It happened in the tiny parking lot behind the Famous Amos cookie store that once resided next to Hollywood High. Returning to our car after having illegally purchased liquor at the store across from the cookie vendor (it was evening and Amos had closed up shop for the night), we were accosted by three young women clad in what can only be called “Whore Couture.” And when we say young, we mean young. So young, in fact, that almost dropped our Wild Turkey, Heinekens, and Marlboro 100s when the following exchange ensued.

Girl #1: Hey.
Us: Uh…
Girl #2: You guys want to party?
Us: Uh…um…
Girl #1: Fifty for all three of us. And believe me, we’re worth it.
Us: Uh…um…gee…if you don’t mind us asking…how old are you?
Girl #3: Old enough to know how, too young to get pregnant.

And, just like Shaggy and Scooby Doo when they encounter a swamp ghost or similar evil apparition, we actually made that ridiculous “whapada-whapada-whapada” sound effect as we ran in place for a few moments, then dived into the car leaving cartoon puffs of smoke behind us as we peeled out of the parking lot, almost running over the middle-school madams. We were 18 at the time, just six or seven years older than the girls who propositioned us. It’s a gap in age that means little when one is past, say, 25, but at 18, no matter how incredibly stupid and horny we were, we knew we were staring straight into the face of diabolic temptation incarnate–and the very real possibility of incarceration and all it entails for young, ripe white boys. To this day, it is not uncommon to be jerked out of a sound sleep, dripping cold sweat, that taunting line still echoing like a dying man’s last words: “Old enough to know how, too young to get pregnant.” Jesus H. Christ.

Welcome to Hollywood, 1979. What was once one of the nation’s most popular tourist areas–on par with Times Square–had fallen onto very hard times. This was four years before Herpes made the covers of Time and Newsweek, a horrible “epidemic” that would soon seem like the minor annoyance that it is once someone got the bright idea to fuck a monkey and bring the scourge of AIDS upon us.

Yet even the threat of a lethal disease transmitted via sex and/or needles didn’t slow the city’s pleasure pigs. Discarded rigs were common sights along the sidewalks of Hollywood, and prostitution kept rolling along as if the world wasn’t coming to an end, which just goes to prove you can’t keep a good man dressed in women’s clothing down.
El Lay has never been a stranger to the world’s oldest profession, but its relationship with illicit sex commerce has certainly had its ups and downs and ins and outs. Though our Famous Amos encounter was, we believe, somewhat out of the ordinary, anyone who passed through hollywood in the 70s and early 80s should well recall the human meat markets that operated 24/7 along the sidewalks and back alleys of Sunset (ladies) and Santa Monica (boys) boulevards, businesses that truly blossomed on the weekends to the extent that traffic often came to a standstill on both thoroughfares.

But, just as Rudy Giuliani sanitized Times Square, making it safe for Nebraskan tourists by forever ridding it of its exquisitely seedy persona, L.A. eventually chased the whores, trannies, twinks, and other assorted genital renters from Hollywood (for the most part) so those same Nebraskan tourists could gawk at the Walk of Fame in peace. Well, semi-peace. Instead of having to share the same sidewalk with high-heeled, tube-topped hookers who genrally left families alone, they are now harassed constantly by the piss-poor knock-offs of Spiderman and Jack Sparrow and Marilyn Monroe who now vie for space–and spare change–along the boulevard of broken dreams. It’s not just cartoon characters and Hollywood icons who are being impersonated, however; Hollywood boulevard is also rife with what appear to be method actors who eschew blockbuster caricatures and instead choose to portray with uncanny realism the the filthy, malodorous, booze-sodden panhandlers who also once called this place home. Some have apparently gone so far as to knock out their own teeth, sleep in dumpsters, and shit their pants as they babble incoherently to no one in particular. Stanislavski would be undoubtedly be proud.

But, according the L.A. Times, prostitution is back, and in a big way. Only this time it has raised its ugly head from the spittle moist lap of…Eagle Rock?

Yes, Eagle Rock, L.A.’s crown jewel, home to…home to…to…a rock that kind of looks like an eagle, is now plagued by that most insidious form of commerce, the massage parlor. Some have abandoned the “parlor” bit and call themselves clinics, therapy centers, spas, and the like, but all offer that elusive treatment that “legit” massage professionals won’t even,uh, touch. Yes, we’re referring to the Holy Grail known as The Happy Ending.

Just dope dispensaries once flourished in Eagle Rock, so too have jerk-oof joints found a new home–and for the exact same reason: L.A. dropped the ball(s) when it failed to correctly identify the impact of a new state law. By letting it languish, they gave erotic entrepreneurs the real estate reach-around to spread like a case of crabs up and down the streets of this peaceful, God-fearing hamlet.

Hollywood, Koreatown and the San Fernando Valley also found themselves waking up one morning to a complete stranger in a bad, lice-infested wig, but Eagle Rock is the community that has taken it in the shorts the hardest.

Google “erotic massage establishments in Eagle Rock” and you’ll come up with more than 30 (including adjacent Glassel Park), with 15 alone on a two-mile stretch of Eagle Rock Boulevard. That’s almost eight happy endings per mile, though your mileage may vary.

“So,” you ask yourself as you look for your wallet and keys or your spouse’s credit card statements depending on your gender, “Why Eagle Rock? Blame it on a state law passed in 2009 that allowed message therapists to attain voluntary certification. The idea was to make it easier for “real” massage therapists to work anywhere in the state rather than be tied down to a specific region.

The law freed legit therapists with state certification from local scrutiny that could often be unduly strict. Los Angeles city code, for example, classified all parlors as “adult entertainment,” but under the new law, licensed therapists would no longer have to apply for police permits, which require fingerprinting, background checks, cavity searches, and, on some occasions, senseless beatings.

Cities like Culver City, West Hollywood and Glendale were quick on the draw when it came to seeing the forest for the bushes, and immediately implemented policies requiring massage parlor applicants to either show their state certification or touch their nose with their index finnger and then walk a straight line toe-to-toe while counting backwards from 100 while not fellating Charlie Sheen.

In the infinite “we-know-better” wisdom that characterizes Los Angeles bureaucracy, the city merely asked applicants to state that they were certified, but never demanded solid proof. But Los Angeles failed to do so, instead asking applicants only to state if they were certified, not to show proof. This is nothing new in Los Angeles. Anyone ever pulled over by a cop for a minor infraction can attest to their kind, forgiving attitude, their incredible capacity to listen to the driver and empathize with his/her problems, and ultimately let them go with a fierce baton beating rather than a citation. As one officer who works for the the Los Angeles Police Commission’s permit processing section and wished to remain anonymous out it this way: “What goes down easier for the driver? A handful of broken teeth and a pint of blood, or the spectre of higher insurance rates? We think it’s the blood and teeth…and maybe a broken jaw or fractured cranium, depending on skin color.” A few officer in the department who not only asked us to withhold his name but also deny that he exists, agreed with his co-worker. “Go ahead and ask anyone: the LAPD bends you over backwards trying to be fair and balanced. We’re like the Fox News News of police departments.

As a result, it became an easy place for erotic massage parlors to set up shop.

While some, like Amos Netanel, who heads the non-profit California Massage Therapy Council, have already urged L.A. to rewrite its own code in order to clear up the matter as soon as possible, local authorities are uncomfortable with the word “urge” as they are with expedited deadlines. “We won’t be bullied by treehuggers,” said another official who declined to come out from under his desk. He added that “true bureacracy does not turn on a dime.” It is “more like an ocean liner that takes a long time to turn around. Caution is the watchword keyword, just as it was on ther Titanic. When you think about it, they came this close to missing that iceberg,” he said, sticking up his hand from below the desk and indicating an approximater distance of three imches between his forefinger and thumb. “That’s awfully close.”

Eagle Rock resident are at the of their ropes. One resident, who did not wish to be identified but welcomed fan mail, lives across from one of the massage parlors.” If you sit on this patio for an entire day with a pair of binoculars in your lap, you will see more than three dozen men go in and out of there. None are there longer than 20 minutes, if you listen closely, you can hear the most ungodly sounds, like pigs rooting for truffles while women moan and scream repeatedly for God and Jesus and…other stuff.” Holding up the binoculars, he added, “And you would not believe what I have seen though these,” he said excitedly. “I would be more specific if I could tell the difference between a llama and an alpaca but trust me when I say it is disgusting, he lamented, adjusting the large magazine conspicuously covering his lap.

“Why don’t they just go back to where they came from so I don’t have to sit out here 24 hours a day?” he asked, almost in tears. He blew his nose and wiped his eyes with a tissue from one of the many boxes he keeps at his side, then tossed it on the porch with the scores of other used Kleenex wads.

One reason the parlors don’t “just go back to where they came from” may be the strictness of nearby cities.

According to the L.A. Times, Pasadena Police Cmdr. John Perez said it had been at least a year and a half since his city had to bust an illicit massage parlor.

Not only does Pasadena require massage therapists to show city officials their certification, it frequently does spot checks to make sure the parlors are in compliance. “We have a proactive approach to it,” Perez said.

It is also important to note that the average age in Pasadena is 73, and that the population demographic of mostly white conservatives does not lend itself to patronizing such establishments. “They prefer glory holes in public restrooms, like airport stalls,” said one former politician who refused to give us his name.

The Los Angeles Police Department says it also does spot checks. On Tuesday, a sting by vice officers on massage parlors in the Eagle Rock area netted six arrests for people who had spots on either their clothing or home decor. “It’s a sure sign they’re hookers,” said one officer who could not remember his name. Those arrested were not state licensed and were operating without city permits. They were taken immediately to Old Navy and Ikea, where they purchased non-spotted items.

In previous raids, police have discovered that some of the women working in the parlors are illegal immigrants working to pay off debts, according to Lt. Andre Dawson of the LAPD’s detective support and vice division. “One had really screwed up her Capital One account,” said Sergeant Richard Gozinya.

But some enforcement has dropped off.

“The regulation takes a lot of resources, a lot of bodies,” said an L.A. assistant district attorney who identified himself only as “Smokey the Bear.” “And I am talking a lot of naked bodies, sweating, intertwined, consumed with lust,” he added, placing a large magazine over his lap.

Solutions to the problem range from more stringent enforcment of certificate checks to changing the zoning laws to squeeze the pleasure palaces out town.

Old Hobo Joe, a homeless man who lives in an alley behind one of the sex establishments has his own idea of how to solve the dilemma.

“Just change the name to Eagle Cock and be done with it,” he said with a grin. “Damn if it didn’t work for Vegas,” he added, lowering his trousers and defecating as he waved to passing motorists.

In the wake of Japan’s nuclear tsunami, it has become vogue once more to fret about the ominous implications of nuclear energy. Indeed, had the tumbler that shifted the earth just off Honshu, Japan on March 11th been merely a mere rather than chart-topping 9.0 earthquake that washed away entire towns and changed the country’s coastline forever, the 32nd anniversary of The Three Mile Island disaster near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania would have gone as unnoticed as the 31st.  Instead, March 28th was a special  day for the press this year. From NPR to Fox, the media was positively frothy about the near-meltdown that occurred at the power plant in 1979. Though no one was killed in the accident, and the second unit of the plant still operates to this day, the mishap transpired a mere week after the opening of the blockbuster film The China Syndrome, and was thus immediately conflated with the fictional version in which Jane Fonda uncovers a massive cover-up and Jack Lemmon saves the world. To make matters worse, President Jimmy Carter decided to pay a personal visit the site, hoping to expose himself to enough radiation to enable him to beat the atomic mutant who was conspiring to seize the presidency from his grasp. His effort proved to be too little too late, and Ronald Reagan–abetted by clandestine aid from Megator, Mothra, and Baby Godzilla–ran away with the election that changed America forever, ensconced the Lunatic Right Wing Fringe, and eventually gave birth to Sean Hannity. Thus, it came as no surprise when Monday, March 28th dawned to a seemingly endless parade of scientific experts and socio-political pundits who crawled out of the woodwork on TV, radio, and the interweb, to offer their collective two cents on what they all called “The worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history.”

Unfortunately, they were all wrong.

As any savvy reader of L.A. Bizarro will tell you, the boasting rights to America’s worst nuclear disaster belong to the Top Secret enclave tucked into the rocky creases that separate the northwest corner of L.A. county from southernmost Ventura county. That’s where the Santa Susana Field Laboratory hummed and glowed from its perch overlooking the entire San Fernando Valley, spewing tons of radioactive toxins into the air, water, and earth  for more than five decades.

“What?!” you cry. “Surely the government and the fourth estate would have made us all aware of such a catastrophe!” Indeed. If that’s what ran through your mind, please email us immediately. We have some prime Florida swampland we’d like to sell you.

The reason you probably never heard about the government’s secret testing ground has to do with the fact that it was, uh, secret. The almost three-thousand-acre facility was built in the mid-forties to research nuclear reactors and rocket engines; the remote location was chosen because the work being done there was so dangerous. Unfortunately, bureaucrats at the Department of Energy forgot to plan for the expansion of that little burg just two dozen miles to the south called Los Angeles. Troops returning from World War II took advantage of the low-priced housing provided by the GI Bill, and L.A. overflowed into “America’s Suburb,” the San Fernando Valley (much of which came to be owned by Bob Hope).  Thousands of acres of citrus groves were razed to make way for the explosion of affordable tract homes. Though the site technically resides in the Simi Hills along the Ventura County border, it overlooks one of the most densely populated suburbs in the U.S., the closest being West Hills, Chatsworth, Canoga Park, Northridge and Woodland Hills to the east and south, and the cities of Simi Valley, Moorpark, and Thousand Oaks to the west and north. All have been tainted in one way or another by Santa Susana’s voluminous history of toxic waste disposal and nuclear mishaps.

L.A. is surely the World Capital of The Stars, but astro-geeks will be thrilled to know that the SSFL actually helped to take the U.S. to the stars. Wernher Von Braun’s early V-2 rockets were tested here, as were the rocket engines that took the Apollo program to the moon. Laser testing for Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile defense was carried out on the grounds, along with a myriad of highly classified, unclassified, and plain ol’ “never-happened-here” Black Ops that will forever remain unknown. What we do know is that the nation’s first commercial nuclear facility (the Sodium Reactor Experiment, or SRE) came online here in 1957, and for a short time, the small, uncontained reactor provided power to more than 1100 homes in nearby Moorpark. So much for the argument offered by some that Three Mile Island was a commercial facility and Santa Susana a government proving ground–as if the distinction truly matters. What matters is that  on July 13, 1959, the Santa Susana reactor suffered a partial meltdown—the first nuclear meltdown in history, another medal on its chest—releasing what one study estimates to be well over four hundred times the radiation released by the Three Mile Island mishap, which was also a partial core meltdown. Another independent advisory panel estimates that the meltdown led to somewhere around 260 cases of cancer within a sixty-square-mile radius of the reactor. Imagine getting an X-ray that lasted thirty years. Hello, San Fernando Valley and Simi Valley!

You’d think that you would have heard something the worst nuclear meltdown in our nation’s history (and by most estimations, the third worst in the entire world) and that it would have led to the closure of the site, but SSFL soldiered on, thanks in part to the cloak of secrecy surrounding the site and the meltdown. Over the years, approximately ten nuclear reactors were built on the Rocketdyne-operated site (parent company Rockwell International also had secret nuclear reactors at its facilities on Canoga Avenue and DeSoto Avenue, smack dab in the middle of commercial and residential areas) and at least half of those reactors failed and/or leaked radioactive contaminants into the atmosphere. The site also contained plutonium and uranium carbide fuel fabrication facilities, the nation’s largest “Hot Lab” for decladding and examining irradiated nuclear fuel that was shipped to SSFL from Department of Energy facilities across the nation, and, most disturbingly, open burn pits used to incinerate radioactively and chemically-contaminated whatnot. An open burn pit is exactly what it sounds like: an enormous, uncovered hole in the ground into which radioactive material was set ablaze. Okay kids, what happens when you set something on fire? That’s right, it makes smoke! And what happens when the wind blows the smoke up grandpa’s nose? And you thought he had smoked just one Tiparillo too many.

The Hot Lab also lived up to its name, suffering a number of fires involving radioactive materials, often resulting in massive contamination. The quaintly-named sodium burn pit was another open air pit for cleaning sodium-contaminated products, but it also turned out to be a cheap and easy way to dispose of highly toxic materials as well.

Angelenos are well familiar with the blustery Santa Ana winds that sweep down wide across the deserts and across the Los Angeles Basin in fall and winter, pushing dust and smoke far out into the Pacific Ocean. These yearly meteorological occurrences may very well explain the gigantic, oddly glowing halibut that devour scores of surfers, swimmers, and fishermen each year. Equally cruel winds are notorious along the craggy mountains and passes surrounding the labs. Drivers familiar with the stretch of the 118 freeway that connects L.A. and Simi Valley can attest to the strength of these buffeting zephyrs that can arise from nowhere, and the startling experience of having one’s car casually slapped into the next lane as if propelled by the  invisible hand of God(zilla). In fact, Simi Valley’s name is said to originate from the Chumash Indian word Shimiyi, which refers to the stringy clouds–borne from fierce air currents–that typify the region. (Like all American Indians, the Chumash no longer roam their native land thanks to friendly relocation efforts aided by the U.S. Calvary, ornery land barons, and cowpokes hopped-up on sarsaparilla. Today, what remains of the Chumash tribe enjoys the sweet taste of revenge by milking elderly retirees of their Social Security checks at one of their many fine gambling establishments.)

Three Mile Island was an isolated incident that released a significant amount of radiation into the atmosphere, yet a vast majority of researchers agree that it was not enough to pose a serious health risk to anyone. The only thing Three Mile Island killed (other than some expendable wildlife and shrubbery) was the building of any more nuclear power plants in the U.S.  That’s what happens when the pesky press goes poking their noses into things. SSFL did not suffer from such media exposure, nor did Fox News exist to give it a positive spin. Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, and even Wilford Brimley were oblivious to its existence. So, for somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty years, Santa Susana was free to, as Dennis Hopper might say, “Do its own thing, maaaaan.” The wind, depending on which way it blew, would invariably carry countless radioactive and chemically-contaminated particles, invisible to the naked eye, through the half-opened windows of many a tract home and into the lungs of dozing Baby Boomers and The Great Generation that spawned them.  The neighboring American Jewish University Brandeis-Bardin Campus in Simi still gets the worst of it (wouldn’t you know it?), as runoff from the 1959 meltdown still flows directly into their property whenever it rains. When visiting the campus it is helpful to know phrases like “Ikh hob zeks toes” (“I have six toes”) and “Dayn yarmulke iz shayn” (Your yarmulke is glowing”).

Without a doubt, burning toxic waste is cheap, easy, and most of all, fun–but it can also be deadly for those who stoke the poisonous pits. Perhaps that explains why, for a short time, the lab adopted the disposal method of packing steel barrels to capacity with highly toxic waste and then firing at them with a rifle. The barrels would then explode, dispersing their contents into the air. For some unexplained reason, this safe and sane  practice of waste removal was abruptly halted shortly after its implementation, and the open pits were set ablaze once again. To provide some idea of the risk involved in standing around a crater of smoldering nuke trash, twenty two of the twenty seven men who worked on one sodium pit crew alone died of various cancers (a 23rd worker, ironically, survived working on the sodium pit only to be swallowed whole by a giant radioactive halibut while scuba diving off the Channel Islands in 1981). In 1994, two SSFL scientists were killed when the illegal trash they were incinerating blew up. Their deaths led to a grand jury investigation and an FBI raid on SSFL, which is how most of this info came to see the light of day. But it’s only the tip of the proverbial glowing, toxic iceberg.

There’s no telling just how much poison has leached into the soil and groundwater of the cities that surround SSFL, but the state has estimated that almost two million gallons of toxic trichloroethylene were dumped on the grounds and that half a million gallons also of trichloroethylene have saturated the bedrock, soil, and ultimately the water table beneath the lab. We tend to gloss over big numbers, so slowly say this out loud to yourself: Two and a half million gallons. And that’s just the count for only two chemicals that we know about.   Buy a home remotely close to the site, and your escrow and purchase agreement will contain an waiver stating that you may very well be living on poisoned property. Having resided very close to the facility ourselves, we think that’s a small price to pay to be privy to the earth-shaking, awe-inspiring  experience of feeling a Saturn rocket prototype being tested just a few miles from your front door. One would swear the damn thing was on your driveway it was so loud, a fact made even more impressive by the fact that, while tests were conducted in open air, most of the enormous rockets were fired and run (sometimes for hours) in one of the many concrete bunkers burrowed deep beneath the surface of the labs.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, that vanguard of justice, reviewed the site in 2003 and gave it two big thumbs up, saying that there was no risk of exposure to contaminants in the area, and though three other studies failed to find any evidence of increased cancer rates in the area, Boeing (which purchased the site from Rockwell/Teledyne/Dr. Evil, still agreed to pay $30 million to settle a single lawsuit alleging that pollutants from the site caused cancer in many nearby residents. In an age when tobacco companies fight to the bitter end, lawsuits about the obvious ill effects of smoking to the bitter end, a behemoth like Boeing rolled over like an old hound, despite reports in their favor. Is there something they know that we don’t?, we ask rhetorically.

The DOE has been anxious to turn the prime-view property over to residential developers who are just, uh, dying to build there. We can only imagine some of the creative names that marketing gurus will devise for the tony gated communities that will inevitably populate the radioactive hilltop: Keloid Crossroads . . . Glowing Oaks . . . Plutonium Acres . . . Nuclear Renaissance…Uranium Villas. . . Tumors:Lifestyle Living for the Soon-to-Be Terminally Ill . . . Mutant Manors…Metastasize: Making Your Early Retirement Even Earlier and of course, Estates of the Living Dead (Sorry, Phases One and Two Already Sold Out!)

And just think of the creative marketing campaigns that will line the signs leading up to the communities:

A nuclear neighborhood for your nuclear family!

Waterfalls and Fallout. What a Beautiful Combination.

Where the glow of sunset is surpassed only by the glow of your front yard.

At last, a community that radiates the status you deserve.

Is it ironic that Santa Susana was built to develop weapons to stop the Soviet Union from bombarding Americans with radiation, and yet it was the facility itself that poisoned and killed nearby residents, never once warning them that they were in mortal danger, that their water and air were deadly, and that their children would grow up to become into flesh-eating mutant teens with loose morals and even looser pants? 

Yes, and The Gipper probably knew it (at least until he entered the “Drool Cup Days” that would follow him to his grave). But like so many canny conservative politicians of his era as well as today, Ronald Reagan built his political career by exploiting the Red Scare, seeing commies hiding in every coat closet, under every bed, and worst of all, hiding on soundstages and movie lots. Reagan was what Michael Moore refers to as “our first spokes-president.” He was ultimately an entertainer with political convictions that could shaped and shifted just as easily as the lines in any script. Dollars to donuts, when the former Death Valley Days host made his dramatic demand,  “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” he knew the partition’s demise was already a done deal; he was just reading his lines in an agitprop farce that had run its course. Just as Nancy Reagan urged Americans to “Just Say No” to drugs while Ollie North and the Iran-Contra gang were creating a bull market for cocaine in the U.S. (especially its ghettos) to fund a secret and illegal war, Mr. Reagan and those before him apparently found nothing wrong in fomenting fear over an exaggerated Soviet nuke threat (the USSR, as it turned out, was a nearly toothless bear) while knowingly exposing U.S. citizens to radiation through scores of open air bomb tests and secret facilities like Santa Susana which operated with little oversight and even less accountability. With a government like that looking after us, who really needed the commies?

America. Land of the free, home of the facade.

As we celebrate this special week that marks the 32nd anniversary of what even the most educated commentators still wrongly refer to as “the worst nuclear disaster on U.S. soil,” please feel free to pass the word that in 1959, twenty years before Three Mile Island was ushered as more myth than fact into the American lexicon , it was the humble yet mighty uncontained reactor at Santa Susana that blessed the United States its first and deadliest nuclear mishap. Though the reactor that went awry at Three Mile Island was shut down, its twin is still humming away as you read this. At Santa Susana, the gates are now chained and padlocked, the buildings  mostly abandoned or razed, and the cracked concrete yields to weeds.  The property is still owned by Boeing, as one can plainly see from the logo on a water tower just outside the main gate, and though the site seems abandoned, there are sometimes signs of human life behind the gates.

On October 15, 2007,  Boeing and California officials announced that almost 2,400 acres of land that is currently Boeing’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory will become state parkland, and permanently restrict the land for nonresidential, noncommercial use. A little more than three years later, on December 7th, 2010, state and federal agencies signed a plan to decontaminate a portion of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, handing the bulk of the task to Boeing. The state had previously mandated that the aircraft and aerospace manufacturer — which purchased the facility in 1996 — make the 2,850-acre test site squeaky clean by 2017 with support from from NASA and the Department of Energy. Not surprisingly, Boeing appealed. and so the site still languishes behind the chains and padlocks and barbed wire fences.

Just a few miles to the west of the Santa Susana site, along a more verdant stretch of the same Simi Hills, the presidential library and burial place of Ronald Reagan looks more like an upscale Mission-style monastery than a shrine to “The Great Communicator.” Given the history of the man whose belongings–including Air Force One–are housed there, its proximity to the site of our nation’s worst nuclear disaster is more than just poignantly ironic. It is also a testament to the naivete of a nation so in love with its own righteous mythology that it, like all empires that have come before, believes that the sun will never set on its self-perceived  of world domination, a notion fueled in part by the just cause of our greatest export, a nebulous catch-all concept called freedom. In 1979, Americans already hard-bitten by a recession, an energy crisis, the ghosts of Watergate, and the Iranian hostage crisis, were burdened with a new bogeyman of nuclear power gone mad. Yest, instead of chasing the public from the theaters, what happened in Harrisburg prompted moviegoers to stand in line for hours to see The China Syndrome, a film as cynical as its audience, which believed then as it does now that the movie is a thinly-veiled replay of Three Mile Island — even though it hit the theaters a week beforehand. That this falsehood has been so casually repeated by the media, reinforced by lazy bloggers, and swallowed whole by a public that would rather question Mr. Obama’s birth credentials proves the old adage that if you say something often enough and loudly enough, it becomes fact.

In 1959, twenty years before The China Syndrome, as the Santa Susana Field Laboratory silently sprinkled its toxic fairy dust over the San Fernando suburbs, Americans flocked to another film that stands as a symbol of it day. Appropriately enough, the 5th highest-grossing motion picture in 1959 wasn’t even a live-action eff0rt. It was a feature length cartoon presciently entitled Sleeping Beauty.

The facilities of the Boeing (née Rocketdyne) Santa Susana Field Laboratory/United States Department of Energy can be gazed upon longingly through the chain link fence  at the top of Woolsey Canyon, just off Valley Circle Boulevard in Chatsworth. Don’t forget to wear your hazmat suit!

It’s a spot that’s got “weird” in spades: nestled at the foot of the Chocolate Mountains Gunnery Range (which are not, in fact, made of chocolate, we checked), just east of The Sonny Bono National Wildlife Refuge, less than ten miles from both the skanky shores of the Salton Sea and the sumptuous cells of Calipatria State Prison, and within biking distance of the Superstition Hills United States Bombing Area (we couldn’t make this up), Slab City—which isn’t a city at all but still appears on virtually every map—is one of the many crown jewels in the Imperial Valley’s epicenter of strange.

We had heard the Slab City folklore for years; a squatter’s paradise on a former military base in southeastern SoCal, where an ad-hoc community of bikers, drop-outs, survivalists, “snowbirds,” individuals of questionable political persuasion, ex-cons (and possibly those who have not yet been caught), disenfranchised Vietnam vets, the all-round down-and-out, and whomever else might want to encamp in the wasteland five miles south of a live bombing range atop a series of concrete slabs (hence the name) which once served as the foundation for the marine barracks of Fort Dunlap. Sounded like a day-trip travel adventure!

And it was. Slab City is an honest-to-goodness California shanty town with a whole lotta style (we say “shanty town” in a good way); easily the Golden State’s finest, much nicer than Santa Monica. It’s a place where real estate prices will never crash and The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf will never franchise, with an established gateway to the city, a street grid, a community bulletin board, and a tented café, all sprawling over a piece of U.S. Government property scattered with abandoned trailers, rusted auto bodies, rain-warped plywood, and sundry post-consumer debris. The number of weather-worn hand painted signs marking the community is a folk art collector’s goldmine for those unethical enough to pinch from the almost-homeless, and purveyors of “found art” may get weak in the knees as they mosey down the eerie streets in the City of Slab (but that stuff was found by someone else first so keep that in mind).

While touring Slab City on a lazy January afternoon, we couldn’t help thinking about how much this place kinda looks like Burning Man. In fact, Slab City feels sort of like Burning Man’s crusty old deadbeat dad, and the similarities don’t begin and end with non-refrigerated foods and poorly constructed shelter occupied by the drug-addled and the unwashed. There’s the Slab City practice of individual liberty, which mostly shapes up at Burning Man by way of public nudity, glittery fairy wings, half-hearted cross dressing, outsized metal art installations, and a full week of anonymous sex with smelly, body-painted strangers, while romping around in inappropriate footwear through acidic soil that will burn your skin, and braving the occasional sandstorm that could fuck you up bad if you’ve left your goggles in the port-a-potty or neglected to zip your tent. All for the ticket price of $300.00, and, if your plan on an art installation or a theme camp, some degree of bureaucracy or a deadline-sensitive registration process. Burning Man—much like Slab City—is an environment of complete freedom (as long as you comply with the “community standards” of Pershing County, Nevada, and abide by Burning Man’s 1,600+ word list of “Participant Responsibilities,” document, which prohibits—among many things—the use of feather boas and the display of public sex, but not necessarily in that combination). But Slab City doesn’t climb all over your back like that. Slab City is older, wiser, weaker, and more comfortable with itself. We’re pretty sure no one’s getting in heated discussions at Slab City about community standards or feather boas.

As our afternoon in this desolate and considerably dusty utopia came to a close, we had decided that Slab City just might trump Burning Man with respect to personal freedom—you certainly won’t find any police officers keeping your behavior in check here or tell you that you can’t shit in the dirt—and could furthermore serve as its “sister event” right here in our own backyard. And Slab City has a lot of advantages over Burning Man too: no ticket price, year-round convenience, you can wear all the feather boas you want—fuck, you can wear real boas wearing feather boas—and while the strangers at Slab City may not be body-painted or costumed with day-glo wigs, fairy wings, kooky sunglasses, or hot pink tutus, they are indeed smelly, and undoubtedly willing to engage in anonymous sex (perhaps even in public if you ask nicely). Nature has taken back a lot of the trailers and many of the gas-powered vehicles for which Slab City was clearly the last stop on a one-way trip, but take a look and tell us that these inadvertent installations don’t rival the art hauled to the The Playa of Black Rock City? And it’s all just a stone’s throw from Salvation Mountain, which certainly rivals any art car or bicycle covered with plastic flowers. Burning Man may trump Slab City when it comes to hypocrisy, but does it boast the amenities of Slab City’s Oasis Club? A Mexican fiesta dinner for $3.00? A public library? A Christian Center? Its inspired use of hubcaps?

You’re sure to find life at Slab City considerably more pragmatic than the elitist hedonism found among the temporary community of Nevada burners. There is no annual “theme,” as the theme here generally tends to be “survival.” And Slab City residents don’t use lumber to build giant wooden structures and then burn them down for shits and giggles: they tend to burn things because there is no garbage pick up. There isn’t any greeting committee to meet you at the front gate and spank you if you’re a first timer either, but we’re pretty sure you’d manage to find someone at Slab City willing to hit you if you looked hard enough. And if you should experience alcohol poisoning or dive into a K-hole too deep to climb your way out of, there will be no medical tent to serve as your safety net. But if you don’t know how to dose your own feline tranquilizers, don’t come crying to us.

Best yet, Slab City knows that human beings are incapable of going anywhere and “leaving no trace.” Slab City doesn’t seem to be too concerned about what kind of “trace” you leave. In fact, leave your whole damn car. Flip it, torch it, and just see who wags a finger.

The Armargosa Opera House in Death Valley was one of the oh-so-many L.A. Bizarro destinations that never made it to the print edition of our book, but not because it’s isn’t worthy—and not because it lies hours outside of Los Angeles County either. As anyone who’s read L.A. Bizarro knows, our “Los Angeles” is just a general idea, a jumping off point, a place to begin—and perhaps end, but not necessarily—an excursion of the absurd.

So just to provide a little background for those who don’t swing though Death Valley as often as we do, The Amargosa Opera House is the remarkable creation of the remarkable Marta Becket, a New York dancer and former Rockette who landed in Amargosa (an old Borax mining town with a dwindling population of less than 15) by accident—a flat tire while traveling cross country in 1967—and decided to stay forever. If wanting to stay in Death Valley forever sounds as fucking crazy to you as it does to us, her story actually gets weirder: she and her husband leased an abandoned “theater” space attached to the Amargosa Motel (the town’s only) that was three feet deep in dried mud, flood debris, and deteriorating plaster, and spent a painstaking five years single-handedly refurbishing the space, including completion of the diminutive 120-seat theater’s awe-inspiring murals covering every square inch of its walls and ceilings. She christened the place The Amargosa Opera House, and mounted her first of many original shows in that first year, often performing for an audience of no one.

Our exclusion of The Armargosa Opera House from the pages of L.A. Bizarro had only to do with its star performer, Marta Beckett. Marta is also The Amargosa Opera House’s only performer really, with the exception of an occasional, but rare, guest. And it’s not that Marta isn’t good, she’s very good. She’s fucking great in fact, extraordinary. An inspiration! But that last show we saw was during the Amargosa’s 2008 season which was just months after Marta’s 84^th birthday, as well as a bad back injury she sustained after falling from a chair while perched to do a little touch-up work on a wall mural in anticipation of the coming performance season. In 2009, it was a broken hip. After 45 years of original vaudeville and ballet productions (many of which were performed solo), you’d think such setbacks might be a deal-breaker for a 87 year-old one-woman Death Valley theater company. But Marta’s one feisty trooper it would seem, and instead of hanging up the toe shoes she instead reinvented, pulling yet another original production from her bag o’ tricks: “The Sitting Down Show.” A show, as one might expect, that was performed entirely while seated. Because she has trouble standing.

Cutting Amargosa from the pages of the book also had nothing to do with “The Sitting Down Show” not being good. “The Sitting Down Show” was, in fact, fucking great. We don’t want to give it away, but it was one of the best shows of any type we’ve ever seen anywhere, much less Death Valley, which is not generally celebrated for it’s vaudeville. The reason that we didn’t include Marta’s Opera House performances, quite frankly, is because we pretty much figured she’d be dead before the book hit the presses (the wheels of the publishing world turn slowly), and we didn’t want to waste the pages. As it turned out, the joke was on us. Marta is no lily-livered song-and-dance gal it seems, the chick’s got grit, and has just commenced with her forty-fifth performance season, and “The Sitting Down Show” has taken the Amargosa stage once again for those who wish to make the drive (for the intrepid traveler, cut-rate overnight accommodations can be had at the adjoining Amargosa Motel—allegedly haunted, which may be considered one of its few amenities—and also at the frightening Longstreet Casino further up the road). And we suggest that you do. Post haste. Especially since she’s threatening to retire “soon.” And sit close to the front, she can’t project quite like she used to, and you don’t want to miss a word.

(For more on Marta and the stupefying Amargosa Opera House story, we highly recommend the documentary “Amargosa.”)

Although it’s been well over a decade since the last sugar-crazed child was seen yanking cheap candy from the pink hoop skirt of the Lollypop Lady, we can still wax nostalgic about our favorite pagan amusement park. While candy canes, Christmas carols, and jingling sleigh bells in June would seem just plain wrong anyplace else, somehow Santa’s Village manage to bend reality in its favor, and here, it all made perfect sense. Cookie-eating reindeer, piano-laying ducks, and a pumpkin-headed man keeping company with flying dragons, anabolic bumble bees, and roaming peacocks sure beat the hell out of some stale old midnight mass. Although SV threw a benevolent bone to those who still wished to believe that Christ was born on December 25th with their perfunctory and least-visited attraction (a nondenominational chapel), Christmas at Santa’s Village was just as it should be: a truly secular affair. This is where hot chocolate, marshmallows, gingerbread, and kettle corn were  the four major food groups, and where a tawdry, story-book themed landscape dotted with psychedelic mushrooms administered one cheap thrill after another, until—much like the Christmas holiday itself—visitors just couldn’t take  anymore.

The Santa’s Village in Skyforest near Arrowhead was the last operating of the three original (the other two were in Santa Cruz, CA, and Dundee, IL). There are still a few other Santa-themed amusement parks around the country delivering an off-season Christmas to those willing to pay admission, but none of them quite manage to nail the magic equation of Santa’s Village. And although we still prefer Christmas in June, we’d like to close with a rare item from the L.A. Bizarro treasure trunk of worthless ephemera: a Santa’s Village oversized puzzle postcard (in the original cellophane no less): our Christmas card to you.

Best Wishes for a Bizarro Holiday!

Don’t miss your one and only opportunity to nab the city’s best stocking-stuffers and sundry arcane Chicken Boy tschockes at Future Studio’s Second Saturday in Highland Park!

Future Studio, of course, is home to The Statue of Liberty of Los Angeles—Chicken Boy—and the Chicken Boy Souvenir Stand (as featured in the new edition of L.A. Bizarro, which, by the way, also makes for great holiday gifting; see button at right).

Future Studio Gallery will also be hosting “Soft,” a show of artist’s soft toys and sculptures which are, according to Future Studio matriarch and Chicken Boy’s mom, Amy Inouye, “priced to move!”

The event happens Saturday, December 11 from 7-10PM (if your dance card’s full, you can nab the wares via the interweb on the Chicken Boy Shop website). But whether you just want to check out Future Studio’s inimitable digs or simply marvel at the majesty that is Chicken Boy, just try to leave without purchasing at least one floaty pen or coffee mug. Just try, we dare you.

By day, he was the director of professional development for the Connecticut Education Association, a state teacher’s union.  By night, he was the director of over 100 home movie travelogues—“documentaries”—chronicling the goings-on of mid-century America, lovingly pimping his family for his part-time passion of home movie making.

He’s Robbins Barstow (yes, that was someone’s real name) and although his films won’t be coming to a multiplex near you, his online following rivals that of the Dustin “Screech” Diamond sex tape.

His most celebrated and widely viewed film was titled “Disneyland Dream,” noteworthy for a number of reasons, among them:

-“Disneyland Dream” was the product of a nationwide contest sponsored by the 3M Company in 1956, who sent 25 winning families on all-expense paid trip to Disneyland. The contestants’ challenge: to express their love for Scotch Tape. Evidently the competition wasn’t too stiff, because his four year-old son Dan wrote the winning composition (“I like Scotch brand cellophane tape because when some things tear then I can just use it.”).

-“Disneyland Dream” is credited as the first film featuring Steve Martin, who, at age 11, was inadvertently caught on Barstow’s Super 8 while hawking guidebooks as a park employee. Child labor laws anyone?

-“Disneyland Dream” was named to the National Registry of the Library of Congress, who called it “a priceless and authentic record of time and place.” The film is one of few amateur titles to nab such a distinction (the Zapruder film of the assassination of Kennedy is another).

Barstow’s oeuvre includes a jungle drama called “Tarzan and the Rocky Gorge” (1936) which he made at age 16 in the woods of Connecticut, “Family Camping Trip Through 48 States” (Parts 1 and 2) 1957-1961, as well as several films about endangered species.

You can view other Robbins Barstow titles at archive.org.

We know it’s common for overzealous shoppers to get in trouble with creditors after Christmas, but the Crystal Cathedral? Come on, Reverend Schuller’s Garden Grove ministry has more money than God, right? And how much can it cost to put on a little Christmas pageant in that glass monstrosity every year? Really,what’s the cost to rent a couple of donkeys — especially without the girls?

Apparently too much, for it was the 2009 production of the church’s beloved “Glory of Christmas” spectacle that got the CC in hot water with many a vendor, until the megachurch finally dropped to its knees and cried out to no one in particular, “Father, why hast thou forsaken me? I shall now be forced to seek the protection of the Chapter they call ‘Eleven!’”  And so it did. And it was good. For now.

No, seriously. Dr. Sheila Schuller Coleman, the most recent offspring of church founder Dr. Robert Schuller to try her hand at making the church not suck so bad, said pretty much the same thing: “Our announcement today to file for the protection of Chapter 11 is just one more chapter in the book that He is continuing to write, and we know that God’s plans are good, we have no doubt His chapter will be good!”

Wait. He’s still writing The Book? That book?  The one in all the motel room drawers? We thought He finished that snoozer a long time ago. Correct us if we’re wrong, but doesn’t it end with something really bad happening to Israel so Jesus can come back and call all the dead people out of their graves like in a George Romero movie so they can fight the vampires before they go to heaven on the back of that thing from The Neverending Story? Or was that an acid trip? Regardless, a lot of folks are going to be upset when they find out The Bible is actually a cliffhanger.

That said, though the Lord does work in mysterious ways, you didn’t need to be omniscient to see the writing on the crystal walls. We knew the end days were upon us when they canceled their equally splendid “Glory of Easter” production (again, we suspect the donkeys had something to do with it) for the first time in 27 years, fired a bunch of staffers, and sold off 170 acres of prime Orange Country land. Not to worry, however. The Schuller family has announced they will take a voluntary 50% pay cut for two months. Two whole months!  That’s longer than it took God to make the Earth!

We hope the Schullers get back on their feet soon. After all, the original drive-in church that Schuller christened in 1961 was designed by none other than Richard Neutra, and the Crystal Cathedral was the handiwork of Mr. Modern himself, Phillip Johnson (as if you couldn’t tell with all that glass). Do you see the divine connection and where it leads? Without the church’s salvation, there will never be the completion of what can only be the final phase of Reverend Richard Schuller’s architectural trinity: an enormous aluminum donkey-shaped cathedral designed by Frank Gehry.

One can only hope.

So endeth the epistle.

The super bitchin’ neon sign of the Safari Inn (1911 West Olive Avenue, Burbank) was one of the many noteworthy drive-by gems around greater Southern California that we didn’t have room for in the new edition of L.A. Bizarro. And it’s just as well, because since the book went to press we made a startling discovery: the Safari Inn played host to the Partridge Family!

In the famous episode “But The Memory Lingers On” (Season 1, Episode #8),  the Partridge family bus gets contaminated by a frightened skunk while the band is en route to a charity gig at a children’s hospital.  With no time to spare, P-Fam pulls over to the first motel they spot (The Safari) to book a quick shower for an intensive de-stinking.  Although the Safari Inn turned them away (they apparently don’t book by the hour, not then, not now), you can see the hilarity unfold in exterior shots of the motel parking lot—bus and all—easily identified by the tell-tale African moderne wrought iron of the second-floor railing.  The iconic signage, however, never made it into the frame, and we assume the location was chosen due only to it’s proximity to the Columbia lot, where the show was filmed, and not for the bitchin’ neon.

IMPORTANT PARTRIDGE FAMILY FOOTNOTE: The provenance of the Partridge family bus is well documented, but where it ended up after the show was cancelled remains a mystery. Apparently it was never gifted to a car museum, or repurposed by the studio. There is, in fact, a web-sourced rumor that the original Partridge Family bus (there are several fakes) sat—vandalized—behind “Lucy’s Mexican restaurant on Martin Luther King Blvd. near USC” until 1987 (?!?), at which point it was allegedly towed to a wrecking yard.  The rumor is erroneous at best however, as Lucy’s is on Melrose.

In any case, anyone who can produce a photo of the Partridge Family bus parked behind a Mexican Restaurant adjacent to USC  gets a free signed copy of L.A. Bizarro!  Anyone who can tell us how it got there, and, more importantly, where it went, will win a wild night of unbridled polyamorous passion with the L.A. Bizarro author of your choice. Or both of us together if you swing that way.  We just really want to know what happened to our favorite bus, and we’ll do anything to find out—as long as it’s legal in the state of California and doesn’t involve children or animals.

From the L.A. Bizarro Archives comes this hilarious ad from BP dated 2008, touting their “unique, eco-friendly gas station” on the corner of Robertson and Olympic. BP claims this “experimental site” was created with the purposes of “engaging customers in a dialogue about ways in which their impact on the environment can be reduced.”

We just hope BP engages those who earned their living and made their homes in the Gulf with such a “dialogue”—and backs it up with a buttload of green.

In the relatively brief time between completing the manuscript for L.A. Bizarro and the day it hit the press somewhere in China, one business (the upscale new age sex shop Freddy & Eddy) had closed its doors and Forrest Ackerman had departed for that great sci-fi convention in the sky. Considering the rate at which things change in Los Angeles, we actually considered ourselves lucky that only two of our entries were no longer with us. A recent visit to The Old Place, however, made us realize that while the restaurant was still there, it was a far cry from what we had experienced when we wrote it up for the book.

Located in the former Cornell Post Office and Country Store, The Old Place was the living definition of “rustic” dining.  Established in 1970 by Tom and Barbra Runyon, the couple ran the place in what could only be called an “informal” fashion. The menu had two choices: steak or clams–and you had to call ahead to let them know you wanted steak because they had to “cut it by hand” (or, more likely, go buy it). Barbra doubled as waitress and bartender (beer and jug wine only); Tom would fire up the wooden stove when he damn well pleased and sometimes not at all (especially if there weren’t enough diners to suit his fancy). On Sundays they served beef stew and only beef stew and if they ran out, well, tough titty. The Old Place didn’t exactly stick to a schedule, either. Sometimes it was open, sometimes it wasn’t, and sometimes a guy named Billy Gale (yes, C&W fans, that Billy Gale) would stand much too close to you while he strummed his guitar and yodeled a few country tunes. If that didn’t make you uncomfortable, then the regulars would, especially when they stared at you  like they wanted to kick you in  the groin (as most regulars at any dive are wont to do). We were warned by one local that whatever you do, don’t ask to use their phone or all hell would break lose. In other words, The Old Place was our kind of place, an exquisitely idiosyncratic place that you enjoyed for its utterly weird ambience, not its disappointly limited menu.

Well. not anymore. Tom and Barbra were nowhere in sight the last time we dropped in. As it turned out, Tom had departed, undoubtedly to tease Forrest Ackerman with the possibility of clams and steak for dinner. Son Morgan had taken over, with assistance from Tim Skogstrom who owns the winery next door (and is, officially, their tenant). The menu had expanded to include over a half dozen appetizers, almost as many entrees, a variety of domestic and imported beers, and wine from (drum roll please) the winery next door. Billy Gale was conspicuously absent and a few of the regulars were the types who wear their LaCoste shirts with the collars turned up. Our groins felt comfortably safe. Morgan was friendly and Tim’s a nice guy, too. We met him when we visited the winery towards the end of Tom and Barbra’s reign.

For diners craving some country atmosphere and a pretty decent menu, this new and improved Old Place will be a pleasant surprise. We, however, much prefer unpleasant surprises, and fans of the eccentric will find that  the new Old Place just ain’t what it used to be. It’s better, and by that, we mean it’s worse. But you’ll probably love it.