Go Left on Clark Gable, Then Right on Mae West

Even in the midst of a mayoral race, I tend to focus on important world events. But it occurred to me that I had come to take the virtues of my beloved San Fernando Valley for granted. For instance, so long as you’re able to stay off the 101 and the 405 freeways, traffic is a dream compared with the jams that plague the poor souls doomed to live on the wrong side of the hill.

It’s also easy to take our easy-to-read parking signs for granted until you pay a visit to the People’s Republic of Santa Monica. Each of its signs lists four or five contradictory regulations, all calculated to befuddle. It’s the sort of duplicity a municipality has to stoop to in order to maintain rent control in a beach community.

But as splendid as things are out here in God’s country, there is still room for improvement. Take Van Nuys Boulevard. One day as we were driving on it, my wife said, “It would certainly look a lot better if each block of stores had uniform awnings.”

“That would certainly help spruce up things,” I said, “but why stop there?” The street is predominantly Latino, and it’s just a hodgepodge of discount stores, taco joints and bail bondsmen. Tourists schlep all the way downtown to Olvera Street. Why don’t the shop owners and the Chamber of Commerce kick in a few bucks for those colorful awnings and hire strolling mariachi bands to give the street some pizazz?

Two days later, I was driving on Burbank Boulevard and, for the 1,000th time, passed that tiny cul-de-sac called Edward Everett Horton Lane, and, for the 1,000th time, I smiled. To lighten my mood, I only need to be reminded of that delightful fussbudget who provided comic relief in countless movies in the 1930s and ‘40s.

So why isn’t the entire Valley taking advantage of its connection to the film industry? There’s no cachet in having streets named Swinton or Lemp. But what if you lived on Cary Grant Terrace? Spencer Tracy Court? Hattie McDaniel Avenue? I’m not saying that life in Pacoima and West Hills would suddenly get a whole lot better. But a little bit sunnier? You bet.

We can take it a step further. After all, if Sepulveda can be transformed into North Hills, and Valley Village can be created out of whole cloth, I see no reason why Thousand Oaks can’t be renamed Peter Lorre Canyon.

I know that the spoilsports are muttering about the expense of, say, changing all those street signs. But that’s where my plan to revitalize Van Nuys Boulevard (renamed Ricardo Montalban Esplanade) comes in. With business booming on that thoroughfare, the increased sales taxes will more than cover the costs.

They will have to be careful when it comes to actually naming the streets though. It would be a good idea, for instance, to keep W.C. Fields Lane and Margaret O’Brien Street far apart, knowing Fields’ attitude toward children. And it would never do for Elisha Cooke Avenue and Humphrey Bogart Boulevard to intersect because, as everyone knows, it was always a bad idea for a cheap gunsel to cross Bogie.