Measuring Distance by Miles and Attitudes

In Sherman Oaks, Greg Chavez was directly affected by Monday’s massive immigration rights demonstrations held on the streets of Los Angeles: For the first time in 12 years, his maid asked for the day off.

In Encino, the demonstrations reminded Ben Eisner why he feels perturbed every time he calls a business and hears a computerized voice inform him that he must press 1 for the right to speak English.

And in Woodland Hills, Jeni Vartanian spent more of her day fretting about the emerging nuclear technology in her native Iran than about the illegal immigrants who trim the shrubs on her street.

The farthest point of the stretch of Ventura Boulevard from Studio City to Woodland Hills is just 25 miles from downtown Los Angeles. But if the dust was still settling Tuesday along Broadway and Wilshire Boulevard, the two routes where hundreds of thousands marched, it didn’t appear to have been kicked up here in the first place.

The more than 15 people interviewed along Ventura Boulevard consider themselves middle-class, but they live a world away from the Eastside’s Tres Hermanos department stores and the downtown mariscos restaurants.

This is a place of Infinitis and valet parking, of Birkenstocks and henna tattoos, of private drives and homes that fall, in the great spectrum of Southern California, somewhere between well-to-do and hoity-toity. Here, it appears that the goal of the protests -- to demonstrate the economic might of the Latino community -- fell short.

Here, the protests were met with detached interest, occasional hostility and widespread empathy but, more than anything, with a shrug.

Among those interviewed, the status quo that seems unthinkable to activists on both sides of the immigration debate doesn’t seem so bad; an unscientific survey found no one in favor of turning illegal immigrants into felons, as some have proposed, and one person in favor of granting amnesty to illegal immigrants who are inside the United States.

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The drive begins at Ventura and Laurel Canyon Boulevard, at a Studio City shopping center fancy enough to be labeled a “promenade” on its signs.

On the ground floor, Long Trinh didn’t know what to expect on Monday when he opened the doors of the Universal Appliance and Kitchen Center, a purveyor of high-end stoves, washing machines and the like. The store has been open for about eight months, and although it has been doing well, Trinh, the store’s 29-year-old manager, had heard talk of widespread retail closures.

By the end of the day, it had become apparent that business would not be affected. Trinh had sold, among other appliances, a 53-inch Viking grill with an outdoor gas oven. It came to $8,000, including delivery and installation. Assistant Manager Frank Rojas, 25, had turned in a $30,000 day; among his sales: a full kitchen layout featuring a Thermador stove with a pyrolitic self-cleaning oven and a 17,000-BTU dual infrared broiler.

Even the cleaning crew -- newly arrived Spanish-speaking immigrants -- showed up for work.

“I thought it might be a ghost town in here,” said Trinh, whose family immigrated to the United States toward the end of the Vietnam War. “We had one of the strongest days we’ve ever had.”

Yes, Rojas reported with a smile, they work on commission.

“This [immigration reform] movement has a stronghold in certain places, but not here,” he said. “We’ve just made better decisions financially. It doesn’t make us better people. It just means we have different lives.”

Four miles west, past boutiques named Elahn and Lush, Ventura Boulevard crosses into Sherman Oaks. Nearby is a neighborhood of charming cottages, bright stands of bougainvillea and a toddler’s swing hanging from the boughs of every third oak tree.

Here, 40-year-old Greg Chavez could be found walking someone else’s dog Tuesday and making a pretty good living at it.

Chavez’s career has unfolded in an unusual manner. In the 1990s he worked for Petco, the pet store giant, and eventually managed the aquatics side of the business at 13 stores. That gave him entree into a subculture of people who own top-shelf saltwater aquariums, which can go for more than $10,000..

He began selling the aquariums himself and soon found that his clients had put so much money into the units -- and that they required so much upkeep -- that they would pay him handsomely to baby-sit, in effect, their fish. While he’s at it, he takes care of their other pets too.

He calls himself a “professional housesitter,” charges $150 a night and is able to keep up his other business interests by day.

Chavez’s maid, Maria Rodriguez, asked for the day off Monday so she could support the demonstrations. He agreed.

“I told her: ‘You’ve been with us long enough. Do whatever you feel is right,’ ” he said. “She’s a hard-working lady. She’s been sick and she still comes to work, no matter what. We’re very grateful.”

Chavez called the immigration debate “a very big issue.”

“But it doesn’t affect me at all,” he said. “And I’m grateful for that.”

Three more miles west, Ventura Boulevard spills into Encino. Banners on both sides of the street begin to advertise the ongoing show of Gustave Courbet’s landscapes at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Brentwood. A turn off Ventura between a bank and a salon reveals an American flag on display in a wide median and a swanky neighborhood canopied by trees.

On White Oak Avenue, real estate agent Harriet Cameron was holding the first open house for a 7,500-square-foot Mediterranean-style manse with six fireplaces, crown moldings and a guest suite.

Listing price: $4.1 million.

In the dining room, as potential buyers strolled the grounds, Cameron was on her cellphone, undergoing “an escrow from hell,” as she put it.

“I don’t have the time to talk,” Cameron said. “Talk to him.”

She nodded toward Ben Eisner, a well-appointed 68-year-old man who retired young and became a real estate agent. He said he had dropped by to see what the market and the competition were up to.

Eisner said he had not been personally affected by the walkout. He described his politics as “moderate to liberal.” But he might not have sounded it to the protest organizers when he summarized his thoughts by quoting Teddy Roosevelt, who once remarked that the United States had room for only one flag, one language and “one sole loyalty.”

Eisner said he “absolutely supports” illegal immigrants who are working hard. But of immigrants who are treated well at work and feel the need to protest anyway, he said: “If I could fire them, I would.”

His parents, he noted, had come to the United States through Ellis Island. His father’s side of the family was from Poland and Russia; his mother’s, from Lithuania. Both were Jewish. If they hadn’t bothered to learn English, he said, he might be speaking Yiddish today.

Seven miles to the west, past Tarzana, Ventura Boulevard leads to Woodland Hills. Here, the crowds milling at the strip malls are more diverse. The upscale boutiques to the east have been supplanted by wholesale jewelers, the cafes by fast food restaurants.

For 12 years, Jeni Vartanian has worked as a hairstylist at the Scissors Palace beauty salon, where a basic cut costs $25 and the chairs in the waiting area are surrounded by piles of irresistibly junky magazines (Baby Battles! Angelina! Katie! Britney!).

Vartanian is 52 years old, of Armenian descent. She has cut hair in three countries: in her native Iran; in Sweden, where she lived for a spell with her husband of 33 years; and in the United States. She lives in West Hills. There, she said, and nowhere else, is home.

Vartanian allows herself some allegiances to Iran. She and her husband frequent a local restaurant called Shirin, where they feast on white rice -- “cooked as individuals, not smushed like Chinese rice” -- and tender shish kebabs.

But she shudders when she hears about Iran’s nuclear program.

“They are fanatics,” she said. “I’m much more concerned about that. That is about protecting this country. The Mexican people, I like them. They don’t bother people. They are quiet and nice. Plus, we need landscaping. We need their cleaning.”

A U.S. citizen, she said, she supported calls to grant citizenship to immigrants who are in the United States illegally. Although she said she was not personally affected by the protests, she said she could relate to the spirit of the demonstrations.

“I know that you don’t have to live in a country for very long before it becomes your home,” she said. “I feel that this is my country. And I’m sure they feel the same way.”