facelessbitchmage:

‘As the website of the current Laurel Canyon Association notes, “restrictive covenants were attached to the new parcel deeds. These were thinly veiled attempts to limit ownership to white males of a certain class. While there are many references to the bigotry of the developers in our area, it would appear that some residents were also prone to bias and lawlessness. This article was published in a local paper in 1925:

Frank Sanceri, the man who was flogged by self-styled ‘white knights’ on Lookout Mountain in Hollywood several months ago, was found not guilty by a jury in Superior Judge Shea’s courtroom of having unlawfully attacked Astrea Jolley, aged 11. 

“Wealthier residents were also attracted to Laurel Canyon. With the creation of the Hollywood film industry in 1910, the canyon attracted a host of ‘photoplayers,’ including Wally Reid, Tom Mix, Clara Bow, Richard Dix, Norman Kerry, Ramon Navarro, Harry Houdini and Bessie Love.”

The author of this little slice of Laurel Canyon history would clearly like us to believe that the “wealthier residents” were a group quite separate from the violent hooligans roaming the canyon. The history of such groups in Los Angeles, however, clearly suggests otherwise. Paul Young, for example, has written in L.A. Exposed of Los Angeles’ early “vigilance committees, which stepped in to take care of outlaws on their own, often with the complete absolution of the mayor himself. Judge Lynch, for example, formed the Los Angeles Rangers in 1854 with some of the city’s top judges, lawyers, and businessmen including tycoon Phineas Banning of the Banning Railroad. And there was the Los Angeles Home Guard, another bloodthirsty paramilitary organization, made up of notable citizens, and the much-feared El Monte Rangers, a group of Texas wranglers that specialized in killing Mexicans. As one would expect, there was no regard for the victim’s rights in such kangaroo courts. Victims were often dragged from their homes, jail cells, even churches, and beaten, horse-whipped, tortured, mutilated, or castrated before being strung up on the nearest tree.” 

And that, dear readers, is how we do things out here on the ‘Left’ Coast.’

Had a college girlfriend who passed on that when her mom was a girl at a sleepover in the foothills at the Valley mouth of the canyon, in one of those hillside houses where the basement has a sliding glass door, Captain Beefheart and his band showed up drunk and uninvited and had to be shooed away.

Only Canyon story of my own is that when I was riding Blue Bitch up around there the timing chain snapped and I had to glide/push her down, not only was that the only time I’ve ever had motorcycle problems that someone else didn’t stop to offer help, but the other drivers on the road were downright obnoxious about me being in their way.

No overnight weekend parking in that part of Weho so I just pushed it east down the sidewalk on Hollywood. Stopped in a liquor store and got a flask, pushed it 200 steps on one side, took a drink, switched. By the time I was clear of the nightlife district I was kind of drunk and figured I was close enough to Vermont where it starts to go downhill, so I kept going and managed to mostly glide back to my mechanic’s place behind the Mexican Mafia nightclub at Sunset and Silverlake.