New name didn’t fix an identity problem

Almost five years after they changed the name of their community, many residents of Lake Balboa still find it necessary to explain its lineage, and location, to visitors. “I’m in Lake Balboa,” they’ll say, inevitably adding into the bewildered silence, “you know, it used to be part of Van Nuys.”

And so it did, the western part, about two square miles of it, bordered to the north by Sherman Way, to the south by Victory Boulevard. And driving through its mostly residential streets, one is struck by its remarkable similarity to many parts of Van Nuys. The same not-quite-shady streets, the same tidy bungalows, the same valiant little lawns duking it out with a sun that considers the San Fernando Valley its personal broiler pan.

On the corner of Balboa and Victory, for instance, there is a standard-issue strip mall -- dry cleaner, check; nail salon, check; Chinese take-out, check, check. Overhead, jets taking off from the nearby airport drown out conversation and thought about every eight minutes.

The perky L.A. City Council-approved street sign may say Lake Balboa, but the flight patterns are strictly Van Nuys.

Yes, wisteria hangs like dropped crumbs from heaven along bowers in the nearby Anthony Beilenson park, and there the actual (man-made) Lake Balboa is wreathed by cherry trees blooming as pink and frothy as cotton candy. But this, alas, is Encino. When the lines were drawn and redrawn, the brand new Lake Balboans didn’t get Lake Balboa.

What they got, according to Ellen Bagelman, who has been president of the neighborhood association for six years now, was a lot of heartache.

“The actual value of the changing of our name has pretty much been zero,” she says.

Which is why when she heard the news about South-Central’s name change, she just had to laugh. First at how easy it had been. She and her neighbors had to go through six years, five signature collections and two City Council members before they were granted a divorce from Van Nuys.

But for the new South Los Angeles, things were a bit smoother. “It took 24 hours,” Bagelman says. “I couldn’t believe it. Bang. It’s done. It was hysterical.”

Equally amusing are all the expectations people seem to have. That somehow life in South Los Angeles will miraculously improve overnight.

The brand-new Lake Balboans heard a lot about increased property values, neighborhood improvements and general self-esteem. They found themselves mentioned on Web sites devoted to urban renewal and community improvement, but mainly, Bagelman says, they had to take a lot of guff: from Van Nuys residents who took their departure personally, from politicos and people in the press who claimed they were doing it to make their houses worth more or just to give themselves airs.

“People called us racist, elitist,” Bagelman says, “said it was all about image. They called us bigots. Bigots! We’re 60% minority here, always have been, always gotten along just fine.”

The neighborhood fought for the name change, Bagelman says, for politics, not prestige. They were sick of taking a back seat to the east side of Van Nuys. The City Council, she says, defined Van Nuys by the boulevard and totally overlooked the problems the folks to the west were dealing with.

“We got the noise from Van Nuys airport and the problems with day workers at the Home Depot,” she says in a succinct, list-rattling-off voice that has clearly faced down more than its fair share of community-meeting microphones. “Louise Park is a rattrap, and they use the Sepulveda Basin for all manner of experiments that we then have to live with. But no one thinks of all that,” she says, “when you say Van Nuys.”

Unfortunately, thus far, no one thinks of all that when you say “Lake Balboa” either. Council district redrawing last year split the new neighborhood right down the middle, making it even harder, Bagelman says, to get anyone’s attention.

“So much for our big idea,” she says.

Lake Balboa was certainly not alone in its hopes to literally make a name for itself. During the ‘90s, Valley Village split off from North Hollywood and Valley Glen broke from Van Nuys. Indeed, stubbornly forcing function to follow form has pervaded American real estate pretty much from the beginning. The West and Midwest are littered with “Cities” -- from Silver to Rock to Dodge -- all of which were hopefully named pretty much before there was a house or a street or anything more than a saloon standing on the site.

Likewise, the names of planned communities out here in Southern California are more likely to include the topographically unlikely “glen” in their names than the less tantalizing but perhaps more accurate “gulch” or “flood plain.”

So if some folks in South-Central think life will be better in South Los Angeles, well, it’s sort of like the urban-renewal equivalent of Botox. It seems crazy to a lot of us, but, hey, if it makes you feel better about yourself, it’s your face.

But as any survivor of cosmetic surgery, etymological or otherwise, will tell you: The benefits are only temporary. Real change requires real change. Just ask Ellen Bagelman.