Wilshire Boulevard
Walking in the City of Angels
Most folks don’t think of dense urban areas when they think of Los Angeles California. Freeways, the beach, palm trees, fancy houses in the hills, yes, but skyscrapers and public transit and pedestrians…that isn’t the LA you see in the movies.
But it’s the LA I lived in for the last week, walking the half mile back and forth between my hotel and the United Teachers Los Angeles building in Koreatown as the union prepared for a potential strike of its 37,000+ members.
That walk took me down Wilshire Boulevard, one of the main thoroughfares through the LA area. Wilshire starts at the beach in Santa Monica, and wanders East and then Southeast, passing UCLA and going through the heart of Beverly Hills, along the La Brea Tar Pits, the Miracle Mile, Koreatown, Macarthur Park, and finally, after more than 15 miles, terminating in Downtown.
Wilshire was a thoroughfare before California was a state — it connected one of the largest Tongva villages, near what is now City Hall, to the La Brea tar pits (which the Tongva people used for building materials) to the ocean. In the 1800s, as the city of LA was being developed, a man named Gaylord Wilshire donated a parcel of land to the city for use as a boulevard, on the condition that it be named after him.
Unlike many of the namesakes of California places, Wilshire was not a missionary who murdered indigenous people or a general who murdered indigenous people or a politician who supported racist and eugenicist policies. Gaylord Wilshire was a wealthy, flamboyant, oddball — and a socialist. He ran for office as a socialist — one of the first to do so — in his 1890 bid for Congress. He started a hugely successful socialist magazine that published articles by Upton Sinclair and got in trouble with the USPS. He classified people “into two great classes—Fools and Socialists” His late-in-life promotion of quacky medical devices makes me think that he was perhaps both a fool and a socialist, but the medical stuff was largely harmless and it was nice to see a road named after a largely unproblematic wealthy man who lost all of his money publishing a socialist magazine in the early 1900s.
I’m sure that Gaylord Wilshire, who ran for Congress on a platform of the abolition of poverty, would’ve been horrified by some of the things I saw on my half mile walk to work down his namesake street every day. There were a lot of folks who were struggling - with addiction, disability, lack of stable housing - on the streets of Los Angeles. I see folks with the same struggles in San Francisco and it’s infuriating that in the fourth biggest economy in the world there are still so many Californians who are forced to struggle to get by.
I would begin my walk each day at Oasis Church, which featured a Hollywood Walk of Fame style star for Jesus. In the various crevices of the church building, people slept on the ground. Seeing people sleep outside next to a church is always particularly galling to me — a direct contradiction to “share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless” from Isaiah. I suspect the church was unembarrassed by the hypocrisy.
On the curb in front of the church was a busy bus stop, a reminder that despite the city’s car-forward persona, many Angelenos rely on public transit (about 25% of Koreatown residents don’t own a car). Next were the Indonesian and Philippines Consulates - the neighborhood is full of consulates and tourism boards of dozens of Asian and Latin American countries. On the next block, I walked past a multi-story mall, where I one day got perfect soft-serve, drizzled with caramel and salt.
Next to the mall was the Gaylord apartment building, named after our good friend Gaylord Wilshire. It’s an old school LA apartment building, with a giant neon sign on top of the building that says “GAYLORD” and can be seen from near and far. A few boring office blocks later and I was at UTLA building — a mini-skyscraper almost at the border of Koreatown.
I had a few hours off last Sunday and decided to treat myself by switching things up and walking West down Wilshire. I saw more Blue Jacaranda trees in this direction — I love being in LA when they are in bloom. You can often see the bursts of purple and blue flowers from the plane.
Then, I was treated to the sight of the truly unique Wilshire Boulevard Temple, home to the oldest Jewish congregation in LA. The Temple’s architecture has the look of a set from some epic movie made in the 1930s, which makes sense given its prominent members included the Warner Brothers. I would’ve loved to go inside, but some sort of bagel festival was happening (complete with a check-in tent for influencers, a very LA scene, and also bagel influencer is my new dream job).
Down the street, I spotted the Wiltern, a magnificent art deco office building and movie theater, a pop of shimmering color against the grey and beige of the other office buildings. I also passed the headquarters of the Korea Times and a few other Korean-language media outlets, fronted by a surprisingly stunning courtyard with trees and ornate lamps.
After eating in a cafe tucked away in a shopping mall on Western Ave, I went back down Wilshire, passing St. Basil Catholic Church. Next to the modern church building was a raised plaza surrounded by beautiful trees and fronted by a dramatic statute. “That looks like a nice park” I thought to myself, eventually finding a little flight of stairs to go check it out.
It was a parking lot. What a bait and switch. This city really loves it cars.
Of the dozens of times I walked down Wilshire, my favorite walk was both the shortest and the slowest. A coworker and I were returning from lunch and came across a woman crossing Vermont at a glacial pace. The light was about to turn, so we held up traffic while she walked. Then she turned to cross Wilshire, and I held out my arm to steady her. She clutched my coworkers hand, gripped my arm, and the three of us slowly made our way across six lanes of traffic.
“God bless you for helping” she said. “Why are you helping? Are you Mennonites?”
A bit taken aback (I was wearing a long black skirt but never in my life thought I would be mistaken for a Mennonite) I told her we worked for a union. “For teachers,”I added.
“Oh teachers!” she said, her face lighting up. “I signed to support you! I love teachers! I hope they give you everything!” Turns out everyone knew about the impending strike. Eventually, we deposited her safely across the street, where her grandson would be picking her up. “Good luck!” she yelled, and we walked back to the office, boosted by her enthusiasm.
Quite a walk! Good luck on your Bagel Influencer goal. Are any of CA's gubernatorial candidates addressing the homelessness issue? I surely hope so.