local developer, Harry Culver, happened upon Thomas Ince shooting a western by Ballona Creek. Never one to let an opportunity pass him by, Culver persuaded the filmmaker to move to Culver City, arranging financing for Ince/Triangle Studios in 1916. Eight years later, Metro Goldwyn Mayer took over the property, drawing the brightest stars of the ‘20s and ‘30s to Culver City, as well as Irving Thalberg, Louis B. Mayer and 124 “little people” to populate Munchkin land in the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz.” The yellow brick road stretched between stages 15 and 27 (about 40 feet); Mother Mayer’s matzo ball soup became a staple at the Rita Hayworth dining hall; and the beautiful Moderne-style Thalberg Building was added to the lot in 1938, named for the boy wonder director, who died of pneumonia in 1936 at age 37.

After many incarnations, the studio was acquired by Sony Pictures in 1990. The next year, the company bought another nearby local landmark, Culver Studios, also founded by Ince in 1919. It’s not included in the Sony tour, but you can hardly miss the Colonial-style administration building at 9336 W. Washington Blvd., with six white columns and box hedges, evoking “Gone With the Wind,” which was filmed there in 1939. Lots of locals worked as extras at the studio, while mom-and-pop restaurants nearby became the haunts of such stars as Clark Gable, who routinely arrived in his pink Packard Roadster.

Gable kept a suite at the Culver Hotel, a six-story flatiron building at Culver and West Washington boulevards that was considered a skyscraper and called the Hunt Hotel when it was built in 1924. Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Red Skelton, John Wayne and all the Munchkins also stayed there--as did I, in a double for $129. (Ask for a room on the quiet, park side. If you book through the Internet, the rate for a double is $99.) The hotel was renovated last year, and its lovely high-ceilinged lobby shows it. But my room on the sixth floor was frumpy, with two queen beds, printed wallpaper, carpeting, an antique desk and armoire, a smoke alarm hanging by a cord from the ceiling and two ugly floral paintings. Room service was erratic, and on Saturday at midnight I was jolted out of a sound sleep by music blaring from the lobby, which had been rented for a party--complete with a deejay spinning tunes from Indian films. I got back to sleep easily enough, and in the end felt fond of the place for its lack of polish. As hotels go, it’s about as distinguished as the best hotel in a town like Cedar Rapids, Iowa, or Independence, Mo.

Two friends, Maureen and Vani, joined me for dinner on Friday at the San Gennaro Cafe, a two-block walk west of the hotel. The food was reasonably priced, plentiful and exceedingly garlicky, and there was a singer who did a loud imitation of Frank Sinatra, causing Vani and Maureen, who are both originally from New Jersey, to feel as if they’d clicked their ruby slippers together and landed in Hoboken. That’s Culver City all over--slow lane and somehow familiar, wherever you’re from.

Later Friday night, I caught Les McCann and his Magic Band rocking the room at the Jazz Bakery (in part of the old Helms Bakery complex at the eastern border of Culver City).

The next morning, I breakfasted on bagels and scrambled eggs at Roll ‘n’ Rye, a real New York-style deli on Sepulveda Boulevard, and went ice skating with my brother, John, and 12-year-old niece, Sarah, at the Culver City Ice Arena on Saturday afternoon. We ate at the pleasant and affordable Double Dutch Dinette near the hotel (the dippy-dogs--hot dog bits dipped in mustard--my niece ordered were outstanding).

On Sunday I took a long run through the Hayden Tract, a warehouse neighborhood at the eastern edge of town with a handful of buildings designed by post-Modernist Eric Owen Moss, then ended my stay by meeting a colleague at Bharat Bazaar on Washington Boulevard just west of the 405 Freeway to shop for Indian groceries and celebrate the market’s 20th anniversary with free naan and daland rice. And I still got home in plenty of time to pay bills and do laundry.

Maybe I didn’t go anywhere. But big, glitzy L.A. can seem like Oz at times, which is why every so often, it’s good to get away to Kansas.

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Budget for One

Gas: $6.00

The Culver Hotel, two nights: 288.96

Sony Pictures Studios tour: 20.00

Dinner, San Gennaro Cafe: 33.00

Jazz Bakery show: 20.00

Breakfast, Roll ‘n’ Rye: 8.00

Skating, with rental, locker and hot chocolate: 10.00

Dinner, Double Dutch Dinette: 17.00

Groceries, Bharat Bazaar: 3.00

FINAL TAB: $405.96

*

The Culver Hotel, 9400 Culver Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232; telephone (310) 838- 7963, fax (310) 815-9618, Internet https://www.culverhotel.com.

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