This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
Well, we were.
Talking about that two hundred year old condom at the Amsterdam Museum and the history there from nine eighteen thirty. Los Angeles is not often in the same conversation of history. We make distinctions between our city and going to just the East Coast for a juxtaposition of buildings and appreciating history and what still remains. Of course, going to Europe and the like anywhere else on the globe is a totally different ballgame. But there is quite a bit of
history in Los Angeles. Maybe it's not preserved as well as it is in other places. But Nathan Marsak is an author from Los Angeles and celebrates all of the history of Los Angeles architecturally and the like.
That exists or that has tragically.
Been lost in some situations in a lot of cases, and Nathan has helped expanded has helped expand a book that was originally put out by photographer Arnold Hyland. Nathan is joining us now to talk about this. First question, Nathan, are you currently wearing a bow tie.
Thanks for having me on, And the answer is incredibly No, I'm wearing a long, regular necktie, but it is from the nineteen.
Thirty Are you wearing pants?
No, we live in a zoom era now, and so I'm just in like my pajama shorts, but then a full suit on top.
Yes, that's the way to do. I like the honesty.
Let's talk about Arnold Hyland originally who put out this book Los Angeles before the freeways. How did you find out about this guy? And how did you fall in love with this book?
You know, I'll tell you I've always loved old buildings and I've always loved Los Angeles. Those are my two great passions in life. And so I was in a bar. I moved to Los Angeles in the mid nineties. I'm a Santa Barbara boy originally, and it was in a bar and I'm near Central Library because I used to go there to try and you know, pick up librarians.
And one of the old rummies he says to me, you know, kid, you like old la out that window right there that was all mansions and I'm like no, it's like yeah, and all the buildings down here, you know, they used to have finials and turrets and gargoyles on them. I'm like, come on, and they're like And there was a guy, it was Arnold Highland, and he took photos in the fifties and he put out books about it. And I said, well, I'll go to Barnes and Noble
and find these books. And they're like, yeah, you know, good luck because the only printed a couple hundred copies of each one. So I got obsessed and I kind of made it my mission to find these book. One was he had two books. One was called Bunker Hill, a Los Angeles landmark, and one was called Los Angeles Before the Freeways. It comes out in nineteen eighty one,
six hundred copies. I finally find the book, and I would kind of drive around with it like a like a weird Phantom Thomas guide, you know, like on my lap graving around downtown. I'd be like, like, look at that giant, crazy building, and then I would look at and be like, oh, and it's a parking lot now. And so I started to sort of develop this idea about what's old like in the nineteen fifties, if you
were walking around downtown, was nothing but Victorian buildings. There had been a giant building boom in the eighteen eighties because of the new railroads, and Hyland knew that this stuff was starting to disappear, so he got obsessive about photographing it. I would have done the same thing if i'd been around that time. And so I got this book, and I eventually said, you know what, someday, I'm going to reprint this.
You go to the south, you go to the East coast, and there are mansions that exist the way they existed in the eighteen hundreds or before then. We don't have that in Los Angeles. And the way that you described the Brunson Mansion, which was once on the corner of Fourth and Grand, I find to be fascinating. And the fact that we lost that is just heartbreaking. Could you talk a little bit about the Brunson Mansion?
Oh, I certainly could. So. If you know downtown, if you've been to Bunker Hill, those two big matching eighties Granite, you know Reggian era muscular buildings, the Wells Fargo Center, originally the Clark Center, that's what the Brunton Mansion was. North and Grant, and there was a judge. His name was Brunson. He was very rich, and he built a like eighteen thousand square foot mansion, the kind of stuff
you think about knob Hill in San Francisco. This Bunker Hill was like our knob Hill, and it had finials and it had turrets and frescoes inside and stained glass and freezes. And it only lasted till like nineteen seventeen because somebody said, you know what we need here, We need a parking lot and a garage. Because of Los Angeles entered the age of the automobile, people were like, all these funny old buildings, you know, they're they're falling down,
they're pointless. We don't like them, Like, get rid of it. We need parking lots. And that's sort of what Los Angeles is known for all over the world. You know. I've been all over the world and people always say like, oh, you're from La. What did they tear down you know, yesterday? And I'm like, uh, you know, thanks a lot.
Yeah.
It's like I brought up Parker Center the other day.
I got some crap about it because it's a dated reference. But Parker Center is another piece of history that even cinematic history alone that we.
Lost well, I know, I kind of got into the old LA thing and part and I know you were mentioning Perry Mason. It's like super noir. Everyone loves old Noir La. Everyone's seen you know, Black Dolly and stuff like that. Parker Center, designed by Welton Beckett, opened in nineteen fifty five, super important, super progressive for the way in which it changed policing and the way we jailed people, Like the cells had rubber matts and it had glass walls instead of bars, and the city was so hot
to tear it down. And what's there now? Nothing still a parking one. Yeah, not even a parking one. It's like it's fenced off. So they destroyed it as some sort of you know, performative justice for criminals, and it's I was just rolling my eyes and you know what they say, When it's gone, it's gone. And it breaks my heart that we are still, especially now with you know, the housing push all down around USC where there used to be incredible craftsman homes, those are falling left and right.
We're really watching, especially in the last five years, we're watching the city disappear before our eyes.
I love the spirit we don't learn.
We don't learn it.
No, we are big dumb animals.
I love the spirit with which you talk about the older architecture and the passion were you. Did you use that to talk to Arnold Hyland's family about reissuing the book and expanding upon it.
Absolutely. They were very type fisted about his legacy and about the negatives that existed, and I really had to sort of prove myself. I started writing about bunker Hill, especially around two thousand and five for a blog called on bunker Hill, and that's when I reached out to them, And it took about ten years before I convinced them that I wasn't. You know, anyone who has an archive always thinks, oh, you know, we're gonna a million dollars
at it. I hate to say it, folks, but no, you put out a book like this, you do it for the love. And once they realized that I was completely obsessed, they said, okay, kid, you know, here's the negatives. Go to town. And then I went to very important Angel City Press, Dean and Titan of Great La Publishing. They also put out my book on bunker Hill called Bunker Hill Los Angeles and ACP was like, we love
this idea, let's reprint this book. And everyone wonders, like, who wants to sit and look through you know, one hundred and fifty photos of old building like eighteen eighties buildings in the nineteen fifties downtown. And it has been selling really well. People really eat it up, They love it. They If I can make people as enthusiastic as I am about it, then I've done my job.
We're talking to Nathan Marsak. Nathan, can you hold on for another segment?
Absolutely awesome. I have some more questions.
I also want to find out if you ever picked up that librarian or librarians.
I think everyone wants to know.
I'll tell you I was not terribly successful, but I wasn't totally unsuccessful.
Oh go, that's excellent. T tell you the story. Gary and Shannon will continue.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Live everywhere on the iHeart Radio app.
We're talking with Nathan Marsak, who has put out a reissue of a book, Los Angeles Before the Freeways, Building on what Arnold Hyland put together back in the eighties, which was a collection of his photos of some of the greatest architecture that La has ever seen. Granted it's not, you know, six hundred years old, like the tavern in Scotland or something like that, but it is important to know kind of where.
We were one hundred and ten years ago, and it's hard to imagine.
It wasn't until that Angelina Joe Lee movie Changeling I think twenty years ago something now, fifteen twenty years ago where it shows all the orchards out where several freeways lie, that you think of Last Angels having a history before the freeways, because so much of it has been lost as well, we don't have those museums of mansions that once were in downtown La anymore.
Nathan, you said the family gave you that Highland's family gave you access to his negative so his entire collection of photos. Was there anything surprising that you saw in the negatives that you didn't see in the original book.
Oh very much so. I should mention that the original book, as published in nineteen eighty one by Dawson's Books, has one hundred and fifteen images in it, and this new version, the expanded version with bigger, larger, lush pictures, one hundred and forty three images. Wow, because he shot in like
the one twenty format. Each each strip of negatives was three shots, So each shot from the book had two other shots next to it, and usually those were like it's a house, It's like, let's say it's the Brussau Mansion, and it's like two other versions of that. But once in a while he turn around and shoot something across the street. And in a lot of cases, those are the ones that just blew my mind. That was stuff
that no one had ever photographed before. So I was just thrilled to be able to put about thirty forty images like that in the book that no one's ever seen before.
What do you think about Los Angeles's time with the street cars? Do you see us ever returning to any sort of.
That you know we are they're trying to re engineer Los Angeles to be Manhattan. You know, you can build as big as you want without zoning if you're near a bus. And then they're building without parking. They're like, everyone's just gonna ride, you know, public transit and have bicycles from now on. We're Los Angeles, damn we always I think dams aren't it. We were built around the automobile. We're an oil town and God blessed the street cars.
But the narrative that there was a conspiracy by big oil and big tire, big road to destroy the street cars is false. That's actually it's actually not true. It's great and Rodgers rabbit, But we like bringing back Broadway. Huizar tried to put street cars back on Broadway. I don't know if that's ever gonna happen. And don't get me wrong, if I could go back in time and ride the you know, the yellow car out to the Orange Groves, you know, or or ride the red car downtown,
that'd be amazing. But I think we, you know, we can't even build a bullet train. Come on, it would cost a billion dollars in studies to find out if we could have street cars in Los Angeles. So I'm gonna go ahead and say that that day has passed.
I just love that era though, and that idea of getting around l A and vibrant.
Yeah exactly.
Oh yeah, I'm an old New Orleans boy. My family's from there, and so I ride, you know, the street car up and down St. Charles Avenue. Yeah, I know it and it's there's just nothing better than that. And I just don't know if it would totally translate to LA And I would love to be proven wrong, you know, twenty years from now, I'd love to have a nice
street car cruising down. But you know, when I moved to Highland Park thirty years ago, we didn't have the gold Line, and you know, it was just empty tracks. So we're slowly putting back public transits. Uh.
Is there a specific landmark or neighborhood or building that you think is most at risk right now?
Oh, that's an excellent question. Well, I don't have to tell you how heartbreaking the fires were in January. But the stuff that the sort of areas we're tearing down right now, just in spades, is like Koreatown and Westlake, that area, like around MacArthur Park, so many incredible buildings between there and like down towards USC, so many incredible built like mostly houses built in the turn of the century, turn of the last entries, like around nineteen oh five,
and I'm just watching them go left and right. They're being demolished for these you know, six story gray boxes that have that are absolutely featureless, that are built to the edge of the property on either every side because there's no more zoning in Los Angeles. They call it a density bonus. It's not a density bonus. It's the
zoning variant. And I've probably seen there's probably been a thousand important houses demolished and commercial structures demolished since I started tracking them around twenty twenty one.
So did you marry a librarian?
I married an archaeologist.
Okay, same kind of thing, and I love like, I.
Love trust me. I had a very lengthy stretch of you know, brainy girls with glasses and drinking problems, but that's what I like, and I like. But but then I met this too little archaeologist and she's a little more sane and sober, so I said, okay, you know you're the one, and we've been together ever since.
Well, you got to know your limits.
Exactly. You gotta know at some point you've got to you got to grow up.
And yeah, oh there is that too.
By the way, Nathan's going to speak about the book coming up Los Angeles before the Freeways, part of the Marine North of lecture series for the La City Historical Society coming up on Sunday. That's June eighth Sunday afternoon at the Tape Auditorium at the Central Library.
Rife with librarians. I'm sure and.
Oh it's like I'm like, it's in a candy store. Oh my god.
Yeah.
You can find out more when you go to La lacityhistory dot org. The events page on there is going to have more about Nathan and that. That talk coming up again Los Angeles before the Freeways, the Tape Auditorium at the Central Library coming up on Sunday afternoon at two Apart.
Nathan, that was so much fun. Thank you so much for joining us.
You guys are the best. Thank you, thanks so much.
You bet all right, coming up more stuff including I don't talk about that.
Let's talk about the elderly treehouse when we come back.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM six forty.
FBI and Port Authority police have arrested a guy at JFK Airport and Queen's overnight in connection with their investigation into the bombing of that fertility clinic and Palm Springs. He was a They believe that he may have been supplying materials for the bomb.
That was used.
He was a guy from Washington State, private payrolls increased far less than expected in May. Adp national employment reports showed this morning a new potential warning sign for the direction of the economy and air quality in the Midwest and the East really bad, but for no reason of ours. Out of control wildfires in Canada is producing a bunch of smoke that is pouring to the south, and there's a plume of dust that originated from the Sahara over
in Africa that's tracking west across the Atlantic Ocean. They're saying that the dust could collide with the smoke sometime someplace around the South this week, causing unhealthy air quality and very hazy, dull skies during the day. But of course gorgeous sunrises and sunset.
It is Wednesday, so don't forget. Let us know what you are watching. I'm a big fan of adults on Hulu right now. We're also going to be talking to Justin Worsham. We're going to be talking parenting coming up in about an hour from now. Research showing that most consider their dad to be a top life mentor.
We'll dig into that as well. Well.
Benito Flores is upset that his home in El Serena was being taken away from him. He says that the home was illegally seized after its owner, the Department of Transportation, left at vacant. He'd been allowed to stay for a few months, but with Zen told he had to go to this nearby home owned by the agency. But now that clock has ticked too far down on that home as well.
Well.
Over the months, he has Benito sawed wooden two by fours to use as a brace between the front door and an anterior wall to make it harder to breach. He has bolted shut the metal screen door. He has secured the entrance. He has retreated into a wooden structure that he has built twenty eight feet high in an ash tree in the backyard, a treehouse.
I have a question.
This goes back to the screwdriver from last week, the slotted versus flathead. Yeah, what other kind of two by fours are there besides wooden?
Why did they write.
That that is redundant? You're right, Chris Little is somewhere losing his freaking mind anyway.
Well, I guess you could have a you have a metal stud I don't know.
Yeah, you're right, it's so redundant wooden two by fours. You know what, Let's get this author who wrote this in the La Times, Liam Liam Dylan, Let's get on the horn.
No, it turns out that Benito then retreated to that wooden structure in the backyard. If the police wanted to believe, they're going to have to go up to his treehouse and get him.
He says, I planned to resist as long as I can. It's six feet tall, three feet wide.
They say it represents the last stand for Benito and a larger protest that has captured the national attention. Starting in March twenty twenty, he and a dozen others occupied empty homes owned by Caltrans. They were acquired was this imminent domain acquired by the hundred and a half century ago for the freeway expansion that never happened, for.
The original high speed rail plan, the idea of that something is never going to happen. The agencies have continued to offer referrals for permanent housing. They've offered financial settlements of up to twenty thousand dollars if group members would leave voluntarily. The evictions would have been a last resort,
but they would be required by law. Basically, Tina Booth, director of Asset Management for the Housing Authority of the City of La which is operating the program on behalf of Caltrans, says, we just don't have any authority to operate outside of that.
Unfortunately, this is one of those things that you'll find a lot with people who get older. They don't understand that there are rules and the hoops that they have to jump through, and I get it. Caltrans wants to sell this guy's home and a bunch of other empty houses in Elserino to public or nonprofit housing providers, which would make them available to people like Oh, I don't know, Benito, low income residents for rent or purchase.
He says.
Evicting him makes no sense because the properties intended to be used as affordable housing that he qualifies for. Yes, and you still have to jump through all the hoops. You still have to do all the paperwork.
You know.
It's not as easy as just saying, well, I qualify for what you want to do here with this, with this house or this property. It's just not that Unfortunately, it's not that simple anymore. It may have been at one point, it's not that way. There's too much red tape.
The way that Benito says it is they are out of options, that his treehouse, as much as a form of protest as it is, is really the only option before he moves into his and sleeps in his van. And he wrote he and others wrote an open letter to Sheriff Robert Luna and said, we're going to live on the streets for the rest of our lives. So the idea that this is a this is one of
the hardest parts about it. But it is one of those things like you move into a neighborhood where the airport is there before you and then complain about the air traffic. You know, you complain about the noise from the airport. This is an awful, awful.
Well, you move into a vacant home that's not yours. You're gonna have to pay the piper. It's all that's yeah, I mean you you know, Yes, story's sad. It's very sad that Benito us to live in a treehouse. But he moved into a home that wasn't his, and it was vacant, and they're going to at some point and get it from you.
And if it makes sense.
If it doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense, Just like in this case, it doesn't make sense. They're trying to take the home away from him to give it to someone just like him. Why isn't it him? Why can't he just stay put? That's what this stuff is intended for. Well, you know that's actually best case scenario. If he's going to get press out of this, they might make an exception and be like, all right, Benito, you can move to the front of the line.
We'll see how it's going. Maybe you can stay in your home or what have you.
But you move into a home that's not your home, chances are it's not going to work.
Out for you.
This is a pretty gross story out of Long Beach. An ad who is working with disabled children has been arrested. We'll tell you why when we come back.
It is as dark as you could go in your mind. Gary and Shannon will continue.
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM six forty.
I was scrolling through Facebook to find an old image that had come up, and one of the things that I'm now being forced in my algorithm is a page called Los Angeles Relics, and it's pictures of La back from the forties and fifties and things like this is the four level Interchange, the first stack interchange in the world, nineteen fifty four, the Horleywood Harbor, Pasadena and Santa Ana freeways.
It's it's wild.
I was off a couple days, stayed at a Weston, said the word Weston and immediately got an email on my phone from Weston. I mean, the listening is out of control, the directed ads, all the things are.
It's so cute.
How we worry about sharing passwords and privacy and social security emit, it's all. It's all done. It's done.
When we get into swamp Watch at the top of the hour, one massive figure in the Democratic Party has given up on the Democratic Party. They just said that they'll be independent from this point.
For I have a story about what you need to do if you want a job in the federal government. Yes they're still hiring, but you got to write an essay to get in. We'll tell you what the subject needs to be.
Let chech ept do it. There you go.
There is an aid working for a school in Long Beach, twenty two years old, arrested on suspicion of possessing and distributing images of the sexual abuse of children. She was working with disabled kids. The Longbeach Unified School District. The LAPDS Harbord Division served a warrant and arrested her just yesterday. Now, the school district says she was specifically a contractor, not a direct employee of the district.
Okay, I have a question, but before I get to it, police also announced that a thirty seven year old kids so Welker coach was arrested on suspicion of attempting to meet up with a minor for sex. That was in Redondo Beach so also Harbor area.
What kind of.
Checks are we doing before we put people in the company of our children.
Listen, I'm amazed. I've said this multiple times. I referred to the training background check, fingerprinting I had to go through as a soccer coach.
For seven year olds.
I mean, and the specifically the coaches training that you had to go through, where they'd bring in all the coaches and then whoever's the for whoever represents the league, would say here's how you can talk to kids, Here's what you can't say to kids. Here's how you refer you know, if you suspect something that your kids. The kids are being abused or whatever mistreated in some way, you can always go through the league. We have a specific phone number that you can call, or email address
that you can or you know references. You can't hug a kid, you have to hug, you have to side hug or fist bump a kid. You can't ever give a kid a ride home alone. You gotta have somebody else in the car, or other kids in the car.
Whatever. I mean.
That kind of stuff for a volunteer organization was so much more aggressive, it seems, than anything that these people have had to go through. Yeah, and they have much more. Here's the thing. I saw these kids two times a week for ninety minutes at a time. These people are around kids six seven, nine hours a day.
Whatever it is, right.
I mean, for it to get to the point of a warrant and arrest has to be pretty blatant. And I think that the hoops you had to jump through while a pain in the ass good.
And I didn't mind it. That was the thing.
Like I as a parent, was perfectly willing to go through a two hour welcome mindless seminar, hoping that the other people that were in the room were the same way as I was, which was this is a perfectly acceptable way to scream for coaches.
All right.
Coming up next, we will get to what kind of essay you got to write to get into the federal government these days, as well as.
What did you say.
The very high profile democrat that has given up on the party?
How do have I not heard about this? I don't know. I think you'll be surprised. I was surprised when I saw it.
I love it when news breaks on this show. It happens all the time. I think that that eagle is going to take flight again.
Gary and Shannon will continue.
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If you do that, you'll get the special Weekend and it doesn't even make air. It's all fresh stuff for the weekend, and it's dirty.
Sometimes it's dirty, it's less.
Is there a disclaimer on that, though, because like if people are listening with their children and then they just pull it up the way my mother pulled it up like she would our weekday podcast.
Wonder if it does tell you that, it should.
Tell you that there's I don't want to I don't want to teach kids new words.
I'm not in the business of that. I have to look at that.
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Your kids should know the basics at this point, right my kids, No, my kids teach kids are kids, they're grown adults.
They're not there kids.
Well, there are always kids in your heart. They'll always need you.
No, they will not. It does say E for explicit on Apple podcasts.
Oh my god, that's awesome an E rating more like a rap album, very similar, very similar.
Gary Shannon will continue right after this. You've been listening to The Gary and Shannon Show. You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio ap