My new day job has taken me back to where it all started for me in L.A.: the Miracle Mile. My first apartment here was behind the Petersen Automotive
Museum (site of Biggie Smalls'
assassination, possibly by an off-duty LAPD officer). I used to rub elbows with the tourists at the
tar pits, pay late fees to the Blockbuster at Wilshire and Detroit (now torn down for new apartments), and wish that there was a coffee shop in the neighborhood that stayed open past 5 p.m.
The Mile has changed a little since then (a Baja Fresh and an IHOP), but it's still a 9 to 5 neighborhood. That's good in a sense, because development pressures that affect other parts of the city skip over the great
Art Deco and Moderne buildings that line Wilshire between La Brea and Fairfax.
Sure, there are ugly boxes sprinkled in amongst the shells of old department stores, and that huge fenced-in hole still takes up a whole city block across the street from Ralph's, but if look down Wilshire at just the right angle (and maybe squint your eyes), you can get a feel for how the street
looked when it was the premiere retail center in L.A.
All in all, it's good to be back here. The sidewalks are wide, the tar pits swarm with school children,
LACMA is free after 5 p.m., and there's a Coffee Bean right up Fairfax at the
Farmer's Market. Now if they would just extend the
Red Line down to Fairfax...
