Need help for trip to LA

[DonnaK]

Am heading back out to LA in 3 weeks and need info and addresses of where Dennis hung out and lived. Will be going to Chez Jay's for a toast to him for the upcoming re-release of POB and would also like to go by his Wavecrest place in Venice but don't know the address. I lent my "The Real Beach Boy" book to a fellow fan and haven't got it back yet, so am strapped for help. Does anyone remember his address near Will Rogers park? The Brothers Studio address? etc., etc.,etc.,?? I would greatly appreciate any help and if anyone out there lives in LA and is interested in meeting up at Jay's for a toast to Dennis, let me know. I'm planning on going there on June 7th for lunch. I don't bite!!!!! Thanks so much guys!!!
Donna

[Surfer Joe]

Off the top of my head, his house from the late sixties- where he had some notorious guests- was at 14400 Sunset Blvd., pretty near the ocean, on the south side of the street, across from Will Rogers Park.  Very easy to find. I'm sure you can find Marina Del Rey easily, if inclined.  Part of W. 119th Street should still be there, in Hawthorne, and the Foster's Freeze is nearby on Hawthorne Blvd. (Right?  It's been a while). And Hawthorne High, Go Cougars, is another easy one in that area...anyone know where the Professional School was where he and Carl finished up?

[KokoMoses]

and you MUST go visit the Beach Boys historical landmark thingy in Hawthorne

[smile-holland]

A couple of years ago I asked a similar question and got a lot of answers! Check it out if you want...

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,1346.0.html

[Emdeeh]

Don't forget to stop by the Beach Boys' star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It's located at the corner of Sunset and Vine, where the bank is, near the bench.

[Pretty Funky]

This 'Help for LA trip' topic comes up now and again. Any space on the home page admin for a 'Definitive Beach Boys Sites' link?

[pixletwin]

This 'Help for LA trip' topic comes up now and again. Any space on the home page admin for a 'Definitive Beach Boys Sites' link?

Thats a GREAT idea. I asked a similiar question about Beach Boys landmarks last year and got lots of help. A sticky thread about sites to see would be a huge +1 for this forum. 

[Mahalo]

I hear South Central is nice this time of year...

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

I hear South Central is nice this time of year...

It is actually.  Lots of great people there.

If there is a "definitive list of Beach Boys landmarks LA" article on the main page, I would like to contribute an essay about racism and the fear of visiting South central.

[Mahalo]

It is actually.  Lots of great people there.

That's nice.

If there is a "definitive list of Beach Boys landmarks LA" article on the main page, I would like to contribute an essay about racism and the fear of visiting South central.

What does racism have to do with fear of visiting South Central? Are you assuming that anyone who is afraid of visiting South Central is a racist? Please elaborate....

What Beach Boys landmarks are in South Central anyway? Honestly, I don't know.

[Pretty Funky]

What Beach Boys landmarks are in South Central anyway? Honestly, I don't know.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/31/DDGTMD07LF1.DTL


 Hawthorne is a charmless, flat, blue-collar town where workers from the plants in the South Central industrial belt could buy tiny two-bedroom stucco-front boxes. In 1959, the same year the film "Gidget" first exposed the Southern California beach culture to the outside world, the Mattel Toy Co. in Hawthorne started producing a new doll named Barbie, which outsold even the Mickey Mouse ears the company also made.

Brian Wilson was a senior that year at Hawthorne High School (home of the proud Cougars, whose fight song he cribbed for the middle-eight to his "Be True to Your School"), hanging out on weeknights in the parking lot behind the Fosters Freeze on Hawthorne Boulevard in his two-tone '57 Ford Fairlane 500. On weekends, the guys would pick up a six-pack and head for the double-bills at Studio Drive-In on Slauson.

It was a long way from Hollywood, a town where things were still possible, but it was close enough to Disneyland that the Wilsons' father took his three boys to the recently opened amusement park at least twice a year.

Few traces remain of songwriter Brian Wilson's Los Angeles. He wrote of a world he knew growing up during the '50s in unremarkable Hawthorne, where he created mythic Southern California in songs such as "Surfer Girl," "Fun Fun Fun," "Little Deuce Coupe," "The Warmth of the Sun" and "California Girls."

If you're going to go looking for Brian Wilson's Southern California, it's not a bad idea to hook up with Beach Boys expert Domenic Priore and have him give you the tour. But first, to supply some context, we met for breakfast at a Hollywood coffeehouse with Wilson's genial and erudite collaborator, Van Dyke Parks, who still has the slightest Southern accent after more than 40 years living in L.A. He is a small, compact man with a salt-and-pepper mustache, gracious manners and an impish grin. He likes to talk about the band and Brian Wilson in particular.

"His music had an animate quality," said Parks, the co-writer of Wilson's iconic "Smile." "It was vigorous, an athletic kind of music. It looks in all directions. It takes everything in. It's anecdotal -- lots of little events. It was a reflection of the real rapture of the feel-good set that grew up in the Eisenhower era."

The Wilson home on 119th Street no longer exists. It was torn down to make way for a freeway 20 years ago, but its site was marked on May 20 with a large brick monument and named an official California State Historical Landmark. A few blocks away, the Fosters Freeze still stands, the hamburger stand where Wilson saw a girl with her daddy's T-Bird. Sometimes Wilson would cruise several miles north to the Wich Stand at Slauson and Overhill, where the parking lot would hold a hundred cars from all over the South Bay, which is what locals call the area between South Central and the bottom half of Santa Monica Bay. He might have immortalized the destination drive-in in a 1964 recording, "The Wich Stand," but the track went unreleased.

With a decorative spire poking through the slanted roof, buttressed by Swiss cheese struts, the Wich Stand looked like Southern California itself -- open, airy, offbeat and futuristic. Today the building is painted an unlikely forest green and houses a health food restaurant, Simply Wholesome, that caters to the large African American community in the neighborhood. The spacious parking lot in the rear, once packed with hot rods and surf wagons, stands nearly empty. More than the neighborhood has changed in South Central Los Angeles. over the past 45 years. But signs of the bygone era, the California of young Brian Wilson, are sprinkled all over the South Bay.

Priore knows where to find them. Author of a book about Wilson's long- lost masterpiece, "Smile," as well as another book about the Sunset Strip in the '60s, Priore dresses like the pop scholar he is: Mod burgundy corduroy shirt and chocolate suede Cuban boots. As part of the weekend-long activities surrounding the recent landmark unveiling, which drew fans from all over the world, he led a bus tour of the Beach Boys' old neighborhood. A few days before, he did a test run, checking out some of the locations he'd never visited before, like the boyhood home of Beach Boys rhythm guitarist Al Jardine, a classmate of Brian Wilson's at nearby El Camino Community College who likes to take credit for suggesting Wilson start the group.

"I didn't know Al Jardine lived in an apartment building," Priore said, pulling up to a Hawthorne address of matching duplexes built in that unique Southern California '50s mode of frenzied modernism. Futurism was more than an architecture style in Los Angeles during the '50s -- it was a way of life.

Dennis Wilson used to go down to the Redondo Beach breakwater and watch the hotshots ride the big ones. He brought home the tales to his older brother Brian, who rarely set foot on a beach. But those Waimea-style titans don't break at Redondo anymore, not since a 1981 wave wiped out the breakwater and did $13 million worth of damage to the beachfront hotel. City fathers moved the breakwater farther out and knocked the historic South Bay surfing spot off the maps.

Much has changed since the Beach Boys lived in Hawthorne, but time stands still on Manhattan Beach, where Dennis Wilson and Mike Love used to fish from the pier. This white sand jewel sits in the middle of the Strand, the string of South Bay beaches that runs from El Segundo to Palos Verdes.

Surfers catch waves alongside the pier where Dennis Wilson would ride the breakers. Girls in bikinis lie basking in the sand. People still fish from the pier. Away from the hectic beach scenes farther north at Venice or Santa Monica, Manhattan Beach remains what Priore called "a neighborhood beach." At Manhattan and nearby Hermosa Beach, the first few lonely surf shops opened in the late '50s, as the Hawaiian sport was just starting to take hold on the mainland.

Priore points to a social convergence coming together over the Southern California beaches in those few innocent years -- "Gidget," Surfer magazine, Bruce Brown surfing documentary films, the emergence of surf guitar king Dick Dale and the Del-Tones at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Huntington Beach and subsequent surf music instrumental hit singles by South Bay combos such as the Frogmen ("Underwater") and the Belairs ("Mr. Moto"). Into this yawning vortex stepped Brian Wilson, his two younger brothers, their cousin Mike Love and Brian's El Camino classmate Jardine.

Over Labor Day weekend 1961, with the Wilson parents on a Mexican vacation, the group took over the 119th Street house, stocked it with rented equipment and worked up the Brian Wilson composition, "Surfin' " which he cobbled together from information supplied by his younger brother Dennis, the only surfer in the group, and cousin Love, who knew some of the lingo.

Wilson's father, an amateur songwriter, took their homemade Wollensak tape to a music publisher he knew, who arranged the have the boys record the song professionally and get the results released on a small label in early December. It was the label's promotion man who named the group the Beach Boys.

The leading Los Angeles Top 40 radio station, KFWB, already broadcasting daily surf reports and quite aware that something was going on with the region's youth out on the beaches, jumped on the record. A minute later, the Beach Boys were signed to Capitol Records -- home to Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, with its instant '50s landmark Hollywood headquarters designed to look like a stack of records, a red beacon on top blinking all night long in Morse code H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D, a long way from Hawthorne.

In a matter of months, the Studio Drive-In was showing nothing but insipid beach party films that were little more than cheap movie-length musicals based on imitation Brian Wilson music (he actually did write the songs for one of the Frankie Avalon-Annette Funicello clinkers, "Muscle Beach Party"). An entire school of pop music emerged in his wake -- Jan and Dean, Bruce and Terry, Ronny and the Daytonas, the Hondells and others.

He painted California as the land of youth, tanned surfers with fast cars and blond-haired, beach bunny girlfriends ("some honeys will be coming along"). He threw in local references, details that fixed his songs firmly in the Southern California coastline.

"That's part of his olio," said his collaborator Parks, "his real ability to osmote and to become a part of what he observes, to drink what he loves and let it kill him -- the comic and the tragic, the sacred and the profane."

The Wilsons all still lived at home in Hawthorne. Love dropped out of Los Angeles City College after his girlfriend got pregnant and her parents insisted they get married. Love's mother threw his clothes out of the upstairs window of the three-story Love family home in the upscale Baldwin Hills neighborhood. Shortly thereafter, his father experienced severe financial setbacks in his sheet metal business and the family moved to a smaller house directly under the path to the Los Angeles Airport runway. Love and his new wife were living in a tiny studio apartment and he was working at his father's business during the day and pumping gas at night for Standard Oil at the busy intersection of Washington and La Brea.

Given his natural talent -- his voice was once famously described in a Beach Boys "joke" album track as "Mickey Mouse with a cold" -- only a family member like Brian Wilson would have ever thought of Love as a candidate for lead vocalist of his rock 'n' roll group. His job at the gas station was probably the last position Love was truly qualified to hold.

The station, which still sits like a fort at the hectic crossroads, has been remodeled, expanded and rebuilt a number of times since he worked there. But Love would probably recognize it in a heartbeat.

[mikee]

the Rendezvous Ballroom in Huntington Beach

It was actually down the road in Newport Beach on the Balboa Penninsula  next to where the Balboa Island Ferry Terminal still is today.  Dick Dale, for a while, lived in a house at the end of the penninsula overlooking the harbor entrance and just a few feet from the Wedge, the world famous body surfing break. 

Some other locations to visit:

Fosters freeze 11969 Hawthorne Blvd Hawthorne

York elementary school Prarie ave and 118th st – all 3 Wilsons attended

Jewelry store - (former site in shopping center) Crenshaw and Imperial Highway – Brian worked here part time.  By the way across the street is the former site of Mel's sporting Goods which was machine gunned by Patty Hearst on May 16, 1974.  Mel's went out of business a long time ago but until recently you could still see the bullet holes in the facade and one that went through a street light post.  They razed the property just a year ago or so.  This incident led to the big shootout the next day (at 1466 East 54th Street) where most of the SLA was killed. 

On a more positive note the Inglewood Covenant Church is nearby ( I don't have the exact address).  All 3 of the Wilsons attended services there regularily as children.  I'm not sure how much they got out of it, but they did later record 'The Lord's Prayer'.   

The amazing Watt's Towers are not to far away and I believe are well worth visiting.  I suggest reading about them before visiting. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Towers         



    

[RickD]

Given his natural talent -- his voice was once famously described in a Beach Boys "joke" album track as "Mickey Mouse with a cold" -- only a family member like Brian Wilson would have ever thought of Love as a candidate for lead vocalist of his rock 'n' roll group. His job at the gas station was probably the last position Love was truly qualified to hold.

a bit harsh 

was a great bus trip, though - nice gas station!

[DonnaK]

Geez Louise guys!! Thanks for taking the time to help out!!! I only wanted a couple of addresses, but you guys are the best!!!

How do you get an "appointment" with Dominic or Van Dyke? What a thrill that must've been!

Last year I was out there and did the monument and Marina del Rey, but didn't get close to Dennis' slip--how do I get that close?

I think I'm only going to have one day to do this, as I'm bringing my 15 year old and his 2 best buddies, so I'm ditching them at Universal Studios on their own while I do the "haunt". Hopefully, the GPS in the car will be working fine that day!!!

I will be making a list and will take it from there. You guys are great--thanks again!!!

Donna   

[mikee]

The Pizza Show resturant, where Brian hung out, a few blocks from the Landmark is still open and basically unchanged from the 50's.  In other words it's cool and I think you can still buy by the slice.  It sadly doesn't seem to get a lot of mention in these things.
Pizza Show  13344 Hawthorne Blvd


The Wich Stand Slauson and Overhill  (4508 W Slauson Ave. Los Angeles)
This was the premier cruising destination for late 50's Hawthorne area teenagers.  It closed in 1987 but is now a healthfood resturant and store.  The structure retains it's character.   http://www.cougartown.com/wichstand-menu1.html

Brother Records (former location) 1454 5th street Santa Monica

     

[brianc]

South Central is a huge area, full of so many diverse neighborhoods. But for those who don't care about a little urban decay (of which tons of L.A. districts have, not just South Central), I would recommend the Crenshaw District, and especially, Leimert Park. For the best in Free-Jazz and Spiritual Jazz, can't beat the World Stage. Too bad the Blue Jay Social Club, Fifth Street Dick's and Jerry's Flying Fox have shut down. But there's also Maverick's Flat. That's where the Temptations debuted "Psychedelic Shack" and "Cloud Nine." Still a great Los Angeles soul hot-spot.

Sorry to get off topic a bit. But this neighborhood isn't too far from Hawthorne.

You can contact Domenic Priore from the Dumb Angel Gazette website at:

www.dumbangelmagazine.com

Under the "Bios" section. Click on his name and it gives you his email. As for Van Dyke, I think he recently moved to Pasadena. I used to live right around the corner from him in the Larchmont Village. Alas, I kinda doubt he's taking appointments.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

What does racism have to do with fear of visiting South Central? Are you assuming that anyone who is afraid of visiting South Central is a racist? Please elaborate....

It has quite a lot to do with it, but I'm certainly making no such assumptions.  It's just a topic of interest to me.

It does bother me that every time a thread about visiting LA comes up that somebody inevitably mentions how dangerous Hawthorne or Inglewood is.  It's usually from people that haven't spent a lot of time there.  And in my opinion, and "danger" in those areas comes from the reaction to the apartheid that can happen when people are afraid to visit the area.

That's not a dig at anybody in particular, like I said, negatively self-perpetuating anthropological systems are just an interesting topic to me.

[exposedbrain]

something i find interesting, since i haven't had the opportunity to visit the Los Angeles area, is to use Google street view. its pretty extraordinary actually and i have been able to get a good feel of what LA looks like and anytime i see an address of an interesting landmark i usually look it up.  BTW i have been looking at laurel way but the the addresses google gives you and the street numbers that are visible on houses don't correspond. does any one know if this house was at the end of laurel way or what it might look like?
heres a link to google street view of Laurel Way:
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=1448%20laurel%20way%20los%20angeles&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Brian's house on Laurel Way is the second one to the end on the right, if I remember correctly.  The street view thingy wasn't quite far enough north to see Brian's house.

By the way, Laurel Way leading up to Brian's house is an almost laughably steep slope.  You can get your car up to 40 or 50 MPH just coasting down, if not faster.

[the captain]

What does racism have to do with fear of visiting South Central? Are you assuming that anyone who is afraid of visiting South Central is a racist? Please elaborate....

It has quite a lot to do with it, but I'm certainly making no such assumptions.  It's just a topic of interest to me.

It does bother me that every time a thread about visiting LA comes up that somebody inevitably mentions how dangerous Hawthorne or Inglewood is.  It's usually from people that haven't spent a lot of time there.  And in my opinion, and "danger" in those areas comes from the reaction to the apartheid that can happen when people are afraid to visit the area.

That's not a dig at anybody in particular, like I said, negatively self-perpetuating anthropological systems are just an interesting topic to me.

Ditto--interesting (and sometimes amusing, if sadly so) to me, too. As someone who often hears from locals about how Prince grew up "in the 'hood," and myself living quite near his old high school (and thus in that 'hood) and having friends who live where his family members to this day live, I can somewhat relate. It's scary because it's not where you live or visit; it's scary because you're not friends or relatives or maybe the same social, ethnic or religious group of the people who live there. But a lot of times, "bad places" are not half so bad as they're made out to be, and the people who most loudly criticize seem never to have set foot there.

[Mahalo]

When was the last time you heard someone say, "I hear South Central Los Angeles is nice this time of year." I know it's dry, but it was meant as a joke. Honestly though, in the early 90's I heard more rap songs about gang-bangin' in South Central and Compton than I care to even remember. How can you blame somebody for thinking that the area is filled with violence? Dudes made small fortunes selling that image.




The only BB related places I would really like to see one in LA is Laurel Way and Bellagio. Mostly Laurel Way.

[the captain]

There's another Californian lie that was propagated, too. I don't think the images we get through music ought to be taken to be reality, either the good or the bad. There's both everywhere. By the way, my comment wasn't meant to knock you particularly. It was just a reaction to/agreement with H.

[Mahalo]

I gotcha... always enjoy reading yer posts Luther, you often have great insights and never short on telling it like it is.... I'm a huge fan of Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, which is a movie that pokes fun of the whole thing. I kind of follow that trail of humor towards life in general...

with that in mind I got to say that fear is big business and big reality too- there are neighborhoods where I live that I am not welcome in. That's reality. In this country I would no sooner be walking around the 'hood at 2 in the morning than be driving around the backwoods of Kentucky at 2 in the afternoon with New York license plates. That's just the way it is and I'm cool with that. Still, political correctness has run so amok that God forbid somebody say something that could even remotely be construed as rascist then BLAMO- they get branded a rascist. This is not in reference to aeijtzsche's post, it's just something that bother's me immensely. Especially when there are some severe double standards in our country.


I do hear that Pyongang is just delightful in early spring...

[roll plymouth rock]

I would chill out man...I stayed in Inglewood last year when I went to see the David Marks book launch show and it was fine, at all hours of the day. I even walked around and took the bus in the neighborhood and I didn't feel that it was nearly as dangerous as its made out to be. And I am Canadian! Ha, ha... What does Pyongang have in common with Inglewood and Hawthorne, btw?

And since this is a post about L.A., my favorite site was the Santa Monica pier - home of Palisades Park and the site of many song lyrics and the young Beach Boys crew growing up I believe...

[mikee]

my favorite site was the Santa Monica pier - home of Palisades Park and the site of many song lyrics and the young Beach Boys crew growing up I believe...

Wrong coast.  Palisades Park Amusement Park was located in New Jersey; near Englewood Cliffs I believe.  However, Pacific Ocean Park was just south of there at the end of Navy Street in Venice.  I understand that the Wilson's and likely Mike, Al, and David went to POP so there is likely generic influence.
POP, which I visited, was cool. Most of it was over the ocean on a large pier.  They had a great roller coaster.  I actually rode that thing 47 times in one day.  You can see the closed-down park in the last t.v. episode of 'The Fugitive'.  It is where David Jansson finally catches up with the "One-armed Man".  Also at the end of Navy Street in the mid to late 60's was the Cheetah nightclub.   The Doors and many other famous bands played there.