Culver City, California
My Home Town

          Culver City is nestled on the flats, mostly, of the La Ballona Valley, between Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean. The weather is mild, with sea breezes that arise around three o'clock every afternoon. Traffic is terrible – the I-405 San Diego Freeway runs thru it – but the natural ambience makes up for such problems.

          History began here with the California Missions Era. The Machado and Talamantes families acquired grazing rights in 1819. Then in 1839, Mexico granted Augustin Machado all the land that he could ride around from dawn to dusk. Being a rather cunning fellow, he began his ride at the Playa del Rey foothills (present-day Westchester), rode east to the Baldwin Hills, north to Pico Boulevard, and then west to the beach – allowing the fourth side to be at the water's edge and encompassing almost 14,000 acres. Members of the Machado family still owned big pieces of land here thru the 1980s.

          Real estate visionary Harry Culver founded the town in 1917, where the Pacific Electric's interurban Redondo Line branched off from the Venice Short Line. The town is surrounded by the City of Los Angeles, and yet maintains a distinctive personality: Culver City is a true small town.

          On the day that I was born in Oakland, California, in 1944, my father was notified of the event while at work in the property department at the Army Air Force's First Motion Picture Unit ["F.M.P.U."] at 'Fort' Hal Roach Studios in Culver City. Younger brother Tom was born while we lived just north of Culver City, on Keystone Avenue. Next brother Richard was born in Oakland as well, before we moved into the 'Old House' on Spad Place, near the 'proto-mall' of Culver Center. (I remember well that journey of 1947: Mom and Dad and three babies in a Model A Ford rushing south on Highway 99 in the dark of night to meet the moving van's arrival in Culver City.) We moved into the 'New House' at Lindberg Park in 1956, two years after sister Melissa was born.

          Culver City calls itself 'The Heart of Screenland' because so much of movie history has taken place here, from the early Silent Era to the present day: Thomas Ince, Hal Roach & the Our Gang comedies, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios & Leo the Lion, R.K.O., David Selznick, Desilu, United Artists, and now Sony Pictures & Columbia & TriStar.
          Producer-director Cecil B. DeMille filmed part of 'The Squawman' on Ballona Creek in 1914; the 'Rocky' movies were filmed here, and 'Gone With The Wind' and 'Wizard of Oz' and 'Showboat'; you will see the buildings of Culver City's Downtown in films by Buster Keaton and Laurel & Hardy and Charley Chase and Charlie Chaplin. (Check out more on the Culver City Film Festival Page.)
          And television too: our family car was in 'Richard Diamond'; I played hookey to watch filming of 'Combat' over the backlot fence; Culver Presbyterian Church was rented for 'Picket Fences' and so on . . .

          While the movie industry has always known that Culver City was as important as Hollywood or Burbank, Culver City's outside reputation mostly has had to do with the school system. Our schools somehow earned a reputation for excellence, which may once have been true, but since Propositions 8 & 13 altered California's property tax rules, the facilities have become worn out, and local efforts to maintain the schools have been a real struggle. California schools overall are not rated high compared to other states in the U.S., and C.C.U.S.D. is perhaps only average these days.

          The Downtown area has almost no nightlife, though a Community Redevelopment Agency works to modernize and add vitality by bringing in movie theaters and such. (The Mann Culver Multiplex is across a gerrymandered line and actually in Los Angeles city limits.) There would be no daytime activity either, were it not for Sony Pictures who took over the old M.G.M. Studios Lot 1 – the best thing to happen to Downtown in a while, because of their huge economic presence and the satellite businesses that have moved into the area.

          Do I seem negative about Culver City? The negative occurs: Only 30 percent of the citizenry cared enough to vote in the municipal election of April 2002, against a comparison to Finland, for example, where 85% vote. The small clique of involved citizens now and then bicker loudly enough to get attention from the L.A. Times, but I give them credit for taking action, even if for banal NIMBY purposes. And the Police Department has a reputation for fascist harassment of 'undesirables' – read an L.A. Weekly article from 1998.
          We have two tiny local papers struggling for existence, the C.C. News and the C.C. Observer; for the longest time, neither had a website. A recent battle, with childish tirades at City Council meetings, was about a ballot measure on the April 2004 ballot, calling for reduction of the Utility Users Tax, which, if passed, would shrink the already meager City budget by 10% – a really dumb idea. [Good news: Though the turnout was light – only 5,760 voters in a population of 40,000 – Proposition U was defeated by 81% to 19%!]
          Still, the city and its government and local organizations stumble along, doing the best that they can.

          This is what I admire about my hometown: We may be behind the times and struggling mightily to catch up, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Other cities and neighborhoods have given up, but Culver City – as a government and among the core active citizenry – will never: nobody can say that the City of Culver City breeds quitters.
          Culver City happens to be My Hometown, it happens to be a big part of who I am, so the thing to do is to love it dearly.