What's REALLY Going On With Taix?

I won't rehash the entire lengthy saga of the battle for Taix French Restaurant. That would take far too long. Here's the Cliffs Notes version, with links. TL;DR: the whole thing is about as sketchy as it gets.

Last week, photographer Gary Leonard posted a picture of a freshly-desecrated Taix. The mature plants in the brick planters are gone, "TAIX" has been (badly) painted on the side of the building (right over the decorative half-timbering), and both the roof and the planters appear to be falling into disrepair. 

I suspect this is a deliberate move to drum up support for demolishing the building by making it look as bad as possible while still keeping the restaurant open - for now.

No permit was filed for the sloppy "mural", and there is something very strange (and concerning) about the demolition permit that the developer, Holland Partner Group, filed three months ago. (No permit has been issued - YET.)

From the permit: 

DEMO AN (E) 1 STORY BUILDING OF APPROX 15,167 SF SINGLE STORY RESTAURANT WITH 2,554 SF BASEMENT. CLEAR LOT OF CURBS, PLANTERS, LIGHT POLES, ASPHAULT, SHRUBS ETC. NOTE: INTEND TO KEEP THE BASEMENT IN PLACE, AS IS. THE BASEMEN WILL BE ADDRESSED IN THE SHORING PLANS

Take special notice of that last bit: leaving the basement.

Basements are RARE in Los Angeles, and California has very stringent building codes due to earthquakes. Leaving an old basement in place when a new development is planned makes little sense.

There is also the matter of precedent. 

According to my friends at Esotouric, "We're not builders, but we are historians of redevelopment. And we know that in the past, when L.A. property owners wanted to cheaply get rid of an inconvenient building, they would leave the basement untouched, and often fill it with rubble from the building above, then pave over the parcel and have a lucrative surface parking lot until they got around to developing the land - sometimes decades later, sometimes never."

No one knows LA history better than Kim and Richard, and this does have the hallmarks of a potential cheap demolition. Filling the basement with debris and paving it would make entirely too much sense here, and it tracks with the worsening condition of the building. HPG could make money renting out parking spaces while waiting on permits, and the flea market already held on site could expand.

Assuming the planned project does get built, there would be underground parking, and the filled-in basement would presumably have to be excavated along with much of the lot. In the meantime, it's possible that the property (which already has a massive parking lot for Echo Park) could sit empty for years. (On a related note, I'm going to be furious if Taix is lost to an even bigger parking lot than the existing one.)

And it just might.

It's well known that Holland Partner Group paid $12 million for the Taix parcel and the adjoining overflow parking lot. Even in gentrified Echo Park, that's overpaying. HPG also spent six figures buying Mitch O'Farrell's support (this is on the public record). It begs the question of how much money HPG may have spent, in total, on the proposed redevelopment already (I suspect there might possibly have been other arrangements with other people) - and how much more they can justify paying for it.

Clyde Holland has an estimated net worth in the billions. You don't get rich and stay rich by holding onto an investment that isn't making the returns you'd expected. Most investors will dump an asset that isn't performing well enough.

Could HPG possibly be looking to offload the Taix parcels to another developer? Empty lots are far more appealing to developers than built-up ones - no pesky tenants to remove and no pesky demolition permits to secure.

Developers sometimes tell lies to get what they want - especially in LA. That's fact, not fiction.

Consider Lytton Savings, a "protected" landmark demolished for a Frank Gehry project that is probably never going to be built.

Consider the Chili Bowl, torn down because of vague mumblings about an affordable housing project that wasn't even planned. To the best of my knowledge, there hasn't been a whisper about it since, and I suspect there never will be.

While HPG's stated plan is to build on the site, I can't be 100 percent sure of that anymore.

In any case, go to Taix while it's still standing. If it is torn down, there might not be a new building for quite some time.

Some Forgotten French Papers of Old LA

One of the most annoying aspects of researching French LA is that some historical documents, especially those written in Northern California, either completely ignore the French Colony in LA or - at most - treat it as an afterthought.

A reader pointed me toward the California Historical Society Quarterly's four-part series on the French-language press in California, written by one Clifford H. Bissell. I wasn't optimistic, but I always check these things out just in case. The CHS is known to have an impressive collection of newspapers.

Part one: blah blah blah NorCal.

Part two: blah blah blah more NorCal.

Part three: blah blah blah it's like the southern half of the state doesn't exist.

Part four: blah blah blah NorCal NorCal NorCal...then, long after I'd abandoned hope, a section on the French press in Southern California began on the thirteenth page. 

FINALLY.

I've mentioned the Spanish-language newspaper El Clamor Público before. For a brief period of time, the newspaper printed a page in French - not surprising, since editor Francisco P. Ramirez learned French from his godfather Jean-Louis Vignes. After the French page ended its run a few months later, the occasional French-language article, letter, or ad continued to run. This is also not surprising, since many French Angelenos picked up Spanish before (or instead of) English.

Two years after Corsican-born F. Tamiet founded L'Union in 1876, Tamiet disappeared. L'Union's editor F.V.C. de Mondran, who had left to establish Le Courrier de Los Angeles, used its debut issue to explain that Tamiet had forged checks, embezzled money, and left debts behind. The French Benevolent Society's meeting minutes from much of 1877 are missing, possibly because Tamiet was the Society's secretary at the time and may have been destroying unflattering records. 

Mayor Joseph Mascarel was the second owner of L'Union. Bissell does insult Mascarel's intelligence, claiming he was nearly illiterate (I have never seen anything to indicate this claim is true). 

As for F.V.C. de Mondran, aka Frédéric François, Vicomte Cazeaux de Mondran, his newspaper career seems to have been short-lived, as Le Courrier only lasted a few issues, and he left town soon after that (although unlike Tamiet, he didn't leave any sort of mess behind him and doesn't seem to have had a known reason for leaving). 

Pierre Ganée founded weekly paper L'Union Nouvelle in 1879, not long after L'Union folded, and remained editor and publisher until he passed away in 1902. The paper was widely read by most French-speaking families in Southern California, and was still being published when the Herald-Express ran its last issue in 1962.

Le Progrès followed in 1883, helmed by Dr. Pigné-Dupuytren and then Georges Le Mesnager, neither of whom really had the time to both keep it going and attend to their other jobs. For a time, J.P. Goytino, notorious son-in-law of Joseph Mascarel, edited the paper, but he left to focus on the Basque-language Eskual-Herria. (Goytino had a well-earned bad reputation that goes far beyond the scope of this entry. He was particularly notorious for being a scam artist and a slumlord.)

Belgian-born Charles Raskin (whom we've briefly met before) founded Le Gaulois in 1887, but ceased publication in 1891 due to being called to Brussels for his other job (agent for the Red Star Line and Compagnie Générale Transatlantique). Subscribers were turned over to L'Union Nouvelle after the final issue of Le Gaulois. Raskin also used the final issue to call out J.P. Goytino. 

Roughly translated:

An unfortunate and miserable vagabond, let's name him, J.P. Goytino, a former resident of the Los Angeles County Prison, has particularly taken on the task of vilifying us. We know full well that he belonged in France, for three years, to the Congregation of the Ignorant Brothers, under the name of Frire Lupulus, and that he was guilty of a series of unnatural crimes. Forced to leave France as a result of these misdeeds - and also as a result of acts of fraud and forgery committed to the detriment of his uncle, Mr. Bernard Etcheverry, he failed in California. Everyone knows that he owes only to the accidental death of his cousin Léonis, not to occupy a cell today in the state prison in San Quentin. It was as a result of his fortuitous release that he became editor of Le Progrés! Our readers know what has been achieved.

Félix Violé came on board at Le Progrés - the very same newspaper that had inspired Félix and his brother Jules to come to Los Angeles - in 1890. 

The 1891 city directory lists a Le Progrés Californien, with no editor or publisher listed, and there seem to be no other references to it anywhere. Perhaps it was short-lived, like Le Courrier, but with no surviving copies. That left Le Progrés as L'Union Nouvelle's only serious competition.

Ganée was certainly an opinionated editor. L'Union Nouvelle leaned Democrat until 1896, when Ganée's disapproval of President Cleveland's trade policy prompted him to switch the paper's allegiance to the Republican Party. Bissell adds "It was very anti-British, and seemed obsessed with the likelihood of the world's being dominated by the Anglo-Saxon races, i.e. Great Britain and the United States. It was rabid on the subject of Dreyfus."

(The less said about Ganée's opinion of Alfred Dreyfus, who was wrongly accused, wrongly convicted twice, and the subject of a cover-up when the real traitor was uncovered, the better. Ganée was eventually forced to admit Dreyfus' innocence.)

Ganée was equally mistaken about the Spanish-American war, believing Spain's navy to be superior to that of the United States. Oops!

Jean Trébaol edited Le Progrés either with or under the direction of Goytino, but left after a squabble and founded Le Français. He proudly advertised it in English as "the only French newspaper in Southern California established, owned, and published by a Frenchman." This must have come as news to Pierre Ganée, the Frenchman who established, owned, and published the long-running L'Union Nouvelle. In the end, Le Français merged with L'Union Nouvelle in 1900, and Trébaol went back to his old job: teaching. Like Tamiet, he mysteriously disappeared in 1919, but I'll dig into that another time.

Bissell notes that in 1895, a semi-weekly called La Concorde appeared, published by Mrs. L. Pavlides, a Parisian married to a Greek doctor. The paper was short-lived; Bissell states that the couple moved away and that no copies were known to exist.

At the start of the twentieth century, there was one French newspaper left standing: L'Union Nouvelle, of course. After Ganée died in 1902, Jacquard Auclair assumed publishing duties before selling it to Adrien Davoust, Ganée's former assistant, in 1904. 

By this time, L'Avenir had appeared. It disappeared after 1906.

Le Courrier Français (not to be confused with 1878's Le Courrier) appeared in 1917, billing itself as an "independent, progressive weekly newspaper of the French, French-Canadian, Belgian, and Swiss Colonies, and also the French reading public in Los Angeles." (See, I told you French LA wasn't totally homogeneous!) It merged with San Francisco-based Courrier du Pacifique in 1939.

L'Union Nouvelle, once again the last newspaper standing, ran its final issue in 1962.

The French Colony died multiple deaths - the railroad, the land boom, Prohibition, the freeway - but between the last French newspaper dying out, the original location of Taix (last survivor of the French Colony) being demolished for government buildings, and Bastille Day getting the shaft in 1968, I feel comfortable saying that the 1960s are the decade that wiped the French Colony from the city's collective memory.

AI-Free and Proud Of It

With the WGA strike in effect, it's well-known that one major sticking point is the possible use of AI in entertainment writing. I'm not a WGA member, just a nerd with a blog and the occasional byline elsewhere, but I'm not a fan of replacing human writers. 

The other day, my dad asked me to explain what ChatGPT was. 

I explained that ChatGPT is an AI chatbot, and you can prompt it to generate all sorts of content. I mentioned that AI is being pitched as a way to generate ad copy, articles...and blog posts...and that screenwriters are concerned about having work taken away by AI bots, or having to fix scripts generated by AI bots. 

Dad asked me to try an experiment in ChatGPT: prompt it to write an article about the French in Los Angeles and show it to him.

I warned him that it was going to be terrible. 

I tried generating several different versions, and they were almost as bad as the mistake-heavy clickbait that's still floating around out there. Almost.

Here are some of the highlights - or is it lowlights? Anyway:

One of the most notable French architects to work in Los Angeles during this time was Paul J. Pelz, who designed many of the city's most important buildings, including the Los Angeles Public Library and the Bradbury Building.

Hilariously incorrect. First of all, Pelz was born in a part of Eastern Germany that isn't even close to France. Second, he lived in Washington D.C. after immigrating. Third, while he did design the Point Fermin lighthouse in San Pedro (lighthouses being one specialty of his), he had nothing to do with Central Library or the Bradbury Building.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, French immigrants continued to arrive in Los Angeles, and the French community began to grow.

Uh, not quite. The biggest influx came between 1850 and 1860, and after the railroad arrived, the French became a smaller and smaller portion of the City and County's population. 

Many French citizens settled in the city's affluent neighborhoods, such as Beverly Hills and Bel Air, where they established businesses and built impressive homes.

Uh, I've spent 9 years working on a map that says otherwise. Relatively few French citizens settled in rich Westside neighborhoods, and even then, most of those I've found were celebrities living amongst other celebrities, such as French filmmakers Jean Renoir and Louis Malle. (One outlier: Thomas Pedy, who was in the cutlery business and lived close to where the Four Seasons is now.)

The French Consulate in Los Angeles serves as a hub for French cultural and economic activity in Southern California.

Good luck getting them to return an email (I have tried).

The history of the French in Los Angeles dates back to the late 19th century when a small number of French immigrants arrived in the city. However, it was not until the 20th century that the French community in Los Angeles began to grow significantly.

This is so, so wrong that it made me cackle like a wicked witch in a Disney movie. 

During the early 1900s, French immigrants began to settle in the city, attracted by job opportunities in the oil and gas industries, as well as the growing film industry. Many of these early French immigrants were from the southern region of France, particularly from the city of Marseille.

WRONG! The first French immigrant arrived in 1827, the first big wave began in the 1840s, the French were a tiny fraction of LA's population by 1900, and back in the day, most French immigrants went into winemaking, sheep ranching, or farming. Oil and gas came quite a bit later. Regular readers may recall that Prudent Beaudry accidentally struck oil on one of his hilltop properties while digging a well.

Also, while LA's French community came from all over France and French Canada (with some outliers from Belgium and Switzerland), there were relatively few arrivals from Marseille. LA's most represented region of France was the Basque Country, hands down.

Le Mesnager founded the French Hospital in Los Angeles, which later became the French Hospital Medical Center...

George Le Mesnager is one Frenchman LA should remember, and for good reason - but he had nothing to do with the founding of the French Hospital, which became the Pacific Alliance Medical Center. He was still a teenager when the cornerstone was laid. While the hospital was being built, he went back to France to fight in the Franco-Prussian War. 

...and the city hosts several French-themed events each year, including the Bastille Day Los Angeles festival.

I FREAKING WISH. LA used to have a huge Bastille Day celebration, but has rudely ignored Bastille Day since 1968. (Hey Mayor Bass, who exactly does one have to be to get City Hall lit up like the Tricolor on July 14?)

...there was a French community that settled in the downtown area of Los Angeles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly around the area of Main Street and Arcadia Street.

It was early-to-mid-19th century, and the intersection is close, but wrong. The hub of the French Colony was at Alameda and Aliso Streets.

The French community in Los Angeles was not as large or well-established as in some other American cities...

While I have yet to make an exhaustive study of the census, one reliable figure estimates that the French accounted for one out of every ten Angelenos, and another put the figure closer to twenty percent. Ten percent is pretty significant (for comparison, 11.6% of Angelenos are of Asian descent and 9% of Angelenos are Black; would you call either of those populations insignificant? I wouldn't). Twenty percent certainly isn't small.

One of the most prominent French neighborhoods in Los Angeles was located around the intersection of Main and Winston Streets. This area was known as "French Town" and was home to many French immigrants who worked in nearby factories and shops.

Main and Winston is on the edge of the Toy District, southwest of what was called "French Town". It's almost a mile away from the hub of the French Colony. (What is it with anyone, human or bot, thinking Frenchtown was a mile away from its true location?)

Another notable French community was centered around the city's historic Olvera Street, which was originally a Mexican marketplace but became a popular destination for tourists interested in experiencing the city's Spanish and Mexican heritage.

While there were some French activities in the Plaza area, Olvera Street was definitely not the hub of French LA. Don't get me started on the bot's description of Olvera Street (which was probably originally an alley). 

There were French-owned shops, restaurants, and hotels, as well as a French-language newspaper called "La Gazette."

The first half of this sentence is correct. The second half made me cringe. LA has had several French-language newspapers over the years (possibly as many as 10), but I have yet to find a single reference to one called La Gazette.

However, the legacy of the French community can still be seen in the French-style architecture of some of the historic buildings in the Bunker Hill area, as well as in the French names of some of the streets in the area, such as Grand Avenue and Figueroa Street.

ChatGPT must not be aware that Old Bunker Hill was annihilated decades ago. There is nothing on modern-day Bunker Hill that I would classify as resembling French architecture. Also, while there are some French street names (Beaudry, Mignonette), Figueroa's origins are distinctly Spanish, and Grand Avenue got its name when residents tired of jokes about living on Charity Street. 

Today, there are still a few French-inspired businesses and landmarks in the downtown area, such as the French restaurant Taix, which has been in operation since 1927.

Taix's downtown location was lost in 1964 (for a parking facility, of all things). The restaurant's sole surviving location is in Echo Park...for now.

The French writer and journalist Charles Lummis also settled in Los Angeles in the late 19th century and played an important role in promoting the city's cultural heritage and history.

This blog has tremendous respect for Charles Fletcher Lummis, but he was from Massachusetts.  

Some of the most prominent French winemakers in Los Angeles at the time included Jean-Louis Vignes, Charles Kohler...

Charles Kohler was prominent enough to have Kohler Street named after him. However, he was German. 

Do I need to go on, or have I made my point?

With the sole exception of the quotes pasted above, this blog has always been, and will always be, free from AI. I type every word, and I always will.

What's In a Name?

I finally got a chance to start watching Bosch: Legacy.* 

I highly recommend it, don't get me wrong, but I couldn't help cringing when the very first scene of the first episode involved multiple instances of Vignes Street being pronounced "VIG-nezz". 

There has been considerable debate over how Vignes Street should be pronounced.

Vignes means "vines" in French (fitting for a vintner from Bordeaux), and in French, "vignes" (referring to vines) is pronounced more like "veen" (I'm simplifying, but I'm sure you get the idea). 

However, French rules of pronunciation don't necessarily apply to proper names. Case in point: Taix is pronounced "Tex". 

The few references to pronunciation I can find state that Jean-Louis Vignes' surname is pronounced "vines". Frances Dinkelspiel, who is an award-winning journalist, the author of Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession, and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California, and a descendant of another prominent Los Angeles winemaker (Isaias Hellman), says it's pronounced "vines". 

Patt Morrison of the Los Angeles Times helpfully suggested via Twitter that an older newspaper account might spell the name phonetically. In 9 years of digging as deeply into the family as I can, I have yet to see that.

(I checked again, since more old newspapers are digitized each year. No luck again, and to my consternation multiple newspapers - mostly small ones based in NorCal - mistakenly claimed that El Aliso winery was on the site of Union Station - no wonder that tired myth has hung around for so long - and a 1972 article in the Desert Sun referred to to Vignes as "young". He was, in fact, 52 when he arrived in Los Angeles. I also found a very long and detailed article about Vignes' children suing their cousins for a cut of El Aliso. Boy, did it get ugly!)

When Jean-Louis Vignes was alive, French speakers outnumbered English speakers by a wide margin (incidentally, Vignes himself was the reason for this). The Vignes-Sainsevain family was prominent enough in a town of about 6,000 people (about one-tenth of whom were French) that the pronunciation of their names was probably well known, and Vignes (who died long before English became LA's dominant language) was "Don Luis del Aliso" to most people anyway.

None of this is still the case in 2022, 160 years after Vignes' death. Most Angelenos don't even know who Vignes was.

So I'll just put this out there: Are there any Vignes/Sainsevain descendants out there who would be so kind as to clarify how "Vignes" is pronounced?

I suspect it's "vines" (for starters, I trust Dinkelspiel's expertise). Maybe it was "veen", and I've also heard "vin-yay".

But there's no way in hell it's "VIG-nezz"; what native French speaker would brutally butcher their own name like that in a city where most people spoke Spanish or French? Hearing "VIG-nezz" makes my ears bleed (and I'm a metalhead with noticeable traces of Valspeak in my speech, so THAT is saying something). So I'm hoping we can get some clarification on that and hopefully send "VIG-nezz" to go live on a nice vineyard upstate with its friends "Pick-o" and "Sepple-veeda".

*I'll let you find out for yourselves which classic detective novel was referenced in the first episode. I was also amused when one character stated that his family made their money first with gold, then steel, then aerospace - shades of the Ducommun family.

Why The Taix Battle Isn't Really (Just) About Taix

Dear Readers:

I know, I know. I’ve written quite a bit already about the Taix situation. I have been researching an entry on a different family, but their surviving property isn’t in any imminent danger, whereas Taix is.

Spread this entry far and wide. Share it with the people who make excuses for bad development and the people who don’t know or care about developers’ misdeeds or City Hall corruption. Enough is enough.

Although the initial Taix landmark approval, with substantial alterations, was rescinded (the city violated the Brown Act), the battle is far from over.

Due to time limits at the 12/7 meeting, the nomination will be re-heard on 1/18.

As you consider your statements for public comment, I ask that everyone consider this: the Taix battle aims to save Taix, but it isn’t solely about Taix.

PLUM, or the Planning and Land Use Management Committee, wields considerable power in Los Angeles. Whether they have too much of it is a subject for another time. 

This is the case of a unique legacy property, sold off-market to an out-of-state developer with a questionable track record in LA, slated to be replaced with a development that has changed considerably from the original renderings. The nomination, altered to the extreme by City Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell at the developer’s request, essentially turns landmarking into salvage. 

The whole thing stinks like a week-old serving of salmon dropped in the gutter on Sunset Boulevard and left to rot in the sun.

Exactly how much say should developers, especially non-local ones who aren’t invested in the community, have in Los Angeles, a city constantly losing the things that make it Los Angeles and also a city stuck with the results of irresponsible development? 

It’s not development per se that’s the problem. There’s an ocean of difference between responsible development (loft conversions, affordable buildings, designing with safety and residents’ needs in mind instead of flashy aesthetics…or the cheapest materials possible) and irresponsible development (too many luxury units, not enough windows - Charlie Munger, I’m looking at you - no security, nowhere to do laundry, in some cases no kitchen, too far away from anything to walk, no green space, tearing down affordable units with no tenant relocation plan and refusing to replace them with an equal or greater number of affordable units, etc.). 

And, of course, there is the Kafkaesque nature of appeasing a deep-pocketed developer by illegally sabotaging a landmark nomination in a way that would set a legal precedent for destroying an untold number of very important places.

Must every important place in Los Angeles be placed in potential danger of demolition because a Washington-based developer is determined to tear one of them down?

Unsure of my ability to get through on the phone (like many of you, I wasn’t called on at either of the two previous hearings), I submitted public comment via the online portal before Taix was moved to the January 18 meeting. 

In part:

“Would you tear down the Chinese Theatre and only keep the signs and forecourt? Absolutely not. Would you tear down the Avila Adobe and only keep the porch? No way. Would you tear down Central Library and only save the sphinxes and globe chandelier? You wouldn’t.”

I deliberately mentioned those three landmarks for specific reasons. The first is that two of them were nearly lost, and one would be affected by a zoning change City Council has been pushing. The Chinese Theatre would be affected by the proposed zoning change (and is uncomfortably close to the recently ruined Pig ‘n Whistle). Central Library, threatened with demolition since the 1960s, was damaged in a 1986 arson fire and could all too easily have been lost. The Avila Adobe was condemned almost a century ago and came far too close to disappearing forever, along with what survives of the Pueblo.

Can you imagine Los Angeles without any of these iconic places, all of which played a role in making the city what it is? (That would be my second reason for mentioning them.) 

They aren’t just a bunch of old buildings. They are part of our rich cultural heritage as Angelenos.

And what about Taix, a rare survivor from what was formerly Los Angeles’ biggest ethnic enclave, and one of its oldest? Does it cease to matter because the city’s French population was outnumbered by Yankees after the 1880s and the French Colony ceased to exist long ago? Shouldn’t that make its significance greater?

Is it really “just a building”? Or is the battle for Taix a microcosm of the battle for the city’s heart, its soul, its people, and its future?

Los Angeles does not belong to developers.

Los Angeles does not belong to its elected officials.

Los Angeles belongs to Angelenos.

God bless us, every one…and God help us, every one. 

(Except for the guilty parties referenced above. I’m pretty sure they’re all going directly to the Ninth Circle of Hell to face a fate worse than living in the dystopian Los Angeles they are helping to create.)

Save Taix! Fundraiser THIS SATURDAY!

 Dear Readers,

If you’re reading this blog, you probably already know Taix is in danger. The site is large enough to develop without demolishing Taix (case in point: Dinah’s in Westchester or Santa Monica’s last Quonset hut). 

The Silver Lake Heritage Trust is kicking off a fundraiser for legal representation this Saturday, December 18. All donations are tax deductible. (Images and info courtesy of Carol Cetrone and the Silver Lake Heritage Trust.)

The fundraiser begins at 8pm Saturday at Luxe de Ville (no website), Pazzo Gelato, Spacedust, and Cosmic Vinyl.

No donation amount is too small - every little bit helps.

Do you know a good attorney who can help save Taix? Reach out to the Silver Lake Heritage Trust, or email me and I’ll relay your message.

Last Call to Save Taix: Tuesday, December 7, 2 PM

Regular readers already know that Taix French Restaurant is one of the final surviving links to the French Colony.

And that it was sold to a developer with a well-earned bad reputation. 

And that Mitch O'Farrell colluded with the developer to effectively gut preservation in LA. Said developer spent six figures on Mitch (this is a matter of public record, not mere rumor). The City Council blatantly ignored the Brown Act, too (granted, they do this more often than not...).

And that the LA Conservancy filed suit (along with Silverlake Heritage).

But there's still hope: the city has rescinded its previous vote, and will rehear the nomination next Tuesday, 12/7, at 2pm. (The Chili Bowl will also be on the agenda.)

As I've mentioned, I was not called on at either of the two previous meetings, and quite a few other people reported that they were also never called on in reference to Taix. 

So yes, flood the phone lines at 2pm on Tuesday. But don't JUST call in. 

Flood those inboxes, too. You can't make PLUM take your call, but they can't stop you from sending emails. Follow the LA Conservancy's list here. If you live in the City of Los Angeles proper, be sure to contact your Councilmember.

I'm not giving up. I hope you'll join me, and many others, by calling in on Tuesday and sending emails in the meantime. Echo Park CAN gain new housing WITHOUT losing Taix - or destroying legal protections for landmarks.

A Very Brief History of French Bakeries in Old Los Angeles

Once upon a time, a long long time ago by Los Angeles standards, the city was just a tiny pueblo that lacked a proper bakery.

You might assume that the first bakeries in Los Angeles specialized in Mexican baked goods. You would, however, be mistaken. For LA's first 72 years of existence, the ONLY bread baked in the city was French bread.

In those very early days, Andre Mano and Pierre Domegue set up shop in the Plaza area, baking French sourdough around the corner from the Plaza Church. 

Andre Mano was born in France around 1809, is listed in the 1850 Federal census as a baker, and shared a house with 28-year-old Pedro Dornes (or Domec), a cooper who was also from France. Ten years later, the 1860 census still listed Andre as a baker, with another French housemate, laborer Martin Echepare.

Little seems to be known about Pierre Domegue, except that he was married to, and also baked bread with, a Native American woman whose name and nation aren't mentioned in the few sources I've found. 

Joseph Lelong, who set up shop in 1851, inexplicably named his French bakery after Swedish opera superstar Jenny Lind. There was a Lelong Block on Spring, south of Fifth, at least as late as 1890. If Lelong did indeed own property on that block (tax assessments suggest he had assets), he would have counted two other French bakers (Augustus Ulyard and Louis Mesmer) and a French grocer (Auguste Chauvin) as his neighbors. 

Lelong was the busiest baker in town...for a couple of years, anyway. He faced strong competition when Augustus Ulyard arrived in 1853. Ulyard, born in Philadelphia to French parents, started out with French bread, but soon added German and American breads and pastries, appealing to the growing Yankee and German communities. Ulyard added fresh crackers in 1860, filling another market gap (crackers shipped from San Bernardino or San Francisco tended to arrive stale). The former site of his bakery is now home to the Alexandria Hotel.

Ulyard eventually retired from baking, selling his bakery to Louis Mesmer. 

As Louis Mesmer merits his own entry, I'll restrict this to his activities as a baker. 

Besides the former Ulyard bakery, Louis Mesmer owned the New York Bakery at Sixth and Spring (the very first Ralphs Bros. Grocery stood next door). Mesmer, a devout Catholic, was the first baker in Los Angeles to bake matzo for the local Jewish community.

Los Angeles gained an army camp in 1861 in case local Confederate sympathizers revolted (Southern California had a lot of ex-Southern residents, and Los Angeles in particular leaned Confederate during the Civil War). An army marches on its stomach, and Camp Latham needed baked goods. Louis Mesmer got the contract, and erected a bakery at the camp along Ballona Creek (he also sold baked goods to neighboring rancheros). He was still operating the New York Bakery downtown. When Camp Latham moved to Highland Park, he supplied baked goods from the New York Bakery instead of building another bakery location.

Sometime around 1870, the Taix family arrived in Los Angeles. The Taix French Bread Bakery opened its doors in 1882 at 321 Commercial Street. Later, Adrian and Joaquin Taix owned The French Bakery at 1550 West Pico Boulevard. When the family tore down their bakery in 1912 to build the Champ d'Or Hotel (which would house the original Taix restaurant beginning in 1927), the Taix bakery moved, ending up in Northeast Los Angeles.

Dominique Foix, born in Haut-Garonne, arrived in 1882. He established a tannery and saddlery in his Macy Street home, later founding Foix French Baking Company downtown in 1886 and delivering bread door to door with a horse-drawn wagon. Foix often traded goods with customers who were short on cash, and received so many live frogs as payments that he was able to start a frog farm and sell frogs' legs to the many French restaurants in town. This led to Foix supplying bread to restaurants, which necessitated moving the bakery into a bigger facility in Highland Park. The bakery's flour came from Capitol Mills, housed in the oldest industrial building in the city - a three-story brick flour mill erected by Abel Stearns in 1831.

Foix turned over the bakery to his son in his later years, and Foix's grandsons were running the bakery at least as late as 1941. That same year, a broken water main below Elysian Park's reservoir flooded the bakery. Louis Foix evacuated all 15 employees, but the water and mud ruined 6000 pounds of flour. The bakery unfortunately seems to have closed down in the 1990s.

French Basque immigrant Jean-Baptiste Garacochea founded the National French Bakery in 1908, later changing the name to Pioneer French Baking Company. Pioneer operated in Venice from 1920 to 2006, operated by several generations of the Garacochea family. Great-grandsons John Baptiste and Charlie Garacochea co-own the Etxea Basque Bakery, which supplies bread to restaurants.

To hell with counting carbs - good French bread is an LA tradition! Pass the sourdough.

Standing Up to City Council

Los Angeles is just as corrupt now as it was when Frank Shaw's goons were harassing reformers like Clifford Clinton.

Regular readers know that I was not called on for public comment during the Taix landmarking hearing. I wasn't the only member of the public who wasn't called.

This isn't an isolated event, either. The same thing happened with the Stires Staircase Bungalow Court and, more recently, the Chili Bowl.

This is a blatant violation of the Brown Act. Every member of the City Council is complicit (shame on all of them).

The LA Conservancy has filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court. Put very simply, a judge can legally require the City to obey state law.

Read more here and sign the petition. There's a link to tip off the Feds, too, if you happen to be privy to anything illegal on a Federal level.

I'll be able to post more regularly once I get my internet access sorted. Coming soon: a study in the many, many changes to the French Hospital over the years.

J'Accuse

Dear Readers:

I tried. Many of you tried. The Friends of Taix tried.

Taix has been "landmarked", but it has also been marked for annihilation. Go while you still can.

And never, ever, ever stop fighting like hell for what we do still have. 

C.C.

Now that I've said that...time to make like my peasant ancestors and bring on the proverbial beheadings. (Who needs a guillotine when words will do?)

J'accuse, Mike Taix.

I know certain things about you that come from reliable sources. But I don't want those sources to get blackballed from the restaurant industry. So while I won't be listing them here...know that I know. And I am not the only one who knows. 

I know you wanted to sell the restaurant previously, in the '80s. I'm well aware that demolishing and redeveloping is part of your family's long history in LA along with that famous bread. 

But if all of this were really about the building being too big, the building could be adapted. Alternately, there are plenty of other commercial restaurant spaces in LA that are smaller than Taix.

Can you really blame anyone who thinks you only care about what money you can make off of Taix? You haven't lived in LA in years. Your continued involvement with HPG looks suspicious to anyone with common sense. You sold out your own family's legacy. I won't speculate on whether your grandfather would be proud of you.

You got your $12 million. I suggest you sell the business end of the restaurant to someone who DOES give a damn and butt out of Echo Park's future.

J'accuse, Holland Partner Group.

I know you asked Mitch O'Farrell to modify the landmark nomination. It's quite literally on the public record, so don't even think about trying to gaslight me.

You people don't live in LA - you don't even live in California. Your contributions to the city consist of luxury apartments (we have had more than enough since the 1970s, thanks) and illegal short-term rentals. You are not part of the community, you are carpetbaggers.

Making money, in and of itself, isn't wrong. Making money at someone else's expense is. And your short-term rentals drive down occupancy and drive up demand in LA. Ultimately, that's harmful.

You have baited-and-switched us with different renderings. The most recent plan for the Taix site bears little resemblance to the first one. Was the revised (and frankly uglier) design the plan all along?

Two signs and a bar top are salvage, NOT preservation. You and Mitch have effectively gutted LA's historic preservation ordinance, all for profit. That takes away meaningful protection and opens the door for wrecking more of what makes Los Angeles, Los Angeles.

If you insist upon gutting a city for profit, I ask that you confine it to your own hometown. LA does not belong to you. It belongs to Angelenos.

You, and Mike, have also based your argument for the proposed development upon a lie: that Taix can't be incorporated. Fairfield Residential is doing just that with Dinah's in Westchester. If they can do it, so can you. (Fairfield's design looks nicer than yours, too.)

J'accuse, Mitch O'Farrell.

I know Holland Partner Group spent six figures buying your influence. Don't bother trying to deny it.

You promised not to seek re-election. You broke that promise after the Taix vote.

Silverlake Heritage was mysteriously not able to get a meeting with you. Were you busy, or were you too cowardly to face them?

You have been caught on video running away from a constituent who intends to run against you. You locked the bathrooms at Echo Park Lake during a pandemic. The lake is now nearly inaccessible, with even the wheelchair ramp blocked off - surely you've heard of the Americans with Disabilities Act? Or do you just not care?

Your actions indicate that you don't care about the homeless. While I realize the encampment had serious issues (although the sanitation issue could have mitigated at least somewhat by, oh, unlocking the damn bathrooms), I have concerns about how it was handled and I have concerns about how inhumane and dangerous shelters can be. I am also concerned about food vendors getting cited in the area, despite their long tenure in Echo Park.

You are hurting your own district, and you are hurting Los Angeles. I can swear in English, French, Spanish, and Italian, and there are not enough curse words in all of those languages combined to fully express my disgust for you.

J'accuse, everyone else on the Los Angeles City Council.

You played along with Mitch and HPG's little plan. Or was it playing? You're politicians, after all. Scratch his back and he'll scratch yours, right?

You violate the Brown Act on a regular basis. Specifically, you violated the Brown Act at the landmarking hearings and landmarking vote regarding Taix. Multiple people, myself included, were mysteriously never called upon. That's illegal and you all know it.

You have now set a precedent gutting historic preservation in LA, effectively marking everything special about the city with an X. Do you really think that will endear you to fed-up voters?

I have news for you - voters ARE fed up. It's why Nithya Raman beat incumbent David Ryu.

Some of you seem to think you will never face a consequence. While that might be true under Garcetti's watch (my ire for Garcetti is a much longer topic for another time)...you are still being watched by the Feds.

Remember your colleague Jose Huizar? He played a little too nicely with greedy developers too. He's facing RICO charges. The DOJ is still actively watching some, if not most, of you.

I won't be the one who cuts the thread holding up Damocles' sword. I really am just a pissed-off Valley Girl who blogs about dead French people. But the sword is there. It's only a matter of time before someone cuts the thread. 

You have all sold out LA's heritage. You are all, arguably, doing more harm than good. Los Angeles deserves better than this, and Los Angeles deserves better than all of you.

LAST CALL to Save Taix!

The City Council is meeting today (Wednesday, June 2) to vote on the Taix HCM nomination.

Here's the problem: Mitch O'Farrell and his ilk have amended the nomination to make it essentially useless.

The amended HCM nomination wouldn't preserve the building at all - only two of the restaurant's signs and its bar top. That is not preservation at all.

If accepted by the City Council, this bastardized nomination would set a dangerous precedent for future preservation efforts.

But we can fight back. We can say no. There is no real reason Taix can't be repurposed or incorporated into a mixed-use development (Acres of Books' facade is being incorporated into a new development in Long Beach, although Onni Group chopped off quite a bit more than everyone expected).

The LA Conservancy has compiled a list of what to do. 

At the last hearing re: Taix, an untold number of would-be public commenters (myself included) were never called upon - indeed, very few calls were taken in regard to Taix. That's a violation of the Brown Act, but as per usual, no one has had to answer for that. (I have my suspicions about Mitch's role in all of this, but first things first.)

This is it. We lost the original Taix in 1964. We need to speak up NOW if we're going to have any chance of saving the Taix we still have.

(Mike, if you're reading this: you've been an absentee owner for years and I know you tried to get the city to buy the place for a freeway extension years ago. Do you even still want to run the restaurant? It's okay to sell the family business and retire - Philippe Mathieu did. If your heart's not in it, what are you even doing? You got a great price for the property. If you don't want to deal with the restaurant, passing the reins is an option.)

Apply Now: Community Leadership Bootcamp

 Dear Readers:

By now, I'm sure most of you know that I feel quite strongly about preserving our historic places.

The LA Conservancy holds an annual Community Leadership Bootcamp to train preservationists. I was fortunate to be selected for last year's original bootcamp. It was very informative, and good practice for contributing statements to the Taix Historic-Cultural Monument nomination (I also shared my notes on Taix with the actual writer of the nomination). 

Apply by February 24 if you want to attend. I highly recommend it.

C.C.

Remembering the Original Taix

Dear Readers,

Recently I was fortunate to be introduced to Jan Gabrielson, who visited the original Taix as a child and generously gave me permission to share some vintage photos.

Born in San Francisco, Jan has lived in LA since the tender age of 18 months. Jan grew up in South San Gabriel/Rosemead, currently resides in Cheviot Hills, and is a retired family lawyer and legal consultant who practiced downtown.

Jan started going to Taix in the early 50s as a child and went two or three times. Jan states “I remember going there and knowing I had been there before.” 

This 1961 photo, which Jan took from the City Hall observation deck, shows Taix in the very bottom center.

Jan describes the lost building at 321 Commercial Street as "a shabby old industrial building with more than 1 floor" and remembers sitting with family at a long table (communal seating was the norm, although private booths were available for a little extra). 

Jan's mother, a Home Economics teacher who had taken a college French class, insisted on the incorrect “tay” pronunciation and was unimpressed. Jan notes “she had no language talent whatsoever, but that didn’t stop her” from teaching Spanish at the family's dinner table.

In fact, there was a running battle with Jan's mother over how to pronounce Taix. Jan opines “it’s the family name and that’s how they pronounce it, end of story”. Jan also ran through a list of place names that ignore the X rule. (In French, pronunciation rules don't necessarily apply to names - of people or of places.)

Jan recalls coffee being served at the very end of the meal. The waiter would say “put your spoon in your glass” - to prevent the glass from shattering when the hot coffee was poured in. (Metal is an excellent conductor of heat, so this makes sense. That said, I studied art, not science.)

Jan went on to UCLA, majored in French (despite never having spoken French before!), and spent a year abroad in Bordeaux. By this time, due to UCLA's excellent language program, Jan was already fully fluent in French. 

Jan also worked as a passenger service agent for Air France. At the time, according to Jan, French visitors didn't spend much time in LA. They would visit Disneyland and Marineland, then go to San Francisco. 

This photo showing the 101 Freeway also shows the former Brew 102 brewery. Which was formerly the Maier Brewing Company and the Philadelphia Brewery before that... and the El Aliso vineyard and winery before that.

In the late 1970s or early 1980s, Jan became aware that there was a newer Taix location on Sunset Boulevard and began going there. Undeterred by the higher crime rate in Echo Park, Jan would sometimes go frequently (and sometimes less so), and often met friends with season tickets at the restaurant.

Jan recalls cheese grinders cranking fresh Parmesan into the restaurant's famous tureens of soup and calls the potato leek soup with Parmesan and pepper “one of the great joys of life”.

Jan may have been Sunset Taix’s last dine-in customer, since Mayor Garcetti shut down restaurants during Jan's last visit. (Guests already dining in were permitted to finish their meals.)

Here's hoping there will be many. many more evenings at Taix when the pandemic ends. 

Merci, Jan.

A Frenchtown Christmas Carol

(Dear readers: the following entry was inspired by my friend Kim Cooper's sizzling-hot take on the "wonderful life" of Eric Garcetti.)

Raymond Taix was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The beloved restauranteur had passed away a decade earlier.

There was no need to change the restaurant’s name; Raymond’s son Mike had taken it over when Raymond retired, just as Raymond had taken over for his father Marius Taix Jr. many years earlier.

Ten years on, Mike Taix still owned the restaurant. The business end, that is. He’d recently sold the restaurant’s building and property - a generously sized parcel fronting Sunset Boulevard, with an adjoining overflow parking lot opening onto Reservoir Street.

In an off-market sale. 

To a notorious out-of-state developer. 

For the whopping sum of $12 million. 

It was chilly in Utah, where Mike now lived. He poured himself a glass of wine before bed, ruminating over the past week.

His family’s restaurant had been nominated for landmark status months earlier. It had just passed the second hearing with a unanimous approval recommendation.

Mike was pissed. He’d made a deal with Holland Partner Group, which intended to build a five-story mixed-use complex on the site, and he did not want anything to get in the way of the plan. It was his business and it was his God-given right to sell what preservationists had called “a rare commercial example of the French Alpine style”, “the last link to old French LA”, “a beloved city institution”, and “the most charming building on the eastern end of Sunset”, among other things.

Mike put the glass in the dishwasher and went to bed. 

Well, he tried to, anyway. No sooner had Mike closed the bedroom door behind him than he heard the front door of his house fly open with a loud BANG!

Mike heard footsteps coming through the door and through the house. All of the color drained from his face as the visitor passed THROUGH the closed bedroom door.

“Dad?!”

“You don’t believe in me,” the ghost of Raymond Taix replied. 

“No…of course I do. Wait - don’t ghosts wear chains in this story?”

“Ghosts wear the chains they forged in life, and I have none. If you could only see the one you’re forging for yourself,” Raymond chided his son. “I can’t stay, Mike. But I had to tell you that you may have a chance of changing your fate.”

“Dad, what are you talking about?” 

“You will be visited by three spirits. Heed their warnings; they are wiser than you may think. Goodnight, son, and do try to have a Merry Christmas.”

And with that, the ghost of Raymond Taix departed. Upon inspection, the front door was locked, just as Mike had left it.

Mike made a mental note to take a better look at that wine in the morning and went to sleep.

A few hours later, Mike was awakened by the clock chiming one a.m. The room filled with light, and Mike found himself face-to-face with a spectral man in glasses, a frock coat, and impressive mutton chops.

“This can’t be real,” Mike groused.

“Oh, I assure you, young Taix, it absolutely can be,” the spirit replied in a faint Quebecois accent. “Good heavens, where are my manners?! I’m the ghost of Christmas Past. Come with me, I have much to show you.” 

Mike grudgingly accepted the ghost’s transparent hand and found himself whisked away to a place he had only seen in old pictures.

City Hall towered over the scene from a few blocks away, but Los Angeles Street was completely different. Gone were the government buildings. Gone was the strip mall. And was that - 

“The French-Mexican Drug Company,” the ghost announced. “Your grandfather’s pharmacy. Shall we drop in?”

Mike watched his grandfather, Marius Taix Jr., accept a shipment of medicinal wine, fill several prescriptions, and dispense instructions to a customer over the phone in his thick French accent. Why was the spirit showing him this?

“That wine is really for the restaurant, of course,” the spirit noted. “It’s 1928. Prohibition killed off every other restaurant in Frenchtown,” he added, gesturing to several vacant restaurant spaces nearby. “But, your grandfather could still get wine because he was a pharmacist. About 12 years from now, the rest of Frenchtown will be gone, and the restaurant will be the only thing left.”

Before too long, Marius Jr. locked up for the night, lugging a crate of “medicinal” wine bottles. The ghost and Mike followed him around the corner and down the street to a more familiar address. 

321 Commercial Street. 

At this point in time it was the Champ d’Or Hotel, housing Taix French Restaurant upstairs. 

“Before your grandfather and great-grandfather built this place, the Taix bakery stood on this lot,” the ghost added. “I remember when your family first came to town and when they set up shop about 10 years later. Los Angeles was much smaller then. My brother Victor and I helped change that, of course, along with our friend Remi.”

Despite the long day at the pharmacy, Marius Jr. wasn’t done for the day yet. The restaurant needed attending to before the family could depart for midnight Mass.

As the Taix family walked into St. Vibiana’s, the cathedral’s bell began to toll.

“Your time with me is up, young Taix,” the spirit replied. “I’ll leave you in the capable hands of the next spirit." 

And with that, the spirit strolled into the cathedral himself.

“Michael Taix, I presume,” stated a woman’s voice.

Mike turned around to see a transparent brunette in a black dress, black beaded gloves, black boots, and a dainty silver guillotine-blade necklace.

“Come with me, Mike. We need to talk.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

She scoffed. “Who’s the Ghost of Christmas Present, you or me?”

The spirit removed one of her gloves and snapped her fingers.

In an instant, Mike was back on Commercial Street. But now it was 2020 again, and Taix was gone.

In its place were a jail, courthouse, and parking garage. Commercial had been rerouted into Aliso Street to accommodate a curve in the 101 freeway. 

The spirit guided him on a quick tour of the neighborhood. More government buildings, parking garages, weedy empty lots, a scuzzy strip club, a bus parking lot, an old industrial building...

“This was a thriving French enclave for over 80 years. Unfortunately Beaudry didn't have time to show more of it to you. And now it’s gone forever. Only one thing remains.”

She snapped her fingers again and they were whisked by unseen forces to Sunset Boulevard.

This being Christmas eve under pandemic lockdown, Taix was only open for takeout. But that didn’t stop customers from chatting while waiting for their food.

“Man, I love this place. I don’t want it to go.”

“I moved across the street to be closer.” 

“Do you really think Taix will come back?”

“What, if the complex gets built?”

“Yeah. I mean...it just seems like Mike doesn’t care anymore. And I heard he tried to sell out a long time ago. Echo Park’s a lot more expensive now, of course.”

“I feel you. He doesn’t even live here.”

“So he sells the property. He’s got the money. Why is he involved with the development plan?”

“No one knows. But the whole thing is fishier than last week’s leftover salmon.”

“Off market sale, shady developer, bigger price tag than expected.”

“Yeah, I think something’s up.”

"Did anyone actually fall for those giant glossy flyers he sent to everyone in Echo Park?"

“I just want to know what his end game is. What’s the point of all this?”

The spirit snapped her fingers again, muting the conversation.

“Mike, do you even want to continue with the business? Philippe Mathieu sold his sandwich shop and retired when he turned 50, you know. There’s no shame in it.”

"It's not your business."

"Damn right it's not. It's YOUR family's legacy business. Mike...do you understand how all of this looks to people?”

He didn’t answer.

“Do you even care what HPG is doing to this city?”

“Building housing,” Mike snapped. 

The spirit scoffed again. “Oh, they build, all right. But it’s not enough to build housing. The city needs good housing, managed well, with an appropriate mix of price points.”

“And what do you know?”

“I was an apartment manager,” she replied. “And I was a small business owner after that.”

Mike was surprised.

“That took the wind out of your sails, didn’t it? Now watch closely.”

She snapped her fingers again.

An image appeared on the wall before them, like a projection. It was a hallway in a sleek new apartment building.

People with suitcases and bags came and went, in time lapse speed, from sunrise until the following sunrise.

“This is one of HPG’s buildings, Mike. They’re allowing illegal short-term rentals on the site. Every short-term rental is a space that’s not lived in by long-term tenants. That drives down occupancy, keeps rents high in cities like LA, and does nothing for the community. You do know the value of community, right, Mike? Frenchtown was obliterated decades before I was born.”

“The building is coming down,” Mike replied. “It’s too big for the restaurant now.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” the spirit shot back. “But our time is up. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come will take over from here.”

And with that, she floated down Sunset Boulevard and out of sight.

Mike heard a low, raspy voice. “Mike...MIKE...” He nearly jumped out of his skin when a clammy hand came down on his shoulder.

Mike whirled around to see a tall, thin spirit in gray jeans and an oversized black hoodie, both having seen better years.

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come hacked and coughed, finally clearing his throat. “Sorry about that. You get a lot of colds living in a public park. Especially with limited access to sanitary facilities.” 

“You’re homeless?”

“I wasn’t always. I had a place on Alvarado. But when the mixed-use complex went up, a lot of landlords raised rents, and there weren't enough low-income units in the complex to meet the demand. Not by a long shot. I was an essential worker, but I suddenly couldn’t afford rent anymore. And I work right down the street. You know how hard it is to commute and park in LA.”

“So what do you want with me? The property is sold. I can’t stop the developer.”

“You’ve still got some pull with HPG. And the building doesn’t have to disappear.”

The spirit waved his hand.

In an instant, the property changed. The restaurant now shared the lots with a bigger, French Alpine-inspired apartment building that matched it perfectly. 

“Come on,” the spirit urged, waving Mike through the door of the restaurant and towards the banquet rooms.

Mike was stunned to see a lawyer’s office in the first room...an accountant in another one...the CD13 office in the biggest one...small businesses in the other three.

“In this future, the building was adapted and the extra space rented out. You saw the apartments on the way in. The people who hated HPG’s original plan love it. This is what the project could be, Mike.”

The spirit waved his hand again. They were back out on Sunset. 

“Or this could happen,” the spirit added.

With one more wave, the proposed development appeared. It was, to be fair, ugly, and already suffering from visible maintenance problems. Traffic backed up in either direction as residents and patrons waited to access the underground parking garage. It was noisy, too, owing to its acoustics. And something was missing.

“Where’s the restaurant?”

“It never reopened, Mike. There were delays, there was red tape, there were disagreements, and you finally just gave up.”

Mike was stunned.

“You may not own the building anymore, Mike...but you can still put in a good word.”

The spirit vanished.

Mike woke up in his bedroom in Utah. What the hell had just happened?