Holiday weekend at NoHo was no average – Daily News

For Independence Day weekend, the New York Times’ Jill cowan wrote a few days before, “Eager Californians should hit the road in record numbers for an unfettered July 4th vacation. And, as usual, many of us are heading for the coast.

Your columnist, meanwhile, was heading towards the San Fernando Valley.

Did I run out of gas on my way to the coast? No. A friend in North Hollywood was out of town and offered his duplex for the vacation weekend. It sounded good.

She walked to the top of Mount San Gorgonio, about halfway between San Bernardino and Joshua Tree and at 11,500 feet the highest peak in Southern California. Meanwhile, I was relaxing in the suburbs, taking advantage of its air conditioning. Who got the better part of this deal?

For those unfamiliar with geography, to my knowledge there are three contiguous Hollywoods: Hollywood, symbol of glamor and the entertainment industry; West Hollywood, gay and upscale; and East Hollywood, gentrification.

Then there is North Hollywood, separated from the others by the Hollywood Hills but which in 1927 took over the name anyway. You have to admire the nerve. It is as if a city on the south coast of England decides to call itself the north of Paris.

Anyway, I was grateful to be there – North Hollywood, not North Paris – and to see a bit of the Valley.

My first stop was an old favorite, and perhaps the city’s main draw for many of us. Circus liqueur, with its iconic drumming clown sign? No, although no visit is complete without driving.

I’m talking about Iliade Bookstore. Since Long Beach’s book acres closed, Iliad is almost certainly LA’s biggest and best second-hand bookstore. It is a veritable labyrinth of tall wooden bookcases stuffed with books. And like any worthy bookstore, there are bookstore cats.

I had brought reading material for the weekend, of course. Do you think I could last two days without a book? And one was for practical use: Erin Mahoney Harris’ “Walking LA” Of his 38 walks, I only had four left, including NoHo’s.

The walk and the valley don’t seem to go hand in hand, but like most misconceptions it’s not really true. Especially here, in an area with an arts district.

The tour includes four blocks of Lankershim Boulevard, passing art galleries, theater companies, dance studios and more. A curiosity is the complex of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, whose square houses statues and busts of television pioneers.

There’s Archie and Edith Bunker on a bench under a tree, Ricky and Lucy Ricardo arguing on the steps, and Johnny Carson, a hand in his pocket, like he’s just told a joke.

Harris’ 2010 book quotes busts of Red Skelton, Bill Cosby, and Walt Disney. Cosby’s a since put in storage, eh eh.

The tour is supposed to take you past several live theater spaces. A few no longer exist and the fate of others is unclear after COVID.

The 1950s marquee at Theater 68 has two ominous messages: “Don’t worry, NoHo / We are just at intermission” and “for lease”. (The theater goes up a virtual play in one act, “In a Hurry”, this weekend and the next at 6pm, until July 18th)

Businesses and restaurants are also changing. Cafe Joe appears dormant, but the intricate black-and-white cartoon mural of its exterior enlivens the block.

Other changes have taken place since 2010. Such as the replacement of a Citibank – described as looking “more like another art project than a financial institution” – with a modern apartment complex, and the arrival of an Amazon Fresh grocery store as part of another housing project. .

I may need spring for the updated edition of the book.

Fortunately, El Portal, a 1926 vaudeville theater with a neon marquee and golden ticket booth, all restored in 2000 and still looking great, isn’t going anywhere. Thanks to the drop-down grid, the posters of the various upcoming shows are visible on the forecourt. And a visit to its website reveals that a fall schedule has been announced.

In the meantime, do as the marquee advises: “Be Like Hamilton / Take Your Covid Shot. “

Guidance comes in all its forms, formal and informal. I read historical landmarks for Nudie Cohn’s former western couture boutique and for the region’s long-gone newspaper, the delightfully named Lankershim Laconic.

“The four-page journal was called a ‘weekly test’, because the editors… ‘tried’ to publish it once a week,” the story reads.

A few steps further, as I admired a black and white mural by Miles Davis on an exposed wall, a man saw me and told me that an even better mural around the corner is this one. by Frank Sinatra.

I followed him and indeed, there was a multi-colored mural with three views of the singer, two of them from his police reservation mug. Sardonic title: “C’est la vie.”

I thanked this volunteer guide for the advice.

(Still later I found an online audio guide at Antaeus.org for NoHo ZIP code 91601 which has stops at the Arts District, TV Academy, Iliad, and Lankershim Train Depot among others, which I’m sorry I missed.)

July 4th away from home was good. The usual activities where I live, Claremont – pancake breakfast in the park, family parade, fireworks – have all been canceled anyway.

At breakfast at Art’s Deli in Studio City, where I was the first customer of the day, I had lox, onions and eggs. When my server asked if I wanted anything else, I looked at my scrambled eggs and thoughtlessly asked for salsa.

When she came back with a dish, I said, “We’ll see how the salsa goes with the lox. “I didn’t even think about it until you said it,” she replied with a small laugh and walked away. She recalled: “It is independence day. You show your independence. (Turns out salsa and lox together are fine.)