Southeast Corner of Santa Monica and Bundy

I’ve been trying to figure this one out for years.

There is a small gated park at the southeast corner of the intersection of South Bundy Drive and Santa Monica Boulevard in neighborhood of West Los Angeles. I’ve walked its perimeter, which is fenced, but the gate is locked, prohibiting entry.

My limited knowledge of the history of the area doesn’t offer much. Nearby University High School sits atop a natural spring (“Lágrimas de Santa Monica,” or “Tears of Saint Monica”) that was the namesake of the city of Santa Monica. The area may have originally been incorporated in the city of Sawtelle. I’m not sure if Sawtelle’s border extended that far west. According to Wikipedia, the city of Sawtelle extended west to the Santa Monica city limit, which is at Centinela Avenue.

LALife.com lists this parcel as # 4263-036-900 and categorizes it as “Government Owned Property.”

AH HA! Found it!!!

Well, sort of…

It’s not the authoritative history, but at least it is a story about “Bundy Greens.”

Starved of Class Consciousness

I guess I’m just now in my early thirties beginning to realize how I, as an American who grew up at the end of the Cold War, was raised in world that was completely depleted of any and all real economic class consciousness. Viewed through the structural-functional paradigm, US society would have perceived any real study of communism as a contagious disease. From McCarthyism, blacklisting, and ultimately the threat of world domination and ComIntern subjegation, American citizens came to view disparate and wide ranging ideas like Marxism, Communism, Socialism (Fabianism) as one. Ironically, the collectivisation of these ideals in a figurative sense resembles the amalgamation of resources from which communism originally derived its name.
When I first attended a public high school I was told that, as a prerequisite for their employment, all of our teachers were required to sign a document stating that they would not teach their students anything about communism. This small but pertinent concept seems emblematic of the greater idea that Americans seem to have willfully and, over time, increasingly denied themselves any kind of real economic class consciousness – almost as if they were doing so for the sake of their survival.
More to come.

JCVD!

This movie was awesome! I’ve never been a big fan of kick-boxing so I was never really one of those who would eagerly go see Van Damme show. Recently VD had become more of an icon of eighties action movies – like Chuck Norris. I remembered from high school friends telling me how he deserved more respect than he got, that he did all his own stunts and was actually a skilled fighter (a la Bruce Lee).

This movie was a total departure. If you aren’t a Van Damme fan, go see this movie. If you are a Van Damme fan, go see this movie!