Billys Apts
By Carol
Fondiller
The voice on the other end of
the phone said, “Rumors are whizzing ‘round, noisy as skeeters on a
stagnant pool spreading west Nile disease. Billy’s apartment building is
up for sale.”
Fighting through my friend’s
hyperbole, I asked “Say what? Who’s Billy? And what’s love got
to do with it?”
“Well,”
said my friend, hereinafter known as Gary, “Billy’s apartment
building is located on the Ocean Front Walk between Park and Brooks Avenues.
About 8 units, 10 people, right next to one of the surviving single family
houses on the Front and
Billy’s…”
Oh yeah,
“Billy’s Apartments.” Well. There’s a strip mall on Park
Avenue that sells nothing useful to the surrounding community, the two-story
single family house, Billy’s Apartments—which is painted a sort of
pinkish brown, has what Easterners call a stoop, and what God-fearing
heartlanders would call a small porch, is three stories high. It’s just
north of a tattoo parlour and the Café Venezia on Brooks
Avenue.
In the late 50s the Ocean Front
Walk had a varied streetscape of former hotels turned into permanent apartments,
bars, single family houses, a few Mom ‘n’ Pop stores….Excuse
me while I brush away a nostalgic those-were-the-days
tear.
Well, things do change, sometimes
for worse, and sometimes for the better. And sometimes it’s just change.
As in decay, rebirth, and all that Karmic
stuff.
But to me, the sale of
Billy’s Apts. signals a real
change.
This is one of the last
apartment buildings that have moderately priced units on the Ocean Front Walk,
perhaps in Venice. Some of the tenants have lived at Billy’s for twenty
years. Years ago, developer wannabes dreamed up a plan for Venice that would, in
the words of one developer, “Make Venice a Miami Gold
Coast.”
This plan included a
freeway that ran west of the beach onto the ocean, the taking of property east
of Speedway by eminent domain, in order to facilitate two-way traffic.
(It’s estimated that the proposed plan to widen Speedway would have taken
about 20 percent of the properties abutting Speedway.) Not just the Hippies and
Commies opposed that plan. And, of course, there’s always been controversy
in regards to development on the
O.F.W.
To put it delicately, Venice is
entering another phase.
To my way of
thinking, there is a plan to eliminate all dwellings on the Ocean Front Walk.
Billy’s Apts. and the single family house next to it can be consolidated.
And with claims of hardship exemptions, easements, setbacks and other
development goodies, to combine with the property that includes the tattoo
parlour, Mom ‘n’ Pop shop and the Café Venezia into one helluva
package for plasticized quaint B‘n’Bs or Hotel California for
discreet business meetings.
As it is,
the Ocean Front Walk and the adjacent walk streets are barely livable
now.
The uh, gee…dare I offend
the west side artistes? I can find no other description—NOISE from the
Ocean Front Walk 8 hours a day or longer, 7 days a week, and the fumes of
endangered sage, gasoline emissions from huge buses with faulty engines, and the
stench of rancid oils that emit from our many fine restaurants. I understand
that much of this will change after the Ocean Front Walk ordinance is in place,
but I am skeptical. The charms of Venice were the juxtaposition of seedy
apartments next to one family houses next to bars and groceries, fruit stands,
synagogues, tabernacles, etc.
There was
also the mix of Bohemian outcast, orthodox Jew, fundamentalist, etc., workers,
poets…; well you know the
drill—diversity.
That’s
coming to an end now, and not only because of the developers, real estate and
the Artbunkers that are popping up like giant pustules. J’accuse some of
the aforesaid Artisty–Poos that have invaded the Ocean Front Walk. They
seem to think that just because they are poor like Van Gogh, unrecognized as Van
Gogh, they automatically have the genius of Van
Gogh.
They seem to think that because
they claim to be artists, they have the right to annoy and denigrate all the
Philistines and greedy money grubbers who have the nerve to live on the
O.F.W.
Well, cheer up. Within a few
years, with some exertion, Ocean Front Walk will be lined with charming air
conditioned hotels and condos converted to “boutique” hotels. Those
units facing the Front will have windows that open, so as to be able to throw
money to the buskers, hucksters, etc., that will line the O.F.W. Visitors will
enjoy the “ambiance” of the O.F.W., because they will be leaving
after a short visit, to go back to their homes that do not have a Loud Noise
Free Speech area. They will show videos of the man and his rubber snakes, the
people who keep assassinating John Lennon over and over every day for 8 hours a
day. Those hotel visitors will be able to open and close their windows at will
and still be comfortable in their air-conditioned units, free of the concert
stage amps used by the exhibitionists to extort money from
them.
Debit cards will be issued by the
Dept. of Entertainment division of Recreation and Parks. The cards will be
issued in varying denominations to be used for entertainment expenses ranging
from $1.00 on up—to throw at the
hucksters.
But best of all, the
residents, or most of them will have fled from the Front inland, east of
Lincoln, so that the walk streets can be converted to parking palaces for the
hotel patrons. These palaces will be disguised as quaint beach cottages. The end
result will be an Ocean Front Walk free of those annoying
residents.
The Artisty-Poos will be free to
bray bleat whine, sell incense, etc., without any interruption. They will have
become part of the establishment that they profess to
loathe.
But like “artists before
them, from Michelangelo to Warhol to Kinkaide, they go where the money
is.
As I was writing this I heard a noise on
the Front, no, not the Lennon-McCartney assassin , but some guy who was
lecturing the customers at the café by my apartment building—he was
yelling at some of the patrons. A bouncer came out and chased the man down the
Front.
The “musician” who
was singing applauded. A customer rebuked the exhibitionist for cheering as the
man was chased off. The exhibitionist yelled at the customer for “trying
to dominate my space. This is MY space!” he yelled through his microphone,
“This is my show! I get to perform here! You don’t like it,
leave!”
So much for love,
camaraderie and caring by the sensitive (only to their own needs) exhibitionists
on the Ocean Front Walk. Did it ever occur to the exhibitionist that if this
man’s two-minute tirade so disturbed him, what must it be like to listen
to his atonal renderings (and I mean rendering) of the Beatles songs over and
over again five hours a day five days a
week?
Someone takes over on the
weekends, and after the Beatle Killer and his Arnold Schwarzenegger imitations
(another reason to vote out Arnold!) someone who kills off Bob Dylan comes on to
commit more auditory rape until it gets
dark.
Perhaps the proposed Robert
Graham statue for the Venice Traffic Circle is a fitting definition of Venice
after all—a stainless steel cunt.
Posted: Tue - March 1, 2005 at 08:53 PM