Mid-Month Anti-Special: Noir and The (Hopefully Only Temporary) Scorching of Los Angeles

Now that the fires are better under control, here are my thoughts on the future of Los Angeles and the three simple questions that must be asked in rebuilding

I’m a rarity in Los Angeles. Not only am I from here, I was actually born in Downtown Los Angeles. One month after my birth, my parents moved to Northwest Orange County. Like many immigrant families, we had outgrown our two bedroom apartment across the street from the hospital I was born in that my father worked at (which I can see from my office building now in Downtown L.A.).

And while I grew up in Northwest Orange County, my neighbor was in Los Angeles County. I spent every Sunday for most of my youth going to church on Third Street near Downtown Los Angeles and grade school in La Mirada on the border of Whitter (both in L.A. County). Finally, I graduated from UCLA (which almost burned down last week). So, when I speak of my beloved city of birth, just know I’m a real O.G. Angelino, not some transplant.

I love my birthplace. And in many ways, it is paradise, especially for immigrants. I love it like you would love any family member: with all of their warts, fights you have had with them and with their sordid history, and even through their many tantrums. Speaking of “L.A. tantrums,” here are a few I have lived through while being just a child or a teenager:

• The Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez, ruining my youth while he ravaged, raped and murdered men, women, and children from 1984 through the Summer of 1985 near where I grew up;

• The Whittier Earthquake of 1987, which happened while I was at my grade school in La Mirada, the next city over;

• The L.A. Riots, which broke out while I happened to be attending an uncle’s funeral near Downtown Los Angeles and my entire extended family escaped through massive smoke and chaos surrounding us;

• The O.J. Simpson freeway chase (and, of course, the subsequent circus of a trial); and

• The cataclysmic Northridge Earthquake in 1994.

All of the above “tantrums” occurred before my 18th birthday, so I had known from an early age that L.A. was not all sunshine and dreams.

When I was a freshmen in college in the mid 1990s, I was first introduced to the academic analysis of the darker side of the City of Los Angeles via a required textbook, “City of Quartz” by Mike Davis in an English class. That book, which is part history/part commentary, portrays Los Angeles as a literal heaven and hell, and it immediately struck a chord with me.

So did my introduction to film noir both in the pages of “City of Quartz” and during that same English class. We watched films from the classic film noir period of the 1940s and the 1950s, and the neo noir era, including “Chinatown,” with its allegorical portrayal of the consequences of L.A.’s raping of Owens Valley for its water so that L.A. can survive and thrive (though I don’t think many feel like L.A. is “thriving” now). It was from that point on that I had become a self-declared film noir junkie.

“Fate” and “fatalism” are pervasive in film noir: A recurring element is that the hand of fate can strike at any time, coupled with the fact that things are completely out of one’s control. Some of the last lines in one of my favorites, the classic “Detour,” are along the lines of, “Fate can put the finger on you or me, for no good reason at all.” And because of the pervasiveness of fate, you know that a film noir is going to end on a “downer,” and that’s because, during the classic period of film noir (the 1940s-1950s), the censors required that the bad guy never got away. Basically, while watching a film noir, you are waiting for the “doom” to drop.

And that’s the thing about the horrific wildfires that are still burning in Los Angeles today: they shouldn’t surprise anyone. While many of us are outraged over various water issues and the sudden dropping of many homeowners from insurance (though, thankfully, it appears the cancellations are being cancelled), we should also remember that L.A. had to “divert” its water from its “sister,” the Owens Valley, in the first place, and that insurers had been leaving California for many years. Do you see the noir/doom connection there?

Also, most of us O.G. Angelinos are born and bred to know that we are living on borrowed time. If you have lived through as many earthquakes as I have in my 47 years (too many to count in addition to the little “big ones” I flagged earlier), you know the drill. Once the familiar ground shaking happens, your stomach gets squishy and the first thought you have is: “Is this “The Big One?”

And it’s not that we fear that the inevitable “The Big One” earthquake itself will kill us by collapsing buildings on us. Most of know that seismic standards have required better building for seismic events. However, we also know that the havoc and wildfires after “The Big One” will cause the most destruction. Unless, of course, we all build back better to also withstand wildfires.

If you haven’t seen the documentary film “The Last House Standing” you should. During a “Good Is In The Details” podcast episode called, “The Climate is Above Politics,” we interviewed the director, George Siegal, and discussed the ways in which homes have been previously designed without climate change in mind, and the ways in which homes can now be cost-effectively designed and built with materials that anticipate the impact of natural disasters, including hurricanes and wildfires. The questions we posed, which are truly prescient today in Los Angeles in the wake of these wildfires, are just as relevant:

• What questions should home buyers be asking about the home they are purchasing (and, now, the homes they will be building) with respect to climate resilience?

• What is the responsibility of the individual, the community, and the government with at-risk homes?

• Should those who build close to known disaster areas be held 100% accountable for the costs of their own rescues and the subsequent consequences?

I believe Los Angeles can be rebuilt, and we need to start as soon as possible, which will require a fast-tracking of permits/temporary suspension of California’s infamous “green tape,” and, very likely, many immigrants and other willing workers. So, what happens next week with the new administration and its voter-approved plan to start mass deportations will likely impede the speed of rebuilding. But, all of the U.S. should remember that the Olympics will be here in L.A. in just over three years, and we need to make the world feel safe to visit and compete here in L.A.

Our paradise may seem permanently lost, and it could be if we are not smart about how it is rebuilt (including considering better transportation options, but we will leave that for future posts). If we build back with climate resilient materials to withstand inevitable future fires and L.A.’s scare water-resources, I know paradise can be regained…even when (not IF…remember the noir connection to fate, though we can and should prepare for it) “The Big One” comes.