The Expo Line may not come to stop in the middle of Sawtelle, but it can already carry you somewhat closer to the center of an even better-known west-side neighborhood: Culver City, which — the name doesn't lie — actually counts as a city on its own. People seem, generally, to know that it enjoys this status in a way they don't always know it about, say, West Hollywood; despite encirclement by several areas we call "Los Angeles," Culver City has retained a noticeably separate identity. Ten miles of distance from downtown have no doubt helped it to do so, but in the century since developer Harry Culver took the first steps to establish his eponymous municipality, the place has also cultivated something else. Having resisted strong bids for annexation, the way the likes of Venice didn't find themselves in the position to do, Culver City has even made a fair few annexations of its own, resulting in a confusing zig-zag of a border, but one that has apparently done no harm to its brand. Not that this comes as surprise; if anyone can build a brand, movie studios can, and you'll find a great deal of studio activity in Culver City's history.

What's in a Street Name is a new series that explores the origins of Los Angeles streets.

From Wine to Olvera

Considered by some to be the heart of Mexican L.A., Olvera Street -- a tourist attraction, Mexican curios marketplace, and home to roving troubadours -- is an alleyway in the "birthplace of Los Angeles." Established in 1858, it's one of the oldest streets in the city, and one of the shortest at just under .10 miles.

In the early days of the Pueblo, it was known as Wine Street, a reference to the Italian vintners that were the denizens of the day. In 1877 the street was given its current name in honor of Agustin Olvera, a judge who fought for Alta California in the Mexican American War, and played a crucial role in negotiating peace with the Americans, eventually lending his signature to the Treaty of Cahuenga. Olvera, already a judge in his native Mexico, arrived in Los Angeles in 1834 and would continue on a civic path in his adopted country -- he was elected as L.A. County's first Judge and later as Supervisor.

His adobe home was located at the north end of the Plaza, and his neighbors were some of the most prominent names of the day: Sanchez, Lugo, and Pico families. After California was awarded statehood, gubernatorial power shifted to a new wave of Anglos that effectively moved the locus of civic life south of the Plaza. By the 1920s, Olvera Street was neglected, filthy, and home to a few machine shops.

Long Beach's legacy in music has been well established, notably by Snoop Dogg, Sublime, and Warren G, to name a few recent examples. Another name to add to the list is LMNO (Leave My Name Out), from the famed So Cal hip hop crew the Visionaries. Born James Kelly, the lifelong Long Beach resident graduated from Poly High School in 1992, just a few years behind Snoop Dogg and Cameron Diaz.

"After the Fact," on Up Above Records, is LMNO's new album, produced by the Venice-based MC and producer Evidence of Dilated Peoples. The dozen songs on the new record come from a pure hip hop sensibility because both artists involved have earned their stripes and then some. Though Evidence is celebrated by many for his vocals as "Mr. Slow Flow," from his "Weatherman LP," he is also an equally skilled studio wizard behind the production boards. Born in Venice as Michael Perretta, the former graffiti artist (also as Evidence) grew up in the Los Angeles musical underground. This week L.A. Letters takes at look their new album and takes a cruise around Long Beach and Southern California with one of its most prolific hip hop artists of the last generation.

Before exploring the new album, it's necessary to explain the backstory to shed light on some little known underground West Coast hip hop history. LMNO is a humble artist that may or may not be under the radar, depending on how long you've been around or whether or not you like hip hop. Besides his work with the Visionaries and Evidence, he's also recorded with celebrated producers like Madlib, Kev Brown, J Rocc from the Beat Junkies, LD, OhNo, and many others. A musical prodigy of sorts, LMNO was a close associate of DJ Speed from NWA while still attending Poly High School. LMNO even appeared in the video of legendary artist "The D.O.C." in 1989 when he was 15.

Communities across the nation and around the world are rising up to reclaim urban waterways, change urban landscapes, and alter the relations of power. Greening urban rivers and inner cities is not just about conservation values -- as important as those are -- it's about the people who live along the rivers, and the future of children and our world.

The exhibit "Reclaiming the Edge: Urban Waterways & Civic Engagement" at the Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum examines successful grassroots efforts to recover, clean up, and re-imagine urban rivers for community access. The mission of the Anacostia Community Museum is to challenge perceptions, broaden perspectives, generate new knowledge, and deepen understanding about the ever-changing concepts and realities of "community."

The exhibit, and the Museum's 46th Anniversary celebration on September 13 at the National Press Club [Ed. note: Robert Garcia will be the keynote speaker], focuses on reclaiming the edge of urban waterways around the world, including the Los Angeles River, Los Angeles, California; Suzhou Creek, Shanghai, China; the Thames, London, England; the Ohio, Louisville, Kentucky; the Allegheny and the Monongahela, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and the Anacostia River, Washington, D.C.

Update 9/13: The Governing Board of the L.A. Unified School District passed the resolution (referenced below) funding physical education on September 10, 2013. See this link for details.

Students throughout California -- and especially children of color and low-income children -- are not receiving the physical education to which they are entitled. The health of our students is at stake, and we must make sure that physical education is a priority for all school districts.

Teachers make a difference. Evidence-based social science research supports teacher training and professional development as an effective way of ensuring quality physical education. Schools should provide teachers with training focused on activity-based physical education.

School board members Bennett Kayser and Steve Zimmer from the Los Angeles Unified School District have introduced a resolution to do just that. Their resolution to support "Elementary Physical Education" would restore state funds for their intended purpose -- "to provide physical education instruction by teachers with a single subject credential in physical education in elementary schools and provide equipment and supplies," according to the resolution.

KCET Departures "Writing on the Wall" guest editorial series continues with Bill Lasarow, who serves as Board President of Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles (MCLA), and is the Publisher of ArtScene and Visual Art Source. Also contributing to this guest editorial were Isabel Rojas-Williams, Executive Director of MCLA, and Marlena Donohue, Co-Editor of ArtScene and the Visual Art Source Weekly Newsletter.

by Bill Lasarow

With the passage by L.A. City Council of the Mural Ordinance, and its certain signing-into-law by Mayor Eric Garcetti, the cultural landscape of Los Angeles recovers something essential that was lost a decade ago.

A citywide ban affecting murals placed on private property was an unintended consequence of the City's legitimate efforts to control wealthy and litigious billboard companies, such as Clear Channel and World Wide Rush, under the Comprehensive Sign Code of 1986. The courts overturned that law on constitutional grounds due to serious flaws in its language. After more than two years of preparation to re-establish the legal status of art murals through this new mural ordinance, artists' and their patrons' relationship with City Hall now changes by 180 degrees.

In 1965, the New Yorker published a series of articles on Los Angeles by "far-flung correspondent" Christopher Rand, then known by the magazine's readers for his dispatches from other such exotic locales as Greece, India, Hong Kong, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Two years later, these became the book "Los Angeles: The Ultimate City," which, despite its age, I often recommend to friends looking to understand the place. Very few to whom I mention the title have heard it before, and Rand himself, who passed in 1968, rings a faint bell at best, even to other New Yorker writers. "He was a man of intense curiosity and strong perceptive powers, whose writing showed the results of a quest for understanding through the amassing of relevant detail," reads Rand's obituary in the magazine, which adds, "he once walked a hundred miles over rough Himalayan terrain in two days." When this highly skilled and now unjustly forgotten writer of place came to seek his own thorough understanding of Los Angeles almost half a century ago, he set up base camp in Sawtelle, a small west-side neighborhood centered on that boulevard between Olympic and Santa Monica.

"The place is a dozen miles west of Little Tokyo, toward the ocean, and it has been a satellite Japanese quarter since the thirties at least," Rand explains. "Japanese truck-gardeners and nurserymen moved out there from Little Tokyo because the land was cheap, being mostly open country then, and the weather was good for growing." Though not enthralled by all Los Angeles has, sometimes aggressively, to offer — but clearly always fascinated by it — the writer takes pleasure in this neighborhood he makes his temporary home. "In July the Japanese Buddhist Church of Sawtelle put on a fair to celebrate the festival Obon," he writes, with a quaintly touching use of use of italics. "The fair was complete with paper lanterns and scores of kimono'd women dancing old Japanese dances; it also had food-stalls, and Mexican tacos were sold there along with Japanese delicacies like sushi and chicken teriyaki. Mexicans of all ages came to it, too, as did several Anglos or Caucasians, and an air of intercultural friendliness prevailed."

As many have noted in the last few days, September 4, 2013, was the 232nd birthday of the founding of Los Angeles. A big part of what had made L.A. blossom and flourish has been the dynamic energy in the creative arts. This week L.A. Letters celebrates the spirit of collaboration and a few local ambassadors doing interdisciplinary work uniting poetry, performance, theater, education, and activism.

Rachel Kann has been one of the most active poet/writers in the Southland since the late 1990s. After her early undergrad years she went back and forth between L.A. and New York, making noise in both the theater community and the poetry slam circuit. Rather than continuing to concentrate on poetry slams, she focused her efforts on teaching poetry workshops and hosting community literary events. For seven years she hosted one of Southern California's most influential poetry open mics of the last dozen years: "co-lab:ORATION."

The title is self-explanatory: Rachel encouraged collaboration, and this meant violinists, beatboxers, DJs, horn players, guitarists, keyboardists, tap dancers, drummers, singers, and anyone else that had the gumption to contribute their energy on stage. Each poet would choose which musicians they wanted to collaborate with, and the tempo for it. They would read their poem accompanied by a whole range of optional musical backdrops, whether it was a free jazz jam session with several players on stage, or a more intimate presentation with just the poet and flutist, or perhaps a single drummer. Needless to say, the show was always swinging. It started at the Knitting Factory early 2001, and soon moved to the Temple Bar where it remained until 2008. Hundreds of writers and musicians participated.

I performed there many times, and recall seeing a who's who of local spoken word artists and very talented musicians jamming with the poets. The open canvas nature of the event encouraged artists to push themselves and create new combinations. DJs, like Lynk and Jedi, were heavy in the rotation for years, but there were also a few times where DJ Jeremy Sole stepped behind the decks. On many nights, Double G from DaKAH came to play, and dozens of other heavyweights dropped in from time to time, like Sage Francis and Saul Williams.

I have an aversion to -- yet a compulsive fascination with -- the high end clothing industry. As someone who worked in the luxury concierge business, I spent a portion of my life desperately searching for new ways to write about the finest bespoke suits being crafted on Savile Row. Having seen these suits rumpled and crumpled after long nights out, I realized that a handmade Norton and Sons tuxedo can look remarkably like its Men's Warehouse counterpart, especially from afar. Up close though, it is impossible not to admire the detailed stitching, that famous "clean line," and the sumptuous finish of the finest English wool.

That was basically my feeling when I first walked into the Cicada Club in the James Oviatt Building at 617 South Olive Street. It was cavernous and serious, humming with the quiet work of caterers setting up for an evening wedding. The wood mouldings were darkly oppressive, but after I adjusted to the grand ocean liner feel of the place, I found enormous delight in the opulent details. The ornate chandelier gleamed, and the decorative columns were delicately carved -- some with crests labeled "service," others with stylized angels carrying a mission bell to signify "the city of angels." Then there was the exquisite glass work, done by the master Art Deco craftsman, Rene Lalique. Beautiful panels with stylized ornamentation, reminiscent of Miro, or Picasso's cubist collages, fractured and softened the light on the second floor. Even the elevator door featured Lalique glass carved with foliage and fruit.

As I stepped outside, I took another look at the diminutive skyscraper I had rushed into earlier. I noticed the whimsical metal work, the Romanesque arches and moulding. I looked up at the building, now dwarfed by surrounding structures, and saw the lovely three-faced clock tower. I knew that right under that tower, in his "castle in the air" penthouse, a man named James Oviatt had lived a good portion of his life.¹ He had built Alexander and Oviatt (later known as Oviatt's), L.A.'s finest haberdashery, from the ground up, and built this building to house the store, using the same exacting detail he used when selecting fabrics. Born into humble circumstances, he had ascended to the heights of his time, always dreaming of the best, until his vision of the world consumed him and limited his views of all that was possible.

"Hold tight to that cheap cigar of yours Keyes. I killed Dietrichson, me, Walter Neff, insurance salesman, 35 years old, unmarried, no visible scars, until recently that is." Fred MacMurray's mortally wounded protagonist of "Double Indemnity" confesses to his supervisor Barton Keyes' (Edward G. Robinson) memo recorder. A suburban insurance salesman seduced by a married seductress, Neff represented one man's "descent into moral blackness" as he lies, cheats, and murders to reach an illusionary objective. Indeed, MacMurray's portrayal of the rakish Pacific All Risk insurance ace in Billy Wilder's 1944 noir classic remains a precedent-setting standard of excellence in the genre and, more specifically, of the Los Angeles variety.

Yet, "Double Indemnity" and Los Angeles noir point to more than simply clever stories of intrigue, betrayal, and lust. Instead, L.A. noir represents fears about cultural alienation, changing gender roles, and interracial interactions. "Los Angeles noir deployed a contrast between the visual imagery of suburban normalcy and the narrative drama of vice and violence," notes USC's Eric Avila. "By focusing on the most cherished icon of Southern California's low density landscape -- the suburban home -- [film noir] articulated the inability of suburban Los Angles to shield its occupants from the poisonous culture of the metropolis, shattering any lingering illusions of Los Angeles as the better city, but at the same time, dramatizing an imperative to fortify the boundaries between the suburbs and the 'black' city." ¹

Three years after Double Indemnity's release, Leimert Park residents witnessed the gruesome and still unsolved Black Dahlia murder, symbolizing the very fears Avila pointed out. Though at the time a white, middle and working class, enclave, Leimert Park had begun to attract black homeowners, contravening spatialized racial boundaries. The pretty, fame seeking victim, Elizabeth Short served as a real life symbol of the perils of interracial mixing, the collapse of gender roles, and the dark corners of the noir metropolis. Taken with the movies of German émigré Billy Wilder, the aforementioned "Double Indemnity" and the Black Dahlia murder underscore white America's discomfort with an increasingly diverse City of Angels, and noir's role in securing this preconception.