A collective pause

PARK LA BREA, I OFTEN TELL VISITORS, IS what the former East Germany was supposed to have been. Built in 1942, it is a vast, egalitarian housing complex whose utilitarian lines have now become classic. But instead of dull gray structures evoking Alexanderplatz circa 1970, Park La Brea is painted cheerful, brilliant colors. Electric yellow lilies, shocking pink geraniums and sturdy white magnolias line the median of its major boulevards. Buildings fan out from palm-filled, manicured parks.

Like the Soviet Zone in Cold War-era Berlin, Park La Brea is ringed by a wall, or, in certain sections, a towering fence. And though you don’t need a visa to pass through its guard gates, you do need a parking pass. The security sometimes recalls Checkpoint Charlie.

I did not expect to live in Park La Brea. Many of its residents are in transition, as I was when I arrived. Moving vans are as common on the landscape as the ever-vigilant gardeners. The place tends to attract “newlys”: the newly graduated, the newly hired, or, as I was, the newly single. For people transferred by their companies, it is less bleak than a furnished “executive” compound, entirely composed of the freshly uprooted. Longtime residents live next to newcomers, contributing vicarious stability. I have lived less than a year in a two-story, two-bedroom townhouse on a central grass courtyard. One of my neighbors, however, has been here for 53 years.

In Spanish, “La Brea” means the tar, and the complex borders L.A.’s legendary tar pits, as well as the Page Museum, which displays objects retrieved from those pits. Despite the street and fence that divide them, Park La Brea and the tar pits share a common geological heritage. This became evident last summer when a pool of black goo opened in the lawn behind my house. By fall, it was more like a lagoon, expanding by dark of night, surrounded by traffic cones and yellow crime-scene tape. I felt as if I had blundered into a 1950s sci-fi movie.

On the bright side, a gaping fissure with crime-scene tape is an excellent conversation starter. I swiftly got to know my neighbors, as we figured out whom to nag about the problem. Management did finally respond -- packing the crevice with truckloads of dirt, then reseeding the lawn. Yet on warm days, the lawn still emits a mephitic petroleum smell. Giant crows swoop overhead, evocative of ancient pterodactyls. Perhaps more than in other parts of the city, one feels a connection to the primeval past. A past that refuses to stay buried: Even as our fissure was sealed, I suspect new ones were opening elsewhere.

At first I felt sheepish to admit that I lived in Park La Brea. But an astonishing number of people revealed that they, too, had at one point passed through it. Some were Hollywood types, for whom this was a first stop en route to Malibu or the hills. I wish this sort of ascendancy for the young actress in my courtyard, whom I recently saw on the TV show “Lost.” She deserves such rewards, having done a genuine good deed -- transcending her allergies to adopt a cat abandoned by earlier tenants. Park La Brea, by the way, is an ailurophile’s paradise. The rules permit up to two indoor cats, and no dogs, even as visitors.

My oddest Park La Brea encounter happened at a Westside party. I ran into Joe Nye, an interior designer whom I hadn’t seen since we were in high school. He had left his lavish Pasadena house to move to West Hollywood and lived in the Mid-Wilshire area during his transition. When I owned up to my Park La Brea address, he laid bare that he had lived here, too -- and, on assignment from House Beautiful, transformed his standard-issue townhouse living room into a highly personal antiques-filled showplace.

The frequent disparity between indoors and outdoors is, of course, a great thing about the complex -- what you see is not necessarily what you get. My apartment, for example, may look Deutsche Demokratische Republik on the outside, but inside it is Weimar, with George Grosz lithographs, Edwardian tchotchkes (well, a Vanessa Bell sketch), and few furnishings constructed after 1930.

Because I value old things, I dislike new things made to look old, or worse, old and pretentious. As a consequence, I am no fan of the Palazzo, a gaudy set of so-called luxury buildings adjacent to Park La Brea. If anything, their over-the-top, fake-European quality enhances the dignity of the little Park La Brea homes -- embodiments of America’s hopes and dreams at midcentury. In the current real estate market, small, sweet houses on valuable property are often destroyed to make way for large, pompous dwellings, a trend that I have experienced firsthand. I grew up in La Jolla and when I recently attempted to visit my childhood home, I found it replaced with a monstrosity best described as Disneyland meets the Alhambra.

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that as circumstances become more equal, and, by extension, uniform, disparities really stick out. Park La Brea proves this point. Because thousands of us reside in similar housing stock, we readily notice who has handsome teak outdoor furniture or exotic plants. We also notice whose garden is turning brown or has been stuffed with painfully ugly knickknacks.

If the knickknacks get too oppressive, I get away. Park La Brea is an excellent place to leave. In contrast, when I lived in Santa Monica, I found it difficult to travel to Los Feliz or Pasadena to meet friends for dinner. The trip would take about three hours. But from a Mid-Wilshire launching point, one can drive to Venice or Silver Lake without too much hassle.

I don’t think I will be in Park La Brea forever. I hope to buy a house again -- one whose architecture reflects my personality and whose study is big enough to house my books, many of which have been banished to storage. But that is not a project for today. Today I have things to do -- articles to write, trips to take, talks to deliver. If the dishwasher breaks, Park La Brea staff will rush to fix it. I can remain at the word processor -- with a snoozing cat in my lap -- until I seek an interruption.

M.G. Lord is the author of “Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science” and “Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll.”