Man Hauled Out of Sewer

April 12, 1947
Los Angeles

Citizens alerted police and fire officials today to a person crawling around in the sewer beneath Bunker Hill Ave. and Sunset Blvd. After fighting rush hour traffic to reach the scene, Fireman Gordon Davis heard breathing and lowered himself through the manhole. Within was a half-naked and muddy James W. Holland, 32, of Newport, Tenn. Davis suggested Holland resurface, where he told Officers J.P. Brennan and C.G. Cunning that he had been “looking for my baby.” Holland was taken to jail for a shower and additional questioning.

Bunker Hill, Down a Manhole

Let’s talk about Bunker Hill for a moment. Not the Bunker Hill of Queen Annes from the Boom Eighties, or of skyscrapers from the other goddamned Boom Eighties. And not the Bunker Hill you’d expect us to go on about, of Fante and Chandler, of Criss Cross and The Exiles and of our addled, baby-misplacing pal James. I want to talk about the Bunker Hill of right now.

The manhole in question:


What else do you see? Nothing. Except Geoff Palmer’s Orsini Apartments in the distance. Between that infant-concealing manhole cover and the Orsini, here at the northern end of Bunker Hill, just east of its Fort Moore area, once stood the 1887 Geise Residence. Couple of years ago, a man named Geoff Palmer applied for a demo permit to raze the LAST remaining Victorian structure on Bunker Hill. He didn’t get it. Nevertheless, the City had decided to relocate the house. Palmer told his foreman to knock it down anyway. Palmer got a slap on the wrist. The house is still gone, though.


Palmer also knocked down these adjacent structures a few weeks ago:


–which is too bad, as they were a pair of fine early commercial structures, one a Mission style with nice tile work, the other having cool ghost signs that read “Lumber” and “Mouldings” and, in the middle, likely indicating its original purpose, “Auto Repairing.” These, and the Geise Residence, were flattened for the forthcoming Orsini Two. And the site for Orsini Three? Across the street to the north:



And thus will serve to fuel the total obliteration of Bunker Hill from our collective memory, in conjunction with the loftifization of the Giant Penny, the Pan-American, Victor Clothing… some will profit, but will it be us? Or our Palmers?

No wonder Angel’s Flight lashes out at man — as does any animal who can no longer recognize its habitat.


Just ‘Duck Soup’ For Vegetarian To Land In City Jail

11 April 1947
Lincoln Heights

A wayward vegetarian today ensured himself a more traditional diet after Radio Officers B. Gonzales and C.A. Boughton responded to the sound of gunfire at Lincoln Park. There they discovered Trinidad C. Quroz, 29, of 338 Clarence St. and his trusty .22 rifle, both some way out into the lake. Called to shore, Quroz reported that he had become tired of his vegetarian diet and, craving duck, had shot the specimen that floated, yonder. Taken into custody on suspicion of illegally discharging a firearm, Quroz pled guily before Municipal Judge Louis W. Kaufman and was sentenced to a 20-day culinary tour of the City Jail.

In the Soup

Death in a dark city. Murders black and bleak. We wrestle with ourselves as Jacob wrestled with the Angel-and our inner child is Cain, striking down every good brother within and without. God plays favorites. Then abandons us to our own.

‘Course, sometimes LA is just about a vegetable-crazy guy named Trinidad what took his rifle wading into the brack of Lincoln Park lake. Was his offering to be accepted as Abel’s? Or was he just itching to glaze the fowl bastard in honey and lavender, to feel the essence of something once-sentient poured down his throat in the form of pan juices?

We shall not know. Those in the throes of Vegetable Frenzy are beyond comprehension.


Woman Found Stabbed To Death In Home

April 10, 1947
East Los Angeles

Shouting to a neighbor “Look after the kids!,” 32-year-old scrap yard worker Efren Saenz bolted from the family home at 4032 Princeton St. yesterday, leaving wife Amelia, 28, dead in a bedroom closet with several knife wounds in her left breast. The couple’s daughters Irma, 7, and Maria Teresa, 3, were playing in the yard at the time of the murder.

East L.A. substation Sheriff’s Deputies Tommy R. Johnson and Robert E. McHaney told reporters that Saenz, who they were seeking, was also arrested in late March on an assault with a deadly weapon charge for throwing a table radio at Mrs. Saenz.

4032 Princeton To-Day

From up and down the block I could hear running feet and the odd door slam, doors on houses much like this one, unassuming structures in that graveyard-laden grey area between Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles.

While footfall fell and doors slammed, what I didn’t hear were children in yards, yards now universally browned-out or paved over. Also didn’t hear cries of “Look after the kids!,” thank God.

Where was Saenz running? Perhaps a block over to Calvary Cemetery to find solace in meditation? Down Indiana St. to hide in his secret recesses of the scrap yards of Vernon? Or up Whittier Boulevard and into LA, to find whatever he felt was denied him in life?

Sinatra Arrested And Freed On Bail In Row With Writer

April 9, 1947
Los Angeles

Deputy Sheriffs today broke up a rehearsal in a Vine Street radio studio in order to charge bobby-soxer dreamboat Frank Sinatra with a misdemeanor battery charge, incurred Tuesday night outside Sunset Strip hotspot Ciro’s. New York Daily Mirror columnist Lee Mortimer claims someone sucker-punched him, and Sinatra then beat the 42-year-old writer while goons held him down. This effectively broke up Mortimer’s working date with Miss Kay Kino, Chinese songbird whom Mortimer was grooming for a role in a show he’d written for New York’s China Doll Cafe.

Sinatra initially admitted involvement in the fracas, noting “For two years he has been needling me. He called me a dago ——–. I saw red. He gave me a look. I can’t describe it. It was one of those ‘Who do you amount to?’ looks. I followed him outside. I hit him. I’m all mixed up.” Later, through his attorney, Albert Pearlson, the story became one of an unprovoked name calling and physical attack from Mortimer–who has written searing columns on the singer’s relationship with gangster Lucky Luciano–on the sheepish Sinatra.

Judge Bert P. Woodward set bail at $500 and trial for May 28. Sinatra pled not guilty, and hopped a flight to NY to receive the Thomas Jefferson Award from the Council Against Intollerance in America.

Ciro’s To-Day


Ah, Ciro’s, the club that made Sammy, the club that made Martin & Lewis. The place to catch Cugat. To buy drinks for the Holmbly Hills Rat Pack. To rub elbows with Rothstein and Luciano. To sock a writer in the nose. All worthwhile pursuits.

But the Sunset Strip couldn’t compete with the Vegas Strip by the late 50s, and Ciro’s — along with the Trocadero, the Mocambo, et al — disappeared, leaving the horror that is today’s Strip in its wake.

The Modern facade has been destroyed by the Comedy Store. I suppose they think that’s funny.


Crowd Perils Attack Prisoner

April 8, 1947
Los Angeles

Robert Ahlberg, 21, late of Denver, was happy to see police officers M. C. Jacobsen and L.O. Sheets early today, even as they handcuffed him.

Alerted by his victim’s cries, two students in a nearby hotel saw Ahlberg attacking a 46-year-old woman in City Library Park (Fifth and Hope Streets) and dragging her 75 feet into the bushes. A crowd several dozen stong gathered at the scene, but did not rescue the woman, telling arriving officers they were afraid her attacker might have a gun.

Officers Jacobsen and Sheets dragged Ahlberg from the bushes, divesting him of a knife with which he had threatened his victim. At this point, the crowd became brave, and cried out “Let us have him!”

Ahlberg was booked into Central Jail, where he gave his local address as 621 1/2 W. Sixth Street, just a short stroll from the assault scene.

Library Park and the Roughly Analogous

Mr. Ahlberg dragged our vic into the park on the lower left of this image. Middle-aged women of 1947 were, then as now, ripe for sacking and rape and other unglorious ends. Once and a while, angry mobs say enough is enough and no means no, usw. So was screamed for this park and its library.

The Edison Building (there, over the shoulder of the Library, Allison & Allison) has withstood its attackers since 1931 (she maintains the finest lobby murals in town). The Fruit Exchange seen across from Library Park (Walker & Eisen, 1935) wasn’t hardy enough to prevent calamity. (And is, at present, site of the Tallest Building West of the Mississippi.)

Library Park fell to the pavers:



and then, that Grande Dame, the Library herself, was set for sacking and rape and, worse yet, outright murder. The developers and city colluded to whack her big-time. They’d sold her air rights for some late-80s AC Martin/SOM knock-offs when they set fire to her. Twice.

But the onlookers screamed and yelled and nearly took apart the evil-doers: so was borne the Los Angeles Conservancy. The Library thus stands as a potent metaphor–yes, They might have a gun. Whether or not it’s too late, whether you have the guts to yell “Let us have ’em!” during or after an attack, for God’s sake, yell, yell, and don’t fucking stop.