Searching for the Yellow Brick Road

I’ve always had an affinity for L. Frank Baum (May 15, 1856 – May 6, 1919), the author of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Long after I read the book as a child, I came to know more of the backstory about the author who started his career as a small-town newspaper editor and publisher in South Dakota before he published his series of books on the Wizard and Land of Oz — a series based on what looked like a simple children’s fable at first glance was instead a political parable about the battle between advocates favoring our national currency being backed by either the silver or gold standard. 

Suddenly the yellow brick road and Dorothy’s silver (not “ruby”) slippers — as they became in the 1939 Hollywood adaptation — started to make more sense. Baum went on to have an illustrious career writing 41 other novels (not including four lost, unpublished novels), 83 short stories, over 200 poems, and at least 42 scripts.

By 1910 he moved to Los Angeles where he experienced great success with the Broadway production of The Wizard of Oz. He produced other stage productions, filed for bankruptcy, received a sizable inheritance from his mother-in-law, and built an architectural marvel of a California Craftsman style home at 1741 N. Cherokee Ave., in Hollywood, called OZCOT. He lived there with his library of works, his wife Maud and a beautiful garden only to die at the age of 62 in 1919. Twenty years later, just blocks from this house, the Wizard of Oz movie premiered at Grauman’s theater.  And then in 1953, his wife died and the OZCOT  was sold, demolished, and replaced with bland stucco apartments.

Sadly, this is the way Los Angeles treats its cultural heritage. The land under which our cultural heritage lies has more value than the history and culture created by the people who lived there. It’s a tragedy that I have witnessed many times as a resident of  Los Angeles over the years.

When I first arrived in San Pedro some 50 years ago, there was a grand street party put on by the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce celebrating the demolition of lower Beacon Street. This area was notorious around the world as being “the toughest four blocks in the world” with its second-floor bar girls, and basement casinos — not to mention the infamous Shanghai Red’s Café. It is said on Beacon Street that “money flowed as freely as blood from the open wounds of rolled sailors.” And so, for many decades various groups have tried to “rebrand” San Pedro.  Yet in places as far away as Bangkok, Thailand the street still inspires awe and curiosity. Back in the 1970s, just one lone architect objected to tearing down old buildings.

Some 30 years later, the term “adaptive reuse” came into fashion and many of the old downtown edifices and buildings were saved. People came to regret the demise of Old Beacon Street or at least its historic architecture, but not so much its reputation.

It was during the demolition phase that Pepper Tree Plaza, at the foot of Sixth Street, was established to preserve some modicum of the cultural history as many could see that if things continued on with the Los Angelesification of San Pedro there would be a complete erasure of the old in a race to invent the new. Los Angeles always seems to be chasing the chimera of reinvention and running away from its past.   There remains a certain allure of the authenticity of the past, a reverence if you will, that attracts both artists and location scouts for the film industry. It’s why the poet Charles Bukowski landed here to escape the phony façades of Hollywood. It’s why political radicals chose here to hide out from the blacklists and is why almost everyone else who wasn’t born here came here ­— for the authenticity. 

This place is about as far away from the abyss of the metropolis as you can get without leaving the actual city of LA, and many Angelenos still don’t know the city actually has a harbor. This is all about to change with the West Harbor development which was recently feted in the same fashion as the destruction of Beacon Street — I’ve said many times before, we will long regret being discovered by LA.

Councilman Joe Buscaino in his zeal to reinvent San Pedro has added his pastiche to Pepper Tree Plaza and reinvented it into an Italian piazza — for which there is no historical rhyme or reason. The recent apartment developments also have no seeming relevance to the history of this place.  German tourists (of which there are many) who come looking for   Bukowski’s ghost may walk away mistaking this place for Redondo Beach.

Cultural erasure has been with California since it was “discovered,” and like Bruce’s Beach or the native tribes of the Gabrielinos, there’s always something left behind for some future urban archeologists to dig up from beneath the pavement. West Harbor will always be Ports O’ Call. And Old Beacon Street will always have the memory of Shanghai Reds.

The long-anticipated completion of the waterfront promenade and the proposed West Harbor, perhaps our own Yellow Brick Road, will lead Dorothy and others from Kansas or perhaps nearer, to discover that there is no Emerald City here but only a still proud authentic working-class community that tenaciously holds onto its traditions, identity and history — refusing still to be like Los Angeles while complaining vociferously about being a part of it.